Dover Canyon Winery

Feiring's Fantasy: Alice Feiring Saves the World from Robert Parker

The Battle for Wine and Love
or How I Saved the World from Parkerization

Author: Alice Feiring

The font of the title is pleasantly wacky, and the title itself promises a dream-like escapade in which Feiring daydreams herself “saving the world” and falling in love with a superhero winemaker. Not a bad concept.

This is not a journalistic effort like other recently released wine books, To Cork or Not to Cork, The Billionaire’s Vinegar, First Big Crush, Wine and Philosophy. This is a personal essay on a personal point of view. The book is a small-format book—hardbound, 5 ½ “ by 8”, 258 pages exclusive of acknowledgments and index, and can easily be read in a few hours.

In the introduction she says, “I am hoping to intrigue those who want wines that truly have a story to tell. Once people experience these wines and winemakers, once they know that wine truly does have soul and character, it will be difficult for them to cozy up to wines made by the numbers and not from the heart.”

I hope that this book fulfills her mission.

Unfortunately . . .

Spring Wine Club Shipments

Spring wine club shipping is finished! 

We completed our roster in record time this year, getting all our scheduled shipments out by April 30th, and with more organization and attention to detail than ever before.  I keep a running debrief dossier each shipment, with notes on how to improve our performance and service.

Pick up requests will be held at the winery until May 31st.  If you have not heard from us yet or received your shipment, please email the winery.  We are capturing as many emails as possible so that all of our members will receive advance notice before wine club season, and a tracking number when their package ships. 

Here's a tip on tracking numbers . . . we run our shipping labels in the latter part of the week, Wednesday through Sunday, and send the information electronically to UPS or FedEx.  As soon as the carrier processes that information you will receive your tracking number.  At that point, your online tracking info will say "Billing information received."  When your order actually leaves the winery, the tracklink will say "DEPARTURE SCAN." 

Thanks to everyone for your patience and understanding during our busy spring season.  Dan, Troy and I personally process and pack every wine club order, and it takes us about 6 weeks to process, pack and ship all orders.  It's zany, but exciting as our newest releases are carefully wrapped up and sent to good homes. . . it's like a vinous maternity ward!

Keeping Things Lively . . .

On Tuesday, April 28, I was upstairs in the winery office processing shipping labels for our Alaska and Hawaii wine club customers.  Rebel Rose and Mr. Stubs were sleeping peacefully at my feet.  Dan was in the creekside wine barn, perched on top of the barrel stacks, taking lab samples, when a 3.9 earthquake hit us.

The earthquake, located directly beneath us, began as a typical rumble and shake but instead of tapering off in two seconds, it kept building . . . I ran down the stairs, fighting for real estate with Rebel, who was also thundering down the stairs but reluctant to leave my side.  Mr. Stubs just clung to the carpet upstairs. 

The phone was ringing with concerned calls moments later.  It took a full hour for my heart rate to return to normal, but we didn't leave the building and continued to pack your wine shipments!   

Shit Happens: The Exploding Fish Emulsion

In March and April we receive the last of our spring rains. This is the time of year we like to give the soil around the vines a little boost by pumping diluted fish and kelp emulsion through a temporary drip irrigation system. We only want to do this during the spring rains so the native precipitation will carry the emulsion deep into the soil, replacing nutrients naturally. The fish and kelp combination also encourages the biodiversity and health of the cover crop and soil life, including natural fungi, microbes, worms, and insects.  We ordered a barrel—a 50 gallon drum—of fish and kelp emulsion from a firm in Oregon. Unfortunately, the emulsion was on backorder for a long time and didn’t arrive until spring was over and the rains nothing but a memory.

So we put the drum in the walnut processing shed until the next spring. It sat in the open shed through a hot summer and fall and a cold winter. The following spring arrived. One sunny morning around 7 am Dan was eager to get started on vineyard chores.  With no particular warning to me he said, "Hey, come help me set up the fish emulsion drip!" I protested sleepily that I was still in my peejays.  I would also be working in the tasting room that day, so I wanted to change into some clean jeans and a sweater first. "No, you don’t need to change. This will just take a minute."

So I let him talk me into riding down to the creekside barn on the ATV, still dressed in my black velour pajamas, with a pair of Uggs on my cold little feet. Dan unscrewed the cap on the drum and explained that my job was to kneel at the base of the drum and hold a five-gallon bucket steady while he dumped a few gallons of fish emulsion into the bucket. Our drip emission feeder is a five-gallon model, so Dan would then pour the emulsion into the feeder and set the drip rate. Once the water was turned on, the water would pass through the feeder, dilute the emulsion and carry it up the hill, depositing it at the base of each vine in a steady drip.

So there I was, kneeling down and holding the bucket as Dan tipped the drum over. We were unaware that over the course of the year, the emulsion had fermented anaerobically in its enclosed drum. Its contents had morphed into something even more awful than the original contents.

