Happy Belated Thanksgiving! Things have been pretty crazy around here…just returned from Holland Michigan. Jen and I spent a week with my side over Turkey Day. On the 20th, we leave for 10 days in Minnesota to spend Christmas with her side. I’m pretty excited to see them and to spend New Years at the Cotton Mansion in Duluth. We had some good times there last year.

Thanksfully I have taken a breather from drinking wines from the Yadkin Valley. I’ve turned my attention to the 2001 Cabernets out of Napa. I recently uncorked a 2001 Caymus Cabernet. At 14.5% alcohol it was the “biggest” wine I’ve ever tasted. It was smooth, very smooth, but the alcohol was a bit overpowering. it seemed sort of flat as well…for $70.00 it wasn’t a keeper. Over the holiday we also partook in a 2001 Rutherford Hill Merlot, which was ok, but at $27.00 not a real keeper either.

This week I am after a value play. I purchased three, $10.00 or less, cab. sauv’s from Napa and Columbia Valley. All were purchased at the local Food Lion. I’ll give those a shot this week and report back…alcohol percentages for those wines range from 13.5 to 13.6%, that’s more my style.

Here is some great information on that latest Beaujolais release. Not much was hyped in the Yadkin Valley about this release, but in the big cities, it’s always met with great anticipation!

1. Beaujolais (boh jhoe lay) Nouveau is always released the third Thursday of November, regardless of harvest date.

2. The region of Beaujolais is 34 miles long north to south and 7 to 9 miles wide. There are nearly 4,000 grape growers who make their living in this storybook region just north of France’s largest city, Lyon.

3. All the grapes in the Beaujolais region must be picked by hand.

4. Gamay is the only grape permitted for Beaujolais. While certain California wineries may label their wine “Gamay Beaujolais” this is not the same grape as what is grown in France, and is quite different in taste and growing habits.

5. Beaujolais Nouveau cannot be made from grapes grown in the 10 crus (great growths) of Beaujolais—only from grapes coming from the appellations of Beaujolais and Beaujolais-Villages.

6. Beaujolais Nouveau owes its easy drinkability to a winemaking technique called carbonic (or whole berry) maceration, which preserves a fresh fruitiness without extracting bitter tannins from the grape skins.

7. Beaujolais Nouveau is meant to be drunk young—it should be consumed by the following May after its release. However, in excellent vintages it can live much longer and be enjoyed until the next harvest rolls around.

8. Serve Beaujolais Nouveau slightly cool, at about 55 degrees Fahrenheit—the wine is more refreshing and its forward fruit more apparent than if you serve it at room temperature.

9. Approximately 1/3 of the entire crop of the Beaujolais region is sold as Beaujolais Nouveau.

10. The region of Beaujolais is known for its fabulous food, and this quintessential food wine goes well with either haute cuisine or Tuesday night’s meatloaf.

or maybe I should say “Bad No Hair Day”….today has been a sombering wake up call. Yesterday I went to a new stylist and after 70 minutes in his chair, I emerged with no hair! For the majority of my life I have had short hair. For the past several years, I grew my hair to greater and greater lengths to a point where my mop of curls became a part of me.

When I had short hair, I wanted longer more stylish hair. While my girlfriend would argue that my hair had no style, just curl, I would argue that the curls were the style. Anyways, the curls released me from coveting long hair…I liked them and life was good.

Today, my hair is one centimeter away from being a butch cut. The “stylist”, a guy, gave me some Paul Mitchell hair glue to impart some semblance of style on my hair. The stuff looks and smells like Elmers glue and has little effect on my hair. It’s all got me up in arms. I am depressed.

True, I feel somewhat liberated and free, but when I look in the mirror I do not see me, I see a drill sargeant or a marine or something. It will take some time to grow accustomed to having no hair.

The real impact will be on my psyche. My former hair gave me confidence as a non-conformist. It was my signature. Now I am just another nameless dude in a never ending sea of dudes with short hair and bad haircuts.

Needless to say, I will never visit a man stylist again. My theory is that if I am going to shell out $50+ for a haircut and have a man cut my hair he had better be gay. Hip, educated gay guys know how to cut, color and style. I cannot say the same for straight hair guys. Even though I have only visited one, they just don’t have the creativity and caring of a gay guy. Gay guys know if you look good, just like female stylists know if you look good….but can a straight guy really know if another dude looks good?

