Weeks 10-11
February 29, 2004 to March 13, 2004 

	Tuesday March, 2 2004
	The Wine Road Barrel tasting is this weekend. We may have 2000 people come in to taste our 2003 barrel samples. I love these wines, partly because they are so different from each other. Fruit, tannin, structure, they have everything. I had to upgrade my Audio, and Video barrel room, into a state of the art movie room. We will be showing many of the best rock videos made within the last few years. I did mention I have bought some B&W 801s, but now I have bought a new projector. This projector, an Optoma H76, has just been released and has been getting some great reviews. The picture will be much brighter than before, with great vivid colors. My side subwoofer is out for an upgrade, for a short time, so I had to buy a new one. WOW what a difference. If you like bass, you will love the new setup. Since I had all this new stuff, I had to get the new Momitsu V880 DVD player with a DVI output (Hopefully here tomorrow). Yes I did get a 50 ft DVI cable to produce the sharpest picture. Boy what fun!!  Some of you may be wondering what has come of my eyes. I had laser on my eyes and surgery on my eye lids. I can see much better with little glare after the laser treatment and little darkness after the eye lid treatment. Each has been a great improvement in the ability to see the world through eyes. Of course we have many other senses to help us appreciate our planet.  I must announce that we are participating in the Dry Creek Valley Passport event again. This great event is held on the last week end of April. We do have several tickets available for sale at $85 for the whole weekend or $45 for Sunday. We must have a commitment by tomorrow evening. 707-433-9715  Brad, our web designer has to go away on vacation on the first of April, so we will be offering our 2004 Pre-Harvest Futures a few days earlier this year. I will have more to say about this next time.  Thursday March, 11 2004  Pat and I are still trying to recover from a great weekend. The Russian River Barrel Tasting event was held. We had by far the best event we have encountered. The audio/video sound was the best I have experienced and our sales were up over 25%. For me, it will be hard to conceive topping the quality of these 2003 barrel samples, but again I did not think I could top the 2001 and again the 2002. Every year is different so it is now time to think about 2004 Futures. For those of you who say WHAT? I say This is my tradition. I will offer 2004 wines which will not be produced until this September and will not be bottled until July of 2005. These 2004 Pre Harvest Futures initially will again be priced below retailers prices. Retailers purchase Red wine at between $14 and $15 a bottle and sell the wines for $18 to 22.  Yes, I will be offering our red wines at a starting price of $12.50 a bottle. As I have said before, when I purchase grapes from other growers, it does cost me more than producing it myself. So I will offer the petite sirah and cabernet for $14. My Aca Modot and Block 4 will be offered at a lower price for the third year in a row. It only costs me a small amount more to produce these grapes, but the yield is very low in each of the vineyard areas that produce the Aca Modot and Block 4, so I will offer these two wines for $15. In all you will not find better prices in this area. I am fair and will not charge more than I need too. I love what I am doing. Next time I will have more details on the 2004 Futures offer. Saturday March, 13 2004  We have bud break! Only seven days ago this vineyard looked like Winter was still here. Now we see green all around us. This is the fastest I have seen these vines go from dormancy to green. BUT last Saturday the high temperature reached 75 degrees. Since then the highs have been 84, 86, 86, 91, 85, 85 and 85 again today. The lows have remained in the mid 40's to low 50's. Usually most years we have a few high temperatures which creates some swelling of buds in a week. Then if we have a few more days of warm weather, usually in the 70's, the popcorn stage appears (The buds look just like popcorn kernels). Then in a few days, depending on temperatures, we can start seeing green followed by apparent leaves. Some vines this year went all the way to leaves in one week.  I am working on our Pre-Harvest order sheet. Brad is going on a vacation toward the end of the month, so he needs to work on it for the internet.
	Dave
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