Very cool. For those of you who like big bottles, you might enjoy these photos of our large formats from the 2002 vintage. The bottles were etched and then handpainted by Bergin Glass Impressions. If you are interested in purchasing these bottles, contact us.

Cary:
We are pressing the two tanks of butterdragon today. One tank is in the press now. The lots will be kept as two lots.
Will go to barrels.in a few days. ML in barrel.
The wines look great

Cary:
Tank 9 baconbrook. Dark dark dark. Dry deep rich. Not too tannic but round been dry for a few days. Will leave on skins.
Very nice
OT3 butterdragon
OT13
Exotic spices. Dry dark clean deep flavors May press one tank and keep the other on the skins a bit.

Cary:
All tanks are almost dry
Look / taste great

Cary Gott has been using his Blackberry this season to keep me updated with brief messages. I’ll post of few of his reports here. We start off on Thursday, October 13. The grapes from both vineyards were harvested the week prior and Cary is reporting on fermentation progress:
All ferms in opentops are up to temp 83 and smelling good. Sugars are dropping properly.

Another growing season draws to a close. We harvested Butterdragon Hill today. Baconbrook was harvested on Monday.

It’s amazing how much energy and worry can go in to having grapes on the vine. Until 2000 when we planted a vineyard, I never worried about the weather beyond wondering whether I should carry an umbrella or not. But what a season! Five years, and I’m still waiting for a “normal” growing season. If you follow these sorts of things, you may remember that the weather in Northern California during the Spring and Summer of 2005 was anything but normal. Typically, our rainy season lasts from sometime in November to March or so. Not the case this year. We got a significant amount of rain in to June!

So how did it all go?

The extra rain thru an extended rainy season meant high farming costs. We had to deal with extreme vine growth and vigor. Vineyard management was a challenge as we tried to take advantage of the natural moisture in the soil (more desirable than irrigation) while avoiding growing simple, fat, watery berries or just a jungle of leaves. It seems we were successful. Although the crops were quite large, complex flavors developed slowly over the long, mild growing season. We’re quite excited about our 2005 vintage.
I’ll post final numbers on this harvest as soon as possible.