Holiday 2010 Discounts 15% Off All Wines!
The holidays are here and we should all be drinking great California wine this season. At Black Sheep Finds we want to make that task a little bit easier for you. Just enter the code HOLIDAY on our website to get 15% percent off the list price of all wines, including Holus Bolus and Piedrasassi. Offer good until December 20, 2010.
Back to Business
One would think that my excuse for not posting in over a month is that I was sooo busy with harvest that I could not find idle time to post. Truth is, I sat through a 3 week period of not picking any grapes. The clouds filled the skies, it was cool and it rained 3 times (just over an inch total at the vineyard). Never in my ten years of making wine in Santa Barbara County had I seen such a extended cool wet period. It was down right depressing. “It’s the middle of October,” I thought to myself, ‘I should be busy processing grapes.” At one point during this time, I had fermented and pressed everything that we had picked and had no grapes at all in the winery! I even went back to LA for 3 nights to visit with the family.
Finally a few days before Halloween I was able to pick the second block of Watch Hill Syrah (photo). For whatever numbers are worth it came in beautifully: 24 brix (potential alcohol 14.1%, 3.50 pH, 5.5 g/L TA). I also picked the first crop off a new vineyard partially in Santa Rita Hills called Sebastiano (NO relation to the Sebastiani wines from Sonoma). It is a cool, windy site and there was hardly any fruit, 1.85 tons off of 3.5 acres or for you Euros about 8 hectoliters per hectare. It also came in with nice numbers, 24 brix, 3.7 pH. It is a unique site with a good aspect, interesting soils and high-density planting. It should make good wine. I’m excited to see how things turn out. Right now all of these grapes are cold soaking or just starting to ferment.
There are a few more tons out at Sebastiano that I will pick this Saturday and that my friends, will finish our 2010 red harvest. Now all that is left in the field is the Roussanne. Record warmth this week should help finish the ripening and I hope to pick the whites in the next week or so.