Wine

Loop the Valley

Ahh, the Valle de Guadalupe!  Home of full-bodied wine, scrumptious olives, and juicy, juicy oranges.  My first foray into the Guadalupe Valle was when I left La Mision at a balmy 70 degrees Fahrenheit in a long-sleeved shirt and arrived in the Valley where it was 91 degrees.  Forgot I was going east into the desert, I guess, but what …

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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 …

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Racking My Brain Over the Grape 

People occasionally joke with me and ask, “How is it that you don’t drink all of your wine?”  We have a chuckle over that but the truth is it’s my livelihood, folks.  This is a sink-or-swim life choice and I prefer to learn the front crawl than to drown in my own creation.  Wine Work equals Hard Work.  It’s not …

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Palomino and Carignan are alive and well in the Guadalupe Valley

No, they are not characters in a Tom Stoppard play. Palomino and Carignan are grapes, two varietals grown in our own Guadalupe Valley. Their merit is that as “uvas de temporada” or seasonal grapes, they require no irrigation.   In the New World, the Americas, irrigation is a widespread and accepted practice.  In Europe,  it is strictly prohibited under penalty of …

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