Two Bees Wine

2007-09-12T20:17:00.000-07:00

Today the label designs are ready. I solicited help from my office’s Graphics guru Dave, who cleaned up the image and worked magic to place our scanned drawing into an actual printer-ready label template. We’re waiting for the hard copy samples of the label paper to arrive from Canada. Semi-gloss or no semi-gloss, that is the question, impossible to determine from hazy internet images.

2007-09-06T23:11:00.000-07:00

I spent my evening at Kinko’s, cutting, pasting, sizing, reducing. I created a pile of scraps for the recycle bin, crumpling them to ward off spies. My goal was to render some sketches on scratch paper into the blank center of the front label template Anthony and I had already agreed. He hadn’t yet seen my drawing idea, and I somewhat worried it might be too whimsical for his sensibilities. I made extra copies of the final, put-together image so that I could experiment with color at home, stopping at Raley’s on the way back to buy a cheap package of vivid Crayola pencils.

The back label, meanwhile, was mostly ready, with some intended tweaks to font TBD.

2007-09-03T21:29:00.000-07:00

We decided not to be so harsh in criticizing our wine. Jon had brought over a friend’s homemade tempranillo yesterday. He relayed that his friend gifted him with a full case, beaming at his accomplishment. We opened the sample Jon brought over and found its taste quite awful. Unsippable. The color bled cherry-red, like cough syrup. We poured out the remainder.

Lesson to us: be proud of our wine. It was far better than this example, which its winemaker introduced with fanfare no less, like a proud papa. So too, we pledged, would we pitch our wine – not down the sink, but to our family and friends. We’ll come up with a description, a flavor profile. We’ll discuss its style, how much we learned, refinements we’ll try next year, our expectations that 2007’s vintage will be even better.

And we will go forth with a real label, something to badge it with honor. The pressure toward this effort had been building for months. It faded when we thought the wine had. But now, brimming with renewed motivation and excitement, I couldn’t wait to sit down and draw some concepts.

2007-09-02T23:23:00.000-07:00

Bottling!

We set aside Sunday of Labor Day weekend to bottle, the day after our trek to Palo Alto to watch the mighty Bruins defeat Stanford. Jon, our winemaker neighbor, promised to help oversee the low-tech operation.

Our bottling line didn’t include a plain-wrap truck disguising an assembly line and automated conveyer belts. Instead, we borrowed a stainless steel contraption about the size of a cumbersome toaster oven that fills three bottles at a time. A suction tube feeds wine directly from barrel to the steel reservoir, the volume of which is regulated by a toilet bowl-type float. Anthony leans the necks of the bottle trio into three prongs. He presses these to draw the wine, which automatically stops at just the right level without overflowing.

I man the corking station, jamming down a long lever that resembles a bladeless paper cutter. This drives a synthetic cork into a secured bottle.

The afternoon hit the mid-90 degree mark, but we went at it diligently, sweating and sunburning, until one by one, we’d completed our caseload: 147 bottles, just over 12 cases of wine!

We stacked the boxes in the living room temporarily, posing for photos.

On the to-do list: adding the maroon foils and, most importantly, creating some kind of label.

2007-08-03T23:02:00.000-07:00

A facelift never looks quite right. We decided not to interfere any further, other than to boost the SO2 level, hoping for better late than never.

We tasted again and started to get our heads right about our wine. Worst case, it turns the corner and keeps on walking, becomes undrinkable. Year #1 chalked up to R&D. Or, it stays as is – not the starry vision in our heads, but wine that people, including us, would still drink and possibly even enjoy. A wine we’d give an “A” for effort. Our first vintage, something to be proud of.

2007-08-01T21:57:00.000-07:00

Today we thieved a couple of glasses, now that the wine had time to relax after the tumultuous racking we put it through, tubes spraying it from barrel to bin and back again. Now we could taste what our final wine might be like, touch its future.

The barrel had evaporated more than we expected, a bit troubling. We hadn’t wanted to open it to the air after racking, but apparently it had needed topping off.

Strangely, the color we witnessed just a couple of weeks ago changed. We held our glasses against blank sheets of paper to be sure. What happened to the juicy, voluptuous ripe raspberry color? The wine had started to take on an orange-brown hue, like a rose hung upside down. And the nose behind the heat of the alcohol seemed like poached cherries, more toward the port side of the spectrum than young wine. The taste matched. Our juice had become “reduced”.

Our hearts sank. Somehow it had begun to oxygenate. In hindsight: perhaps it was our rough treatment during the second racking introduced too much air…or the fact that we didn’t top off the barrel. Worst of all, our free SO2 level was low – one-third of what it should have been. We didn’t realize how fragile the wine was at this stage, how critical it was to check the sulfur dioxide again. A fatal error. But we simply didn’t know.

Neither of us spoke. It felt a bit like running to catch a flight to go on vacation – but arriving, breathless, just as they closed the gate, watching the plane pull away without us without being able to coax it back.

Apparently, there are Frankenstein techniques to reinstate color. But with every manipulation, there’s a consequence that can’t quite be predicted.

2007-07-06T23:17:00.000-07:00

Second racking...

We decided that double-racking would make our wine as uncloudy as possible, a measure to ensure thoughtful craftsmanship. We followed the same procedure as the first go-round. As it turned out, there was practically no sediment whatsoever, though we poured out perhaps an inch or so for good measure. This left crawl space in our barrel that needed to be filled in.

We turned to the assortment of jugs and bottles sitting on our counter by the microwave since the first racking in February. We’d filled them with overflow wine at that point, knowing it would come in handy to counter evaporation.

Only a couple of these bottles smelled and tasted right – the rest cooked, turning brown and foul enough to dump unceremoniously into the sink. We should have known better than to cork a couple of those bottles with silly Christmas-themed toppers, inadequate to keep out air. So, to top the barrel, we opened a couple of bottles of zin. A quick sampling of our wine still suggested high alcohol content. But underneath it tasted of bright fruit, and its color looked youthful, sassy, luscious.

2007-02-20T22:38:00.000-08:00

First racking...

Anthony bought a pump which turned out to be a fantastic gizmo for the task of racking. It looks like it could motorize all sorts of other projects – a go-cart perhaps, or a school science exhibit. At first the purchase seemed like folly: couldn’t we borrow one?

