August 31 - September 6, 2014

	Sunday August 31, 2014 8:45 Pm: I had pizza tonight and I am mellow for now............... waiting for Harvest. I am obsessed...........Like I have said if i had to do Harvest all year around, four times a year........I may not survive 4 years..........but I love it    soooooooo many decisions to be made. Of course some of you reading this diary are in to the same thing as I, but in a different business. It is easy for me since I have made wine from this vineyard for 36 years. It will be fun soon...........Harvest is here Tuesday September 2, 2014 8:30 Pm: We walked the vineyard today and i saw many vines with ripe raisins ready to be harvested. We did tests in several sections and now I am obsessed!! It looks like we will be harvesting every day in the next two weeks. Even the Cabernet tasted ripe. We had high readings in Block One so we will harvest all of that section tomorrow. Then on Thursday we should be ready for old vine zzzzzzzzin in Block 3. and Of course the NFL season starts with GB and Sea on Thursday...............I digress I am now up to see tennis and Giants baseball Wednesday September 3, 2014 We just received 2.3 tons from our Block One which will be blended into the Block 4 wine in January. This is one of the smallest yields from this block so we may have a light year in old vines. We decided to harvest one ton from our Block 3 to see where the sugar is so I will report on that later. 9:00 Pm: I was looking for Mrs. Doubtfire but could not find it so Pat is up looking at baseball and I will look at tennis and then baseball. Since it is late I will have to fast forward............ I like a beer for a few sips after consuming some wine. It is usually late like now. I love hops and I like alcohol in wine so 2bl or trpl hops is fine with me...........but now some of those beers have to add too much sugar to their hops............ We did receive and process another ton of Zin from our North section. Sometimes in the past we have stopped picking because we have unripe fruit in this North section,...........Those dedication Spanish speaking people who still know English will be here and will start in the North Section of the 3rd Block tomorrow morning at 6:30Am. It is exciting, we did many sugar tests today so Catarino and I have more into our minds...........We are the ones responsible to decide on Harvest......... There are so many things I don't need to relate...but one small one now.....OH a big concern yesterday after walking in the vineyard was I saw Mourvedre stressed in one section. So I asked Catarino to go down today after picking grapes to do several sugar tests and one was this Mourvedre.........well it is so distressed that it was only 21.6 sugar so to get 25 would be not happening..............There is no leaves on the vines so they are just disintegrating in the sun..........There was  only one small section about 20 vines. I now after 36 years remember this small section, probably in the lowest section of our vineyard and I guess it drys out faster than other sections. I could go on but Duff would say put a different rootstock for those vines and irrigate more and the vineyard would be in perfect balance. That is what it is about. I think I could make good wine from any thing but controlling what I want with Catarino is special........... We have had a lot of hot weather which happens at least 70 percent of the time in my 36 years here. The hot weather brings on stress and makes the grapes dehydrate and gain more sugar so we turned off the water last week and then the heat up to103 on Monday meant we will be harvesting for two weeks............now BUT does dehydration make better wine???????????????????? I still don't know Friday September 5, 2014 9:00 Pm: This was the most interesting day because Catarino and I are responsible for the vineyard. We harvested the most grapes today for the Harvest.......3.9 tons from our old vine 3rd and 4th block. The South acre of the 4th block is mostly Zin so we do not include this section for our Block 4 wine. We had perfect sugar at close to 25%. By tomorrow with this lot of Zin we will have 26+ sugar and will be well over 15% alcohol unless we add some water to rehydrate. Like I said dehydrate is one thing but does that make better wine, I choose to keep the fermentation in balance but trying to create wines that are 14.5-15.5 alcohol. I have made some wines as much as 16% and they are fine but most of us want less alcohol. So on Saturday, tomorrow we will slice bunches off our vines but it looks like we need to skip some old vine Zin because we have a few other sections more ready. It was complicated but I think we start with Malbec tomorrow. It is ready but being in the first crop it will be small.......then we will pick some of the ripper Merlot to blend the two into the Aca Modot wine. Then there is Sagrantino which is ready and Barbera so we could do the start of our first Italiano blend......It may be called Dago Red, but I am sure there are many other wines with that name. It will be a blend of all of our many Italiano varieties planted in our vineyard...... Tomorrow is another day I am now up to see tennis and Giants baseball
	For any comments or questions I encourage any of you to e-mail.....david@coffaro.com Dave
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