Rancho Azul y Oro ~ Surviving the Dream

The rancho wine grapes look the best they have ever looked and the chemical tests bear that out.  Additionally, they taste the way they should and the seeds are brown and crunchy, so are the stems.   What are you waiting for, one might ask?   Ducks are being placed in their rows -- and you know how well ducks work in rows.  We believe our yields will be exceptional this year and therefore need additional bins, and will drive north to pick those up on Tuesday.  In the meantime, the vintner/chemist (and we use those terms very loosely), will run one last set of numbers to see how the harvest will be scheduled.  The balance of Tuesday will be spent cleaning and sanitizing the barrel room floors, the crusher-destemmer, the bins, all of our buckets, all of our picking tools, so we're ready to go at sunrise on Wednesday, September 4th.   We don't know our sequence yet or if it will be concurrent or consecutive for the t...

  Apologize for the hiatus!  As with everyone, some time was taken to bask in the warmth of the summer sun, roast a few marshmallows, go to the fair, watch a few sunsets, and walk barefoot through the grass (only in our minds, otherwise, the rattlesnakes could end the summer quickly).    What's been going on at the rancho, you might ask?  Lots, as always.  The table grapes ripened nicely and surprised us with much more bounty than expected!  The fig tree has produced a serious crop of figs this year.  We're currently producing fig jam, strawberry fig jam -- basically, anything one can think of utilizing figs, as well as our highly anticipated Tequila Jalepeno Grape Jelly and our Ruby Royale Grape Jelly.  Our current cocktail accompaniment is a olive/fig tampenade, with the ranch olive oil, naturally!   It was been a sizzling summer here on the Central Coast, with temperatures over 110 since mid-May through the end of July....