But we fed one side of the clear tubing through the bung hole of our barrel, which we rolled on its gurney out the patio door in case of spillage. We fit the other end of the hose to the machine, which was perched precariously on a hutch. Underneath the motor, a thick towel served as our sole protection in the event of leakage. The goal was to transfer the wine from barrel, minus the remaining dregs of solids lingering at the bottom, to an empty vessel (in this case, a sanitized food grade plastic bin). This would provide temporary haven for the pristine wine while the barrel received a thorough scrub.

I had some trepidation about the operation. I called to mind the plastic drip hose in my garden which springs tiny, hissing spurts of water. There the only consequence is a patch of weeds. Sprays of wine in the living room wouldn’t be so negligible!

We hit the switch. All systems go! The pump hummed, drawing wine from the barrel like blood from a vein – out one vessel and into the other. It took several minutes, and then we became more vigilant so that we could flick off the motor just as the solids entered the transparent tube. Mission accomplished. We repeated the procedure with the two carboys.

To the wine in the white bin, Anthony introduced sulpher dioxide to help protect it from micro-organisms and oxidation. We secured the bin lids to keep curious cats out while Anthony took the hollow barrel to the patio’s edge and gently heaved it sideways to drain out the leftover lees (solids).

It was impossible to know how much was really in there until it oozed out. A rather toxic purple goop the consistency of cake batter spread into the dirt, out toward the flowers. As it kept flowing, the unnatural vivid hue started to alarm me. Would this be fertilizer, or doom the plants it touched and the soil with it?

Too late to reconsider, we instead rinsed the barrel with bucket loads of hot water from the bathtub, sanitized the barrel, and then returned the ruby, pure, vibrant wine to its woody home with our motorized tubing contraption.

2007-01-28T10:31:00.000-08:00

It’s winter. The vines have long since shed their sunset of leaves, which crisped up and disintegrated with late fall rains, or were clipped and tossed unsentimentally into burn piles. Pruners, dots of yellow on misty hills in their rain slickers, tended to the vines' woody spines and arms in a coma during these cold months.

It’s a brown season at first, rows of spindly bark and rusty stakes in dirt. Eventually, clumpy fava bean plants, then vivid mustard, fill the void. These smiley-face yellow fields of February are as iconic to Wine Country as the lavender of Provence, and people who live here seem to emerge from their bleary hibernation simultaneously. We’re not too local or too oblivious to pull over for a photo to spruce up our cell phone wallpaper. Celebrations themed around mustard and olives foreshadow spring.

In the barrel and carboys clogging the entryway, our wine has been a passive household member. Our muddy boots and wet shoes dried next to the vessels. The cats paid them no mind at all despite initial worries they’d knock off the gurgling fermentation locks.

At Christmas, we passed around a glass of thieved wine for a toast and wondered how the alcoholic, port, and fruit tastes might evolve. I felt cautiously optimistic from its ruby color; Anthony declared it a future sweepstakes winner at the fair!

Topping off became a necessary and periodic activity. Though it pained us to do so, we added a half dozen foreign bottles of zin, 1 or 2 at a time, to counter the evaporation. A winemaker at Audelssa Winery who heard about our in-house storage guessed we’d been generous with our “angels’ share”; a toasty warm house with no humidity means high evaporation. The 4% non-house wine initially seemed drastic to us, but we’ve since made peace with the notion; next year we’ll have our own zin for topping off.

And finally, quietly, malolactic fermentation stopped. There were no more crackling sounds when we put an ear to the bung hole. The taste softened. A paper chromatography test confirmed that malic acid did indeed convert to lactic acid.

Next step: racking!

2006-11-21T22:36:00.000-08:00

On a plane back from Philadelphia today, a spunky flight attendant with a crystal bobby pin in her hair and perfume I could detect 3 rows away (oddly, it smelled of cigars when she passed by) escorted a young man of 8, Daniel, down the aisle. He was conducting a poll for school, and she broke the ice for him with unsleeping, headsetless passengers. It was the “Favorite Meat Survey”, and the choices were meatballs, chicken, hot dogs, steak, bacon, sausage, pork, lamb, and meatloaf – a list he recited in one quick breath. He permitted me to choose two: lamb (when the mood is right) and bacon (of course). I wonder about his final tallies.

It started me thinking about my favorite wine (probably because my blog entry was overdue and I was captive and agendaless). If I had to choose, which varietal would I have Daniel record?

I’m inclined to name pinot noir for its soft fruit, flexibility with food, drinkability solo, and for aromas that deliver the same pleasure that Jolly Ranchers did when I was a kid – the more I inhale or taste, the greater the bursts in intensity.

Yet my annoyance at its mass popularity due to Sideways (I liked it before the trend – really!) may suffocate my initial response.

My desire for originality means I’d need to pinpoint a rarer grape. And unfortunately, occasional ones I’ve sampled don’t stick in memory because I can’t pronounce them.

I’d probably choose a wine I can easily appreciate without food – though complementary pairings always surprise me when they’re orchestrated for me. This seems consistent with how I eat: with certain dishes, I strive to fork up all key elements into a single bite – they’d each taste delicious separately, but together the mouthful becomes divine. I tend toward pizza slices with evenly spaced toppings, calculate how to finish off my plate so that the last forkfuls carry representative ingredients, and loosely track M&M colors as I munch to ensure rotation. Alternating back and forth between wine and food can yield equal satisfaction – and might even heighten the individual elements. For instance, I’m not a foie gras fan, but at a celebratory dinner the other night I tried Anthony’s with a minced apple strudel chutney and a Royal Tokaj – a Big Bang effect.

But this philosophy depends on the particular food, making it impossible to choose a favorite wine.

My default answer: champagne or sparkling wine. I can drink it any time. With or without food, any season, morning or night, special excuse or not. It’s interactiveness almost flatters – given the slightest chance, it fights to be unbottled, to rise out of the glass, and its sparkles hypnotize like fire. The awe it inspires from enthusiasts and from those afraid to make it a habit, the patience it commands of vintners, and its link to milestone events further its mystique. It’s like the ficus tree in that sushi place in the mall that blinks with Christmas lights to the beat of the music, or a song by the B-52s – impossible to experience without feeling an inner smile.

And that, Daniel, is my final answer.

