David Coffaro Winery and Vineyard Winemaker's Diary 2008 Weeks 29-32

David Coffaro Vineyard and Winery Winemaker's Diary

Weeks 29 - 33

July 20, 2008 - August 23, 2008

Tuesday July 29, 2008
Pat's tooth is fine. It has been temporarily repaired, but may need a crown in the future.
I want to remind everyone that our prices on the 2007 wines will go up on August 1st. They will be on sale again for only two days for our open house on August 23 and 24.
We are having some problems with our seals on our 2007 screwcap wines. I think we found the problem.....the height of the head was off by one millimeter. That was enough to lessen the tightness of the bottom part of the screwcap. The screwcap was not breaking at the cap so the whole screwcap comes off in one piece on some of the bottles. It won't hurt the wine because the cap is on tight. We now have to decide whether we should reseal all the wines. That would take a week.
4:00 Pm: Steve and I have talked over our screwcap problem and we have decided to reseal all our 2007 wines. To make it faster for now, we will seal about 50% next week and the rest when we bottle the 2007 Ultimate Cuvee in February. Here is a .pdf of our storage area showing where I loaded all our 2007 wines. As you can see it would be a nightmare to pull all the wine out now.
Wednesday July 30, 2008
I want to give credit to Steve and Matt. They have helped me make some great wines over the last few years. Thank you. Of course there are other factors that have contributed to the success of the bottled wine. 1) we went to screwcaps 2) I purchased a machine to purify barrels and I purchased a machine which will steam clean barrels. 3) I purchased a machine that kills yeast to make sure the wines are stable. 4) I have also purchased equipment that would take a long time to itemize here. In all, in the last few years I have spent more than $150,000 to make sure I make the best wine I can. I will continue to purchase anything that will help me achieve this goal.
OK here is a little speculation for those of you who follow the stock market. I have been watching the qqqq. That is the symbol for the top 100 stocks on Nasdaq. Those of you who follow technical analysis will notice a small reverse head and shoulders forming over the last month. If we can break out above 46.20 we could fly up to 48 in a flash. That could be enough momentum to get us going for the rest of the year. Remember this is only my opinion.
Friday August 1, 2008
Just a quick follow up on the qqqq. The price got up to 46.15 yesterday and sold off. Today it closed at 44.90. We still need it to go above 46.20 and close there to have a breakout.
Yesterday we decided to reseal all our wine that is flat on the ground in our storage building. That way any of you who come by to pick up your wine will have a wine with a solid screwcap closure. The number of cases we resealed was over 700. Since we did not have to fill the bottles again or label them, we could speed up the bottling line. For most of the time went at 200 cases an hour so with breaks we finished in 4 hours. My plan is to reseal another 2250 just before the pickup party on August 23. That will leave us with 1620 cases in the back of the building that we can reseal in February when we bottle the 2007 Ultimate Cuvee.
I'll be taking a look at the vineyard tomorrow so I hope to report what I find.
Tuesday August 5, 2008
I want to report about what I saw out in the vineyard Sunday. The weather has been great as usual. The bunches are filling out nicely and I am encouraged about what I see in our 6th block where we have all our new varietals planted. If you take a look at our order form updated yesterday, you will see Touriga, Souzao, Aglianico, Tannat and Lagrein as some of the varietals that will be in our 2008 Escuro. Escuro means Dark in Portuguese and all of these varietals are supposed to be intense and dark.
Our Zinfandel is almost all colored up and thus we could be harvesting in the first week of September. The Pinot is getting close but since it is the first to be sweet, the birds are attacking the bunches. There is very little crop, maybe 400 pounds, so we may make a 2008 Fresco with Alvarelhao and the Pinot as well as Merlot Matt wants to purchase from Mounts. It looks like it will be a Rose. I do not like Rose but Matt and Pat do and they are encouraging me to let them make one. It will be their wine but it will have my label.
2:30 Pm: Here is another update on the qqqq. Today it closed at 45.95 after trading as low as 44.30 at 1:00 Pm yesterday. It is now trading in the after market at the magic number of 46.20. If it can open there or higher tomorrow morning we could see another big day. Remember don't blame me if I am wrong. I have been wrong many times before.