I’m straight and while I have an idea when I meet another good looking guy, I don’t really know. It’s more of a vague, undeveloped, fleeting thing where I think, “I bet chicks think he’s good looking”…and then it’s gone. Straight guys aren’t supposed to really know if another guy is hot. It’s sort of like ordering Lobster in Duluth Minnesota, you could do it, but it’s going to suck. Same with going to a straight guy for a $50 haircut, if you are a dude, you could do it, but it’s probably gonna suck.

For the lobster example, I have ordered lobster in Duluth Minnesota and it was horrible.

My apologies to all straight guys who also cut hair. I’m sure you are awesome, maybe I just got a bad apple. I might try again, but not until well after my wedding. It will take me 9 months just to grow my old hair back, maybe longer!

I think the blog is going strong…I had to upgrade web hosts as I ran out of space on my last one. Sort of a pain since I have to reupload the whole site to a new host…which screwed up most of my programs…but now we have the bandwidth and the space to support the site for many moons!

Brent

Well I picked up 2.5 gallons of ProPhyt from Frank Hobson. Even thought my vines have shut down I am going to give them a shot of it next week. The cost was about $80. 2.5 gallons is suppoed to treat 10 acres or so.

Robert Guyer has been discing and tilling my land. Lime goes on in the next week or two…and then a deep till to 12″ will occur. That’s probably all I’ll do before spring planting….I need to get Sean McRitchie down here to see what he recommends.

more later

Great news! Anne Matson, who is the Director of Sales and Marketing at Vino Con Brio responded to my email about sourcing some Pinotage graftings / cuttings.

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This is her email:

Hi Brent,

Your order went out today! I sure hope you enjoy it.

We got all of our Pinotage cuttings through the plant foundation at UC Davis. It is the best way to get healthy vines.

A great source of info on Pinotage for us has been the Pinotage Association of South Africa. Their website is www.pinotage.co.za. It is a challenging grape to grow – very sensitive, but worth the effort!

Best of luck to you!

Anne Matson
Director of Sales and Marketing
Vino Con Brio

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I ordered a 1/2 dozen of their latest Pinotage Vintage and I did some research into the Plant Foundation at UC Davis. I called up UC Davis and spoke to Susan who oversees their grape program. They supply dormant hardwood cuttings (scions) which are then grafted to the rootstock of your choice. UC Davis DOES NOT do the graftings.

However, they said many nurseries will do the graftings for you. I called up Double A Vineyards, and inquired about the process. They said that they have done this before with UC Davis and will gladly take delivery of the cuttings, graft them to the rootstock of my choice, field grow them for a year, and then deliver them for planting in the Spring of 2006! They charge the standard $3.50 per grafting (on orders >100).

So that’s pretty exciting. I guess I am too late for spring 2005 planting, but that’s ok. I really should stick to Cab. franc and Cab. Sauv. anyways until I get a better handle on what I am doing.

So we’ll see….I ordered a bunch of Pinotage from a few vineyards in CA, I’ll let you know the outcome of my tastings!

Brent

I am in the process of selecting my vines to order for Spring 2005 planting. I need to have Sean McRitchie come out and work with me to measure my rows and develop a plan for my 1.5 acre spot.

I plan on adding to my current varietals, Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc, but I would like to put them on Riparia rootstock to see if that slows down their vigor some. But I don’t think Double A Vineyards has much grafted on Riparia. I’ll give them a call soon.

I do plan on planting some Pinotage. I may have to fly to New Zealand or South Africa to get some budwood, but I’ll do it if that’s what it takes. I think the varietal will grow real well here. It seems to do well in clay / rocky soils at higher elevations in relatively warm climates.

I’ve found it’s being grown commercially at 4 or 5 vineyards in California:

Sutter Ridge Vineyards, it’s a small 2500 case a year outfit in the Sierra Nevada foothills at 2000ft. Located a bit south and east of Sacramento, the climate would appear to be similar to North Carolina except that they don’t appear to get quite as cold, nor do they get nearly as much rain. I really don’t know how well Pinotage withstands rain and cold.