2006-11-15T00:03:00.000-08:00

Wine Country window shopping

Living in Santa Rosa, one can’t help but notice ads, posters, flyers, and newspaper blurbs trumpeting imminent wine tasting weekends. They tend to draw the city and Marin folk looking for a getaway or Bay Area backroad. They range from the still-complimentary barrel tasting weekend in spring, to elaborate soirees with fine chef buffets, silent auctions, and a pricetag to weed in the proper attendees.

The wineries, of course, hope to lure potential buyers with samples. We locals know better than to fall for that trick – delay gratification and shop at the Bottle Barn. Stick to window shopping.

Locals who pay attention also know which events to pick and choose – weighing cost by such factors as number of participating wineries, munchies possibilities, and likely crowd sizes. My neighbors invite me along for the Wine and Food Affair, a post-harvest celebration where wineries pair a dish with a spotlighted wine. Participants take home a cookbook of the feasts. It’s not a bad deal for the Sunday-only pass, at $35.

Here’s a run-down of the day’s noble attempt to hit the 64 possible winery choices. I'd planned to go easy on trials until my friend volunteers to chauffeur; so, I surrender to impulse:

Harvest Moon

At 5 minutes to the 11AM kick-off, I collect my cookbook and glass at Stop #1. Chicken curry spooned onto leaves of endive plus just-thieved viognier jostle my palette. Not yet released, the wine is poured from an unlabeled bottle, shaken and frothy. I blame the early hour for not tasting the zins right – they seem acidic and too thin.

Pellegrini

We cross over to this hefty salmon-hued facility and find Sunday brunch: banquet trays of zucchini frittata carved into checkerboards, platters of paper thin soppressata, and my beloved cheese of the moment, Fiscalini. I try a wine or 2, but it still feels too early to appreciate them.

Iron Horse

Tablecloths peeking from a side barn signal that we arm-banded tasters can bypass the standard tasting outpost for a more exclusive venue. A chef doles ice cream scoops of raw ahi onto sesame chips, while a bright-eyed woman with poetic vocabulary explains the chardonnay.

Marimar Estate

Past Graton, up a windy driveway, stands a Spanish-style villa overlooking vineyards – a new find for me. A stately woman, the winemaker, greets newcomers with efficient politician smiles. I prefer the welcome by her spotted dog Chica, who follows after me and my plate of sausage and fava bean stew (a stand-in for the listed paella). She has ties to the prince of Spain, as evidenced by photo-ops at her family winery overseas, blown up onto posters near the tasting bar. A young man pouring wine inquires about the symbolism of my golden Avon bee pin, but my Two Bees story gets cut short by the baroness, who tugs him toward more promising guests. We pass a tipped over metal cow sculpture on the way down the hill and wonder – Halloween prank or intentional?

Taft Street

My friends snap up their only memento for the day – an entire case of Peka pinot, a soon to be extinct label for their higher tier wines. Pressured at the thought of missing out on something big, I buy 2 bottles at their 30% off trade discount.

Lynmar

I’m intrigued to taste at this mega millions winery not open to the masses without

appointment (I was once turned away politely when I showed up uninvited, spoiling a private tasting in progress). It sits on the footprint of a pumpkin patch; a few years ago, I raked their field and stuffed my Jeep with Halloween Eve orphans – their donation to handicapped kids for painting and adornment. Now, I sit in their alfresco living room sipping pinot and overlooking ordered clumps of grasses, vegetable beds with mammoth specimens, and vineyards. A sign announces weekend pumpkin patch hours, but a tasting room attendant says it’s there “for nostalgia sake”.

Dutton Estate

I don’t recall the wine now, though I know my friends and I sipped some at a picnic table on their deck, speaking intimately about the pros and cons of having and not having children.

Balletto

Last stop. None of us like the wine we try particularly. The soup they ladle seems a cop-out. The staff shows disinterest in us latecomers. We hang out on their patio for a bit, then fold, with 10 minutes to spare before the event weekend’s official conclusion.

2006-11-01T23:13:00.001-08:00

Dreams of a wine cellar

Last weekend, some out of town guests prompted a day of wine tasting. We shaped an itinerary around a picnic (smoked salmon fillets from the morning’s farmer’s market, shaved turkey sandwiches, olives, hummus, orzo salad, edamame). These friends had never seen Dry Creek or Russian River, so we surrendered to the glory of the amber leaves and hushed roads of autumn. We managed to hit 5 wineries on a par 3 course. Unbeknownst to us, a case of wine accumulated in back of the Jeep by day’s end.

This followed a recent 11-bottle binge, post Harvest Fair acquisitions. Where to store the stash?

Long ago, in an L.A. apartment far away, I felt sophisticated with my coiled metal wine rack on display next to the microwave. A move to Sonoma County quickly rendered the rack garage sale fare; 6 slots seemed amateur.

Next, a closet fit 4 cardboard wine crates sideways, a more important way to assess storage capacity than one’s shoe collection. Their 48 roosts flipped frequently.

But guilt following 100-degree summer days, along with a suspiciously raisin-like wine or 2, ultimately pushed the futon in the spare bedroom aside to make way for the real deal: a wine refrigerator.

Ah, the sleek splendor of polished stainless steel, a glass door to tease, a new hum from the bedroom… This was Wine Country living.

The manual touted a storage capacity of 60 bottles. Yet no amount of fuss achieved this sum, and I felt as flummoxed as when wrestling with a dismantled 3-D puzzle. A more careful read of the brochure revealed the secret to maximizing space: load only those bottle silhouettes that mimic a traditional sloping Burgundian design (e.g., pinots and chardonnays) – no long necks (gewurtztraminers, rieslings), no tall shoulders (merlots, cabs, sauvignon blancs), no chubby bottoms (champagne). These trouble-makers ruin the watertight design.

And so, tucked under a bureau, overflow cardboard carriers keep the excess, the inevitable misfit varietals, and we try our best to rotate stock.

Anthony logs occupancies and vacancies in the refrigerator as they might track guests at the resort where he works. He keeps a clipboarded grid with all names and arrival dates (of the grapes). Some bottles move in for an extended stay, while others may only be in for the weekend. This summer will be sold out; that’s when bottling happens. With 12 ½ cases of wine – about 150 bottles – alternate accommodations will be necessary. A refrigerator expansion? Perhaps a new sister property? Or, if the spare bedroom is to remain a spare bedroom, an off-site rental unit for the wine? It doesn’t seem too early to plan.

