We have had very little rain but enough to turn our cover crop green. The photo is from our northern vineyard looking south. Our winery and southern vineyard are accross the river but barely distinguishable.
Pruning is now finished and now we sit around waiting for bud break — which should be soon.
These photos were taken in Montecito in their Santa Barbara stage. Yesterday they passed through the Santa Ynez wine country. It is marvellous to watch these athletes as they race past you. You can hardly afford to blink.
The combination of sophisticated electronics and the purely mechanical — levers and wheels — can be mesmerizing. Before bottling begins everything that comes into contact with wine is sterilized — hose, pumps, valves — everything. Steam is run through for at least 20 minutes. Corks are received sterilized in sealed plastic bags. The air in the bottling room is filtered.
This video shows the entire process — the bottles enter the bottling room, they are vacuum cleaned, filled with an inert gas to remove oxygen, filled with wine, then the fill is levelled, corked, a capsule is then put on the bottle, the capsule is spun to make it fit tightly on the bottle, the bottle is labelled, packed and stored. All this at 60 bottles per minute.
[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.lafondwinery.com/movies-flash/bottling2007/bottling2007.swf" width="500" height="400"/]
Now that pruning is over workers are focusing on preparing the new Chardonnay block for Spring planting. The first step are the posts which locate every fourth vine. These are very carefully laid out, first by survey and then by very careful alignement.
The vines may not care but the visual effect is very reassuring. A geometric order imposed on what we cannot control — nature.
From Business Times…
“Wine consumption among NASCAR fans nationwide is up 22 percent from last year, easily outpacing overall U.S. growth, and probably dispelling the myth that NASCAR fans only quaff beer, according to a Nielsen Co. study released Thursday.
The survey, by Nielsen’s ACNielsen and Nielsen Sports’ units, indicated that annual average wine purchases by stock car racing fans jumped from $66.80 in 2005 to $81.40 last year. That’s presumably good news for Northern California wine producers, although many Bay Area customers are likely to spend $80 or more on wine in a single week, as opposed to annually.”
Further evidence of the inroads that wine is making on beer consumption. We take this as positive news in spite of the qualifying comparison to Bay Area customers.
And from Reuters the sports fans who drink the most wine, as reported by ACNielsen…
Households with at least one fan of the Ladies Professional Golf Association spent almost $125 on wine in 2006, which was up 17 percent over the year — overtaking fans of men’s golf.
After a five month hiatus we are bottling again. Life at the winery seems to be divided into winemaking and bottling. The bottling equipment has been dormant for all these months and , of course, the first day everything that can go wrong, goes wrong.
Despite this lack of co-operation we managed to maintain our schedule. These were small lots of 2005 red wines — The vineyard designated Lafond Winery wines and other small vineyard designated wines which were kept in barrels over the harvest season. Wines which will not be released for at least a year.
Photos show bottle filling and bottles with their capsules on the way to the capsule spinner and labeller. For a bottling video go to Videos tab above.
Joshua Keating, executive chef at the Pierre Lafond Bistro Restaurant in Santa Barbara, has done some wine pairing with five of his entrees and Michael Brown has taken some marvellous photos.
Eggplant Canneloni is one of executive chef Josh Keating’s signature entrees. Organic Baby Spinach, Potatoes, Sweet Peppers and carmelized Onions. Topped with a Feta, Walnut and Oregano Salad finished with a Carrot emulsion and Balsamic reduction. The Wine – Lafond Winery 2005 SRH Pinot Noir.
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