The Setting Moon over the Mayacamas Mountains

Moon over Mayacamas

Photo courtesy of Joe Bauer

I was on my way to work at 5:44 this morning when my cell phone rang.  I noted that the incoming call was from my good buddy, Joe Bauer.  Since Joe is not usually vertical at that time of the day, my first thought was that something bad had happened.  I was relieved when he asked me if I had seen the full moon. He said he called me because he knew I'd be up. I briefly thought about taking some pictures but knew that Joe would be taking better pictures than I could.  And ain't that a great one?  (Be sure to click on it to enlarge)

According to the Farmers' Almanac, the June full moon is the Full Strawberry moon:

"Full Strawberry Moon – June This name was universal to every Algonquin tribe. However, in Europe they called it the Rose Moon. Also because the relatively short season for harvesting strawberries comes each year during the month of June . . . so the full Moon that occurs during that month was christened for the strawberry!"

To checkout all the full moon names, click on this link:

http://www.farmersalmanac.com/full-moon-names/

Bottling Day at Piña Napa Valley

June 9th was bottling day at Piña Napa Valley. 

Since we're not big enough to justify having our

own bottling line, the bottling line comes to us.

Macario on the forklift.

Inside the trailer, things are a bit tight.

This machine is putting the foils on the bottle.

This machine is "spinning" the foils on the bottle.

We don't have paper labels, or the bottling line

would be placing those on the bottles, too.

Here are the large format Mimbre bottles. 

The Mimbre package design was the

first choice of 3 of the 4 brothers

(Okay, I'm warming up to it).

It's hard to visualize the size of the large format

 bottles from the pictures, until you place a standard

750 ml Cahoots bottle in front of them.

Our winemaking team:

Anna Monticelli & Macario Montoya

Photos provided by John C. Piña

Celebrity Winery Visitors: J.J. Putz & Mr. Incredible

One of the cooler things about being involved with a winery is that occasionally, you get to meet celebrities.  Yesterday we got to meet 2 celebrities: J.J. Putz & Mr. Incredible.  For those of you that aren't baseball fans, J.J. Putz is a relief picture for the Arizona Diamondbacks.  The Diamondbacks are "in town" to play our SF Giants and there's a good chance that J.J. will take the mound tonight.

J.J. was touring some Napa Valley wineries with two good friends.  His friend Larry claims to be a Southwest law enforcement narcotics officer.  But what makes Larry a celebrity is that he is the real life character that inspired Mr.Incredible. You DO know Mr. Incredible, don't you? 

 And for those of you that need proof: 

  
I'm sure the other wineries they visited will confirm that they are all very fun loving and entertaining guys, and yes, wild & crazy too.  We appreciate that they have a taste for fine wines.

Larry Piña, Larry (Mr. Incredible), J.J. Putz & Davie Piña

Thanks for the visit, gentlemen. It was great fun!

Mother's Day

My goal was to finish this deck by Mother's Day

And, I made it - Here's remembering you, Mom!

  

From the deck you can see open fields with mounds on each side.

Those mounds are really stacks of vines that were removed by Piña Vineyard Management.

Those fields are being prepped for replanting. 

We've been doing more vineyard redevelopment this year than last.

We think it's a good sign that the economy is improving.

Happy Mother's Day from the Piña brothers and staff!

Rutherford Passport Weekend - May 7th & 8th

May 7th & 8th is the Rutherford Passport weekend, and we are participating. 

Rutherford Appellation Wineries

The Rutherford Passport Weekend  is the premier consumer event sponsored by wineries residing in this historical appellation.  Experience the wineries of the Rutherford Appellation as never before. Passport Weekend allows Passport holders exclusivity to special pourings, barrel and tank tastings, paired food and wines, and conversations with the winemakers - all of which will make for a memorable time in beautiful Napa Valley. 

