Armed forces visitors

I gave a short tasting/tour at the winery last week for a group of 6 people. It was planned weeks in advance. It's not something I do often. I prefer that our visitors get a chance to taste with people that really know their wines... our wine educators.


Two young men in that group are serving in our Armed Forces. One was a veteran of Iraq, the other a veteran of Afganistan.  They will both be returning to their respective assignments.  I thanked them for serving our country, and one of them gave me this hat.  My thanks paled in comparison to what I was given. 

Godspeed, gentlemen.  Stay safe!

Piña vs Pina – The Typewriter years/Casket Factory

Isn’t it sad, in a way, that many young people would not be able to identify what is in the picture above? Click here for more information:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Typewriters.jpg#file

So Joe (No, the structural engineer, NOT the plumber) tells me that he ran into somebody that knew me from high school. But that guy knew me as Ranndy Pina (pronounced pee-nuh), not Ranndy Piña (pronounced peen-yuh). So, what’s that about?

Piña vs Pina – Let me explain. My grandfather left Spain as Juan Mena Piña. He accepted the first name change to John in America, but he would never give up the Piña. But slowly, over the next half century, the name Piña would evolve into Pina for nearly all written communication. Some might say that was the expected Americanization of a foreign name. I think it had more to do with the typewriterization (yea, I just made that word up) of a foreign name. You see, that little squiggly thing (~) over the n in Piña is called a tilde.
Tilde is defined as: “a diacritic (~) placed over an n, as in Spanish mañana, to indicate a palatal nasal sound”
Tildes may have found their way onto typewriters in Spain and Mexico, early on, but not here in the good ‘ole U. S. of A. So without the tilde, folks had a tough time typing Piña and it would come out as Peenya, or something equally as bad. So for many years, we just accepted Pina. Eventually, typewriters and word processors added the tilde and we started the transition back to Piña. Using the tilde got even easier with the development of computers, but it also created some problems. Searching this document or the internet for “Piña” will yield different results that searching for “Pina”. Even now, some fonts & document formats can’t deal with the ñ, and will substitute some other symbol or just leave it out altogether. So even though Piña is the correct spelling, we will frequently just use Pina.

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12-29-08 - I just stumbled on another example of the digital difficulties of displaying "PIÑA":

But we thank The Cork Board for giving it a try. Now that's a blog worth reading. If you haven't checked it out, I recommend it.

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Most online dictionaries will interpret Piña as Spanish for Pineapple, but we prefer the less common interpretation to Pine cone, or fruit of the Pine. After all, we’re talking Spain.

We even incorporated pine cones into our first 2 labels.

This was the label we put on our 1st wine, a 1979 Chardonnay:

Note that 14.9% alcohol

We upgraded our label a few years later and the
Pine cones were embossed on the label

Yes, our first wine was a 1979 Chardonnay. We made it in a bonded winery on Action Ave. in Napa, of all places* (see my related story at the end). We were making some great wines through the 80’s, but even great wines don’t sell themselves. The Pina brothers did what they could, but the vineyard management company was growing too quickly and requiring too much time. After several years, we realized it was unrealistic to think our one employee could handle the winemaking and the sales. We had to let our one employee go and take a break from making (commercial) wine for several years. We leased space to other startup operations through the 1990’s. When we realized just how good the Cabernet was from the Howell Mountain Buckeye Vineyard, we decided it was time to get back into wine production.
Below is the original sign for Pina Cellars. Yes, some of you will recognize it as our current tasting bar. It was made from the barrel staves of a large redwood tank.


For Piña Napa Valley (AKA Piña Cellars 2.0), we decided to use
a tilde, or more specifically a red tilde, as our trademark.

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The Winery under Construction

Summer 1982 - Placing the 48’ long main beam (Davie on the forklift, Dad, John C.)

