Now that they’ve sanitized everything in sight, the 2009 Harvest Interns are ready for the real thing. We’re getting the first grapes today to make the base wine for a client’s fabulous sparkler, and thanks to the interns, the place is glistening.
Interns Emilee Coomes, Bret Jenkins, and David DeLuca are all transplants from The [...]
Archive for the ‘Winemaking’ Category
The 2009 Harvest Interns Hard at Work
Posted in Vineyards, Winemaking, Wineries, tagged harvest, intern, macrostie, winery on August 31, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
The Slow Degrees of Perfection
Posted in Vineyards, Winemaking, Wineries, tagged carneros, grapes, harvest, macrostie, sonoma, wildcat mountain, wine country, Winemaking, winery on August 28, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
“Perfection is attained by slow degrees; it requires the hand of time.” – Voltaire
As we approach harvest and the rocky stretch above San Francisco starts to hum with anticipation, time seems to speed up dramatically. The last week of August is that crucial time when these slow degrees of perfection come into play. The grapes [...]
2008 Harvest
Posted in Winemaking on October 9, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
MacRostie Harvest 2008—The Roller Coaster
Some harvests are remembered for heat, some for cold, and some for rain, but this year we got all three—in rapid succession. It’s been a wild ride, but I think we’ve come to the end of it with some pretty thrilling wines. We started, as usual, with Pinot Noir, which is [...]
Barrel to Tank
Posted in Winemaking on July 31, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
July 30, 2008
Our bulldogs don’t bite. They don’t even bark. What they do is allow us to get wine cleanly out of barrels with out exposing it to oxygen. In this picture, Bernie is using one of our four “pups” to transfer the barrels I designated for the 2007 Carneros Pinot Noir into tank. This [...]
Veraison
Posted in Winemaking on July 29, 2008 | Comments Off
July 22, 2008
Veraison is the word of the day. I stopped by the Beau Terroir vineyard on my way to the winery this morning, and saw, finally, some berries starting to turn pink. This Pinot Noir block is usually our first to ripen, so I expect to see color here before Wildcat (which was still [...]
Bottling
Posted in Winemaking on July 29, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
June 9, 2008
Bottling of the 2007 Carneros Chardonnay is going well; we’ve been averaging 2200 cases a day, so we should be done a couple of days earlier than planned. After that, we turn our attention back to red wine. Sometime next week I’ll take a look at the Merlot, Syrah, and Cabernet and decide [...]
Carneros Chardonnay
Posted in Winemaking on July 29, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
May 29, 2008
The Carneros Chardonnay was successfully blended last month, and has been “on cold” for the last three weeks, during part of which I was on vacation. After adding some bentonite (a fining agent, a type of clay) to help the wine settle clear, we chill it down to around 30°F and hold it [...]
Bulldog Pups
Posted in Winemaking on July 29, 2008 | Comments Off
April 25, 2008
With the red wines assembled last month, our attention this month has turned to the 2007 Chardonnay blends. After looking at many different combinations over the course of several weeks, we’ve settled on a blend of four clonal blocks for the Wildcat Chardonnay. From the older (1998) section, we’ve included the Wente, with [...]
The First Blog
Posted in Winemaking on July 29, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
March 14, 2008
This is my first entry in what I plan to make a regular feature here on our website, a running commentary on what is happening throughout the year in the winemaking process here at MacRostie. Stay tuned for regular updates; they will be more frequent when more is going on, so I should [...]