Wednesday August 6, 2008
I know almost all of you are not interested in my opinion of qqqq so this will be the last entry about it. This morning it opened lower and got down to 45.58 by 7:50 am. because the whole market was driven down by lower reported earnings by Freddie Mac. After 8:00 am. qqqq started to rise and has now closed at 46.63 above the 46.20 mark I was looking at. As I hoped once it got above 46.20 it never went back down below that mark. Only time will tell.....like I said I could be wrong about my prediction it will rise to 48 soon.
Thursday August 7, 2008
Our 2007 Futures holders should be receiving an email Monday and a postcard soon thereafter. It will announce out 2007 Release Party on August 23rd. The event will be catered so we are limiting the guests to 4 people per order. Extra guests or people who stop in for the first time will be charged $10 for the tasting and food. We have not charged in the past but we will have to pay several thousand dollars to hold the party.
Monday we will bottle our 2007 ZP2C and then in the next few days we will be bottling for Bruce, the Wineguerrilla. It will be a busy week.
Sunday August 10, 2008
Why do they do this. This bottle had to weigh well over one pound. I know what some out there think, it is a better bottle of wine. I am drinking a bottle I purchased at Costco for about $60. I always want to try wines that are more expensive than mine to see where I am on your totem pole. This wine a Hewitt Napa Cab is very nice with low acid which is the trend to impress customers out there including me. I am not impressed with Barbera because it does have a lot of acid. As I found with this wine to my humble opinion was close but not better than my 2005, 2006 and 2007 cabs. I thought my wines were more intense because they did have good acid to cut through my fried gizzards tonight. The case of Hewitt wine to be shipped would be charged at maybe 50% more than our bottles. The point is that these producers of wine over $50 feel they have to impress you with heavier bottles. Seriously they do not have more wine in them. We all have to put only 750ml in each bottle.
Monday August 11, 2008
I have a follow up to what I reported yesterday. The 2005 Hewitt Napa Cab empty bottle weighed a whopping 2 lbs 10.25oz. It is amazing because that is what a full bottle of our wine weighs. Our empty bottle weighs 1 pound. A case of Hewitt Cab would weigh well over 50 pounds to ship.
We finished bottling 163 cases of our 2007 ZP2C. Tomorrow we will start bottling for the WineGuerrilla.
Tuesday August 12, 2008
As usual the first day bottling a new label is a challenge. It took a while to set up and we did get some of the wine done today. I tasted all three of The WineGuerrilla wines we bottled today and thought they were all very nice. I was happy to find out that the 2nd crop Zin, the WineGuerrilla decided to use for the Coffaro Vineyard Old Vine, had a lot of that spicy character I have described for our David Coffaro 2007 Zinfandel. Tomorrow we start bottling the largest case bottling at this winery. We will bottle the 2007 WineGuerrilla Two Vineyards which will consist of 1170 cases. We will do most of the run tomorrow and finish up on Thursday.
Monday August 18, 2008
Matt and I took a long walk in the vineyard and checked many berries to see where the sugars are. What we found was interesting as usual. Our small crop of Pinot maybe 400 lbs looks to be about 22% sugar which means we are off about two weeks, maybe a harvest around August 29th. The Peloursin should be next maybe the first week in September. We actually got some readings at 22 and 23 sugar on a few berries of Barbera. There is very little first crop of Barbera because we were hit with a frost in April. The second crop that developed later is barely turning color. We obviously will have to pick that section at two times. Most readings on the Zinfandel came in at about 21 Brix (%) so we are looking at a harvest around the end of the first week in September or beginning of the second week. The most interesting sugar readings we got were in our 6th block. That is where we have all our new varietals. Since we have very little data on harvest dates for the many varietals we were surprised to get many low readings in the teens. Aglianico could be the last one to harvest. It is only half colored up and we got a reading at 13%. Tannat was at 18%, with Alvarelhao, Touriga, Souzao and Lagrein all in the mid teens. This could be a long harvest. Only the one row of Sangiovese could be harvested in September. Our Cabernet and Petite Sirah are coming along fine and look to be about 6 weeks away from harvest.
Wednesday August 20, 2008
We are closer to Harvest!! As usual I can't wait. This is our time!!
The North wind is up. The Bay Area in San Francisco will be without fog tomorrow. How do I know this? The North wind is up!! The Bay Area in San Francisco Has fog most everyday. The North wind up here must suck up the fog so I know the Bay Area will be fog free tomorrow.
The Stock Market goes up dramatically in Democratic administrations. I have documented this in the past diary entries. If Barack Obama is elected, the Stock Market will go up!! If John McCain is elected the Stock Market will go up, that one is easy. Both candidates will be an improvement. The Market can't stay down for ever.