The Pepper Manifesto

We make zins with pepper. Unabashedly, unforgivably peppery zinfandel. We gather the finest Tellicherry pink peppercorns, white peppercorns, and fat black peppercorns and select them, blend them, coarsely pulverize them (to increase the surface area of unoxidized, freshly exposed peppercorn surface) and then add them to the wine while it is still in barrel.

Sometimes, we make a slurry of the discarded peppercorn shells in a carboy of red wine, let it soak for 1 week, and stir it according to biodynamic principles. Then we pop the head off each empty barrel, and paint the inside of the barrel with the pepperslurry. After the barrel has dried, we affix the barrel head and fill the barrel with old vine zinfandel.

We also buy peppercorn in bulk and mix it into our compost piles of grape skins and seeds. Then we spread the peppered compost in the zinfandel vineyard under the vines, where insects and earthworms carry the peppercorns deep, deep into their subterranean pantries beneath the vine roots.

(This has the added advantage of giving an interesting pre-seasoned flavor to the succulent meat of our locally produced grilled gophers.)

Come on by, and see for yourself!

Baby, you can light my fire!

With the approach of warm weather, blue skies, spring bulbs and lambs, our thoughts turn to grilling. It’s time to dust off the barbecue and uncover the patio furniture. Here are our top ten tips for enjoying hearty meals hot off the grill.

It all boils down to how do I get it started? and when is it done? Everything in between should be simple and fun. Dan and I prepare appetizers on the grill for hundreds of people on wine festival weekends. For the most part, we’ve had great success, except when I set fire to the barbecue itself (a feat Dan didn’t think possible), or the time our friends decided to use walnut firewood to start a twelve-hour barbecue fire, good for dinner and breakfast.

We use a Weber kettle-style barbecue, because we like the intense heat produced by coals, as well as even heating when the lid is closed. Our 26" Weber can get up to 600° very quickly with the lid closed. We don’t actually grill at that temperature, in our saner moments, but we can grill on cold, windy evenings while we’re working on the crush pad, without losing heat to wind and frigid outdoor temperatures. We also have a gas grill, which is a great backup for busy grill evenings, but we’ve found that in cold, windy conditions gas flames just cannot keep the grill hot enough, even with the lid closed. Gas emitters clog with grease and ash, and since we grill often, that’s extremely inconvenient. So we stick with our trusty Weber, piling coals in the middle for a nice hot center, and leaving the edges open for radiant heat, or piling them to one side if we’re going to rotisserie. We can also use moistened wood chips and herbs in a coal barbecue.

Here are our ten simple steps for successful and enjoyable grilling:

Rebel Rose, Ubermodel

Last month photographer Craig McGill came by to do a photo shoot with our English springer spaniel, Rebel Rose, for his publication Wine Dogs.   Craig knows the fast track to a spaniel's heart--biscuits!  He took some indoor and outdoor shots and Rebel followed him eagerly and obediently, clearly fascinated by the magical biscuit camera.

Before Craig left, he set his camera down on the front seat of his car while we were chatting, and our yellow kitten Mr. Stubs--you know, the one who has so far climbed inside the crusher, a wine tank, the refrigerator, and on top of the press while it was running--anyway Mr. Stubs jumped into the car to check out the camera and snoop around.  Craig laughed and suggested he shoot Stubbie-doo for their forthcoming postcard series, Wine Cats.

The Wine Dogs website features beautiful winery dog portraits, dog-of-the-month profiles and a short video of wine critic Robert Parker "rating" his bulldog Buddy on the 100-point scale.  Sadly, Buddly doesn't fare too well.

Time to go.  Enchante'.

        

2008 Paso Robles Zinfandel Festival

The annual Paso Robles Zinfandel Festival kicks off this coming weekend, March 14-16th.  We will be breaking out the spring releases for tasting (see below).

As part of the celebration, we will be grilling lambsicle appetizers all weekend (from noon to 4 pm), spiced with our handmade lavender salt rub and wasabi herb rub, using fresh herbs from our garden.  On Saturday, we'll also be serving some saffron-infused bouillabaisse.  Fresh-baked coriander-spiked bread and Pasolivo orange-olive oil will be available all weekend for palate cleansing.

At right, Dan rescues some grilled paper towels. 

On Saturday, soil scientist Dr. Tom Rice will be on hand to sign copies of his new book, Paso Robles, An American Terroir.  Dr. Rice is a fun guy who knows the dirt on Paso--he has spent years trenching and mapping the vineyards of Paso Robles and studying the soils beneath our vines.  Come learn why the central coast is significantly different from Napa and Sonoma, and what makes our area unique.

On both Saturday and Sunday, grower Denny Colbert will be here to sign bottles of our 2006 Carmenere, Colbert Vineyard.  Only 65 cases were produced.  Denny will be happy to answer questions about this rare varietal and his other entertaining projects. 

