A quick time line in photos

Harvest is a crazy time of the year. I've heard people describe it as "controlled chaos", a "love hate relationship", and my favorite, "a time of year when I can drink as much beer as I want and not gain any weight".  Harvest is also a hard time of the year with many long days spent in the winery. The significant others of winemakers and cellar staff call themselves harvest widows at this time of the year as not much QT gets spent with the family. My kids also get confused because I come home in a different big truck every couple of days ready to be in a vineyard in the early hours of the next day for a pick. My daughter asked me the other day if her car seat would fit so I could drive her to school in it. In the winery we spend time checking weather reports in the various areas of California where we have grapes contracted while tending to brix and temp measurements and looking after all of the various fermentations. There is a lot of manual labor involved in the winery, bodies take strain and the cleaning never stops. We spend a lot of time on the road grabbing grape samples making sure we pick the fruit at it's optimal level of ripeness. We drink a lot of coffee and beer never tastes as good as it does at this time of the year. Here is a quick photo tour of urban winemaking at WineWorks...

Unloading precious grapes from one of our rent a wreck trucks (it's actually pretty fun to drive). 

This is what a barrels worth (half ton) of grapes looks like...

Happy grape sorters digging into the days first fruit to pass over the sorting table.

Fermenting grapes being inoculated with yeast. Every wine lover should smell this at some stage of their life.

Pouring the must into the basket press is always a Kodak moment. Yes we do spill a little bit every now and again.

Beautiful Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir draining from the press and ready to be pumped into barrel.

Eric making sure to smile for the camera while not letting the wine over flow from the barrel.

Everyone gets to be hands on in the winemaking process at WineWorks, even grand kids get put to work. Young Benji helps slide the press into action...

and poses for a picture with his grandad.

This is another activity that any serious wine geek should try to experience at some stage of their life. There is nothing as aromatically pleasing as the smell of freshly pressed wine being transferred into an oak barrel.

Pinot Noir seen through the site glass.

Ya'll come back now ya hear!?

Thanks to Linda for the photos!

Harvest is in full swing

Goldeneye bins waiting for the morning Pinot pick

 I was talking with a friend/mentor the other day and asked him how harvest was going. He replied "harvest is an exercise of survival, and we are surviving".

If you've ever worked a harvest it's easy to relate to that. We are just getting started with harvest here at WineWorks. We've already had a couple marathon days and tomorrow will be another one. We are surviving and we  are having fun. We are having a lot of fun!

We've been walking vineyards tasting grapes. Talking to growers and tasting grapes.. Tasting grapes and talking with consultants. Driving around northern California dropping off bins and tasting grapes. Our first fruit is in, we've got our first ferments ticking away and each new days greetings are met with conversations about how sore we are from the previous days efforts. Each day of harvest produces a new bruise, bump, ache or pain. It's all part of harvest, and it's all fun.

Colin and Andy from Tasot sorting Pinot from Keller Estate

Whole berry Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir with dry ice, ready for cold soak.

6 year old Benji shows Eric how its done

 We couldn't be happier with all of our equipment. It's been fun tweaking the speed on the sorting table, elevator and destemmer getting everything just right.

Richard, Jerry, Sam and Benji sorting Pinot

 Kate and Brad sorting clone 777 Pinot from Keller Estate

 And then there is Mother Nature with how she keeps us guessing. There is rain in the forecast with low temperatures for the next few days. With it decisions on whether or not to pick fruit that is ready or close to ready. We go through all of the scenarios, trust me there are a lot of them, and then factor in logistics of harvest crew availability, truck rental availability and what ever else we already have scheduled.

 Anderson Valley is hands down my favorite location for growing Pinot Noir and Anderson Creek is a magical vineyard just outside of Boonville.

 We pick the 2011 vintage Anderson Creek Pinot tomorrow!

Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue

No there is not going to be a wedding in the winery, at least not yet, it's more a description of a few new toys we have recently acquired...

Something old (it's a fork lift rotater for those of you who are wondering)

 My new harvest boots, quite a fashion statement I know

 New punch down tool waiting for the first fruit of the season

 OK so I don't really have anything borrowed but here is our new scale which is...

Blue

Here's a little teaser shot of the new floor in the tasting room and our 10 foot long super comfy couches, prefect for sipping a little vino on after a grape sorting or punch down session.

The construction phase of our first year is getting close to being finished, the new restrooms are being constructed this week (just out of the frame to the left of the above picture). Stay tuned for more pictures of the front of house soon. 

