October 22nd, 2009 by Bob Dye –
Acme Fine Wines, in St. Helena, recently held a tasting of the wines by Mark Porembski, our winemaker. If you’re not familiar with Acme, they are a local shop that specializes in new, hard-to-find or hard-to-get wine brands. They have both on-site sales as well as clubs that allow those who don’t live here access to wines they wouldn’t normally find where they live.
Every Friday evening Acme holds a complementary tasting, usually for a specific winery or winemaker. In this case, Mark was there pouring the three wines for which he is winemaker or co-winemaker (more on that in a moment). They were all Cabernet Sauvignons, and the wineries were:
- Charnu Winery
- Anomaly Vineyards
- Zeitgeist Cellars
Zeitgeist Cellars is the brand of Mark and his wife Jennifer Williams, who is winemaker at Spottswoode Winery, another very highly-regarded local winery.
Also present was their daughter Kiran, who can add the tasting to a growing resume that includes being present at vineyard evaluations, harvest, bottling and blending sessions.
Did you attend the Acme tasting? If so, let us know what you thought.
Harvest Update
The Charnu 2009 Cabernet Sauvignon is resting comfortably in its tanks, safe from the rain that has plagued the Valley recently. The Lewelling block has already fermented to dryness, and the Stanton block is well on its way.
September 30th, 2009 by Bob Dye –
The 2009 harvest has finally begun in earnest for Charnu. Monday morning we harvested the grapes from our Lewelling Vineyard block, located South of St. Helena on the West side of the valley.
The morning was nice and cool, a welcome change from the hot spell we’ve been having lately. Luckily, the hot spells this year have not been as prolonged or as poorly-timed as last year.
This is the smaller of our two blocks, and we ended up with almost 3 tons. That’s 35% more than last year (but that was a lower-than-average crop).
When we got the grapes down to the winery in Napa, we found that the temperature was about 10 degrees lower than in St. Helena. Good for the grapes, but a bit chilly for those of us used to the warmer summer weather.
Destemming and sorting went smoothly. The grapes were in good shape, so there was only the normal sorting-out of a few raisins and unwanted debris.
Now the grapes are sitting comfortably in the tank, getting ready for fermentation.
Harvest is always a bit of a relief, knowing that you’ve successfully gotten through the riskiest part of the process.
September 9th, 2009 by Bob Dye –
We just sent out the release emails for our Fall release – the 2006 Cabernet Sauvignon.
It’s amazing how many details go into setting up a release. Scrubbing the Mailing List. Updating the order forms. Making sure that everything is set up correctly in our online store.
For us, there was a lot more to do for this release than would normally be required, because we are significantly expanding the states we can ship to.
The 2005 release went essentially just to California. There wasn’t much of it, so it didn’t make sense to apply for direct inter-state shipping permits.
As you may already know, shipping wine direct to consumers in another state is a quagmire. Every state has different rules. In some states it’s illegal. In others, the process is so cumbersome or expensive that it’s impractical. For states where you can get a permit to ship direct, you are generally signing up for a significant reporting effort. States often require out-of-state wineries to submit monthly sales tax, excise tax and shipment reports even if there were no sales to that state in that month.
This release, we decided to get shipping permits for all states that “made sense”. That obviously means states that permit it. But more importantly, it means states that are likely to be a market for our wines. So we hope to be able to ship to:
Alaska- California
- Colorado
- Florida
- Iowa
- Michigan
- Minnesota
- Missouri
- New Mexico
- Nevada
- New Hampshire
- New York
- North Carolina
- Ohio
- Oregon
- Texas
- Virginia
- Washington
- Washington D.C.
As you can see, this is a big change for us. Is it completely set up yet? No. We could still run into delays dealing with state bureaucracies. But we think we can get all of these eventually.
What about other states? We’re not willing to skirt the laws. If you can’t have the wine shipped to somewhere legal, your best option may be a storage facility such as 55 Degrees in St. Helena (www.fiftyfivedegrees.com). If you rent a locker there, we will deliver your wine to 55 Degrees for free. At that point, it’s yours. You can instruct 55 Degrees to ship your wine to you whenever you like.
So we’ve jumped into the wacky world of inter-state direct wine shipping with both feet. It may be a wild ride.
What do you think of all this?
September 2nd, 2009 by Bob Dye –
It’s the time of year when everyone (vintners, winemakers, growers) keeps a sharp eye on the grapes, trying to figure out when is exactly the right time to pick.
Our vineyards look great, the best ever at this date. The high heat we had last week does not seem to have hurt them a bit.
The sugars are developing nicely, but they still need more time for tannin development.
If everything goes well, we will probably be picking near the end of September.
Of course, Mother nature can always speed things up.
We’re finally taking the plunge. This is the first post to the Charnu Winery Blog.
Wineries and the Mobile Web
September 16th, 2009 by Bob Dye – 2 Comments
Since I do web design, I decided to set up our website (http://www.charnuwinery.com) to work on an iPhone. I’m hoping that this also makes it work well on a Blackberry (which I can’t test). If you have one of these, check it out and let me know what you think.
But the skeptic in me wonders how useful this really is for wineries. I can see it for some businesses, say restaurants. You’re with some friends and on the spur of the moment decide you want to get something to eat. You use your mobile device to find a restaurant that sounds interesting, and then to get their phone number and call them.
Where this breaks down for wineries is that wineries are actually rather rare . They tend to be concentrated in places like Napa Valley. People have to make an effort to get to them, so usually already have some idea of which ones they’re going to visit.
They probably used the web to find those wineries, but I’m guessing they used a PC/Mac to do it, and not their mobile device.
But maybe I’m missing something. Can you see yourself needing to visit a winery’s website on your mobile device? If so, what’s the scenario.
Let me know what you think.