I hope you can join us for a fun-filled weekend with lots of great food.  For more information on winery events and activities, visit the Paso Robles website.

Spring 2008 Wine Releases

Our 2008 Spring wine club selections will soon be available for pickup, beginning Friday, March 14th.  Shipping will begin March 17th.

The Spring selection includes:

• 2006 Old Vine Zinfandel, Benito Dusi Vineyard
• 2006 Tre Noce (66% zinfandel, 34% syrah, all estate grown)
• 2006 Syrah, Starr Ranch

Other new releases include the 2007 White Bone (60% viognier, 25% marsanne, 15% roussanne) and the 2006 Carmenere, Colbert Vineyard.  Visit our Current Releases page for pricing and links to our wine profiles.  Please visit us soon to taste these limited releases!

A Paean Salute

Zinfandel. Primitivo. Guttural pagan names that perfectly elucidate the robust, peppery, shamelessly lusty fruit of the zinfandel grape.

March. The end of winter and cold feet, of leaving for work in the dark and coming home in the dark. It's almost time to dust off the barbecue; our hunter-gatherer instinct awakens and hungers for blackened, peppered steaks and grilled vegetables.

This month is our paean salute, our end-of-winter bonfire, our celebration of everything wine symbolizes—good food, warmth, red berries and red lips, sunlight and firelight, and most of all, the mystery of earth's bounty and man's eagerness to preserve it.

Some zinfandels are elegant yet barbaric contenders for a Gallic throne, mysterious and powerful, with layers of complexity under a velvet mantle. Some are distinctively New World zinfandels—brash, bold and individualistic. Late harvest zinfandels and syrahs with dark, divine flavors strike a resonant note deep in your soul on a chilly night.

Each season's harvest is different, a reflection of the winds, the moons, and man's ability to capture earth's magnificence in a bottle.

February Notes and Reviews

Hits for Inside a Wine Scam :

Mary Baker, Winiarski Detektyw  (Poland)  That's a pretty cool link.  You can call me "Winnie".

Deregulator, written by our customer and friend Rick Henderson, editorial writer for the Rocky Mountain News in Denver, Colorado.

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Damn Good Wine reviews the Dover Canyon 2001 Barbera, 2001 Syrah DeBro Vineyard and 2001 Fralich Vineyard (syrah/zinfandel blend):

"It was Sunday late afternoon and I wasn’t sure what I was in the mood for, but it was definitely a big red. I blew the dust off a couple racks downstairs and grabbed a Dover Canyon Winery Barbera. Wait… the dust is leaving my brain and the distant past is racing back. I remembered that the good folks at Dover Canyon sent us the Barbara to taste. Sounds fair enough; not a bad recollection.

So let’s begin the tasting. The only problem is that it’s now 2008 and the Barbera was a 2001 vintage. Better late than never guys? I was really enjoying this Paso Robles Barbera. It’s powerful, but not overpowering -- fruit on the nose, lots of dark berry flavor, long finish. The color is a dark burgundy. It’s full bodied and very well balanced . . . " Read more here . . .

Paso Robles: An American Terroir

An extraordinary look at the soils and geology of Paso Robles, Paso Robles, An American Terroir is the result of ten years of study and exploration by soil scientist Tom Rice. Dr. Rice heads the soil science department at California Polytechnic Institute in San Luis Obispo, and their soil science program is understandably the largest and most popular in the United States. As the local "dirt guy," Dr. Rice has also done soil surveys for a number of local vineyards.

The book is lushly illustrated with color photos, charts, graphs, diagrams and aerial shots. Paso Robles: An American Terroir is divided into two main sections—the first third of the book deals entirely with the geologic origins of the Paso Robles area, its soils, parent soils, geography, wind tunnels, water issues and climatology. It is densely factual, but attractively broken up by color art and photography, and Dr. Rice’s "prose cards."

Dr. Rice created the narrative prose cards for his introductory soils class, as a way of helping his students visualize the science. "If a scientist can take science/tech language and rewrite it in a form that any layman can understand, then that person will truly understand it." He would frequently choose a photograph he liked or simply sit down outdoors at a site, and write a semi-poetic prose narrative, weaving a story about a soil or landscape and how it integrates with plants, animals, and native ecology.

"While a lot of people might think of soils as being inanimate, I think of soils as living, because of the integration of the mineral with the organic material, which includes microbes, roots, decomposing leaves . . . I think of every soil as an individual . . . and every individual as a soil."

Join us for a Live Chat on Thursday at Cellar Rats!

Cellar Rats is a new online discussion forum, created and hosted by Dover Canyon. Our first live chat will start Thursday, February 21^th at 6 pm Pacific / 9 pm Eastern. Guests are welcome, and registration in the forum is not required to enter the chat.

