David Coffaro Vineyard and Winery

arrow August 10 - August 16, 2014

Monday August 11, 2014

Salt is another concern for me. Everything, for a few seconds, tastes better with salt (It is a trick). Margarita's even taste great with salt, but I do not put salt on my glass of Tequila. I like Tequila with lime once a week to clear out my palate. Like I have said before I taste many wines over 4 or 5 days and then I have a tequila before tasting for the 6th day. I digress.....

Salt is a necessity in small amounts...........but I try to use less......And then there is sugar, maybe not a necessary thing for health like salt but a thing we enjoy. I love meat the best.......I grave fat. I have maintained my weight for 14 years by eating fat because it is hard to eat a lot of fat. Back in the 70's Pat and I tried to eat no salt and a lot of carbohydrates but it put 70 pounds on me. I lost the 70 pounds in year 2000 in 6 months by only consuming an average of 60 carbohydrates a day. But I am thinking about trying carbos again, especially without a lot of fat and thus no red meat for two months...........It is all about counting calories SO if I consume less than 2500 calories a day I will lose weight no matter what I eat.
 
I like my life, but it is hard at times. SO My passion has to be winemaking..........Harvest is near.........
 
We did another sugar test on the Pinot Noir and got 25.2. We will do another test on Wednesday and if we get 26 we will harvest Thursday.

Tuesday August 12, 2014

I have demons like all of us. Some of us do not want to reveal them. Robin Williams did talk about his demons at times but he always looked happy so I did not research or especially know about his problem with alcohol..................he obviously had other demons............

I have never understood why someone would take their own life. I saw a movie 50 years ago and finally found it again but I have not looked at it again because I know the story. I will not reveal the movie BUT it was in purgatory and some people there were wondering why they were there AND then of course they found out they were dead...........BUT was so interesting there were several assistants to accommodate these poor lost people. It turned out the assistants were in real purgatory. They could never go to Heaven because they had taken their own life. They would never go to Heaven. I have to see Robin Williams movie about Heaven because I thought it was great. I am depressed because I loved all his movies...............

Tomorrow is another day so we have to think about Harvest...............

It has.........was a cold day around here, only 80. so we will take another sugar test in the Pinot. We will be the first winery to pick Pinot Noir for red wine. We were at 25.2 sugar yesterday and we should be at least that high tomorrow. The next day we should Harvest...........but we have time........we could wait a week and still be the first to Harvest Pinot. I am inpatient at times but I could wait. I will report the sugar tomorrow........

Wednesday August 13, 2014

Harvest is here but I will digress about cats. Sin Wit......We had a cat we called little and then we shortened it to Wit. She was the most beautiful calico cat Pat and I had fun with in Fairfax before we moved to this vineyard. We were close to her and she had her baby cats within our bed one night.......one of the cats we called Sin Wit........long story, maybe tomorrow.....

The test came in at 1pm today after a warm up to 85 degrees and we got 26 sugar and a pH of 3.4, less acid than before so we will be the first to harvest red wine grapes tomorrow....more tomorrow............

Thursday August 14, 2014

Today we harvested 2.5 tons of Pinot Noir at 26+ sugar and a PH of 3.45. We will add yeast tomorrow and the three bins will be fermenting on Saturday and Sunday during our 20th anniversary event. Of course this is actually the start of our 21st year. The Zinfandel could be ready in two weeks and our Sauvignon Blanc could be ready next week. We have pictures on Facebook.

9:30 Pm: Lou Preston told me in 1995  "Now that you have a winery people will find you even if it is after hours". He has been right many times since then. A few months ago we heard about robberies around here and so I decided to extend our fence out on the road, closer to our gate. That made no gap to walk through. The gate had been around here for about 10 years and we have still had a few so called friends come on through on the side of the gate before this extension...............even when the gate was closed, a message out at the gate said respect our privacy. Since we put the wire gate over to the gate, but of course easily cut if someone really wanted to come in here, we had no one come through to our property until tonight..............

We have a loyal customer, he is a friend of Everett's and was here from Japan................."I am sorry I came from Japan and I want to buy some of your wine". He tapped on my door on my deck. He seemed like a nice person so I opened the door. That is when he said where he was from and he was here to see me. I was ready for sparkling wine tonight..............our first day of Harvest, so when he came to the door, it was still nice, because it was an honor to have some one come from Japan to see me. Seriously this nice person had been from San Francisco to Davis and to here in one day. He arrived here at 5:30 Pm and said he did not know how far it was...........probably 5 hours of travel. I explained to him we were closed. He again said he was sorry, he spoke broken English but easy to understand.

I asked him several times "How did you get in here". The first several times he did not understand me So I pointed at the gate where his white rental car stood in back of it And asked "How did you get around the gate"?

He told me he walked over to our Neighbor two blocks up the road and asked if he could come through her area................broken English but I got the point!!!!!!
 
We will call him "O". "O" was so happy to be here so Pat and I took 45 minutes to greet "O" and two younger students from Japan. They were at a conference in San Francisco and "O" decided to head back to the first college he had attended years ago in Davis, California and then head over to his favorite winery. "O"........Pat is great, she knew who this adventurous person was. He was a great customer who had people in the states bring his wine back to Japan. He told us........he ran over here on to my deck after talking to the neighbor, about three blocks through her property on to ours and then went back to tell his colleagues who were waiting to hear back from him, and back again to the gate where I opened the gate of course and let him in. "O" was driving so he only had a small sip of sparkling wine with us to celebrate our first day of Harvest. His two younger friends had several sips and so did I. We could have spent more time together but I asked right away "when do you go back?" and he said "12 mid night". I informed him he was 2 hours away from San Francisco airport SO the three of them left at 6:30, plenty of time to get back to the airport. He did pick up 10 more bottles of wine and I sold all bottles for $12 a bottle. I just thought it was such an honor to have someone go through so much effort to see me. I know all of us will never forget this day..........

 



For any comments or questions I encourage any of you to e-mail.....david@coffaro.com

Dave


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