2006-10-25T20:35:00.001-07:00

Grape Glut?

A headline in the Napa Register announces astronomical yields of cab and syrah this year. In part, it’s traceable to a cold front a few weeks ago that stalled the rise in brix levels and pushed “hang time” and harvest.

I suspect an updated census of the vines would also account for the bounty.

Before the Charles M. Schultz airport lost commercial flights (which coincided with economic shut-downs after 9/11), I’d get occasional birds-eye views of the surprisingly sweeping fields. With pride, I’d spot my little house, which seemed about to be swallowed by vineyards. I liked it that way. When I moved in, my street had 1 winery. I’d draw a star on the winery map practically adjacent to the star for the winery, write in my address, and send it to my family. Now, I count 7 stars including my address.

A few years ago, when the Gravenstein apple orchards along the highway named after them were ripped out and the apple processing plant shut down, West County mourned its heritage. We all sympathized with the workers and felt a sense of loss – as for the Cheese Shop’s croissant recipe I wished someone would have written down before the old baker died, or for the mislaid map my sister and I drew to mark the buried time capsule we left for the future. We knew the apples would never be replanted. But it became difficult to lament the rolling, vibrant fields bursting with chardonnay grapes each autumn. Just before Crush, a hold-out barn along Gravenstein Highway stacks tables with bushels of crunchy, tart apples, and signs appear in markets touting the “local” crop. They’re not ghosts, but the remaining orchards, wisely, keep themselves hidden.

Eventually the traditional trek to Westside Farms for Halloween paraphernalia – field-plucked pumpkins, ornamental squash, popping corn crisped up on the spot – became increasingly complicated when they started charging for parking and required an army of teens to direct traffic. Then, one October, a lonely sign thanked passersby for loyal patronage. A vineyard came in the next spring.

Another summer, the scruffy blueberry farm that sent out annual “berries are here!” postcards so we wouldn’t miss its ultra-short harvest, sold its ancient bushes. The land, after all, proved ideal for a more opulent purple berry – pinot noir grapes.

I’d always felt content, before turning onto my street, passing an organic lettuce farm that sold only to specialty stores. Its 2 long greenhouses helped me spot my home from the air, and explaining it to out-of-town guests made me feel conscientious. For the first time this year, rootstock pokes up through yellow tubes.

They also sold the dirt lot just down the road with the grey-beige cows with floppy ears. I always felt a little sorry for them in their grass-free rectangle; in summers they’d crowd in the shade of a lone scraggly oak along the fence line, and in winter I’d see them standing steadfast in mud past their shins. Driving by the other day, I noticed a couple of burn piles, and the area seems to have been leveled. Instinct tells me that vines, on what must be a very fertilized acre or 2 of land, will soon thrive there.

The vineyards, my subdivisions, encroach. This sprawl of golden, green, and red every October beckons and the paparazzi come. We can’t escape the yeasty perfume of bulging, ripe grapes, nor can we deny their seduction. What new wine will we drink or hoard?

And when will we mind
what the vineyards erase?

2006-10-22T23:57:00.001-07:00

Stirring the lees

We figured out that one characteristic we tend to appreciate in wines is mouthfeel. No doubt there are numerous technical ways to explain this concept. I think of cooking, when a recipe says that the texture of a sauce should change from pure liquid to a point where it just coats the back of a spoon. Not that we'd want wine to be similarly thick! But we like when it has enough body to be tasted and felt all around the mouth.

Anthony decided to try stirring the gross lees (the remnants after pressing that accumulate at the bottom of the barrel/carboys while the wine undergoes malolactic fermentation). This, we heard, is one way to enhance mouthfeel.
The 2 glass carboys reveal the sediment layer. It’s like a mossy seafloor at the bottom of an aquarium tank. The wine, the ocean, seems pure and vast by comparison. Soon, once malolactic fermentation finishes, we’ll siphon the wine away from the sediment in a process called racking. Stirring must happen now.

So, Anthony purchased a very special drill bit – a long metal rod with a whirly-gig at the far end. When attached to his Bosch cordless drill and inserted into the bung hole, the gizmo becomes a mini windmill that swirls the lees and gives them a chance to re-interact with the juice – hopefully a beneficial liaison. We conducted our 2 lees stirring ceremonies with great seriousness.

Subsequently, I’ve found scant and vague documentation of lees stirring for red wines. It appears to be employed with whites, in France, quite a bit. They call it battonage, and apply the custom to the fine lees (the dregs after the first racking). And the justification doesn’t necessarily relate to mouthfeel. Some internet conversations link stirring lees to enhancing flavor, and to oxidation to encourage malolactic fermentation. Apparently home wine makers needn’t bother with the practice; the indexes in our guidebooks don’t feature lees stirring as a chapter, sidebar, or glossary term.

We’re not daunted. Lees stirring becomes another prong on our flow chart of variables. It’s all experimentation. With luck, the wine angels will smile this direction.

2006-10-19T17:07:00.000-07:00

Searching for gold

Early October brings the annual Sonoma County showcase event at the fairgrounds – Harvest Fair. It’s a gathering of the best made-right-here stuff – or at least that’s what everyone’s trying to prove. We make a pilgrimage to witness the most morbidly obese pumpkin, the spongiest lamb, the spikiest dahlia, and the supremely delicious jar of apple butter. People shine, too, for their prowess at spitting a watermelon seed farthest, crushing the most grape juice with their bare feet, or painting an area vista masterfully. The ribbons prove it: blue, white, pink, bronze, silver, gold.

A highlight is the wine competition. Held in a colossal Quonset hut, each appellation’s wineries pour their newest vintages for a rabid public. We surrender perforated tickets to taste the best, according the booklet with the judging results.

Navigating the room can be tricky, if seeking particular winners from the hundreds. It’s as though someone shook up and dumped out each dot on a winery map like Yahtzee dice. Every year, there’s a new, unannounced system to locate a table featuring a coveted label: a serpentine alphabetical arrangement this time, or clusters by appellation, by medal color, or by varietal. It keeps us sober.