• Just go to Cellar Rats
• click on the colorful "Chat" icon at the upper right
• pick a chat name
• and you’re in!

I have no idea what we’ll be discussing in this first chat, but one question is sure to pop up repeatedly: "What are you drinking tonight?"

Cellar Rats differs from other online wine and culinary boards in that it was created specifically for the wine industry, with a focus on winemaking and wine industry trends. Not all the discussion threads are entirely serious. We have a thread on rattlesnake recipes, for instance, but I’ve had some trouble getting my hands on a snake!

Everyone is welcome, and we hope to have a fun and lively discussion in the chat room. I hope you’ll join us.

Inside a Wine Scam, Part V: The Worm Turns

"To whom do lions cast their gentle looks?
Not to the beast that would usurp their den.
The smallest worm will turn being trodden on,
And doves will peck in safeguard of their brood.'"

William Shakespeare: Henry VI, Part 3

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At first, the callers are hesitant. "Hello, my name is . . ." "I’m a chef in the Midwest, and I sell gourmet products online . . ." "I’m with a skin care products firm in San Francisco . . ." "We broker handcrafted jewelry to catalog buyers . . ." After a stumbling start, they race to the finish. "We almost made a huge mistake."

Through their calls and emails, I learned that even sophisticated firms can be targeted. "We frequently send wine overseas in containers," reported one winery. "Although the email seemed a little odd, it was the price of shipping that alerted us, as we get much lower rates. While researching the shipping company online we came across your articles. Our customer was ‘John Nelson’."

Another caller explained that they ship products overseas to catalog buyers. "They are usually English speaking, but often dictate personal correspondence to a native-tongue assistant. Sometimes the emails we receive have very quirky English, so when I received the ‘birthday’ request, I thought it was odd enough to investigate, but I would have filled the order had I not been warned. Thank you!"

And as they say, the worm turns . . .

Maria Bruhns at Kirigin Cellars emailed to report: "I did some Googling and got nowhere, until Betaway emailed me where to send the $3300…to an Ashley Lowe, at, you guessed it, 315 N. Main St, Alene. I googled the address…got a café! Called the café, disconnected. Next search result gave real estate offices…it’s abandoned!"

And now the prey become the hunter . . .

Inside a Wine Scam: Money Orders

Diane Raubach at Security State Bank in Chehalis, Washington agreeably answered some questions for us about the safety of accepting money orders for internet sales.

Question: Can Money Orders be cancelled even after the bank has made the funds available? Is there a time limit in which a Money Order can be cancelled? Or can it happen at any time?

A Viognier Valentine: 2001 "The Terraces" Dessert Viognier

Many people decline to sample a dessert wine.  "Oh no," they say, "I don't like dessert wines."

"Oh," we say.  "Well, we are offering tastes of our white chocolate and macadamia nut brownies with our 2001 Dessert Viognier."  And then we hold up the golden-white morsels on a glass plate of deep blue. 

It's amazing what people will do for a brownie . . .

In our tasting room, we are currently offering tastes of our 2001 Dessert Viognier, "The Terraces".  This light dessert viognier was picked in September of 2001 and features aromas of banana, pear and lemon candy followed by flavors of pear tart, vanilla and nutmeg.  The fruit is from Chequera Vineyard's steep, terraced hillside, which produced under 1 ton per acre in 2001.  Bottle age has mellowed the original exotic fruit into a luscious sweet, bottled in a slender 350 ml bottle.

We developed this recipe specifically for The Terraces, but I'm sure these golden brownies will work with other dessert whites and even late harvest zins or port-style wines. 

So this is our Valentine to you.  Please feel free to copy and share our recipe for these scrumptious blond dessert brownies . . .

Inside a Wine Scam, Part IV: Who's in Your Wallet?

In our last post, customer John Nelson asked me to run four stolen credit cards, accept the stolen funds, and then wire $2500 from our bank account to a Ms. Jeanette Springer.

He requested a Western Union wire transfer. However, in order to receive the wire transfer a living, breathing person must show up, produce identification, and be able to identify details regarding the transaction. (In Alpha Trans’ full communication, they ask for our location address, the money transfer control number and the exact amount of money sent.)

I expected our ‘front man’ and ‘shipping company’ to be based in San Francisco or Los Angeles—far enough away to get lost in a crowd, near enough to pick up the wine order. I also assumed right off the bat that anyone showing up to receive the money would have false identification. I imagined a nervous Nigerian immigrant who splits his time between swabbing restaurant floors and stealing electronics. Or a dreadlocked pimp with gold chains, gold rings and gold teeth, perfumed by Turkish coffee, opium and Moroccan cigarettes. Or a pale, anorexic computer engineering student with severe gambling debts.

But our anonymous law enforcement advisor is right—they want us to send the money several states away. Even then, I expected someone in a city, anonymous and unnoticed by most.

