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Winter in the Home Winery - again

So it’s February or should I say Febrrr-ary? As in it’s almost too cold to be in the garage winery right now. This is also true for the barrels full of wine which are hibernating quietly. Too quietly as the malolactic bacteria that is supposed to be chewing up green apple-like malic acids and turning them into creamy lactic acids are also slumbering in the low temperature of the winery. Is this…

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A Murder of Principal and Graciano

Author Saralyn Richard’s novel A Murder of Principal bears more than a little resemblance to Richard’s own background. Well, Richard never had to deal with her principal being murdered, even during the years she spent working as a high school principal, herself. She did have to deal with a lot of the politics that goes on in school administrations. But that’s what brings her novel to…

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Wine as a Business?

Because Michael makes wine, a lot of people ask us if we’ll go into wine as a business. Bag filling machine featured at the Unified Symposium Uh. No. And as much fun as we had at the wine industry Unified Symposium this week, we became even more certain that we’ll keep our amateur status, at least as winemakers. The Unified Wine and Grape Symposium, by the way, is the big wine industry…

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Bottling wine in the wintertime winery...

What’s Up in the Winery is Michael writing about his adventures as a home winemaker. This month he’s covering bottling wine. I wanted to write about bottling wine this month because there’s less activity in the winery during the winter. Once the newly made wines are in barrels or steel containers, it’s not unusual for winemakers to take a skiing vacation or spend the summer in Australia. But…

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A Crowded Home Winery

What’s up in the home winery is written from Michael’s perspective since he is the home winemaker. Anne’s role in the winery is strictly quality control. Earlier this year, we expected the 2022 harvest to be on the light side. The ongoing drought in California promised us winemakers a shortage of grapes for our winemaking projects. But, speaking for myself, this harvest was very fruitful and…

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What Gifts to Get for a Wine Lover

This is a repeat post from a few years ago about what gifts to get for a wine lover – or more importantly, what not to get, but it’s still relevant. By now, you’re home from your Black Friday spree, putting your feet up (preferably with a nice, soothing glass of your favorite wine). But that doesn’t mean you got just the right gift for the wine lovers on your list. Or maybe you got the wrong one…

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Beaujolais Nouveau is a Winner

A lot of fuss is made each year right before Thanksgiving and not just about the dangers of talking politics over turkey. Everyone has an opinion on which wine is the best escort of all the different food and party guests who might grace the table? We have an easy answer: Beaujolais Nouveau! Yes, we enjoyed that year’s Nouveau! Made from the gamay grape native to Burgundy, gamay wines are known…

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Jane the Quene and Sparkling Wine

No. We didn’t spell Jane the Quene wrong. It’s how she spelled her name on the birth announcements for her son, Edward Tudor. The book, by Janet Wertman, is a fictionalized account of Jane Seymour’s journey from lady-in-waiting to the ill-fated Anne Boleyn, to her marriage to King Henry VIII. Told mostly from Jane’s perspective, it’s book one in the Seymour Saga trilogy. The reason almost…

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Wine for Your Big Holiday Dinner

This post was originally about picking a wine for Thanksgiving Dinner, but then we realized, not everyone wants to celebrate Thanksgiving. Some folks would prefer to celebrate Indigenous Peoples Day. And there are other big holidays coming up during this time of year, many of which involve special foods and cooking turkeys. So why not look at picking a wine for a Big Holiday Dinner? So, we…

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Native Ferments with Marlen Porter, Amplify Wines

Native ferments are getting to be a more popular style of winemaking these days, but they can also be a little controversial. Especially in our household. Anne loves them. Michael enjoys well-made native ferments (although not “natural wines” which is a grab bag of marketing hooey). Marlen Porter So, when we got a chance to talk to Marlen Porter of Amplify Wines, we asked her about them. Porter…

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Why Wine Ages in Oak Barrels

Some time ago, we got invited to a lunch and wine tasting featuring wines from Rioja, Spain. The lunch not only featured some amazing wines, the winemaker attended. He led us through a flight of the same red wine aged in different types of oak barrels. Now, normally, Anne scoffs at tastings like this. Tasting wine based on what oak it was aged in is the sort of thing that wine snobs turn into…

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Grape Harvest 2022 Continues

Michael is writing this one solo, since he’s the one who makes the wine at the old homestead. And it’s part two of Grape Harvest 2022. Last month I looked at the start of harvest. And after all the prep for the upcoming harvest, planning for every possible contingency, every detail in needed supplies and flexibility in scheduling… Here it comes: Harvest 2022: Agrape-ocolypse NOW! The NOW! is…

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Battered and Late Harvest Zin

How do you pair wine with a book set in an urban café? Well, you do and you don’t. G. P. Gottlieb is the author of the Whipped and Sipped series of cozy mysteries, and her main character, Alene Baron, is a nice woman trying to take care of her ailing father, raise her three kids, and run the corner café featuring delicious and healthful snacks as well as great coffee. Set in Chicago, the series…

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GRAPE HARVEST Time (or Armageddon by another name)

Michael is writing this one, since he’s the one doing the grape harvest. If you had but one word to describe the simultaneous occurrence of the entire baseball post-season plus the entire football season and post-season and let’s throw in the Stanley Cup and the NBA Finals – coming down to a single do-or-die event played out with no cheering section and no audience support but also no…

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Deep Dark Secrets and Syrah

Deep Dark Secrets, by Joy Ann Ribar, takes place in the dead of winter in Wisconsin. This first in the series of cozy mysteries featuring winemaker and baker Francine (Frankie) Champagne, involves our heroine trying to find out who killed a local pastor and left him in an ice-fishing shanty. Yes, there are wineries in Wisconsin, and author Ribar assures us that the wine is quite tasty. Anne also…

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Pétillant naturel from Natalie Albertson

We first met Natalie Albertson at the Women Winemakers Celebration earlier this spring. She makes an amazing pétillant naturel, or pét nat, under her Wildflower Winery label, a very small production winery in Ventura County. Natalie Albertson The fun thing is Albertson and Michael both buy albariño grapes from Riverbench Vineyards and Winery, in the Santa Ynez Valley. Albertson also buys…

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July in the Home Winery - Time to Label the Bottles

July in the Home Winery – Time to Label the Bottles

July in the home winery is normally the month when winemakers prepare for the next harvest, which is typically late August to early September typically, but can differ if you’re making sparkling wine or live near the High Desert AVA in Southern California. That’s when we do our last-minute orders of chemicals, cleaners, supplies. We inspect and clean our tools, and sharpen the one we use in the…

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