But the more tastes, the less critical medal holding seems, and we veer off our carefully plotted course. Underdogs become secret treasures, and we sneer at the sprawl fronting stations with gold medal pours.
This year, we factor in time to scrutinize the amateur wines exhibit. A glass case displays bottles from dozens of would-be vintners. They compete for taste, and only a handful get singled out for best in show. Almost all the rest still wear Olympian-style medals around their bottle necks, we assume for encouragement. Only a heartbreaking few, along the floor, go unadorned, scorned for having the audacity to show up.

The entire lot of novice bottlings undergoes judging for label design. These range from handwritten white file folder stickers slapped on for identification not artistry, to high-tech graphics printed professionally. For our Two Bees wine, we’ll shoot for something in between. We take a few photos of ones that catch our fancy, for inspiration.

2006-10-16T17:04:00.000-07:00

A side note: the walnut harvest!

We don’t have grapes to gather on the property (though some hardy vines thrive along the fence line and supply us with an assortment of mystery varietals good for eating if you don’t mind spitting out seeds). But we do have walnuts, and autumn also cues their debut.

The September prognosis of an anemic yield this year was too hasty. Perhaps the rush of crows pecking the still-green orbs from the treetops fueled rumors of a poor walnut season. So did the ratio of hollow shells versus whole nuts at the feet of the 2 trees – at least initially. The single day of rain a few weeks ago seemed to lob the final blow; any hangers-on would turn moldy and end up as burrows for ants and pincher bugs.

But then one day we noticed beneath our neighbors’ tree a carpet of walnuts, perfectly intact, their green casings shed and buried under fallen leaves. We wondered what illness had stricken our trees?

A skeptical double-check proved miraculous. Russet-colored wrinkled globes, unscathed and naked without their green sheathes, littered the shadow beneath our smaller tree. I stooped to gather handfuls of them into my shirt, but needed a satchel. Foraging required no more than lightly brushing aside leaves to reveal the nuts, as though they had been tossed generously from a parade float like candy.

Through my rubber flip flops, the shells could have been river rocks pressing into my soles. I felt like a robber with too-easy pickings as I moved between both trees, almost guilty at how easily I collected a bushel basket of the loot, then another. At the same time, the thought of overlooking any of the perfect nuts seemed an unpardonable crime.

They’re in the house now, near the wine barrel. A couple of weeks’ time will dry the nuts, firm up their prize interiors, and enrich their earthy toastiness. This vintage 2006 crop, at least, will soon be ready to enjoy.

2006-10-09T21:39:00.000-07:00

Anthony’s grandfather was a beekeeper in Croatia -- by hobby, not by trade.

One springtime, a hive bursting with the weight of bees, broke in two, cascading a bowl of bees down from their treetop perch. Anthony’s grandfather, Vice (pronounced “Vee-tseh”) Zaper, discovered this renegade colony, stuck it in a bucket, and transferred it to a box with a vacant honeycomb. The bees took up housekeeping chores and stayed the season.

Meanwhile, Vice honed his bee-keeping savvy. He scrutinized books on the craft, and spent quite a lot of time observing his bees, prying off the lid, getting to know them. The first winter, when cold set in, a mold developed in the honeycomb and sickness overtook his bees. He learned to prevent this plague. Vice beguiled his daughters with stories of who the bees were – the queen, the busiest honey gatherers, the lazy freeloaders. He’d instantly identify these out of the swarm of hundreds.

Wildflowers on the land, profuse in spring and summer, kept the bees spellbound and industrious. They produced a vivid yellow honey that Vice scraped out of the comb before spinning chunks of the wax in a machine to more efficiently drain the nectar.

Jarfuls kept the family and neighbors through winter. They’d sweeten wild chamomile tea with it, slather in on bread, or bake it into pastry and cakes in place of sugar. But nothing tasted better than the raw honey, sucked or chewed straight from the waxy honeycomb.
The honey served an important medicinal role, too. A spoonful soothed a sore throat. More serious ailments called for a potion of honey and cloves, simmered with wine, rum, or cognac.

Vice’s actual business involved nectar of a different sort. He made wine – rosé pressed from both white and red grapes on the property. He’d put his grapes in containers to ferment; 3 days for sweeter wine, 5 days for drier. Weights on top helped keep out air and minimize spillage from the froth. Vice let the natural yeasts have their way with the juice, never adding anything. When ready, he’d press the juice and siphon it into barrels – made from oak he chopped, then forged himself.

The villagers in Vojniče ("Voy-nee-cheh") knew where to come for their alcohol – about 150 cases of wine a year, in unlabeled bottles. They also bought his heftier stuff, grappa derived from leftover grape seeds and skins, boiled and distilled until clear.

Today, the family land in Croatia remains. But the vacant bee boxes and barrels rot in the yard, and the grapevines were set on fire years ago. There’s no vintage magnum of wine locked away, dusty in a cellar. And yet a stash of sweet nectar exists, devoured occasionally by Vice’s children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren: the legacy of quainter times and distant kingdoms.

2006-10-02T23:25:00.000-07:00

A milestone: we pressed our grapes today.

Anthony brought home a rented mini contraption for assembly: 2 half-moons of vertical wooden slats, loosely aligned. Clasped together, they formed a barrel that held our 500 pounds of grapes (a few pounds at a time). This sat atop a red metal base with a moat along the perimeter.

The 2 of us formed a bucket brigade on the patio. We transferred the rich, pulp-free, red-purple liquid as it ran freely out the crevices in the press, through a pasta seive, and into a pail, to a funnel, then into our oak barrel.

Of course it wasn't so efficient and simple. Step 1 in the morning was to cleanse the barrel with scalding water and citric acid. But, by odd coincidence, the hot water ran out during Anthony's shower, and we discovered a broken water heater. It turned out to be our hydronic floor water heater, but the delay as we investigated set us back.

Then, the patio hose broke, followed by a rusted out replacement, until the last hose on property held. At this point, Anthony stuck the nozzle in for what seemed like forever (will we really end up with that much wine?). He rolled the bloated barrel back and forth to bathe its insides, drained it, and repeated the process.

Finally, at 2PM, we began pressing. Our immature wine, for the first time cut off from its mother grapes, seemed to relish the freedom -- it flowed fast and hard, garish in hue, unsubtle with its alcohol. We paused to dip in 2 shot glasses to toast our first vintage and hope for the best.

