2010 Grenache

Finished up the 2010 Grenache today. Everything went pretty well. The berries were a little bit larger so we had to make some machinery adjustments in order to keep the berries intact. Doing that meant a few more jack (piece of the stem) in the crushed fruit. Overall though it was a great day at the winery. Looks like we will probably be moving on to the Cab Sauv in the next week or so depending on the weather.
Neil

International Best of Class, Sommelier Challenge 2010

We just received the news that our 2007 Artemisia won Best of Class (Bordeaux Style Reds) in the 2010 Sommelier Challenge International Wine Competition! This is a great competition judged exclusively by Sommeliers. The winning wines in this competition came from all over the world from Spain to Australia and everywhere in between.

We are very proud of all our wines. Anke puts a lot of time and effort into her all the blends and this wine shows it. This is the third international honor that our 2007 Artemisia has won in 2010. This wine has won Gold in its class at the Women's Wine Maker International Competition, Gold at the Long Beach Grand Cru International Competition and now Best of Class at that Sommelier Challenge.

We still have a few more competitions that we are entered in before the year is over, a couple closer to home. We will keep things updated as the year comes to a close.

The link for the Sommelier challenge results page can be found here.

Crushing our 2010 Merlot

We just finished crushing our 2010 Merlot from Stone Tree Vineyard. This will be the Merlot that goes into our Artemisia blend. The fruit looked and tasted wonderful! Many thanks to Stone Tree for delivering such great fruit in such a challenging year.









Anke, Tom, Maria and Martha are all hard at work sorting jacks in the photo on the left. It is a little hard to see, but the fruit was nice and small and stayed pretty well intact throughout the de-stemming and crushing processes. Anke, made SO2 additions throughout the day.







The crushed fruit is in the cellar tonight getting a cold soak (chilled down to about 55 degrees Fahrenheit). Anke will slowly warm it and inoculate it with yeast soon so it can begin the fermentation process. -Neil