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2012 Harvest is Here!
After five years of planning, planting, pruning, tying and netting, harvesting, punching down, tasting, and fretting, they’re here!
2010 Enfold Anita’s Blend
Our 2010 Enfold Anita’s Blend and Jazzin’ Zinfandel Blend Estate wines were bottled September 18, 2012, and are ready for your order. Most of you havefollowed our story from the birth of these babies and we hope you’ll partake of their debut. They are only available through select restaurants and our Wine Club.
We invite you to purchase a case of our wine. We’d love to have your business and Enfold would go great with your Thanksgiving dinner!
Please go to the Wine Club tab on this website and put in your name, address, phone and email. The cost is $275 per case including tax and shipping within California—what a deal! (Shipping is $20 more outside CA.) Enfold will be shipped this year in early November, after it has had its two-month post-bottling rest.
Last week our professional picking team picked our Syrah. It was at 25 Brix and is tasting delicious.Yesterday, with the help of nephew Andrew and our faithful pal Leahandah, we picked our second leaf (our youngster vines) Mourvedre and Grenache, both at 24 Brix and yummy. We’ll pick our Zinfandel and Cabernet Sauvignon in two weeks during our Second Annual Lucy Stomp. The guests of honor for this year’s Stomp are some of Joseph’s high school buddies from St. Peter’s Boys High School in Staten Island, New York City. Find your bandana and stomping shorts and join us on Monday, October 15!
SUMMERTIME, SUMMERTIME SWEET, SWEET SUMMERTIME
Greetings, it has been a while!
In April we planted another acre with 950 vines, all Rhone varietals from the ENTAV: Etablissement National Technique pour l’Amelioration de la Viticulture (French National Technical Center for the Improvement of Viticulture (www.entav.com). The clones are all grafted onto 1103P rootstock and include 350 Mourvedre (369 clone), 300 Syrah (470 clone) and 300 Grenache (362 clone).
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These additions will offer us even more blending opportunities and results. For example, in a year where one of the clones produces an extraordinary vintage we might bottle that wine as a single varietal.
On August 1, we finished “racking” (see The Oxford Companion To Wine, 3rd Ed., p. 560), tasted and blended our 2010 vintage. We produced two wines: Anita’s Blend and Zinfandel Blend. The blends will barrel until at least January 2012. Maybe longer. We will bottle the wine, lay it down for three months, and ship to our wine club members the first week of November. Please click here [OUR WINES] to learn more about the 2010 Anita’s Blend and the 2010 Zinfandel Blend.
To receive your first shipment in time for the 2012 holidays please click here [WINE CLUB] and then fill in the blanks. The first shipment will be 6 or 12 bottles and we expect its cost to be between $160 – $295. With a club membership we will offer a discount of up to 20% on future purchases of our 2010 selections.
Please send me the email addresses of any friends you think might be interested in our vines and our wines. We need 100 members. We will send them an invitation to read our blogs and become a subscriber. We will not add them to our mailing list without their consent. We do not sell or trade email information. Additionally, members will be invited to attend the First Annual Lucy Stomp, October 19th. Yes, like Lucy, we will stomp those grapes (Cabernet Sauvignon) and each stomper will receive some fruits of their labor. We will have an aprs-stomp lunch at Thomas Hill Organics. Harvest and Crush run from mid September to mid November, a very busy time. Members are welcome to join in the festivities! Call us at 805.239.2856 and we will arrange a way for you to participate.
ps. This year's fruit looks GRAND!!
“Salute la Famiglia,”
Anita Speciale Joseph D’Alessio
Pruning Vines for the Winter
Why Trim?
Trimming is important because it stimulates growth of the vines and product. You want to remove buds that suffer freeze damage. Also, too many grape bearing vines will weigh the main vine down and cause it to break. Too much weight on the vines might also cause the wire to break or drop, which would result in loss of product in the long term and create more work replacing wires the next season.
When to Trim
According to Curtis Smith from the agriculture extension of New Mexico State University, some people trim in autumn, but this could lead to freeze damage because the trimming will stimulate growth and if there is a late autumn warm-up the newly formed buds will die. It’s important to leave them unpruned through early winter to protect the plants through the natural process of apical dominance. Apical dominance means that the buds at the ends of the vines have priority of growth, so if they start to form buds and then freeze, trimming them off will stimulate growth on the younger buds that grow at the top of the vines (Smith). The trimming should be completed before spring and especially before the last few frosts. Waiting too long to trim will leave you more susceptible to damaging buds. Also, it is important to trim after the first frost, but don’t trim if the temperature is way below zero because this will also damage the plant.