July 3rd, 1982 – Davie on the scaffold, Ranndy on the roof

Here is the story that I alluded to earlier:

It was a Wednesday morning in October, 1979 and I was waiting outside the winery on Action Ave for the owner to show up. His converted warehouse was right next to a casket factory that employed several special needs people. The special needs people started showing up for work and were waiting outside the building for it to open. I sat in my car facing away from these folks, but monitoring their arrivals in my rear view mirror. Then I saw him approach. He appeared severely disfigured, but I continued to look on as many folks do when passing a bad accident on the highway. I felt so sorry for him – That poor guy, having to go through life looking like that. As he approached the waiting group, they didn’t seem at all upset by his appearance – In fact they seemed quite happy to see him. They laughed and gave him high fives! I’m thinking: Wow, is this the reception he gets every morning? Then he put his hand up to his face and removed his mask. I felt duped. How could I have forgotten it was the 31st of October – Halloween! And then I reluctantly accepted the possibility that he was enjoying life more than me. It was a very humbling experience that I remember vividly 29 years later.

Old Wine press – P & P Cellars

I love this picture (by good friend Joe Bauer) and this old wine press that sits in front of our winery. It was never used at our winery, but it still makes me wonder about the people that did use it. My brothers and I have spent lots of hours working with presses like this. The first couple of loads were kind of fun. After that, it was work – Hard work. These are referred to as basket presses, due to the shape the wooden staves form. After the grapes, or more accurately, the “must” is pressed, the pins holding the basket together are removed to split the basket in half for unloading the “cake”. The cake is what remains after the wine is pressed out. It’s a surprisingly dry combination of skins and seeds. As far as the consistency goes, the best comparison I can think of is a bag of compressed peat moss. It will stand by itself after cutting away the plastic. But hit it with a pitch fork or shovel and it breaks up fairly easily. At max capacity, this press could hold the must from about one ton of grapes. But there were times that a smaller load would need to be pressed - Maybe a small batch or the final load of a larger batch. For most presses, this required a variation from the standard practice. If it was a small amount for the final load, the cake from the previous load could be left in the press to take up the extra space. If not, it might require several additional layers of alternately stacked wood spacers to make up the difference.

But this press had a unique feature that I have not seen on any other press (That’s not to say they’re not out there, I just haven’t seen them). This press had an upper basket and a lower basket. If you look at the picture above, you can see the handles on each section. Both sections would be used together most of the time. But if need be, either section could be used alone for smaller loads. Adding further to its flexibility, is the fact that the upper basket comprises about one third of the combined total, and the lower basket about two thirds of the combined total. So, depending on load size, the press could be used at one third, two thirds or all of its capacity. Simple, but ingenious at the same time.

If you find yourself passing by on the Silverado Trail, stop in and check it out.

This part of the press is called the platen. I know, I looked it up on the internet. Amazing tool, the internet. Using different wine presses over the years, I never knew what those parts were called. After the must is transferred to the basket, the platen is placed over the must and pressed downward forcing the juice out the spaces between the staves of the basket. The platen above is hanging on the wall in our cellar. It has a bit of family history to it. My dad was managing several vineyards in the mid sixties. During that time, Bob Pepi Sr. bought the vineyards that now are part of Cardinal winery in Oakville, and my dad took over developing and managing the vineyards. They became pretty good friends and started making wine together in what had been an old dairy barn. They even made a small wine cellar in the back corner of the barn. When they poured the concrete, someone scratched “P & P Cellars” in the wet concrete. Bob Pepi Sr. acquired a wine press from the cellar of an old Italian in San Francisco. We used that press for many years, but eventually decided/needed to replace the old platen with new wood. But, we kept the old platen and eventually mounted it on the wall. Yes, it’s a bit rough and at some point in it’s past, someone nailed what appears to be galvanized sheet metal on the surface to hold it together. I’m sure that Anna, our winemaker, shudders at the thought of wine actually coming into contact with any part of it. I don’t think she even likes it in “her” cellar, but its part of our history, and Anna has learned she needs to choose her battles with the brothers.

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After viewing the original post, Joe Bauer sent the following pictures:

Even though this is a very small press, this is an excellent picture

of the basket (1/2 removed), the platen and the cake.

Lori (Sis) removing the platen and breaking up the cake.

Well why did you think they call it a cake? (Yes, it was her BD)

Foot note: I never had a sister, so I "adopted" Lori to fill that void 5 years ago