Instead, our trail takes us to Aline, Oklahoma. Population: 415 (and dropping).

Inside a Wine Scam, Part III: "It Ain't TV, Lady"

John Nelson sent us four Mastercard credit card numbers for his wine order. As I related here, they were all stolen.

"Identity theft is the # 1 crime in America today, even ahead of murder," said Angela of Sears National Bank as we went through the credit cards one by one.

Nevertheless, I contacted John’s shipping company, Alpha Trans, and these are the instructions they sent . . .

HERE IS THE INFORMATION FOR YOU TO GET SHIPPING PART OF THE PAYMENT SENT OUT VIA WESTERN UNION MONEY TRANSFER.

NAME: Jeanette Springer
STREET :315 N Main St
CITY: Aline,
STATE:Oklahoma
ZIPCODE: OK 73716
COUNTRY: U.S.A

EXPECTING TO HEAR BACK FROM YOU SOON .

After some amateur sleuthing on Jeanette, I contacted the FBI regional office in Oklahoma. "What’s this all about?" snarled an agent. "Um, who am I speaking with, please?" I asked. "We don’t give out our names for security purposes," he said.

Thoroughly intimidated, I didn’t want to point out that I was looking at their website, which lists at least a dozen names—including first names, last names, and middle initials, presumably to prevent inter-cubby confusion. Moving on, I explained the scam and the fact that a front man was operating in their area, and we might like some help observing or catching him or her. "This isn’t TV, lady," he sighed. "We have legal issues."

He asked for all the details . . . and after trying my best to explain, I finally asked, with some degree of exasperation, "Do you have an email? I can simply send you a description of what’s going on, with all the correspondence, including email headers for tracing." "Oh, yeah, that would be good," he replied. "Hold on, I know this office has an email . . ."

In the meantime, a northern California law enforcement professional (who asks to remain anonymous due to jurisdictional protocols) agreed to an interview on these scams . . .

If someone feels they have been scammed, whom should they contact first? What can they expect to happen?

Inside a Wine Scam, Part II: The 'John Nelson' Letters

I received an email offering to buy some wine from a Mr. ‘John Nelson’.   Here is John's initial email.

Hello, my name is John Nelson, an American . I live and work here in Seoul, South Korea. Actually when I was around last year for christmas holiday, I got a bottle of one of your wines from a friend as a gift and I love the taste .Since then , I have been planning on getting your wines for my birthday party ...coming up soon here in Seoul, South Korea. I will be making my payment via my American based credit card . I am registered with a shipping agency here in Seoul, which has representatives in USA . So you are not get the wines shipped but the wines will be picked up at your winery by this licensed shipping agency .The shipping agency have all the appropriate exportation documents and permits. . . Kindly get back to me so that I can make my orders . Thanks. John

Let's find out a little bit more about 'John Nelson.'

Inside a Wine Scam, Part I: How the Wine Scam Works

This isn't the first time a wine blogger or reporter has written about the Nigerian wine scam.  There's a pretty funny riff on the 419 'advance fee' scam, written by Jack at Fork & Bottle and published by Alder Yarrow at Vinography. Ric at TORBWine holds the evil Nigerian forces at bay even though they want to order Dom Perignon.

Nigeria is a poor country, but you've got to give them credit for hard work.   FraudWatchers offers internet chat forums for victims and fraud watchers, but the moderators there also have a separate forum for scammers who post there.  The subforum heading reads, "This forum is where all posts made on this board by criminal scammers (yes, they really are *that* stupid!!) are placed for the search engines."  I got a kick out of  Another Genius Scammer.

Inside a Wine Scam: 'John Nelson'

Have you ever yearned to be a private investigator?  A Stephanie Plum, Magnum P.I  or an intrepid investigative reporter?  I do . . . I fantasize that if I could solve just one crime, hand over one perpetrator, I will have done my part for society. 

Recently, some small family wineries in our area were hit by internet identity thieves.  One small winery was innocently engaged in a fraudulent transaction for $80,000 and 4 pallets of their wine.  Then another winery down the road from us also reported the loss of an entire pallet of wine in a fraudulent transaction.  They thought they were dealing with an overseas distributor.  So when I got a similar email with shady details, I asked myself, what would Stephanie Plum do?  Or Kinsey Millhone?  And I proceeded to snoop, lie, and cheat my way to answers with the best of the best.

Unfortunately, when I called a law enforcement office to tell them I could arrange for the perp to be at a specific place, at a specific time, easily identified, and engaging in crime at that moment, the response ranged from, "this isn't TV," to, "We don't give out our names for security purposes." 

So the best I can do for the future of internet safety is publish my rather long account of my affair with wine customer 'John Nelson.'  I will show you how the wine scam works, why it works, who the real criminals are, and who the front men here in the United States are. 

