Barreled - A Winery Blog

Those who are familiar with our wines know that we like to have fun with words on our back labels.  Over the years, as the brand grew from a true “garagiste” hobby brand to a nationally distributed regional brand (we only make wines from grapes we grow or source locally) – the lingo on our back label has toned down from being very edgy to just mildly self-deprecating.  However ...

Just a quick note as I’m taking a deep breath in between vineyard and winery hops…  I’ve heard today that some say there’s a sense of panic in wine country because of the rains that are predicted for next week.  For those of us who are long in the tooth: Panic is useless, it’s like a Rocking Horse; it keeps you busy but it get’s you nowhere.We harvested the Carignane from Sadie ...

Imagine for a minute a crazy world.  Imagine you live  just outside Atlanta, Georgia.  You own a Peach farm and produce preserved peaches.  You work hard to improve the quality of your product and your efforts pay off, you start to get inquireries from folk in Delaware about purchasing some of your Peach preserves.  Now imagine this: you can’t simply ship your product to Delawa ...

When asked why I decided to become a winemaker, I answer that to me winemaking is the most perfect union of art, science and agriculture — three things that separate us from the platypus and politicians.  As a winemaker who has lived and worked in California during a time that can only be described as the “Big Bang” of modern winemaking, I find myself emotionally charged and c ...

Last month I had fun talking on KSRO 1350 on “The Drive” with Steven Jaxon and Larry Levine.  I can always count on some “Woodie” jokes to loosen the participants and get to a comfortable place for chatting.  At some point the question about the connection between surfing and winemaking always comes up and since time is often limited, I keep it short and sweet (and true) and ta ...

In case you did not know, Syrah-based wines from the Rhone region were sought after before the Bordeaux region came to fame. It is believed that the Romans brought the first vines to the area in the year 125 BC. Wines from the region supplied many Popes’ cellars for centuries, and no doubt have inspired an inquisition or two, but I digress...   As a winemaking student, I learne ...

A few years before she died, my grandma decided to take a computer class.  I was quite impressed she had the guts to do this but what came out of my mouth was something along the lines of: “Aren’t you too old for this"? Grandma, a crusty, strict, German-Czech holocaust survivor, raised an eyebrow and proceeded to tell me that just because she remembers sitting on her Grandfathe ...

Travaille D’Amour (aka Labor of Love) In the early fall of 1986 my college roommate (Scott, owner of SP Drummer Wines) and I jumped into his 70’s International Scout and gobbled up the miles between Davis and the wine country in search for fruit for some garage wine.  Armed with two (slightly used) plastic garbage cans, picking knives and a few Kilos of HUTZPAH, we sped toward ...

Wine and Surfing Part Deux   It has been a while since I wrote something about the parallels I see between the worlds of surfing and winemaking, so here I go again.  Back around 1981 I was airbrushing and glassing surfboards (painting and applying fiberglass resin) for MOOSAH  on the boardwalk in Tel-Aviv.  Life had a sweet simplicity to it; you had a job to do and as long as ...

I just got back to the ranch from a surf trip to the Baja Peninsula and I am still hovering a few inches off the ground. There is nothing like a surf trip that goes well, trust me, I know. Larry, my surf buddy and I left San Francisco at 6 Am and we were surfing our first waves at Shipwrecks (on the east cape) by 4:30 PM that day. It was almost dark by the time I paddled in. Dr ...