Dave

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	*Tuesday July 29, 2008* Pat's tooth is fine. It has been temporarily repaired, but may need a crown in the future. I want to remind everyone that our prices on the 2007 wines will go up on August 1st. They will be on sale again for only two days for our open house on August 23 and 24. We are having some problems with our seals on our 2007 screwcap wines. I think we found the problem.....the height of the head was off by one millimeter. That was enough to lessen the tightness of the bottom part of the screwcap. The screwcap was not breaking at the cap so the whole screwcap comes off in one piece on some of the bottles. It won't hurt the wine because the cap is on tight. We now have to decide whether we should reseal all the wines. That would take a week. 4:00 Pm: Steve and I have talked over our screwcap problem and we have decided to reseal all our 2007 wines. To make it faster for now, we will seal about 50% next week and the rest when we bottle the 2007 Ultimate Cuvee in February. Here is a .pdf of our storage area showing where I loaded all our 2007 wines. As you can see it would be a nightmare to pull all the wine out now. *Wednesday July 30, 2008* I want to give credit to Steve and Matt. They have helped me make some great wines over the last few years. Thank you. Of course there are other factors that have contributed to the success of the bottled wine. 1) we went to screwcaps 2) I purchased a machine to purify barrels and I purchased a machine which will steam clean barrels. 3) I purchased a machine that kills yeast to make sure the wines are stable. 4) I have also purchased equipment that would take a long time to itemize here. In all, in the last few years I have spent more than $150,000 to make sure I make the best wine I can. I will continue to purchase anything that will help me achieve this goal. OK here is a little speculation for those of you who follow the stock market. I have been watching the qqqq. That is the symbol for the top 100 stocks on Nasdaq. Those of you who follow technical analysis will notice a small reverse head and shoulders forming over the last month. If we can break out above 46.20 we could fly up to 48 in a flash. That could be enough momentum to get us going for the rest of the year. Remember this is only my opinion. *Friday August 1, 2008* Just a quick follow up on the qqqq. The price got up to 46.15 yesterday and sold off. Today it closed at 44.90. We still need it to go above 46.20 and close there to have a breakout. Yesterday we decided to reseal all our wine that is flat on the ground in our storage building. That way any of you who come by to pick up your wine will have a wine with a solid screwcap closure. The number of cases we resealed was over 700. Since we did not have to fill the bottles again or label them, we could speed up the bottling line. For most of the time went at 200 cases an hour so with breaks we finished in 4 hours. My plan is to reseal another 2250 just before the pickup party on August 23. That will leave us with 1620 cases in the back of the building that we can reseal in February when we bottle the 2007 Ultimate Cuvee. I'll be taking a look at the vineyard tomorrow so I hope to report what I find. *Tuesday August 5, 2008* I want to report about what I saw out in the vineyard Sunday. The weather has been great as usual. The bunches are filling out nicely and I am encouraged about what I see in our 6th block where we have all our new varietals planted. If you take a look at our order form updated yesterday, you will see Touriga, Souzao, Aglianico, Tannat and Lagrein as some of the varietals that will be in our 2008 Escuro. Escuro means Dark in Portuguese and all of these varietals are supposed to be intense and dark. Our Zinfandel is almost all colored up and thus we could be harvesting in the first week of September. The Pinot is getting close but since it is the first to be sweet, the birds are attacking the bunches. There is very little crop, maybe 400 pounds, so we may make a 2008 Fresco with Alvarelhao and the Pinot as well as Merlot Matt wants to purchase from Mounts. It looks like it will be a Rose. I do not like Rose but Matt and Pat do and they are encouraging me to let them make one. It will be their wine but it will have my label. 