Starting to get berry formation at Butterdragon Hill

Getting close to time to leaf the vineyard to bring back that canopy a bit on Butterdragon Hill

Baconbrook is further along with clusters showing more berries

Baconbrook shows less vigor, undoubtedly due to less water retention in the soil

Ask any winery to identify their biggest headache and you’re likely to get the answer “shipping.” Shipping and fulfillment of direct sales cost more than customers think it should. It is tough to get accurate service from 3rd parties. Wineries must depend on mother nature to not freeze or boil the wine in transit. And finally, compliance with all the state and federal laws provides a minefield that is difficult to negotiate without a specialist.

It just got even tougher for over 200 Napa Valley wineries.

On June 1, Wine Business and others reported that New Vine Logistics (NVL) in Napa suddenly suspended operations because it had “abruptly gone into a state of financial crisis.” Those 200 wineries who depended on them for order fulfillment suddenly were left in a lurch. Not only was NVL not taking any shipping orders, but even orders in process where stopped. Most of those wineries probably even had some level of inventory with NVL too. What would happen to that inventory?

Ironically, it seemed that New Vine Logistics had been setting the standard on what services to offer a winery, especially to a small one. A winery would have inventory in place with them, NVL would receive orders straight from a winery’s online ordering system, accurately process the orders including checking the shipment for legal compliance, and get them out the door via UPS or FedEx. Special and international shipments were supposedly no problem. In fact, NVL even had a service which helped a winery operate “directly” in many 3-tier states. (A 3-tier state is where a winery can only sell through a distributor, i.e.no direct sales.) Note, I don’t know the exact details of how NVL accomplished this, but I believe they or their partner served as a winery’s distributor in said state and legally (and briefly) took ownership of a shipment before forwarding it on to the customer. NVL would also provide the necessary information back to a winery for compliance reporting or could even completely take care of the legal compliance reporting for a winery. Sounds great, right? I’ve taken a tour of NVL and heard several presentations from them. New Vine Logistics did seem too good to be true. They have a huge temperature controlled warehouse and much of their process is automated, supposedly reducing mistakes. It’s a small winery’s dream to be able to concentrate on production and sales and have someone else accurately and affordably take care of fulfillment and shipping tasks. NVL certainly looked very impressive with their computers, scanners, conveyor belts, etc. No wonder Amazon.com selected them to provide fulfillment for their upcoming wine sales venture. NVL must have looked very familiar to the big online retailer.

When we first got in the business, we asked around for suggestions on shippers. I basically discovered it would be a choice not of whom my peers liked, but of whom they hated the least. I was tempted by New Vine Logistics but found their costs prohibitive. I ended up selecting WW Shipping Solutions and have had a love-hate relationship with them ever since. They’ve made more mistakes than I thought were acceptable, and yet they’re always so darn nice and bend over backwards to fix their mistakes, that I’ve never quite gotten to that tipping point and fired them to make a change. Ironically, the change I would have made was to go to New Vine Logistics.
I can only imagine the sleepless nights of early June for the small winery owners who were depending on New Vine Logistics. Word is they were getting very little information from NVL. What would it be like, especially under already-difficult economic conditions, if your most profitable sales channel suddenly froze?

So how will it all end? Perhaps happily. On June 12 it was reported that New Vine had started shipping wine again because of a deal where Inertia Beverage Group infused cash and assumed NVL debt. Those 200 wineries must be breathing a bit easier but I think we all got a warning on how vulnerable one’s business can be if even the most in-demand, cult wine can’t get to the customers’ hands. I’ll keep an eye on NVL and post if there are other interesting developments. Hopefully new management can be brought in to still provide the needed services in a profitable way.