We're busily readying the winery for our first fruit of the year which looks like it could be just over a week away. Windsor Oaks Pinot is in the lead for the first pick of 2011. We still have a little fruit available from a few of our vineyards and there is still time to get in on making wine this year if you are up for all of the fun to be had. We just added an organically farmed Sangiovese vineyard to our line up for the inaugural vintage. It's a fantastic vineyard planted on a steep terraced hillside in Dry Creek. We're only sourcing a small amount of the fruit from this site so if making your own California super Tuscan sounds fun give us a call.

First Party

We held our first party this past Saturday. It was a great chance to meet a few of the people making wine with us this year and show off some of the new equipment and the work we have done in the winery. 

Our neighborhood butcher Olivier (http://www.oliviersbutchery.com/index.html) prepared some phenomenal treats for us right on our back dock and we tasted wines produced from a few of the vineyards we are sourcing fruit from this year. 

 David and Aran from Carlotta Wines tell their story.

 It was a great first event. We're looking forward to hosting more in the near future and being able to pour wines we've produced on site.

Thanks to everyone who came out to show their support, and thank you HM for the loan of your cooler at the last minute ;-)

Christmas in August?

Most of our equipment was delivered today. It was a hair raising experience unloading all of this shiny new winery equipment but a very exciting day for us.

The truck full of new toys arrives

 Kevin giving the basket press a little kiss to say hello

 Trying not to think about how much the press weighs much less how much it cost

 Sorting Table and Basket Press safely in the winery

Whose grapes will be the first to pass through the new destemmer?

White Hawk Visit

My daughter Kate joined me for a quick visit to White Hawk vineyard this past weekend to check in on our Syrah. The crews just finished removing laterals and it looked like some leaves had been pulled as well. Kevin Merrill the vineyard manager said they were planing on hedging this week. As we've heard from other growers Kevin says it's going to be a light crop "but should make great wine".   

The sandy soil at White Hawk is amazing. It reminds me more of Lanikai beach than a vineyard.

Vineyard Visit

 Last week I drove up to check in on a few of our vineyards and chat with the growers about the season so far to see how things are shaping up for 2011. Despite hearing stories of 25-50% loss or shatter damage, both the Keller Estate and Windsor Oaks properties have experienced minimal damage and yields are looking only slightly lower than last year. 

We're still a good few weeks away from veraison, but in general it looks like we are running about 3 weeks behind "normal" this year.

Last week our barrel racks were delivered so we finally got the chance to do some winery work. I've never been so happy to smell sulfur before. All of our barrels are now resting on their racks, with a sulfur "sous" in them waiting to be cleaned out and filled with wine in the upcoming months. 

It was also fun to finally put our newly rented forklift to work, after all driving a forklift is really the reason we all get into this business in the first place, right?    

Until next time...

First Post

Website. Check. Facebook page. Check. Twitter account. Check. Blog. Really?

These are just a few of the things that have nothing to do with making wine yet have a lot to do with opening a winery. The things Kevin and I have learned since launching Dogpatch WineWorks just a few months ago are pretty varied and almost always interesting, almost. If you think it's all about grapes, fermentation science, chemistry, barrels and really expensive equipment your wrong, well you'd be right about the equipment.

Here's a list of a few things that we've been learning about since signing the lease here on 3rd St.

Lights (high bay energy efficient)

Water (2 1/5 inch copper pipe is cool)

Power ("Are you going to make it all 220?" "Yeah 220... 221, whatever it takes")

Load bearing walls vs. non load bearing (tearing them down is fun)

Protective concrete systems (landlords like stuff like this)

Trench drains and general plumbing (do you know why a plumber looks up at the ceiling when you are talking about installing a drain in the floor?)    

Add to that Google analytics, Go Daddy's, Urban Daddy's, Mailchimps and the SEO for dummies book collecting dust on my desk and you're pretty much caught up with what's been happening here at the winery. 

Starting this business has been a very exciting, sometimes stressful but fun undertaking. With everything that has been going on so far, and everything we still have ahead of us before we actually start making wine I am not sure how often this blog will be updated but I'm going to make an effort to document all of the weird and wonderful activities that are involved in opening and running an urban winery.

Stay tuned for updates on weather conditions, grower and vineyard profiles, equipment maintenance, harvest activities, traffic jams, ramblings of sleep deprived winemakers and useless trivia that we will somehow link to wine, all in a fun way.

Cheers,

DG