2:30 Pm: Here is another update on the qqqq. Today it closed at 45.95 after trading as low as 44.30 at 1:00 Pm yesterday. It is now trading in the after market at the magic number of 46.20. If it can open there or higher tomorrow morning we could see another big day. Remember don't blame me if I am wrong. I have been wrong many times before. *Wednesday August 6, 2008* I know almost all of you are not interested in my opinion of qqqq so this will be the last entry about it. This morning it opened lower and got down to 45.58 by 7:50 am. because the whole market was driven down by lower reported earnings by Freddie Mac. After 8:00 am. qqqq started to rise and has now closed at 46.63 above the 46.20 mark I was looking at. As I hoped once it got above 46.20 it never went back down below that mark. Only time will tell.....like I said I could be wrong about my prediction it will rise to 48 soon. *Thursday August 7, 2008* Our 2007 Futures holders should be receiving an email Monday and a postcard soon thereafter. It will announce out 2007 Release Party on August 23rd. The event will be catered so we are limiting the guests to 4 people per order. Extra guests or people who stop in for the first time will be charged $10 for the tasting and food. We have not charged in the past but we will have to pay several thousand dollars to hold the party. Monday we will bottle our 2007 ZP2C and then in the next few days we will be bottling for Bruce, the Wineguerrilla. It will be a busy week. *Sunday August 10, 2008* Why do they do this. This bottle had to weigh well over one pound. I know what some out there think, it is a better bottle of wine. I am drinking a bottle I purchased at Costco for about $60. I always want to try wines that are more expensive than mine to see where I am on your totem pole. This wine a Hewitt Napa Cab is very nice with low acid which is the trend to impress customers out there including me. I am not impressed with Barbera because it does have a lot of acid. As I found with this wine to my humble opinion was close but not better than my 2005, 2006 and 2007 cabs. I thought my wines were more intense because they did have good acid to cut through my fried gizzards tonight. The case of Hewitt wine to be shipped would be charged at maybe 50% more than our bottles. The point is that these producers of wine over $50 feel they have to impress you with heavier bottles. Seriously they do not have more wine in them. We all have to put only 750ml in each bottle. *Monday August 11, 2008* I have a follow up to what I reported yesterday. The 2005 Hewitt Napa Cab empty bottle weighed a whopping 2 lbs 10.25oz. It is amazing because that is what a full bottle of our wine weighs. Our empty bottle weighs 1 pound. A case of Hewitt Cab would weigh well over 50 pounds to ship. We finished bottling 163 cases of our 2007 ZP2C. Tomorrow we will start bottling for the WineGuerrilla. *Tuesday August 12, 2008* As usual the first day bottling a new label is a challenge. It took a while to set up and we did get some of the wine done today. I tasted all three of The WineGuerrilla wines we bottled today and thought they were all very nice. I was happy to find out that the 2nd crop Zin, the WineGuerrilla decided to use for the Coffaro Vineyard Old Vine, had a lot of that spicy character I have described for our David Coffaro 2007 Zinfandel. Tomorrow we start bottling the largest case bottling at this winery. We will bottle the 2007 WineGuerrilla Two Vineyards which will consist of 1170 cases. We will do most of the run tomorrow and finish up on Thursday. *Monday August 18, 2008* Matt and I took a long walk in the vineyard and checked many berries to see where the sugars are. What we found was interesting as usual. Our small crop of Pinot maybe 400 lbs looks to be about 22% sugar which means we are off about two weeks, maybe a harvest around August 29th. The Peloursin should be next maybe the first week in September. We actually got some readings at 22 and 23 sugar on a few berries of Barbera. There is very little first crop of Barbera because we were hit with a frost in April. The second crop that developed later is barely turning color. We obviously will have to pick that section at two times. Most readings on the Zinfandel came in at about 21 Brix (%) so we are looking at a harvest around the end of the first week in September or beginning of the second week. The most interesting sugar readings we got were in our 6th block. That is where we have all our new varietals. Since we have very little data on harvest dates for the many varietals we were surprised to get many low readings in the teens. Aglianico could be the last one to harvest. It is only half colored up and we got a reading at 13%. Tannat was at 18%, with Alvarelhao, Touriga, Souzao and Lagrein all in the mid teens. This could be a long harvest. Only the one row of Sangiovese could be harvested in September. Our Cabernet and Petite Sirah are coming along fine and look to be about 6 weeks away from harvest. *Wednesday August 20, 2008* We are closer to Harvest!! As usual I can't wait. This is our time!! The North wind is up. The Bay Area in San Francisco will be without fog tomorrow. How do I know this? The North wind is up!! The Bay Area in San Francisco Has fog most everyday. The North wind up here must suck up the fog so I know the Bay Area will be fog free tomorrow. The Stock Market goes up dramatically in Democratic administrations. I have documented this in the past diary entries. If Barack Obama is elected, the Stock Market will go up!! If John McCain is elected the Stock Market will go up, that one is easy. Both candidates will be an improvement. The Market can't stay down for ever.
	Dave
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