Over the next few days, our 'Inside a Wine Scam' report will be published in five parts:

• Part I: How the Wine Scam Works
• Part II: The ' John Nelson' Letters
• Part III: It Ain't TV, Lady
• Part IV: Who's in Your Wallet?
• Part V:  The Worm Turns

Recent Mentions

Everything Typepad, our blog service provider, recently featured Dover Canyon.

"We always love it when our customers — and the great things you are doing with TypePad — are spotlighted in the media."

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Who would expect a mention on a investment site like Investor Village?

"Wine pairing: For a VWSI of -9, I continue to recommend carmenere as an ideal pairing. The last time around, I sugested a Concha y Toro 2003 Terrunyo Carmenere, some favorite carmeneres listed at Cellar Tracker, and an American effort at Dover Canyon. For ideas about varietals I do not have a lot of experience with, I often check out what is selling at one of San Francisco’s best wine stores, K&L Wine Merchants. A quick search on their site yields a good number of carmenere blends, as well as several selections where carmenere is the dominant varietal."

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From Britain:  The Podcast Sisters

"A story of a small winery. Dover Canyon Winery was recently highlighted . . . You don't have to have a big budget to create customer engagement with your brand...you just need a BIG imagination...."

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From France:  SOWINE

"On peut certes s'interroger sur la réplicabilité du modèle et sur la pertinence d'une approche me-too en la matière mais je gage que nous ne sommes qu'au début des succès et les témoignages de retours positifs se multiplient (lire l'article de BusinessWeek sur la Dover Canyon Winery dont les ventes à distance ont doublé en un an)."

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I have no idea where in the world this is coming from.  Sweden?  Denmark?  And what the heck are they saying?  Omatt Oimeksiannot

"Juttujen tilaajaksi sopisivat kaikki yritykset, joilla on verkkosivuja, koska blogi elävoittaa sivustoa ja saa aikaa sivuille palaavia asiakkaita. Mainostaminen blogin avulla on siis aika edullista. Muutenkaan verkkomainonta ei välttämättä tule kovin kalliiksi varsinkin, kun vertaa sanomalehtimainontaan ja vastaaviin julkaisuihin. Pari hyvää esimerkkiä: Restaurant Girl ja Dover Canyon Winery."

Romance on a Swing

In late October, sweethearts Josh Rosenstein and Carrie Mathewson pledged their love on our wooden swing.

There has been a swing on this 100-year-old black walnut for at least 80 years, according to our neighbor Joe Barloggio.   On a balmy fall afternoon, Josh proposed to Carrie against a backdrop of autumnal walnut leaves raining down like golden pennies. 

Josh and Carrie are looking for a winery or vineyard host for their wedding.  If you have any suggestions, please let us know.

Here are some sources for central coast wedding information:

• Central Coast Wedding
• Central Coast Bride
• Central Coast Wedding Professionals

Congratulations to Josh and Carrie!

1996 Roussanne: Peach Pie in a Glass

I received a call from a customer recently asking about our 1999 Roussanne, Chequera Vineyard.

So I ventured into the wine library, which is actually a damp underground root cellar below our 1921 farmhouse.  After braving a flurry of startled frogs and rummaging around in the few whites left, I found a bottle of  our 1996 Dover Canyon Roussanne, Chequera Vineyard.

This was the last bottle. It was tucked against a stone wall, all alone and outside of the wooden boxes we use for shelving. As there were no bottles of the 1999 vintage left, I opened it anyway, just as Dan was finishing a pot of his winter comfort food--smoked hamhocks simmered in chicken broth with coarse cut Maya onions and carrots.

Color: deep harvest gold, still a ways from becoming pumpkin.

Aromatics: mango, peach pie, candied Meyer lemon, creamy lemon meringue

Prospecting for Oil: Pasolivo

In the third installment from our private October fundraiser--a weekend food and wine tour featuring private tours at Tablas Creek, Cayucos Abalone Farm, Saxum, L'Aventure, and a finale dinner at Villa Creek, we visit Willow Creek Olive Ranch, home of Pasolivo olive oil. I am seriously addicted to their orange and tangerine oils, made with oils pressed from citrus rinds and blended with olive oil. They also offer an estate olive oil, a California blend, a low production kalamata oil, and lemon and lime olive oils. Pasolivo was featured in Gourmet magazine, and sells almost all their oils via their private club and tasting room.   

We met with owner Josh Yaguda (in the red shirt), who gave us a very entertaining tour and private tasting. The olives are picked by hand, and because they ripen late (generally late October or early November) as winter storms approach, the picking is done quickly. So rocks, leaves and other matter come in with the olives. The olives are poured into this chute and passed under the blue vacuum hood, which sucks up any light debris like drying leaves, twigs and fine dirt. Rocks and other matter are removed by hand or shaken out as the olives pass through the chute.

