Six Strings SLH Chardonnay now at Vietasia - Morgan Hill

Vietasia adds Six Strings Chardonnay to their wine list - Vietasia is a modern vietnamese cuisine restaurant in Morgan Hill. Opening in the Spring of 2008 owner Christine Levan chose Six Strings Pinot Noir as one of the local wines to kick off their wine list. Today Vietasia added our Santa Lucia Highlands Chardonnay to pair with their dishes like Grilled Pork Vermicelli Platter and Grilled Ginger Salmon with Jasmine Rice. We're grateful to Vietasia for their continued support.

Iain & Gary

Six Strings Winery group now on Facebook

We've added yet another way to connect with customers. Six Strings Winery now has a fan group on the social networking site Facebook.com. In the first day we've already got 31 members and growing. Our growers and many of our business associates have their own pages on Facebook. We plan to keep it updated with photos of our events and just like we do on the blog we'll post news and bulletins. Want to join? click here 
Look forward to meeting you there.
IDC

Dry Creek Valley Cabernet Sauvignon Released!

Just a quick note to our customers and friends that we have released the first vintage of the Six Strings Dry Creek Valley Cabernet Sauvignon.  As some of you may know, the fruit for this wine comes from the Puma Springs vineyard in the highly-regarded Dry Creek Valley AVA in Sonoma.  This vineyard is special as it has been painstakingly managed using sustainable farming practices since 2001 and will certified Biodynamic for the 2009 harvest.

The 2006 vintage is still a young wine and although it is drinking nicely now, it will continue to develop over the next 3 to 5 years.  Its 100% Cabernet Sauvignon and was aged in 50% new French oak for 22 months prior to bottling, and was unfined and unfiltered.

We only made 70 cases of this inaugural vintage so if you enjoy handcrafted Sonoma Cabernet, be sure to check this one out.  It will not disappoint.  You can find all of the details on the Six Strings Winery website.

GRC

Harvest Updates - Cabernet picked 9/29/08

The fruit is all in and the fermentation has begun. Pinot Noir has nearly finished fermentation and will be pressed this weekend. Great color extraction and a good clean fermentation. Cabernet and Chardonnay are crushed and starting their metamorphasis now.

We must say the weather has been a little odd this year. We picked our Dry Creek Valley Cabernet before our Santa Lucia Highlands Chardonnay. It's almost unheard of. Only by a day but the Cabernet was ready nearly two weeks early and the sugars hit 25 brix weeks ago. Through some careful vineyard management Puma Springs was able to hold back the sugars to allow the fruit some extra hang time and for the acids to come into better balance. They also dropped some fruit that was beginning to show signs of stress from the warms days.  http://www.pumasprings.com/ . 

I drove up to the vineyard Sunday night and stayed at the guest house there so I could be up bright and early Monday morning for harvest. Gary met up with me in the morning. I must have been excited about the harvest because I woke up at 4AM thinking I heard a tractor out in the vineyard...winemaking paranoia. After I poked my head outside and realized that there was no tractor outside and harvest was still a few hours off I went back to sleep for a little while. So I got up at 6 and made some weak coffee (gotta talk to the grower about stocking some decent coffee in the guest house http://www.flyinggoatcoffee.com/). 

The picking crew was running a little behind so we started on our own, picking a few buckets of Petit Verdot to throw in as a field blend. Sugar readings on the Cabernet were all above 25 which meant even after dropping some of the really ripe stuff, this fruit was ready to go. The crew arrived a little before 9am and we got going picking the top half of the south facing rows first. Then we moved our truck down to the bottom of the hill and picked the bottom half. By about 11 we finished up, strapped down the grapes and headed south for the winery. We had to make a quick pit stop in Napa though to pick up our new barrels for this year. We bought several new barrels including 3 for the Cabernet to throw into this years mix. They are an american coopered barrel that is made from imported french oak. We've already got a few of them in our barrel program but they were neutral barrels we bought from another winey. These are new and Six Strings will be the first wine that touches them. 

