Rancho Azul y Oro ~ Surviving the Dream

After last year's harvest, we actually sat down and had an organized meeting and devised an organized, printed winemaker's protocol, so we could improve our technique, streamline the process, eliminate unnecessary steps, and ultimately, our wine. Now in our winemaker's "post-game" review, despite all of our careful planning, in the end, what we were most unhappy with last year turns out to be the precise thing we are most unhappy with this year. Last year, we learned that while many winemakers aim for a brix of approximately 25, the model of wine to which we aspired would demand a brix of 26 to 26.5. Last year's mistake was that we picked at the numbers many winemakers prefer. This year, we waited two months longer for the numbers we wanted, but what we did not factor in was the lack of cooperation from Mother Nature. We waited two months longer than last year and our post-press numbers are not what we had hoped, so we're left with a new wine we'r...

It seems like it was a year spent waiting. Spring and bud break seemed like it would never come. Summer seemed to come in starts and stops. We waited all year for a heat that really only materialized on occasions when we wished not to have to deal with wilting heat; the rest of the summer was 26% below our normal temperatures. We waited for ripening of the grapes. We waited and waited. Finally, with the olive harvest upon us, we could not wait any longer. The Zinfandel was harvested October 4. The brix sneaked up on us and came in at an astounding 28.5, a whopping 17.8% alcohol. It is destined to accompany chocolate as a late harvest wine. It stormed most of that week of primary fermentation, but it provided a perfect backdrop to decorate for our Harvest Celebration with the family, which we celebrated our traditional third weekend of October and which will be covered in a separate post, but one of the highlights of the weekend was that the barn was officially renamed The Win...