The olives are then placed in the “press,” which isn’t really a press but a complicated centrifuge. First, the olives and the pits are macerated into a chunky must. If I remember correctly, a little super-heated water is added to loosen the must. The centrifugal action of the press slowly (very, verrry slowly) pulls the oil from the must and deposits it in a long, low covered pan. Josh lifted the lid of the pan and showed us where this first pressing is deposited. The oil is still murky and unfiltered, almost like mud. At this point, it is called dirty oil. From there, the oil is moved to a vertical centrifuge where it is processed again to remove gross impurities. Josh is standing next to a dismantled secondary centrifuge. From there, the oil goes into a tank, and then, over the next few months, it is patiently racked and returned, just like wine.

A Touch of Terroir: Tablas Creek

During our October fundraising weekend, I took our guests to visit Tablas Creek.  Tablas Creek Vineyard is a cooperative venture between the Robert Haas family and the Perrin family of Chateau de Beaucastel in Chateauneuf de Pape. The tasting rooms were packed as Saturday was also the date of their wine club blending party and barbecue. Nevertheless, we were warmly greeted by general manager Jason Haas, who guided us outside into the quiet of the herb gardens surrounding the crush pad and spent the next two hours entertaining us with stories of the winery and vineyard venture. Jason related the history of the winery and his parents’ search for the perfect site for Rhone varietals. After decades of visiting potential sites, they decided the Meditteranean climate and calcareous soils of west Paso Robles were the most likely place for the Rhone varietals they wanted to plant.

Before we headed out to the vineyard, we squeezed behind a wall of stacked half-ton picking bins to look ‘inside’ a retaining wall made of limestone rocks cleared from the vineyard. Tablas built a ‘window’ into the wall that allows us to look past the wall into the bedrock that exists about 10’ below the vineyard surface. Looking in, we see the white-grey surface of calcareous hardpan. Jason passed around flakes of calcareous mudstone/sandstone rock so we could feel how light and porous the rocks are. He then explained how the calcareous soils of the central coast (which do not exist in Napa) act as a water sponge, draining moisture away during spring rains, but wicking it back up from aquifers during dry spells. Pre-limestone soils are also easily fractured by searching roots, which encourages deep penetration by the vines and therefore a more complex source of nutrients and minerals.

101 Uses for a Wine Tank

• Really deep pool.
• Impromptu steel drum songs
• Storing wine before bottling
• Fermenting large lots of grapes
• Wildlife shelter
• Better phone reception
• Lightning rod

Cleaning tanks is fun.  When the weather isn't bitterly cold, at any rate . . . this month I would generally wait until the mid-morning sun hit the crush pad before shucking my shoes and socks and climbing into the tank.  Our largest tanks are only 3,000 gallons and while they have safety railings around the top, there are no ladders inside.  We place an empty picking bin under the tank door and main valve to catch the wash water so it doesn't schloop all over the crush pad while we are pressing.  I climb into the bin and then slither through the 2-foot opening into the tank.  There is no graceful way to do this.   My front gets thoroughly smeared with grape goo, and I generally look around to make sure no one is watching first.  The remaining grapes crunch beneath my bare feet and the sticky, cold grape gunk gets between my toes.

During harvest, we use the tanks to ferment larger lots, which means we also need to punch down the fermenting fruit.  The stainless steel lids are removed for the duration of harvest because they are impossible to lift manually.  In the past, we jerry-rigged plastic covers for the tanks, and that worked, but they required constant checking and tightening after wind or rain. 

Dan solved the problem by ordering custom-built spa covers for the tanks.  They were made to fit the tank aperture; have skirts that keep rain, bugs and leaves out; are heavy enough to withstand inclement weather; and best of all, it's easy to fold back one-half of the cover for twice daily punchdowns. 

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day, and we will be enjoying a day of rest and respite from everything except punchdowns . . .

I will prune my roses and pull out the fall garden, plant some winter seeds, maybe even take a nap in the hammock.  Dan will probably wash his Mustangs and Rebel Rose might get a bath as well!

We have many, many things to give thanks for tomorrow--our beautiful farm, robust health, loved ones and friends, loyal customers who frequently become friends, our warm and supportive community . . .  But one thing I can unequivocally add, because it's the real reason for our day of rest:  "Thank God for football!"

Our Podcast Premiere: WineCast

This week Dover Canyon was a guest on Winecast's Unfiltered podcast series, with hosts Tim Elliott and Jeff Lefevere of Good Grape, and guest Alyssa Rapp of Bottlenotes.

Join us for an hour-long round table conversation as we discuss Alyssa's successful wine club, the 2007 central coast harvest, recent wine news, high alcohol in wine, the story behind our carmenere, online wine forums, and wine writer Dan Berger's latest commentary at Appellation America. 

• Winecast:  Unfiltered
• Good Grape
• Bottlenotes
• Dover Canyon 2005 Carmenere
• Dan Berger's article: The Berger Merger Report
• Appellation America

Thank you to Tim and Jeff for inviting me! 