The barrel didn't quite hold all the cache; 2 extra carboys finished the job. Finally, we guided the barrel up an improvised ramp and navigated it through the living room into the foyer. Topped with fermentation locks to permit release of carbon dioxide and prevent air from entering, the barrel and its 2 glass cousins rest.

2006-10-01T00:20:00.000-07:00

The Thomas characteristic

Two days before pressing. It proves difficult to ignore the blockade of bins next to the TV. We have brix on the brain. Is the juice warmer? Is it gurgling underneath the dry cap of skins? I insert a thermometer at mid-day, cheating, pleased as I ring Anthony with news that they’ve reached nearly 70 degrees.

In the afternoon, I swish the batches around one at a time, then decide as documentarian to grab the camera for a daylight shot. I remove all 3 lids at once and admire the majestic purple.

Suddenly, I witness my little kitten Thomas leap from the hardwood floor up to the top of bin 1. Only this time there’s no lid.

A chain of events unfolds in what must have been microseconds. Thomas disappears into the darkness of the vat, sucked in like a meteor. Juice and solids spray out, and the surface flattens again, empty. I lunge forward, feeling instantly sickened and panicked, not wanting to believe, to thrust my arms into the murky depths to find him. Everything seems to be happening simultaneously. Out of the black muck, Thomas flings himself, like a spawning salmon, almost into my face, and I grab the air for the wriggling, clawing, inky, unrecognizable life form. He’s not just wet from liquid, as he might be if caught in a wine spill – he’s coated in blue-black grape skins, soaked so that the bits stick to his bones and scrawny body, his entire head, inner ears, nose, tail, legs – everything – thickly masked. The horror!

My mind thinks only of saving Thomas, of getting him to the kitchen sink to free him of this shell of must and alcohol. I blast on the water, trying to adjust the warmth, while holding him in place and checking to make sure he’s not choking or going into shock. He’s disturbingly still and quiet as I douse his skinny body. I realize as the muck washes into the drain – stems, seeds, skins – that I need to soak his head, too, which he takes without protest, trusting my hands.

When his orangey color finally emerges under the faucet, and I see him starting to shiver, I pull him to me, still sopping, and shuttle him to the bathroom to swaddle him in a red bath sheet. He’s brave, and doesn’t bite, yowl, or fidget. He just looks up at me, puzzled, trembling from the chill.

I hold him like a baby, both of us in trauma, as I call Anthony who just finished work. I reassure him, and perhaps myself, about Thomas and the wine, though I survey the room and the fallout with dismay.

It’s a crime scene. Red coagulated spatters of juice leak down most of the sliding glass door next to Bin 1. There’s a dense trail of it from the living room all the way to the kitchen on the blonde wood floors and streaks flung onto the cabinets. Random purple speckles stain the white stucco walls, even 10 feet away from the immediate vicinity. As Thomas licks at his clumpy fur, I mop up the mess and restore order.

As for the zinfandel, we wonder what character Thomas will impart. A certain je ne sais quois that will mark vintage 2006.

2006-09-29T23:40:00.000-07:00

We brought our science project inside. The nights have cooled considerably, dropping into the 40s. The energy of fermentation defies the weather to some extent; our grape juice has held around the mid 60 degree mark.

The goal is for the sugar levels to drop to slightly below zero (from their original highs of almost 30). If this fails to occur, fermentation “sticks”, and will require the addition of a new strain of yeast to kick-start, then finish off, fermentation.

We’re in the home stretch – around 5 brix. But 3 factors worry us:

(1) The BM45 Brunello yeast we added to the grapes to attack the sugars operates at 64 degrees or above – fermentation subsides otherwise. We’re riding the line, it seems, keeping the bins outdoors.
(2) Our nightly monitoring of brix levels indicates sluggishness in the sugars’ march toward elimination. Last night, we recorded just 1.5 degrees of change, half as much as the prior readings.

(3) Another kink: we plan to press in 3 days. This corresponds to Anthony’s day off and my last day before a business trip. But we can’t press with sugars still present.

We decided to bring the bins into the living room to provide warmer, predictable shelter. The cats certainly found this intriguing, sniffing where the lids snap on, and discovering new cliffs for pouncing.

To rally the fermentation further, we employed a trick. We bought an aquarium lamp to submerge, bin by bin, in the juice. As we prep dinner or watch a movie, we’ll pause to shift the lamp’s position within and between the bins, using barbecue tongs. Healthier bubbling already suggests the effort might pay off.

2006-09-28T23:53:00.000-07:00

Signs of Autumn in Wine County:

The mythic quinces dislodge themselves from the hardy stump near where I park my Jeep. I collect them for a planned Moroccan lamb stew. Rubbing off their blonde, dusty fuzz reveals a lemon-like membrane, and under that a subtle rose flesh that only blushes after patient roasting or braising.

The chorus from the black and white speckled birds invisible in the tip-tops of the redwood trees hits crescendo levels. Callers hear the din through the earpiece and wonder where my jungle is.

The pink naked ladies queued up along the driveway wither, keel over, and disappear for the cold weather months, covertly plotting a glorious prance for next summer.

Sluggish dwarf tractors occasionally drone by. They knot traffic on our street, which normally offers swift passage between rural arteries. These not-so-state-of-the-art machines are needed between vineyards and stubbornly insist on the right of way. With no shoulders for passing, they teach drivers endurance (and possibly respect).

Meanwhile, the corn maze along the highway rivets with its “how high?” sign. Answer: 10 feet!

There’s an indelible stain on the insides of my thumbs and fingers as though I varnished wood; actually, it’s from prying walnuts’ green casings to dislodge the nuts and dry them in a bushel barrel in the living room. They’re a tad early this year; I’d heard the late rains might damage the crop. My task is to beat the voracious crows to the fallen bounty beneath the trees in back. Often, I’m too late and I find punched-out shells littering the ground while the crows taunt me from a safe vantage point.

Anthony’s hands, this year, look more stained than mine. He’s been helping Jon with his crops of grapes. The viognier skins, after a few hours pressing, turned his palms dark. He tries to hide his dirty nails at work, though I suspect he’d be proud to explain them.

