Of course. Just let me know what dates work for you and hopefully I will be around to show you around and taste you through the wines currently in barrel. Shoot me an email at morgan@bedrockwineco.com. Best!

M

Speaking of Carignane and Syrah, they were both picked last Thursday. The Carignane is tasting excellent, although it soaked up to a crazy 28 brix (we are talking Rosenblum levels!) and the TA is a little lower than I would like. As such, I watered it back to 25 to hopefully ensure a good fermentation, and may need to do a TA add soon as well.

The Syrah came in at 25 brix. I decided to ferment the old vine stuff in the Rousseau puncheon I used for Rebecca’s Pinot Noir. With it I included about 20% whole clusters to hopefully heighten the aromatic and spice components of the wine. The remainder of the young vine Syrah I put into Tonnellerie Baron ferment barrels. The ferment started almost immediately, and is creating quite a cap. As an experiment I included macerating enzyme to break down the skins a little bit for more color. The results have been scary– the stuff looks like ink! There is some debate whether the color attained via macerating enzymes “sticks” with the wine as it ages, but as of right now the stuff is impressively dark….

The Mourvedre is still about a week away. Not surprising since Mourvedre has the longest ripening cycle of any major (or somewhat major as the case may be) grape variety.

The 1999 Sebastiani should be really good, as 1999 was a great a year for North Coast Zinfandel. It never really got the press it deserved since it was a ho-hum year for Cab and Chardonnay.

The other thing we have done since buying the vineyard is really reduce crop levels in the old vines. This year we averaged 2.77 tons/acre, last year was 1.7. In contrast, the previous years the levels were up around 4-5 tons per acre, which in my opinion is just too great for such an old vineyard to sustain without frequent irrigation and fertigation. Sort of like making your grandma do sweatshop labor…

Our hope is that by achieving a little better balance in the Zinfandel we will get better fruit expression. I would say that Barricia Vineyard, which was part of the same original farm as Bedrock, has better Zinfandel since it has been farmed better for the last twenty years. That said, Bedrock makes up for the slightly lesser quality Zin by its large amounts of excellent Carignane, Mourvedre, Syrah, Alicante, and others.

DAP and Superfood (100 ppm) were added this morning to feed the yeasties and prevent reduction. So far this is showing typical high-tone Sonoma red fruits, spice, and already the mid-valley tannin. Really quite nice.

I am picking the Carignane tomorrow morning, and will most likely coferment it with some old vine Syrah (there is not enough old vine syrah to ferment by itself). I am also bringing in the younger Syrah tomorrow. The Carignane is tasting delicious. It is nice to make wine in a good year!!