Abalone's Revenge: The Cayucos Abalone Farm

In October, I arranged a fundraising dinner and tour of local food producers as a fundraiser for the eGullet Society of Culinary Arts & Letters.  We started the day at the Cayucos Abalone Farm with a personally guided tour conducted by Brad Buckley. Perched on small bluff overlooking the ocean, the farm produces almost 500,000 abalone a year. They culture only red abalone, under the brand name Ocean Rose.

Our first abalone epiphany was that abalone are not bi-valves like clams or oysters. They are snails. Gross, yet cool. Various strains of abalone also have their own particular flavor.

Conception begins in low-tech white tubs. Two tubs are filled with females, and one with males. Michelle saw the gonads up close and can describe the difference. Ab prefer to spawn during a full moon, and the staff plans accordingly. Justin inquired about ambience but was assured they didn’t need candlelight or music.

The water is changed daily, dumped out through fine membranes to catch the microscopic babies which are then laid back in clean water. When they are the size of a fingernail, they are placed in the nursery—four foot wide tubs with small hoses oxygenating the water. The hoses are also used to inoculate the tubs with algae—plugs of green stuff are allowed to form in the hoses and then blown into the tub to make ‘seaweed slushies.’

Wine Without Borders

The Specialty Wine Retailers Association is expanding their outreach and efforts to coordinate and change ridiculous state shipping laws.  Recently, they started a blog . . .

Wine Without Borders

Wine Without Borders is written by the irrepressible Tom Wark of Fermentation, who has a far-reaching audience for his own informative and entertaining blog on the wine industry and wine blogosphere. 

The struggle to change archaic laws and grant consumers the liberty to order fine wine and have it delivered to their home can only be accomplished with the support of consumers like yourselves.  I hope you'll take a look at Wine Without Borders, and check it frequently for updates.  Particularly if you live in a "difficult" state, I encourage you to take the time to post comments and considered opinion on the blog. 

With participation from retailers, wineries and consumers, Wine Without Borders can become more than a blog--it can become a journal testifying to the anger and repression of respectable adults who collect fine wine.

Catie at Through the Walla Walla Grapevine has written a funny yet impassioned post on the state of wine liberty today.  I highly recommend it!

A Shepherd's Morning

During harvest one morning around 7 am, I was in the office and Dan called me outside.  "Uh huh," I responded lethargically.  "No, really! " he called.  "You've got to see this!"

From outside the wine barn we watched in amazement as a flock of sheep trotted down Vineyard Drive.  They were almost 10 deep across the road.  Men strolled behind them, whistling and swinging their jackets; border collies barked happily, dashing back and forth and keeping the sheep from straying off the pavement.  Some of the sheep wore bells and we could hear their languid clanking as the sheep, most white-faced, some black-faced, trotted obediently down the road. 

There were hundreds of them.  Finally, the flock seemed to pass, and we could see open road.  There was a pause, and just when we thought the show was over, another flock trotted quickly past with its attendant shepherds and collies.  After several more awestruck moments and several hundred more sheep, we saw a car with its hazard lights on following the flocks slowly down the road, and a few patient pickup trucks following behind.

2007 Harvest Wrap Up

It's been a busy eight weeks--harvest started in early September, but then a heat spell and cooler weather following the heat delayed further picking until October, when it all began coming in at once!  In the meantime, we were also packing and labeling hundreds of Fall 2007 wine club orders.

This year we had planned to purchase less fruit than usual, but the vintage looked so good, we ended up buying more fruit than ever before.  At right, zinfandel clusters from Benito Dusi's 90-year-old vines are being gently forked into the crusher.

All the fruit this year had exceptional pigment--Dan was especially pleased with our estate fruit.  Most of the central coast was reporting lower tonnage this year, but both our estate zinfandel--which is dryfarmed and head-trained--and Benito Dusi Vineyard--also dryfarmed and headtrained--produced significantly heavier crops.  Although since these vineyards typically produce limited tonnage in the first place, any increase in cluster load is significant.  And with the quality of this year's fruit, also cause for excitement. 

At left, you can see the red-brown stems from a Dusi zinfandel cluster.  This is a sign that the zinfandel vines and clusters have had time to fully mature.

Some vineyards, including Dusi and our estate vineyard, were picked in several different passes so we could bring in the fruit at its peak of ripeness and balance.  With only a few weather hiccups, we enjoyed warm days and cool autumnal breezes throughout harvest.  (None of those grueling late nights and freezing temperatures we remember from recent El Nino vintages.)  Dan kept the fruit coming in at a steady pace so each day's work could be accomplished in a reasonable amount of time--which meant 10 hour days for me, and 12-14 hour days for Dan. 

Below, you can see the whole berries falling from the crusher into the fermenting bin.  Our crusher/destemmer is set to