And of course the leaves begin to morph to reds and golds – mostly, in this region, those in the vineyards. The patchwork of leaf hues between fields seems impossible. They hop some fence lines and dirt paths, but not others, and hillsides don’t match their floors. Is it due to different varietals, soils, or a minute shift in the sun’s angle between microclimates?

Summer shouldn’t have left so soon…and yet these teasing tastes of Fall soothe the regret.

2006-09-26T08:37:00.000-07:00

Fermentation Update:

Living in Sonoma County has allowed intimate snapshots of Crush. We might luck upon a winery in action, and watch a bladder press squeeze purple rain out its belly. At Navarro Vineyards in Andersen Valley, they let us sip a wine glass of this first run juice -- ruddy, hazy, and wincingly acidic. We've donned plastic gloves running past our elbows, as though about to birth a calf, and plunged them into massive bins of fermenting grapes. It demonstrated extreme internal temperature variations between the chilly newly pressed mash and the warm batch just a few days more rested.

Tracking and living the maturation process is completely new. It rewards because development unfolds daily, strikingly. While photos offer the only proof that our new kitten doubled, then tripled, in size after a couple of months, the grapes can't hide their flux.

Ours began as heavy berries, densely packed in plump clusters. No doubt they were shocked at the rough treatment they received after picking, when their stems were yanked away mechanically, haphazardly and imperfectly leaving bits of stem and leaf. They were still mostly identifiable as grapes, not juice. After the shock of the day, they slept, exhausted, pressing in on themselves. Later, at the first punch downs, the raft of pulpy fruit floated atop an ever-accumulating pool of liquid.

Temperatures in our bins have stayed fairly steady and warm. But the drama lies in the brix levels. We need the sugars to disappear, for the yeast to consume them. In 5 days they've gone from about 30 brix to last night's dip to 11-12, a slide of about 3-4 degrees per day.

Telltale foam also captures the wonders of fermentation. The first couple of days of punch down yields some gurgling, much like a baby's lazy dribbles. And then, as the grapes start to surrender their precious juice, the suds kick in, a vibrant magenta bath.

The bins look almost rabid with froth, as the puncher sloshes what's left of the solids. They're now so laden with juice that it's easy to whip up the cap, and care must be taken to avoid spashing the ink overboard (though there's some nobility to this stain on one's jeans or sneakers).

The yeast's sugar feast has calmed considerably, the salivation subsiding and subtle. We don't know yet when it'll be time for the next phase -- pressing. But the oak barrel we just moved onto the terra cotta tile in the entryway, an upgrade from the plastic, awaits.

2006-09-23T23:25:00.001-07:00

My mom’s arm was almost amputated because of a bee. When she was 3, her arm ballooned from her wrist to her shoulder. They chose to cut into her to drain the blood before the poison spread to her heart or brain. It worked, but my mom still lives with 3 scars down her arm. She hasn’t been bitten since.

I inherited a fraction of my mom’s susceptibility. A histamine reaction, meaning that I swell up and bruise dramatically.

Bees periodically remind me of their hold over me. It started when I was a toddler in Toronto, during a family vacation. When I call to mind this trip, my memory only encompasses the handful of photos from a creaky green mottled album: my aunt and cousin Howard at a picnic table; my sister pointing at Canadian geese, awestruck; my mom holding me by a Shamu stroller; a zoomed-in photo of me on an aerial tram.

In this last one, I’m squinting and somber in a chestnut brown and white checkered dress. A dark ring encircles my left eye like that dog in Little Rascals. The whole photo seems cast in sepia, as though the bee's venom leaked over the whole day. Apparently, the incident closed out our trip; there’s a subsequent photo of me in pigtails and a fuzzy pink sweater smelling a gigantic crimson rose on a bush along our driveway in Cleveland, sweet but for my black eye.

There were a couple of traumatic and nauseating extractions of stingers by tweezers from the bottoms of my feet. A consequence of running around our swath of lawn barefoot to access a plastic wading pool, oblivious to the hundreds of dandelions and their attendant bees. No swelling, though, when one endures a tonging.

In college, when I worked the mobile lemonade stand along the busiest part of Bruin Walk near the student store, an itch drew me to crush a yellow jacket into my ankle with my shoe. My foot bulged so that I couldn’t wear anything but flip flops for several days. The emergency room doctor prescribed OTC antihistamine, ignoring my hysteria.

This past spring, while touring some gardens, a bee flew up my skirt and understandably panicked. I made a beeline (ha) for the restroom which thankfully was deserted so that I could verify in the mirror a bright red sting on my rump. Two days later, the venom inside turned hard and seeped into most of my right cheek. Though I'm long healed, I still sit atop the appended pillow when at my desk chair.

July 4th marks the most recent encounter, when I prepped my first South Carolina pulled pork. At the appointed hour, I reached under the grill to twist on the propane. A sharp jolt tossed back my hand, an apparent electrical charge -- or so I thought until a couple of irate yellow jackets crisscrossed the vicinity. I peeked under the grill overhang, and discovered a busy hive just above the crank for the propane. After cursing the creatures, blasting them with inadequate dregs from a can of hornet spray, and bravely diving in to turn on the tank, the propane can proved empty and the hour too late on a holiday for a refill. I salvaged the night by hauling my 5 pounds of pork butt and bloated hand to the out-of-town neighbors’ grill.

My mom says she doesn't fear bees; in fact, the bottle brush in her yard breed them, and you can't sit on her patio in the summer without hearing their faint buzzing underneath the breeze. Perhaps respect fits better. They co-exist.

2006-09-22T23:47:00.001-07:00

It's almost midnight. Anthony stands at the counter with 3 ramekins, divying tartaric acid and nutrients which will be incorporated into the 3 bins of grapes.

We got a late start because I underestimated the prep time for my dinner of salmon steamed atop an heirloom tomato and sweet pepper stew. And then the neighbors called us for an ice cream run to Screaming Mimi's; impossible to pass on homemade strawberry and galaxy chocolate chip scoops.

The sugar level (brix) of our grapes is higher than we'd like, so some corrections need to be made or else fermentation will stall because excess alcohol will kill the yeast. After 2 days of calculations and debate, Anthony determined that 1 gallon of water should be added to each bin to reduce the brix and reach a reasonable potential alcohol level.

