Brendan made an appearance here this weekend. We were honored with his presence but discovered the real reason for his trip up north was to attend a Lyle Lovett concert at Knochti Harbor overlooking Clear Lake. He arrived here at the winery at about 9:30 a.m. on Friday on his way up north,  and I put him to work racking off all our ZP2C barrels and carboys until about 2:00 when he had to leave for the concert. Of course, the racking is necessary at this time to make sure the wine is as clear as possible when we do bottle it in the first week of September. 

Pat and I were extremely surprised and pleased when he also showed up with the first draft of the explanation of our 1998 Pinot Noir fermentations. We very impressed with his account of how our different fermentations were conducted. Of course as to be expected with any first draft, there were a few minor errors, but he has gone way beyond what we ever expected. The pamphlet will be available to any of you who have purchased a Pinot 4 pack. As a matter of fact, since I am very short on the Pinot cold soak version, I am encouraging some of you who have only cold soak to give up a bottle or two and trade those in to fill out a 4-pack and then you will receive the pamphlet as well. Brendan will send us a revised copy of this pamphlet soon, and we are hoping to have it finished just before harvest in the second week of September. 

August 18, 1999

Pat is up playing a game with the girls so I have to make this short since I am a horrible typist. 
Our temperatures have become normal again. About 93 high and 50 low the last 5 days. within the next two weeks we should see some real hot weather. 

I've just done inventory on the Pinot cold soak and it confirms what I suspected---we are short atleast 3 cases. Sooooo any of you who have more than 2 bottles of the cold soak can either exchange it or receive your money back. I've screwed up again and must apologize. As long as it works out equally I am willing to exchange cold soak for any of my other 98 wines first come first served. That means even if you have one cold soak I would like you to exchange it for any of my other wines. Again, unfortunately I must insist that you accept two bottles only of the Pinot cold soak. 

August 20, 1999

Our weather in the last couple of days has turned *hot* as I had hoped which should keep us on track to begin harvesting our Sauvignon Blanc around the 15th of September. 

We have received almost all our new barrels for the coming year, which includes 9 American oak barrels from Demptos, 2 Hungarian barrels from Barrel Builders, 7 Hungarian barrels from Canton Cooperage, and 1 French oak  and 6 American oak barrels from World Cooperage. We are still anticipating 4 Czech Republic barrels in the next week or two. 

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