Some of the best wines grow in the craziest places...


Here's one of them. High up in the Cuyama valley, crowding against the foothills of the Southern Rockies, are a series of mesas which plateau out at 3200'. The soil is rocky, the air dusty. Water runs deep and whatever grows has to really want to grow. All along the valley below, the agriculture of Santa Maria fills the floor with hundreds of acres of fruit and grain and vegetables.

Up on the mesas, though, only a persistent weed with a knack for channeling its energy into fruit production can call this place home. This place is Alta Mesa, and finding it is like finding a lemonade stand on the moon -- perplexingly out of place, silly when you think of it, but beautiful in its own way. The altitude and soil force the Alta Mesa Mourvedre and Alta Mesa Grenache to produce fruit of unusual strength and depth.

Our first barrels of the 2005 Vintage Mourvedre are maturing nicely in our Sequin Moreau French oak barrels -- this will be a wine which will drink for years, yet taste extraordinary out of the bottle.

Coming in 2007! We can't wait to share it with you.

Wine is a living thing ....

In so many ways ... from grapes to grape juice, then through fermentation, then throughout its life in a barrel and then finally to its final resting place in a wine bottle before you & I uncork and sip ...

Something I learned recently reinforces this thought - the BOTTLE SHOCK phenomenon

After you bottle a wine, the wine 'seizes up'. I believe it must get very upset after being so happy sitting quietly in a dark, cool barrel in our winery cellar. Its safe, its happy, Then one day, we decide its time to bottle. How to decide --> if for our Viognier, the sugars are down to zero, malo's have been blocked to a mouthfeel we like, the aromatics are pronounced, & as in our 2005 Catie's Corner -- grapefruit & tangerine peel fill your nose.

Then on bottling day, the wine is RUDELY forced through a bottling machine pump which forces wine out of a barrel & into every wine bottle. If that wasn't bad enough, then a cork is slammed in for good, labels are pasted & bottles are boxed in cases. I guess I must now know what giving birth is like.

The wine must get traumatized by its new surroundings. Its now seeing 'light' for the first time, its touching glass... how weird it must be, when its been swimming in a dark cool oak barrel for months. BUT as wine is a living thing, it evolves and gets used to its new 'womb' of sorts. So... few weeks after bottling, the aromatics open up again, the mouthfeel of the wine fills.

This is why we do NOT release or ship wine as soon as we bottle.

Wine is a living thing, isn't it cool ...

Q's, comments - pls. email me.

Bettina.

The 2004 Las Madres Syrahs are going fast...

(down to our last 5 cases) and we are anxiously monitoring the 2005 Wines in barrel.

To me, Las Madres has a taste unlike any other syrah I've come across -- call it terroir or Carneros Clay or whatever, but I could pick this wine out of a lineup blindfolded! I've heard it described as black olives, which sounds more like a pinot than a syrah, but maybe that is what you get when you grow syrah in a traditional Pinot area. 2005 will show the same characteristic -- alcohol will be slightly less, which will give more balance to the finished wine, but it won't hurt anyone's enjoyment!

For me, this is the wine I look forward to every bottle ...

Peter

Winery as a Co-Op

Many have wondered how we launched ourselves as a winery. For us it was opportune that a San Francisco based winery launched in 2004 the same year we decided to start our venture. Having Crushpad in the city allows us to be in charge of our winemaking, cellar operations without having to travel to Napa or Sonoma AND most importantly to allow most of us to keep our day jobs.

We have had the privilege of learning from our crew of consulting winemakers like Kian Tavakoli of Opus One & Clos Du Val. Our learning curve is steep and soooo much more enjoyable then anything we've ever tackled with our day jobs.

The economies of scale are also phenomenal... we do NOT have to pay for $150k bottling line machine, we get access to cellar space that is pristine & in perfect shape. Truly for us, it was the only way to go as a start-up boutique winery.

More about life as a winery owner later, pls. email me if you have q's - Bettina

What a great weekend to meet HUNDREDS of thirsty Syrah & Viognier loving wine drinkers.

This is part of the life we now have as San Sakana Cellars. Instead of playing golf or watching Da Vinci Code (we maybe last people in America who haven't yet), we managed to squeeze in two tasting events this weekend.

The Crushpad open house, our winery in San Francisco, was filled to the brim on Saturday afternoon June 10th. We managed to meet with 600 or so rabid fans of limited production, single vineyard Syrah's and Viogniers.

On Sunday, June 11th, we were also one of the featured wineries at the Taste of California Wine Event in San Mateo. It is a great charity and for us another fantastic opportunity to share our wines with more Syrah & Viognier loving folks.

We're tired, but happy.

More notes soon as we gear up for the release of our 2005 Viogniers!