My first customer. Hey, the shit is free.

Bottling!

Here's a short video from the other day of the bottling of the '07 Zin. We bottled 24 cases in rapid fashion thanks to everyone's help. We also bottled two wines for Amelle - Zin and Pinot! Look for them soon from Eric Buffington - very impressive stuff.

My first label for the 'hobby' zinfandel. What do you think? The next label will switch out the grapes for the stadium facade.

Good News

After fourteen months of being my "finicky mistress" (see post from 10/15/08), the '07 Zinfandel has finally finished mlf and is now completely dry. Eric has sulphured the barrel for me so it will rest comfortably until bottling in February. Now, we are having some fun creating some labels and hope to have them ready in time. Our excitement was really kicked up a notch last week when Ed's Sandler wines arrived and we were able to try his Buck Hill Zin from bottle. Not surprisingly, we love it!

Also, the '08 Keefer pinot noir is finished as well. No residual sugar (rs) and mlf is done. Everything about this wine has been perfect so far. I simply cannot wait to pull a sample in February. Recently, I have been opening up Keefer pinots from wineries such as Failla, Siduri, AP Vin and Loring (as you might imagine, I am pretty familiar with the Freeman Keefer's ;-) ) to get a feel for the flavor profiles with various clones etc. Tough research but it needs to be done!

It's been a great year in wine and life. I want to wish everyone well during the holidays and the new year. Merry Christmas!

Zinfest

We had a great party with 60-70 folks attending. The blind tasting I set up attracted about 25-30 participants and the results were very interesting. I asked everyone to rate five wines from their favorite to least favorite. My '07 Zin was clearly the most controversial wine in the lineup. While five people rated it their favorite, nine people thought just the opposite! One fellow kept commenting on how much he hated it! lol

I guess such differing opinions are likely when I chose to serve a non-finished barrel sample alongside some zins from some of the best winemakers in California like Mike Officer and Ed Kurtzman. So, while it was a fun tasting, I'm not sure I gained any valuable information from the experiment. There didn't appear to be any clear-cut favorite with some people liking the $11 Cline Zin more than the Carlisle (a 93 point Parker wine). Others preferred a Maryland zin that I personally didn't care for at all.

All in all, we had a great time and that's I all I was really hoping for.

Prep for Zinfest

Before we left, I made sure to pull some barrel samples of the '07 Zin for the upcoming Zinfest party back east. I think I will serve it in a blind tasting with some zinfandels from existing, established wineries and see what people think. Should be fun! Also, we now have confirmed our bottling date in early February to coincide with our trip to the Freeman Cave Dinner so that's exciting!

Party Time

Harvest was over so it was time to party! We had an amazing dinner Friday in SF at Sociale with some fabulous Italian wines. We had barolos and barbarescos from Conterno, Giacosa and others from '61, '90, '96, '97 and '98. I'll remember that dinner for a long time thanks to the generosity of the Freemans.

Saturday, I shipped in some live blue crabs from Baltimore and steamed 'em up baby. That was a blast and it was a great party at Ryan and Amanda's house.

Sunday, we went to the Pinot on the River Wine Festival and got to taste dozens of wines and met lots of great people. Another dinner at Zazu and Eric was ready for me to check out of Chez Buffington!