Summer's Approaching

Posted 06/04/2010 at 09:51 AM by Dirk

Rumor has it that summer is here. OK, it has been raining, but I know that you can't be a winemaker unless you are an optimist. According to the calendar, it is time for all those summer things: graduations, good weather, barbecues, swimming, SPF 45 and a fun book. Graduations: I have attended and listened; the graduation speakers were wonderful this year. Yes, summer must be close. Weather: It continues to toy with us. If ...  
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Single Source

Posted 05/24/2010 at 02:10 PM by Dirk

I recently had some great, single-source chocolate at the Nimbash event, put on by Nimbus Arts, in St. Helena. (There was good wine at the event, too.) Their name: TCHO. (Pronounced "choh!") Doesn't that sound as if you should then say, "Geshundheit"? They are making great chocolate in San Francisco but got my attention when they brought a chocoholic's dream kitchen appliance to Nimbash. It looked like a KitchenAid but its granite wheels turn cocoa nibs into chocolate! ...  
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Great Futures

Posted 05/12/2010 at 02:27 PM by Dirk

You have to be about my age to remember the classic line from "The Graduate": "The future is plastics." That may be true if you are talking about toys that come with your Happy Meal, but we have determined that Great Futures actually is about wine?and blue teeth. This weekend is the official start of the Nickel & Nickel 2009 Futures, when we taste the latest vintage of our single-vineyard Cabernets from barrel. They are young?maybe even ...  
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Pit Stop

Posted 04/29/2010 at 02:10 PM by Dirk

We had the mother of all pit stops at Nickel & Nickel this week. The California Mille stopped here?they were invited, so it was OK. If you love vintage cars (which means that you don't judge a car by the size or number of its cup holders?or if it has cup holders, you don't mind knowing your mechanic on a first-name basis, don't need those wimpy airbag thingies, don't need that GPS doohickey, know how to ...  
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Plant a Tree

Posted 04/15/2010 at 08:35 AM by Dirk

Last night I heard our resident owl hooting. Today I saw her and the name fits; she is great. ("Great" sounds more important, wise and aloof than "huge.") I assume that pretty soon we will see one, two or three baby owls peering out of the hole high up on the oak tree by the Sullenger House at Nickel & Nickel. They have been returning each spring. I doubt that they are finding it quite as ...  
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Bread and Wine...Try PaneVino

Posted 03/24/2010 at 11:00 AM by Dirk

When someone talks about "Bread & Wine" I usually get some sort of communion flashes - (usually without the guilt.) But, we are in the wine world, and it is normal to serve bread when offering wine for tasting. (I happen to be partial to a classic sweet baguette with a crispy crust that is easily torn apart. It is some French etiquette thingy to tear baguette and not cut it. I don't get it.) PaneVino ...  
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On your marks...

Posted 03/11/2010 at 08:24 AM by Dirk

You may not have thought of this, but, it is hard to look graceful when wearing snow shoes. Worse still if you are racing...late at night...by starlight...and candlelight. (You have to like a race that has better candles than some French restaurants.) Beth Nickel, our resident arbiter of all things stylish, did "Book Across The Bay" last month. Snow, ice, dark of night, (almost sounds like mail delivery doesn't it?) and snow shoes, 10Km. Imagine ...  
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Spring Flowers

Posted 03/05/2010 at 10:31 AM by Dirk

When I think about "bloom" in Napa Valley, I normally think about when the vineyards are blooming to set the crop for the year (usually in May but it changes by variety, location, rootstock, exposure, soil, vintage...you get the idea). I happen to love it when the vines bloom, but it isn't much to behold. They are nearly invisible at a distance. You could drive past all of our vineyards and never notice the grape ...  
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Pruning Away

Posted 02/19/2010 at 08:33 AM by Dirk

February is one of my favorite times in Napa Valley. There isn't as much traffic. (Locals are supposed to complain about the traffic, but chances are, we would hate it if the traffic wasn't there to support wineries, restaurants and more.) The mustard is in bloom and it is spectacular. Last weekend there were cars trying to find parking spaces at Rock Cairn Vineyard so that they could get out and take pictures in the mustard. ...  
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Back to School

Posted 02/12/2010 at 01:24 PM by Dirk

I attended law school last week. (While shocking, that is NOT a lie!) Given that my dad and grandfather were lawyers, it wouldn't seem that far out of line unless you know me. I am a winemaker, never took the LSAT, and the Berkeley admissions staff would have justifiably assumed any application from me was submitted as a prank and been forced to check their calendars to see if it was April 1st. They have a ...  
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Espresso