---

PS. One can’t talk about shipping difficulties in the wine industry without at least mentioning the #1 reason it is so complicated and expensive. Many of the laws governing the distribution of our favorite beverage are left over from the days of Al Capone and prohibition. And these days, even though anyone over the age of 21 should be legally able to purchase wine from their source of choice (i.e. our winery) it rarely painlessly works out that way. The federal and various state governments provide many a roadblock to control or limit the sale and distribution of alcohol. In this regard, fine wine is treated no differently than moonshine. Fortunately, the legal situation is getting better. Supreme Court decisions and bold action by some state legislatures and governors over the last few years have made it easier for wineries (and you) to ship wine legally… at least in some states. For more information about wine shipment issues, see the websites Free the Grapes and Specialty Wine Retailers: Wine Without Borders.

Ah, the glamour! They never show this stuff on the TV travelogue In Wine Country.
Our garbage collection is on Tuesday and as we mainly spend weekends up in Napa, I usually take the cans down to the main road before departing on Sunday. I decided to be lazy and rather than rolling them down through our meadow, I would load them on our little 6 x 4 John Deere “Gator.” I was not dressed for farm work wearing shorts and flip-flops.
I rolled one of the cans towards the gator and looked down. A small rattlesnake, about a foot long, had been hiding under the can. So much for rattlers avoiding humans! This one was hanging out 10 feet from our front door. Fortunately, he seemed as determined to get away from me as I was of him. I ran to the shed and grabbed a spade and (voila!) I had dispatched my first rattlesnake. It was a youngster, with just two sections on his rattle, but he was definitely striking at the spade. I learned later that the babies are more dangerous because they tend to inject a full load of toxins when striking while adults may not release poison at all.
It was with just a little bit of swagger that I called and told my son that I had killed a rattlesnake. (The rattler may have grown in length and ferocity in the telling.)
What is really weird about this encounter with the wild is just a few hours before, as I was moving some wine around my wine storage room, I noticed that I had apparently stepped on (and killed) a scorpion.
I think it may be time to sell it all and give up this glitzy life.

