Week 4
January 20, 2002 to January 26, 2002 

	Tuesday, January 22, 2002 There were only a few minor problems today during our first day of blending our 2001 wines:  I had no diesel to run our barrel washer. We had a leak in a fitting on our tank.  One of our hoses to transfer the wine broke down. These were all small problems that were resolved easily. We don't know what to expect, because last year on our final day we had a power failure.  I think the quality of our wines look exceptional this year. Most of you know I would not say this unless I truly believed it.  Saturday, January 26, 2002 The blending is over!! Things went real smoothly. I personally did very little since I had all the barrels set up and Brendan had marked them ahead of time. The wines are all shook up now and will improve over the next several weeks. By Barrel Tasting on the 2nd and 3rd of March, the wines will taste fine. I actually tasted all the wines today since we had a few customers come by. They all tasted pretty good for only a couple of days in the barrel.  If you check on our order form, you will see we have chosen the name for our new wine. "Terre Melange" replaces "D.C. Cuvee". The translation suggests "Earth Mixes". Since the wine is a mixture of grapes grown in many different soils, I feel it is a good name. I have also decided not to produce the Cab Franc, which then was blended into the Terre Melange. I had a dilemma regarding the cab franc: I received only a small amount of cab franc grapes from my neighbor and had sold already more futures than I could make in wine. Any of you who purchased cab franc, will receive an e-mail or letter from us with your options regarding replacement. We've had this sort of dilemma before! The new percentage of varietals for the Terre Melange came out to be 38% Carignan, 17% Zinfandel, 15% Pinot, 14% Cab Franc, 9% Barbera and 7% Cabernet. The alcohol came out to 14.32%. Here are the other alcohols:    Zinfandel Estate Cuvee    Petite Sirah    Carignan 14.18% 13.85% 13.95% 13.88% Block 4 Syrah Aca Modot (my no wimpy) Pinot  13.67% 13.62% 13.94% 14.92% BTW, my alcolizer performed flawlessly so I paid the $15,000 bill (see my earlier concerns in Week 2 and Week 3 of this year).
	Dave
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