Weeks 14-15
April 4, 2004 to April 17, 2004 

	Tuesday April 6, 2004 We did get Vista Broadband to install our new High Speed internet connection. It is fun. See a link to their site on our home page.  Today we are bottling our 2003 Sauv Blanc. We are filtering slightly to clarify the wine. We are not finning so the wine should not be stripped of character. Remember a third of this wine was fermented like a red wine, which included a hot skin contact for 4 days to a temperature of 86 degrees. This Sauv Blanc is not wimpy. It will be a great food wine. This will be our last dry Sauv Blanc and we will bottle about 190 cases.  We racked all our red wines last week. Since they are so intense, there should not be too much shock. By next week I suspect they will be tasting great again. We are participating in the Passport event in less than three weeks so the wines should be fully recovered by then. This will be the last racking before bottling starts on July 6.  Our driveway has been widened, but the concrete work on our part of the driveway must be completed by Dennis who is off on another job. I expect everything to be finished next week. Then we can install our sign again. I plan on being open from 11:00 Am to 4:00 Pm most days after that. We are hoping to have enough time to spend with customers during the weekdays. I will be offering Steve a commission to do most of the serving and sales. He has many responsibilities during the week, so when he is too busy we will pull in the open sign. If we can sell at least a case of wine a day, it will be worth the time.  In about two weeks we will be planting some more vines. Actually this time we will be budding some great Grenache onto some existing rootstock that was planted last year. This Grenache will be blended into our Terre Melange.  Wednesday April 14, 2004 I've been rethinking the possibility of using screw caps for our closures. I have been reluctant to use them in the past because I was not sure if there was a possibility of failure with the seal. Thus there would be air entering and a fast oxidation that would occur. That would of course spoil the wine. Now I have found that a good seal should be the norm and that failure would be very unusual. In a short while Steve and I will visit a facility that sells screw cap sealing equipment and check out the possibility of incorporating a sealer in our bottling line. That will give us the possibility of using our two different artificial corks and screw caps. If I do decide to use screw caps, I will be able to offer either closure. Pat feels some of you will not buy my wine if I only offer screw caps. There are many wineries going exclusively the screw caps because wine will stay fresh. I'll have more about this subject after more research.
	Dave
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