Before I wrap up on this years Cabernet harvest I must wax a little about the drive between Dry Creek/Alexander Valleys to Calistoga through Knights Valley/Hwy 128. This was the shortcut from the vineyard to picking up our barrels in Napa. This has got to be one of the most scenic drives in California. Red Mountain juts up on your left and is sparsely wooded but has magnificent red rocks that protrude out everywhere. On the valley floor vineyards are all around broken up by old farm buildings and the winding road. To the south are the Bald Hills which are not bald on the side you see fromthis highway. They are covered in redwoods up high and golden grass between the vineyards. It's a great drive, even in a bumpy flatbed diesel with 2 tons of grapes strapped to the back.

We'll post some more technical updates on how this years wines are doing once they are all in barrel. Which should be within a week. We're relieved to have another harvest season done and the 2008 wines off to a great start. The rain started this week and the weather is starting to get cold which means the vines will soon shut down for the winter. And in case you missed it the 06 SLH Pinot Noir is officially released and the first Six Strings Cab will be released in less than two months! We opened some last week and it still needs a little time in the bottle but is getting very close and promises to be a great Cab.

IDC

Wine and Rock and Roll Music... Great Idea!

We just got back from Las Vegas where we were fortunate enough to participate in the 3rd Annual Wine Amplified festival at Mandalay Bay. Picture this for an evening out:

• 30 wineries pouring
  
• 2,000 people partying
• 2 great bands (Gin Blossoms and Sherwood) rockin
• All outside at night at the beach
• In Vegas!

It does not get a lot better than that if you love music and also happen to enjoy great wine along with your music.  This was the view from our pouring table in the Lexus VIP lounge.

Chris Hammond and his partner Sonny Barton of Rock'n Roll Wine put on this event and they really did a great job.  These guys have been putting on wine and music events for several years and they attract huge crowds, great wineries and the best bands.  The Gin Blossoms were fantastic.  They played all the big hits and some really nice new songs.  We were lucky enough to hang out with a few of the guys after the show and they were very cool.  The guitar player Scotty Johnson is a big wine fan as well so be sure to check out their new CD.

We are already looking forward to next year.

GRC

2008 Pinot Noir Harvest

On Saturday September 20th we harvested our Santa Lucia Highlands Pinot Noir. One down two to go!!

Friday night we got together in Hollister to load our bins on our rental truck in preparation for the morning harvest which started at 6AM. Gary met the crew at Olsen ranch first thing in the

morning and by 6:30am the bins, crews and tractors were in the vineyard and busy harvesting. The weather cooled off this week and the morning of the 20th was cool but not cold while we plucked the fruit from the vines. Vineyard samples of the fruit showed 24 brix the day prior to harvest and the morning of the pick I was getting between 24 and 25 depending on which bunch I sampled. The berries this year were exceptionally small which offers the promise of concentrated flavors in the wine. The rows in block 13 of Olsen where we source our Pinot Noir run roughly east/west and the south facing fruit zone was just beginning to show signs of stress and some dimples when we picked. We picked up notes of coffee and chocolate in the dimpled berries while the more north facing bunches showed more plump fruity ripeness.

Our vineyard manager Bryan pulled together a crew of 10+ which made the work go swiftly and we were finished by 8:30am. After weigh in we dropped off the fruit to begin its cold soak as we typically do to extract maximum flavors and tannins. The must is still soaking now in its three separate lots and we'll pitch our yeast selections tomorrow to begin fermentation. There is still lots to do but there is always some feeling of relief to bring the grapes in. Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon still have some ripening to do and we expect to harvest them in about another week. The warm weather up in Dry Creek Valley means that we're going to bring in the Cab nearly two weeks earlier than last year.

IDC

Remembering 9/11 and Cuatro (It's a Port)

So I'm sitting here thinking about what life was like 7 years ago and what I was doing. As we all know the country changed pretty dramatically on this day in 2001. At this time 9pm I was glued to the tv like everyone else in the country pretty stunned at what had happened. But, This site is really about wine so I'm not going to write much about 9/11 except to say that two days ago I witnessed my father take the oath of citizenship to this country and I'm proud to be American and call this place my home. It's a great country to live in and not a bad place to make wine either.

