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June 29, 2006
2004 Butterdragon bottled
Well, we've now done it 3 times...
Yesterday we bottled 650 cases of the 2004 Butterdragon Hill. That's 630 12 pack cases + the rest in equivalent of mags and 375's. The bottling went well. The wine was trucked over to Frank Family from Rombauer on Monday, underwent a light filtration, and the line was set up and ran quickly on Wednesday.
As those of you who had the chance to taste it out of the barrel know, the 04 is great. We are very excited about this vintage. Although we like both 02 and 03, the additional maturity of the vines makes us suspect that the 04 will be our "out-of-the-ballpark" wine.
The 2004 Butterdragon will be released next Spring. We've decided to keep the 2004 Baconbrook in the barrel longer so it won't be bottled until next January. That wine will be released in the Fall of 2007.
Posted by matchvineyards at June 29, 2006 07:07 PM
June 27, 2006
The "glamour" of Wine Country living
Ah, the glamour! They never show this stuff on the TV travelogue In Wine Country.
Our garbage collection is on Tuesday and as we mainly spend weekends up in Napa, I usually take the cans down to the main road before departing on Sunday. I decided to be lazy and rather than rolling them down through our meadow, I would load them on our little 6 x 4 John Deere "Gator." I was not dressed for farm work wearing shorts and flip-flops.
I rolled one of the cans towards the gator and looked down. A small rattlesnake, about a foot long, had been hiding under the can. So much for rattlers avoiding humans! This one was hanging out 10 feet from our front door. Fortunately, he seemed as determined to get away from me as I was of him. I ran to the shed and grabbed a spade and (voila!) I had dispatched my first rattlesnake. It was a youngster, with just two sections on his rattle, but he was definitely striking at the spade. I learned later that the babies are more dangerous because they tend to inject a full load of toxins when striking while adults may not release poison at all.
It was with just a little bit of swagger that I called and told my son that I had killed a rattlesnake. (The rattler may have grown in length and ferocity in the telling.)
What is really weird about this encounter with the wild is just a few hours before, as I was moving some wine around my wine storage room, I noticed that I had apparently stepped on (and killed) a scorpion.
I think it may be time to sell it all and give up this glitzy life.
Posted by matchvineyards at June 27, 2006 07:09 PM
