The Rest of the Story

My little 12 volt SureFlo pump has two wires sticking out of it instead of a plug and has to be connected to a car battery to run, and it only pumps two gallons a minute.  Ha.  I had more than 800 gallons of wine to move.  Do the math, kiddos. It took us 16 plus hours.  Yep.  And we worked solid.  Our hands are black (wine has a wonderful way of staining), our backs are sore, but the babies are put to bed and let me tell you, they are some very good babies.

I am really excited about my new dry rosé made from 100% Cinsault.  It is deeply colored, with irresistible floral notes and spice.  This will be my 2013 Soul Sister.

Lady in Red will be a more mature and structured wine this year.  The harvest was outstanding, the fruit perfect, the fermentation problem-free, and the wines are stable.  I made three barrels of this Mourvédre based blend this year and hope it will eventually be my flagship wine.

This year I fiddled a bit with 50 Shades of Red and added Tempranillo (which I love) to this Grenache based blend, along with bits of Syrah, Mourvédre and Cabernet.  I think it’s going to be a winner.

Perhaps Lust, my premium Syrah, is the wine that will be the most noticeably different.  The fruit I worked with this last harvest is superior in every way to 2012.  I am quite pleased with its development so far.  It is loaded with juicy fruit, well-integrated tannins and spice, and I believe will take on some good qualities from the barrel.

Okay … and now we get to my unintentional blending blunder.  It was around three in the morning and Chente and I were working steadily, determined to get the wines racked, the barrels cleaned, the blends and barrels organized, etc.  But by this time of the wee hours I was getting rummy.  I had taken half a barrel of Tempranillo earlier for my 50 Shades blend and intended to top off the newly racked barrel with un-oaked Tempranillo in carboys.  Oops.  I was tired and didn’t read the careful label I’d attached to the tambo.  So I ended up topping the barrel with Cinsault!  Tempranillo is my monovarietal Bold Sister label.  Apparently it’s not going to be a monovarietal this year.  Oops.

I thought Chente would strangle me because it meant lifting more carboys to fill the Cinsault barrel and we were dead tired.  I was contrite but I’m curious how it will turn out.  Hopefully it will be one of those happy accidents.  I have a hunch I’m not the first winemaker to make a similar goof.  More on that as the wines develop.

Thanks so much for all of your support and for taking an interest in my winemaking journey.