Vino con Brio. Only 28 miles separates this vineyard from Sutter Ridge. I’ve ordered 6 bottles from each of them.

McNab Ridge Vineyards & Winery. Located in Mendocino County, north of San Francisco and 168 miles north and west of Sutter Creek / Vino Con Brio.

Phoenix Vineyards & Winery. Napa Valley. I ordered a few bottles of Pinotage from Phoenix Vineyards and Winery this summer. Very nice. I really enjoyed them. This is a small 2500 case winery as well.

So, as you can see there is not much Pinotage being grown in the United States. It’s not possible to source the vines from Australia according to growers there. My only other options are Canada and perhaps a rogue nursery in California. I emailed a few of the growers above to ask for advice.

Another grower told me to email Dr. Richard Smart, the highly acclaimed author of Sunlight Into Wine. So I did that. Since I was emailing him anyway, I asked him if he thought I was crazy for trying to grow Pinotage in North Carolina. We shall see. I need to do lots more research, but what’s the point if I can’t find any vines to buy anyways?

Here’s a vineyard in British Columbia growing Pinotate, Lake Breeze Vineyards.

Brent

Today has been another extremely busy day. Time is really really flying right now. Just have to run with it, as much as it pains me.

Yesterday Jen and I went exploring on the Blue Ridge Parkway. What a blast! So incredibly beautiful! We found several trails and even a winery off Mile Marker #246. Thistle Meadows Winery is quite a place. A retired and somewhat eccentric pharmacist names Tom Burgiss, runs the place and what a place it is. There is a B&B, a catering business, a restaurant, a dance hall and a tasting room.

The wines are ok. He doesn’t grow his own grapes, he makes the wines from kits or from grapes he purchases from all over the world. Check out grapestompers.com for more information on that side of the business.

We bought a couple bottles of some Boone’s farm like wine that we figured would be good for some of the wine novices back home during the holidays. Other than that, the reds were just not for me. Although they all had a heavy plum aroma to them. I never new what plums smelled like as I am not a fan of plums, but after tasting and smelling those wines, I’ll never forget it! For that experience alone it was beneficial. Tom’s a great guy, so it’s hard to knock his wines. He’s a smart guy too, so not sure why his wines aren’t better, perhaps he’s too close to the product!

I did pick up 20 clay thing a ma jiggers for wine storage. Made in Portugal, they are pretty ingenuous and work well to transfer the coolness from my concrete floor up through the clay and to my wine bottles. Very nice and very simple. That’s my style!

Well I should head off to bed. The cleaning people come early and Jen and I have to be up to greet them. I opened up a nice bottle of 2002 Napa Blackstone Merlot tonight….I’ve enjoyed it immensely. A nice break from some of the crap wine I have had around here lately.

Other than that, what else is new? My work on my new site, vacationrentaldirect.com is progressing, albeit slowly. Ton of problems there, but I think they are almost fixed. Will be fun to launch that site. I also bought another business and I think I got it for a real steal!

I bought a sports business called Liquid Moon Sports. They sell outdoor gear and hiking equipment. Why did I buy it?

Great question. 1) I bought the site for $2520.00. 2) It included $500 in office equipment, and $2800 in inventory and the website, all content and a fully documented system including supplier relationships, etc… It’s been around since 1999, has a PageRank of 4 and has a few links as well. The age of the domain and the site itself are worth $2500.00. So is it too good to be true? we shall see, I guess I bought mostly to learn something new…I don’t know much about retail.

My biggest challenge will be shipping and carrying inventory. I’ll probably pick up some affiliates and a drop shipper, that will help. But this site will require some inventory and shipping…so not sure how I will do that, but I have some really good ideas!!!

With some SEO work, I could really take this site places. Maybe I’ll just beef it up and sell it off in 6 months….might be a $30K site or more if I can document revenues and get traffic up.

Either way it’s tough to lose on such an investment. I like fixing things up and selling them….should be a no brainer.

My next purchase mught be a hunting and fishing site in Texas. But I have to get these sites up and running and making me some money first!

Well there’s lots more to write but I have to go to bed!

Brent

A couple of Sundays ago, Jen and I headed out to Stony Knoll Vineyards and Winery. Stony Knoll is north of Rag Apple Lassie in Yadkin County. Owned and operated by Van and Kathy Koe, I think they have 10+ acres under plant. The winery is brick structure that sort of looks like a house, with the tasting room on the upper floor and the winery on the lower floor.