Rutherford Appellation Wineries was established to educate consumers on the significance of the Rutherford appellation as Napa Valley's preeminent grape-growing area. This consumer-focused organization was created to promote the uniqueness of the area and encourage visitors to experience personally the quality of the wines produced in this special place.

Proceeds from the passport events benefit a local Napa Valley Charity.  Some recipients in the past are the Rutherford Volunteer Firefighters, the Rutherford flood project, Queen of the Valley hospital and others. In 2010, the Rutherford Grange was the recipient of $10,000.00 to help in the restoration project.  Some of our member wineries will be pouring at the Grange this year and hope that our participants in this years' event take the time to see the Grange while it is being retrofitted and remodeled.


Click here to visit thewebsite:  http://rutherford-appellation-wineries.com/index.php

Big Steaks & Big Cabs

Every year we donate an auction item to the Taste of Howell Mountain fundraiser.

This is what the promotional ad for the event looked like for last year:

And, as the last lines notes:  All proceeds benefit the Howell Mountain Elementary School.

Prior to last year, our auction lots were typically dinners for 20 - 24, served in the cellar.

But last year, we  decided to offer a more intimate experience:

The winning bid came from Lorna Wood & Bob Long.  The date agreed upon was April 16^th, 2011.  Their group of 7 folks arrived at the winery right on time and we transported them to a new deck I built on the hillside above Piña Vineyard Management. 

 The deck site was chosen because of the extraordinary views.  This was the first “official” use of the deck that is not yet even completed.

In the above picture, Davie is pointing out points of interest to the group.

One point of interest is the group of trees & buildings just over the folks in the picture.  That is Plumpjack Winery.

In the enlarged picture above, is the home we grew up in until 1962. 

More info on that is shared in another one of my posts.

Larry grilled sausages and served Piña Cellars Chardonnay.  We stayed for the better part of an hour before returning to the winery. 

Once back at the winery, Davie & I explained the rules of the game & officiated while our guests played Bocce.

We had planned to eat in the cellar, but at Lorna’s request, we set up for dinner under the trees above the bocce court.

As the bocce games continued, John put the steaks & veggies on the grill.

Eventually, we sat down to dinner.

All agreed that it was a perfect evening for dining outside.

 

And the dinner received much praise.

Leslie Burma, Jackie Rubin & Javier Cardieo helped with all aspects of the dinner.

There were many toasts (that’s Bob & Lorna) celebrating our good fortune.

Dessert was served with our (soon to be released)

Late Harvest Chardonnay, as the sun set.

The following week, we received a very kind & gracious note from Lorna Wood:

Larry,

We all want to thank you and your brothers very much for the fabulous time we had last weekend.  Sharing your "mountain" with us, the view, the history, the stories were all tremendous; but then teaching us bocce and cooking up a awesome dinner to have with your first class wines were the creme de la creme.  It was an event we all will remember and will be hard to top!

I attached some pictures for your album.  Thanks again - we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves!

Lorna Wood, Bob Long, Erika Vogler, Mel and Rosemary Gafner, & Bob and Jan Polichino

We intend to offer the same auction item at this year’s Taste of Howell Mountain, for those of you that might be interested.

As the event gets closer, you will be able to get more information and see the auction lots listed here:

http://www.howellmountain.org/

You need not be present to win!

If you want to bid on an auction lot, but cannot attend, please contact:

Claudia J. Chittim

Executive Director

Howell Mountain Vintners & Growers Assoc.

2260 First Avenue

Napa, Ca 94558

707-252-6229 – phone 

Email: claudiachittim@gmail.com

Above picture created by Leslie Burma

The Cork Board: 2008 Buckeye, Howell Mountain Cab Release Day

On Saturday, April 9th, we released our 2008 Buckeye Vineyard, Howell Mountain Cab. It was very well attended and I've been meaning to write a short post on the event. But my procrastination has paid off.  Someone else did it for me.

Trevor Jonas, of The Cork Board, and his lovely photographer attended the event that day.  Trevor wrote about their visit and included several high quality pictures in:

A recap of the Piña Napa Valley 2008 Howell Mountain Buckeye Vineyard Release Day

Thanks Trevor!