Fortunately, he's handling the algebra. My chief duty is punch down. I cover the AM and afternoon shifts. Like clockwork, at 10AM and 4PM, I rinse off the mammoth metal tool that resembles a potato masher and press it through the dense must of seeds, stems, and skins that rises to the top. Sweeping it through the grapes to tumble them draws in air and encourages a purple froth to swell up through the mishmash. Day by day when I uncover the bins, there's a thicker mass of seeds and stem remnants jacketing the juice below.

Anthony calls out initial temperatures and brix levels and I jot them down: Bin 1, 76 degrees and 26.2 brix; Bin 2, 76 degrees and 26 brix; Bin 3, 75 degrees and 26.2 brix. He'll input all this data into a spreadsheet later.

There's quite a lot of tension as he adds the carefully allocated water, nutrients, and acid. Thomas, the orphaned kitten we found living behind our barbecue, relentlessly climbs the screen door facing our patio crush pad, putting more strain on our nerves. What will happen to the sugar levels?

Magically, brix drops within minutes of the prior readings, plummetting to 22.8. I hear a sigh outside, but don't know if it's from relief or worry.

Turns out Anthony had hoped to shave it by 3 degrees, so we appear to be on track again.

2006-09-20T22:09:00.000-07:00

One summer afternoon a couple of years ago, I slid a chair into the sunlight filtering in through the sliding glass door of the living room -- a better spot to work that particular day. While typing away on my laptop, I noted a single bee a couple of inches outside the screen, hovering at about my seated eye level.

This wasn't the usual brown and yellow honeybee variety. It was one of those mini bees, darker in color and less angular and technical looking. I've noticed this type of bee before. It always seems to float in some random spot mid-air rather than absorb itself with the task of robbing nectar from flowers like its compadres. These bees have the habit of facing forward, aiming straight at me, and bob languidly, vertically.

This particular one behaved the same way. I felt its eyeballs on me (dozens of them I supposed). It seemed a little heavy for its size, so that when it swayed, it bounced back and forth sloppily, like a marshmallow stuck to the end of a pipecleaner. Sometimes it appeared almost motionless; then it would shoot up or down about a foot, always tracking along my silhouette, and always oriented toward me, observing.

This sounds odd, but it stayed there in front of the glass, in front of me, for over 2 hours, and maybe 3, though I almost doubt that could have happened when I reflect back. It never landed on the screen, and never turned its body sideways. It crossed my mind that it was monitoring me, feeding calculations to a mother bee elsewhere, or to the government. Even so, I somehow felt comfortable with that thought, a willing participant in its grand data-gathering plan.

I kept working, and there were short spurts where it did seem to disappear from view, but whenever I looked for it again that day, there it was.

Individual data bees periodically return for updates when I'm out and about, though they never stay long; I suppose I've been tapped, much like ancient zinfandel vines that eventually lose steam, having already given away their bounty to generations. But I smile when occasionally I see someone else get that strange sensation that they're being watched and shoo away a tiny, nosy, out of place bee.

2006-09-18T23:08:00.000-07:00

So why the name Two Bees for our wine? Grapes require little to no pollination from bees; wind does the job. And usually it's the greedy yellow jackets rather than the gentle, well-meaning bees that show up during harvest time, attracted by the sweet scent of mass quantities of sticky, juicy grapes.

We sing the praises of bees nonetheless:

They symbolize productivity, cooperation, organization.

They've been associated with gods and royalty since the ancient Egyptians.

They fly with purpose, take time to smell the flowers, create buzz.

Working together, bees transform one natural product into another, resulting in something wonderfully delicious and complex that others gather and enjoy. Likewise, we Two Bees hope to make a honey of a wine!

2006-09-18T09:50:00.001-07:00

Harvest! It’s 2 days later than expected, but the grapes are in – 500 pounds of them, spread across 5 bins along the back of the patio.

It’s 10:30PM, and Anthony’s winemaking day started 12 hours ago. He took off from work to help Jon cleanse his macro bins, lids, and all pieces of the de-stemmer-crusher, and then to await the arrival of the grapes.

Luigi, the grower, delivered them at 2PM – 3 tons all together. Luigi is tall, grey-haired and beared, his hands rough, a man of the land. Anthony told him that he hopes to make him proud; Luigi wished him likewise on behalf of his grapes.

Our batch was the last to be processed. Anthony stood atop an improvised ladder, stabbing clumps of grapes with a pitchfork and heaving them into the raspy, screechy machine. As it spit out the stems to one side and plunged the purple berries straight down into a plastic bin, I dipped a finger in the accumulating juice and sampled one bruised grape. Sweet, intense nectar, delicious and drinkable right now. Can’t wait for daylight to see how they look as they await the fermenting process.

We celebrated after dark (and before the bins were trucked to our patio) with champagne and a Cote Rotie, a precious last bottle from a stash Barbara and Jon carried back right before September 11th. The women folk cooked: an Alsatian tart with gruyere cheese and smoked ham, a salad with figs and proscuitto, and chicken mole with brown rice and zucchini. The guys needed it more than we did, but we all revived with laughter and stories of our nerdy teen years (we'll keep this anonymous: our foursome includes a classroom's designated AV guy always in charge of the projector and tech issues, such as they were back then; a girl whose mom sewed her clothes, buying Gloria Vanderbuilts to get the signature correct on her copycat jeans, then returning the store-bought pair; a guy whose dad crew-cut his hair and who played soccer when it wasn't a cool sport; a girl whose mom drew all the boys' looks when they'd drive around).

Yeah, just look at us now!

2006-09-13T10:02:00.000-07:00

White plastic bins, buckets, and lids fill up our entire spare bedroom floor area. Crush is supposed to happen in 3 days – at least our crush, a 500 pound batch of Alexander Valley Zinfandel grapes. The plan is to de-stem and crush them with a borrowed contraption, into the bins. Anthony spent his day off sanitizing the containers with soda ash, citric acid, a power washer, and large scrub brush. I worried about whether these powders would wash into the surrounding flowers, but so far things are still in bloom. His hands, though, suffered; the abrasives rubbed some of his skin raw before I could insist he don latex gloves plus a hat to shade him from the 90+ degree heat (a mini heat wave in September).

This is my 9th year in Wine Country, but my 1st making wine. Hard to believe that soon we’ll have a barrel aging in our living room, and 12 1/2 cases of homemade wine!