Posted 01/22/2010 at 08:42 AM by Dirk

Maybe you are like me, and you like coffee but don't know that much about it. People who are "into" coffee are as crazy about their subject as wine geeks are about what we make (wine). The coffee master studies it and knows: who makes it, where it is grown, how it is roasted, stored, brewed, (if the water was blessed by virgins), was it organic, the fiber count on the burlap bags, etc... It ...  
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Tasting Teeth

Posted 01/13/2010 at 02:19 PM by Dirk

It's January and we are busy evaluating our next moves with the 2009 red wines. It's time. They are in barrel. They have dropped a lot of their sediment. They have finished malolactic fermentations. They have lost the "fermentation" character. (Oh...and they are very good.) Tasting wines this young can sound great...even romantic in a wine-geeky sort of way, but, like teenagers, they can be aggressive and rebellious. (They are supposed to be like that...the wines, ...  
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Plaid Tidings

Posted 12/08/2009 at 09:41 AM by Dirk

Plaid happens to be "in" around St. Helena right now. You don't have to be Scottish or read Alexander McCall-Smith books to like plaid and we aren't going to explore any of the kilt jokes here. Our own Tim Setzer - otherwise known as "Sparky" -- is one of The Plaids who is performing at the White Barn in St. Helena in "Plaid Tidings." We caught him last weekend, which leaves this weekend in their limited ...  
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Christmas Lights

Posted 12/04/2009 at 11:57 AM by Dirk

It's that time of year again... The cynical side of me can say that I heard the same Christmas CD playing in the grocery store, the bookstore, and the gas station. (Who organizes that sort of coordination and could we put them in charge of fixing the economy?) The (what is the opposite of cynical?) optimistic side of me can say how much I enjoy the Christmas lights. I am biased, but my favorite lights, after all ...  
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How many bottles of wine are in your future?

Posted 07/30/2009 at 11:28 AM by Dirk

Have you ever stopped to consider how many bottles of wine are in your future? You should. It may surprise you that it isn't as many as you might think and that you should be making good choices. Recently I was at lunch with fellow winemaker, Bruce Cakebread, who said that people are getting tired of this recession and of trying to find something drinkable in the world of 'Two-Buck-Truck Econo-wines.' He did a survey and...  
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Meet the "Futures"

Posted 04/21/2009 at 02:43 AM by Dirk

Yes, we know that there is more than one "Future." In fact, this year, we have 13 "Futures." (Multiple "Futures" sounds like some sort of vino-schizophrenia.) (Did you read "Popular Science" when you were a kid? It was always predicting how we would live in the future. I don't have a flying car...and I could use one! They never mentioned the internet...) You get the idea, they were wrong. (but it was fun to read and ...  
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Tractor Jam

Posted 04/03/2009 at 08:38 AM by Dirk

There was a tractor jam at Dragonfly Vineyard this week. There aren't any traffic lights and Aaron didn't have a traffic copter in the area but it might have been needed. Four tractors on a four-acre vineyard seem like a lot, but each had its purpose to fully integrate our cover crops. It is the time of year when we have to knock down the cover crops to help the soils and aid in frost protection ...  
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Don't Read too Much about Food...(It is better to enjoy it!)

Posted 03/27/2009 at 11:49 AM by Dirk

I just finished reading Michael Pollan's book "In Defense of Food." In spite of being dangerously close to qualifying as a "self help" book, it was very good. (I tend to avoid self help books because there would be no logical place to stop if I ever started in on that Herculean task of my own self improvement.) Michael (now that I have read the book, we are on a first name basis...other than the fact ...  
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Half-Track Takes on Vineyard

Posted 03/24/2009 at 01:57 AM by Dirk

When I was a kid, I had a toy half-track. It was a WWII truck with tires in the front and treads in the back. (That's why it is called a half-track.) They were probably in a lot of those movies about D Day, A Bridge Too Far, Saving Private Ryan, Kelly's Heroes... I never expected to see a half track in our vineyards but we have one (It's orange instead of green and comes ...  
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Spring Release

Posted 03/13/2009 at 12:14 PM by Dirk

In spite of it being frost season, spring has arrived. I know that spring is here because the change to daylight saving time has zapped me. We have had a bunch of frost recently (For Californians, that means we had to defrost the windshield for a couple of minutes...or even scrape it!) but the vines haven't pushed out quite enough to require turning on the frost protection sprinklers or fans. We are hoping that we get ...  
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