Snow in the Napa Valley

We don't see a lot of snow here in Napa Valley.  So when I was traveling down the Yountville Crossroads last Saturday morning, I stopped to take a picture of the snow on Mt. Veeder.  I wasn't going to include this in a post since the great majority of Americans would probably respond with: "You call THAT snow?"

Piña Vineyard Management (not to be confused with Piña Napa Valley) cares for lots of vineyards in the valley. There is a foreman assigned to each of the properties.  When I got to work this morning, I received the following pictures taken by Jesus Hernandez. Jesus oversees the Pahlmeyer Vineyards east of Napa, and sent these pictures, also taken Saturday morning:

Thanks for the pictures, Jesus!



Optical Grape Sorter to the Rescue

So what do you think this mechanical monster is and does?

2010 was a difficult year for most grape growers in the Napa Valley.  It was unseasonably cool through most of the growing season and the grapes were maturing later than usual. Notice that I didn’t say it was an abnormal year. That would imply that some years are normal and it doesn’t seem that we’ve had anything I could refer to as  “normal year” in a long time.  Tedious leafing had exposed the grapes to direct sunlight, just as planned.  Just when we were beginning to think that we might make it to harvest without any major concerns, we got hit with a heat wave.  It was an intense heat wave.  It was as if Mother Nature woke up and decided to make amends for the cool summer.

Things looked bad.  We had grapes turning to raisins, especially on the sunny side of the clusters. I have read, and believe, that the single most important factor for quality wines is a uniform crop.  But with the raisins, our crop was less than uniform.

Anna, our winemaker, suggested a fairly expensive solution to this dilemma. She suggested we use an optical sorter.  We had to decide between spending lots of money for top quality grapes or producing something less than top quality wines. When we looked at it that way, we had no choice.

So our good friends at Walsh Vineyard Management had an optical sorter that we could rent.

So what exactly does an optical sorter do?  This is the amazing part.

An optical sorter looks at each berry and decides if it is worthy of being made into quality wine. 

Did you catch that … “each berry”?    So how does it do that? 

Thomas Ulrich, in an article for Wines & Vines, described the process like this:

“The destemmer detached berries from the stalks by moving clusters of grapes along a pair of vibrating inline berry separators. The fruit fell onto a notched roller sorting table that pushed the stems and other debris over the side of the machine and moved the berries into the optical sorter. A vibrating table carried them to a rope conveyor made up of 99 parallel cords that aligned what was left of the harvest for a final inspection.

The optical sorter photographed the berries and extraneous debris as they moved towards the ejection jets located at the end of the rope conveyor. The jets fired as seeds, jacks, raisins and imperfect berries cleared the end of the conveyor, hurtling them toward a waste bin. Momentum from the rope conveyor carried the unblemished grapes past a threshold and into a bin set aside for collecting the harvest.”

In this YouTube video, you can see the optical sorter in operation.  Unfortunately, you can’t see the air jets actually blasting away at the substandard berries, but you can see the speed at which the berries travel down the conveyor. As you watch the video, keep in mind that each of those speeding berries is closely evaluated before they can make it past the air jets and into the “keep” bin.

Technology helped us survive yet another difficult growing year.  We’re due for Mother Nature to give us a normal year, whatever that is.

The Six B's of Exeter

I want to share a fun response & picture I received in response to my last blog.  It's from a fellow blogger, Steve, that I have never met. Steve has provided the most comments on my blog, and I appreciate it.

Ranndy,

Great post. Baseball coaches are second only to farmers for creating what they need. We made this to drag the fields. You can see the picture here. http://sixbeesofexeter.blogspot.com/2011/01/inventors.html The picture is during a parade to honor the school's 100 year anniversary.

I do like the versatility of the vehicle you saw.

Steve

Check out his blog at:  http://sixbeesofexeter.blogspot.com/