It’s a pretty setting. They did a nice job in all aspects. The tasting room is very roomy and well-planned out with lots of tables and a long bar.

I enjoyed the wines enough that a couple of the reds warranted purchasing. I bought the 2003 Stony Knoll Syrah and the 2003 Stony Knoll Cabernet Sauvignon. Stony Knoll caused me some displeasure with their use of pouring spouts, I never got a good fell for the wine and hated asking for another pour. Get rid of them!

The 2003 Cabernet Sauvignon was opened up a few days later, and it was poured down the drain a day or so after that. I am not even going to bother reviewing it, because it’s just another Yadkin Valley wine…whether it be poor winemaking or young vines or both, the wine is just not there.

Outside of pressures to pay the mortgage, if my wine is of that quality when I open my winery, I’ll sell off the juice. Or just pour it all out and try again the next year. Stony Knoll has a nice label though….and someday I’m sure they’ll make some very nice wines…will they survive the learning curve? I imagine they’ll wine a few fair awards, but after that we’ll just have to see..

Brent

Wine Blogging Wednesdays are held on the first Wednesday of every month. I think each month a new site is selected to host the event. Today the event is being hosted by Seattle Bon Vivant. The wine / varietal of choice is the Australian Shiraz.

I decided to focus on wines that any normal person can buy at a local grocery store. I did this because there are no specialty wine shops in Elkin North Carolina. Once would have to travel 45 minutes to Winston Salem to fine such a store.

I bought two wines, but drank only one. The wine I chose was the 2002 Rosemont Estate Shiraz. Here is a picture:

The wine was nice. I enjoyed it, but it was too much for my girlfriend. With a 14% alcohol content, the wine is hearty and a little spicy (not much). It enters the mouth nicely and has an intoxicating nose. I’d say the wine is a bit sweet for my tastes…somethng akin to sweet tarts…but I did enjoy 2 glasses and for $9.00 at the grocery store, I’d have it again if I was in a pinch. Here are a couple of external links to other reviews on the 2002 Rosemont Estates Shiraz:

http://www.smlserver.org/demo/rating/wine.sml?wid=309

I am not real familiar with Shiraz / Syrah. I had a nice Bogle Syrah and really enjoy the Petite Syrah from Guenoc. Carolinawine.com gives these three Australian Shiraz nice reviews allwith 95 point Parker scores:

1. ’02 Kay Brothers “Hillside” Shiraz $39.99 net

Parker says: “Already rocking and rolling, it has 10-15 years of aging potential. A deep plum/ruby/purple hue is followed by glorious aromas of black fruits, flowers, dusty, loamy, truffle-like scents, and a classic combination of pepper and licorice. The wine saturates the palate with a seamless integration of acidity, tannin and alcohol (15%). The finish is opulent and multilayered.” This has been one of our most popular Aussie Shirazes over the years, and the 2002 appears to be the best yet. The lowest U.S. retail price. PRE-ARRIVAL.

2. ’02 Kilikanoon “Covenant” Shiraz $34.99 net

From 30 to 40 year old vines, Parker describes this as “a hypothetical blend of an old style La Mission-Haut Brion and a mid-seventies Diamond Creek Cabernet Sauvignon. Full bodied flavors, great intensity, tremendous richness, superb structure, and fine overall balance as well as purity are found in this riveting old vine Shiraz.” A steal at this price. PRE-ARRIVAL.

3. ’02 Torbreck “The Struie” Shiraz $44.99 net

A new Shiraz from the legendary David Powell blending cool-climate fruit from the Eden Valley with riper and richer Barossa fruit. Parker says: “A blend of 40-year-old Eden Valley Shiraz vines and 80-year-old Barossa Shiraz….It’s dense ruby/purple color is accompanied by a big, rich, perfume of white chocolate intermixed with loamy soil, black cherry, blackberry, pepper and currant aromas.” The surprise hit of the Torbreck offerings, which leading Aussie critic Jeremy Oliver actually rated over the Factor and Run Rig! PRE-ARRIVAL.

Might want to give those a try to get a better fell for the varietal!