Last Friday — I think I’m just now recovering a week later — was quite a day of wine tasting. I never take notes during such experiences but do try to at least write down the names of wines I would recommend for my own purchases and others. If I mention the wine, I would recommend it but an * indicates that I found the wine particularly outstanding. Note, I only tried a fraction of the wines available at these events. One would have to be some sort of super taster on a paid vacation to work through all offerings.
Taste Napa Valley – part of the Napa Vintners’ Auction Napa Valley. This event featured numerous wineries pouring their current releases, many local restaurants offering wonderful edibles, the closing hours of the online e-Auction with computers set up for last-minute bids, and the barrel auction of future releases. Personal observation and confirmed by several vintners was that bidding was down from previous years. Many bidders at the barrel auction were able to pick up some future cases of quite renowned wines for less than the ultimate release price. I was pleased however with our E-Auction lot which went for $5101. Ultimately the auction raised $5.7 million for local Napa Valley non-profits. This is a little more than half of what was raised last year.
Bottled Highlights:
*2007 Truchard Roussane
*2008(?) Heitz Grignolino Rose
2007(?) Broman Sauvignon Blanc
2007 Madonna Estate Pinot Grigio
*2005 Cornerstone Cabernet Sauvignon
Barrel Highlights and there were many reflecting the excellent 2007 Napa vintage:
2007 Blackbird Contrarian Bordeaux Blend
2007 Crocker Starr Cabernet Sauvignon
2007 DR Stephens Estate Cabernet Sauvignon
2007 Etude Cabernet Sauvignon
*2007 Jones Family Cabernet Sauvignon
2007 Keenan Cabernet Sauvignon
*2008 Mi Sueno Cabernet Sauvignon – if you don’t know Mi Sueno’s wines, you should
*2007 Realm Beckstoffer Dr Crane Cabernet Sauvignon
2007 Roy Estate Cabernet Sauvignon
*2007 Sonador Cellers Cabernet Sauvignon “The Dreamer” – a winery I’d never heard of but I think one to watch, very charming, lush, approachable, and I believe they said the price point of this wine is in the $50’s
*2007 Viader Cabernet Sauvignon
Next, it was on to Herb Lamb tasting at Acme Wines in St Helena. They were pouring their 2007 Sauvignon Blanc, 2006 EII Red Wine, and *2005 HL Cabernet Sauvignon. All were good to outstanding. If you’ve not had a chance to meet Jennifer and Herb Lamb, do it. They were wonderful, down to earth, and charming people. It was also a pleasure to meet face-to-face winemaker Michael Trujillo after so many years. His wife planned my wedding back in 2001.
Cheers St Helena – this is the first year for this event held the first Friday of each month (starting last month and ending in October). The merchants of St Helena stay open late and most have a winery pouring inside plus many have restaurants providing munchies. Tickets are $5 a taste, $35 for a VIP one night unlimited tastings, or $100 VIP unlimited for the whole season. This is not your run-of-the-mill wine festival. They limit the number of winery participants to 50 local wineries and there is a waiting list to participate. (I know, I’m on it.) This differs as usually these types of events are begging for participants. Sign of the times, I guess.
Highlights:
Scott Harvey Wines – a new one for me. I liked their 2007 Jana Rose (Napa) and their *2005 Old Vines Zinfandel (Amador County)
2006 Chappellet Mountain Cuvee – “hot” nose, but delicious taste
*2005 Venge Vineyards “Scout’s Honor” Zinfandel blend
2006 Bouchaine Pinot Noir Carneros
*2007 Cliff Lede Sauvignon Blanc
2006 Miller Wine Works Grenache Shannon Ridge Vineyard, Lake County – another new one for me. I’m not normally a big Grenache drinker but thought this one was quite attractive
2006 Pride Cabernet Sauvignon – undoubtedly this will be a great wine but it’s almost painful to drink now. Honestly, I’m surprised they would choose such a baby to show at this sort of mass venue.
I finished up the evening with the delicious Oysters Bingo and the Brutus Caeser sitting at the bar of Cindy’s Backstreet Kitchen. One final “new” discovery, 2006 Six Sigma Sauvignon Blanc (Lake County) by the glass and a small taste from a neighbor’s bottle of *2006 Inman Russian River Valley Pinot Noir.
And then I slept.

I hope so, because that’s what this is. I am editing (or in my mind, reblogging) my very first blog post that was originally published on our site on March 1, 2005. That’s back when we first launched our site… back right before we released our first wine. It seems longer than 4 years ago.
In March 2005, I struggled to capture with bits and bytes the passion and experience that we wine enthusiasts share. Wine is personal. Whether as part of a big celebration or an intimate evening, a bottle of fine wine adds far more than just liquid refreshment. I thought that a blog would be a great way for me to share our story with you and provide a forum for you to share your’s. Many of our friends old and new wanted to know what it was like to start and run a winery. Well, a lot has changed in the online world in those four years. (A lot has changed in our wine world as well, but we’ll save that for later posts.) Blogs have gone from being a quaint piece of software supplementing a web site to being major media and information sources. The Presidential election of 2008 proved that blogging had gone mainstream — or perhaps I should say Mainstreet.
And now we have Social Media. I’m not sure if anyone can predict where Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and all their e-kin are headed. I know many folks think of these apps as toys or a waste of time — if you’re reading this, you probably aren’t in that group — and many who think they represent the biggest advance in digital interaction since email. We’ll see. But one thing is clear. Businesses (including tiny wine businesses) ignore all of these new communication avenues at their own peril. A business will risk missing a whole generation of customers if they simply decide that a static webpage, word-of-mouth, and traditional print media will bring success.
On the back of our bottles, we mention that there are stories behind every bottle of wine. With the relaunch of our Vintner’s Journal blog tied in with our new Facebook page, we’re starting a new chapter in our story and a new way of telling it. I hope you enjoy.
I’ll be reblogging (with some edits) several old posts over the next few months.