Now about wine. Gary and I poured our wines at a charity event for the Kinship center last weekend which was a lot of fun. It was attended by about 1,000 people and lots of them visited our booth and tasted our wines. As is typical with tasting events we get a lot of questions like "I've never heard of you, how long have you been around?" and "Are you new?"

So here's a piece of the story as it ties in to this day 7 years ago. I think Gary and I started on the paths that would lead us to this endeavor at about the same time. We just hadn't put the two together yet. In 1999 I reconnected with an old friend who had just finished the viticulture program at CalPoly. It must have been post-harvest because I don't think we made wine that year. Or if we did I've drank it all by now because I don't have any left. For a few years after that these friends (Randy, Joffre and Justin) and I played around with making wine. Two of them worked together for a large Monterey county grape grower and we had our pick of fruit. Varietals, vineyards, it was all there and since we were able to pick pretty much whatever we wanted to play around. I will have to get Gary to tell about his first Pinot planting in a separate posting. I'm sure he was doing it around the same time though. We made the first Six Strings Pinot Noir in 2003 from Gary's vineyard at his home in San Benito County.

For the 2001 vintage (which was being picked while the world was in complete turmoil), we picked lots of varietals. Zinfandel, Syrah, Petit Verdot, Cabernet Sauvignon and Pinot Noir. One of the last was Souzao for making Port http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Souzao Souzao is a common grape in the production of port in Portugal known for its deep inky color. As you may know port is made sweet by stopping the fermentation process before it has completly consumed all of the sugars. This is achieved by spiking it with brandy whilst there is still sugar in the must. In our case we used brandy and a bit of rum from the local grocery store. The result...59 gallons of deliciousness. We called the wine 'Cuatro' for the 4 guys who made it and commemorated 9/11 by putting an image of the American flag on the label. Justin is now the maker of some great Tempranillo and Sauvignon Blanc http://www.nadawines.com/ and Randy grows some of the top Pinot Noir producers in the country as their viticulture director http://www.saintsbury.com/

IDC

Harvest...right around the corner

It's now Sept 5th and its looking like harvest is only a few weeks away for all our vineyards. We've been getting frequent updates from Puma Springs Vineyards who grows our Cabernet Sauvignon and harvest is definately coming earlier than last year. They harvested Merlot on Wednesday. It's not uncommon for the Cabernet to come in mid to late October but this year will likely be before the end of September and the weather in Dry Creek Valley is warm right now. Brix is approaching 22.

Everything else is lining up great.

Our 2006 Cabernet is in the bottle waiting for its big debut around Nov/Dec. Since we only produced 59 cases this wine is going to go fast and Gary and I are still figuring out our channel strategy for such a limited production. For lots of reasons we're going to make a little more Cab this year than we did in 2006 & 2007. It is a lot of effort for just 59 cases so this year we plan to pick two tons, or about 120 cases. This still means there won't be more of our Cab until fall 2010, wow!! Wine takes a lot of patience.

Our new french oak barrels for this years harvest are waiting for us up in the warehouse in Napa. We've got enough to get that 25-30% blend we generally like for all our wines.

We'll bottle our 2007 Chardonnay next week and plan to release it early 2009. Another great vintage for Chardonany!

IDC

Just A Little More Time... 2006 Reds Are Big and Bold!

Iain and I wrapped up a marathon tasting session at the winery yesterday and we came to conclusion that our 2006 red wines are just about ready to go. The 2006 Santa Lucia Highlands Pinot Noir is already in the bottle and should be ready for an October or November release. The 2006 Dry Creek Valley Cabernet Sauvignon will be bottled this month and should also be ready for a December release. Unlike the 05' wines which did not need a lot of time to hit their stride, the 06' wines are big and bold with a firm tannin structure that you will surely notice. Be patient with these wines as it will be worth the wait.