January 1 - January 6, 2013

	Wednesday January 02, 2013 I know I have been neglecting my diary. There is so much to say.............I will not divulge much. Like most of you I have been having fun with our family and we had a great time with several of you here to celebrate with us on New Years Eve. My head hit the pillow at 3:15 Am on 1113. I wrote checks today for our employees and I see there was one more interesting number 1313 to write checks, tomorrow's date. It is a new year and that means Matt and I will decide on the blends for the 2012 Vintage. Salvador and Catarino and his crew will help in a big way. I will have more about the blends tomorrow. 9:30 Pm: The 2012 wines have been in the barrel for about three months now so we will rack off the clear wine from the sediment and start creating more refined wine. I will miss the complexity from the wines sitting on 4 gallons of mud which will start the creation of Zp2c. We will rack off 56 gallons of the clearest wine...............no filtering.........and leave 4 gallons.......settle for three months and rack again and wind up with about 55 gallons. It will be fun.............Zp2c will begin with the 4 gallons of mud left from the first rack Friday January 04, 2013 The blending has begun!! We are cold stabilizing the first two wines in our freezer. The Fresco this year is low alcohol and a blend of 61% Grenache, 21% Barbera and 18% Peloursin. The second wine is a Soft Zinfandel at only 12.5% alcohol. I am happy to report it has plenty of body and will be a nice summer wine........ The Block 4 is going in the tank now and smells fabulous. 8:00 Pm: Some of you may be wondering what I did with my Stock Market obligations. Hey, as i have said before the Stock Market is one of my passions. After a quick search I see maybe the last time I mentioned the market was on Nov 30. What follows is a few posts before that Oct 4: I have a dilemma. I have looked at the chart of GOOG and it should be up another 80 points, maybe. I have a profit so I may buy 4 of the stocks which have not gone up this year.......SODA, TEVA, CSCO, MSFT Nov 22: I will talk about the market at another time..........I bought back Nov 27: Ok, the Stock Market. I hate the politics of the Fiscal Cliff. The Market does not like uncertainty so I see nothing happening for a while. That means this is an opportunity to buy.............but only if a deal is made.........of course a long term deal would be the best. I sold 30% of my AAPL, 20% of GOOG and 33% of AMZN at much higher prices and purchased all AAPL back and some AMZN. I am waiting to see what happens before I buy more. Nov 30: My stocks are going up, I will not be buying more, but I may be selling and be wrong again. It is nice to sell a stock at a higher price than when you bought it, but that is tricky, because it could go down right away. I have been wrong on most stocks I have purchased in my life, but I have had my winners, sell high sometimes. Every time on my big stock winners I have sold too early....looking back.............that is still a good thing...... 9:00 Pm: I mention this because Susie has started to be interested in the Stock Market. I told her it is a passion and thus we have to be concentrated in timing............. As I said I hated the politics of the fiscal cliff so i sold high and bought low. I sold some AMZN and GOOG and bought more APPL. Amazon is nearing new highs and Google is surging and Apple is going sideways. I have great prices on Apple and sold Amazon and Google too early again, but I still have equal positions in Amazon and Apple and a little more in Google. 55% of my money is in these three stocks. I sold CSCO and MSFT at a small profit after a year or so and bought more TEVA. SODA is moving up and I should have bought more of this great soda company. It is still hard to be sure about the quality of a vintage. So far 2012 looks good. One vintage that did not look good at first has given me hope. I expected 2008 to be a good but not exceptional vintage. BUT then i made my first Lagrein and maybe my best Block 4. On New Years Eve the 2008 Estate Cuvee was one of the best of all 15 past Estate Cuvee wines. We had a great party and wish more of you could have been here. The 1994, 1995, 1996 and 1997 were showing well. The real corks in the 1994 and 1995 were sound and showed better for me than the artificial corks but some preferred the 1996 and 1997. The 2003, our first screwcap finished wine was great as was all the vintages later. The wines are aging perfectly. The French who invented the screwcap had a Bordeaux blind tasting and the screwcap wines compared to there equally cellared real cork wines won easily. These were 10 year old wines so The French said they need to wait another 10 years to decide whether they should provide screwcap wines as an option for Bordeaux wines..............maybe some of them will be long gone by then. Tomorrow is another day
	For any comments or questions I encourage any of you to e-mail.....david@coffaro.com Dave
	Home | Read | Diary | Tell Us What You Think of Our Diary | Last Week | Next Week