It’s been the 3rd driest year on record. A particularly mild winter and spring got everything going early. Everyone was expecting early harvest and that proved to be true.
Baconbrook’s crop was about what we expected: we harvested 6.3 tons on Sept 25th. Brix was ideal at just over 25. It is currently fermenting like a champ.
Butterdragon kept getting put off. Suddenly, although the vineyard still looked strong, we started seeing quite a bit of dehydration. Panic mode (which seems to be the norm in farming at harvest time) set in. We harvested the 3 rows of Merlot on Sept 29. We brought in .82 tons of Merlot. Cary lowered the estimate of how much Cab we would be bringing in to Rombauer from 9 tons to 7. (Unlike in the past where we sold a set number of tons or half of our grapes to our grape buyer, this year the buyer had designated rows which meant anything not on those rows would go to us.) On October 1st, we trucked over 13.45 tons of Cab!! The crew at Rombauer certainly gave us a ribbing how our 7 tons became almost 14! Oh well. It remains to be seen if all that will make it into the final Butterdragon blend. I can say that although the brix was 27, the fruit tasted really great; particularly striking wa the taste of the skins. If we can avoid a stuck fermentation, it will probably be some monster juice.

Ahh, bud break.
It has happened at both vineyards though Butterdragon, as usual, is a tad bit further along. The shoots there are about 3/4 to 1 inch long. Just right to provide a tasty snack for deer who like the sweet, tender young shoots. Let’s hope everyone remembers to close the gates.
Northern California is behind in rainfall though I don’t think we’re so short as it will cause problems later on. At least not for us and our wells. We’ll see though.
After seeming like Spring had sprung, the temps have fallen again with unstable weather. Today has been like a regular “Winnie the Pooh blustery day.” “They” say that snow levels are going down to 2000 feet. Won’t affect us at our vineyards, but the temps in the Valley could dip down low enough to make some folks nervous, particularly since bud break has happened for most ranches. Generally, we don’t have a lot of frost worries as the hillsides where our vineyards are located tend to stay above freezing. We keep our fingers crossed because, unlike Valley floor vineyards, we have no frost protection.

Today we bottled our first vintage from Baconbrook, our Spring Mountain District vineyard.
122 cases (12 bottle) of 750’s
16 cases (6 bottle) of mags
4 x 3L
1 x 6L

Yesterday, at 7 AM about 40 guys from Barbour Vineyards began picking the 7 acres at Butterdragon. Temperatures were in the mid 40’s and by the time they were done at 11 AM, it was around 60 degrees. I LOVE it when the grapes come in cool.
The fruit looked and tasted great though there was evidence of a bit more dehydration than we saw at Baconbrook on Saturday. Tonnage reflected this as we kept a total of 9.3 tons of Cab and a little under 1 ton of Merlot. This will mean production of 2006 Butterdragon will probably fall around average (~600 cases) rather than like the big harvest of 2005. This is fine with me. Crush went off without a hitch. With the small amount of Merlot, we were able to do a bin fermentation rather than putting it in a tank with the Cab. I like doing it this way. Although we’ve always ultimately blended in Butterdragon’s Merlot, I like having separate lots as long as possible so we can track individual elements and make final blending decisions. You can’t take it out once it’s in. By 3 PM, we were ready to clean up and go home.
Always a relief to get another vintage into the barn.
PS. I’ll post some pictures from both harvests soon.

Yesterday morning at 7AM, Pina started harvesting Baconbrook. They were done before 10. Weights came in a bit light: we had almost 14 full half ton bins and the weight came out to 5.5 tons. Crushed around noon at Rombauer. With 5.5 tons, you can’t blink or you’ll miss it. We were done in probably half an hour.
The grapes looked fantastic. Little to no dessication, great flavors, brown seeds, softening skins. Tannins that had been described as hard a week or so ago were significantly softer. I think this last little heat umph of temps in the 80’s brought it around.
Butterdragon on Tuesday.