July 19 - August 1, 2015

	Sunday July 19, 2015 We are off tomorrow to San Diego until next Monday, one week. We are off to see a Giants game against the Padres. It should be fun but Pat thinks I drive too fast in My Model S..........It will be hard to please her........... I have been tasting wines that were bottled 7 days ago. Tonight I only tasted 2014 wines even though some of you know I have all the 2013 wines open at the same time. So since we are leaving for a week tomorrow, I had to combine many 2013 I had tried over the last week. I put the still nice wine in to bottles that were topped off to the top. We have the right to top off barrels with these wines. so tonight I wanted to taste the 2014 wines again, they are fine after one week. It could be a great vintage............. Monday July 27, 2015 I have a new toy and I will have fun. I received my Apple Watch today and it took me a long time to set it up so we will see. I will report more tomorrow........... we are harvesting.......long story but I will make it short............. I guess I should say we are home after having fun in my Model S for over 2,000 miles. As I have said we were down in San Diego,  I liked the Gas Lamp were we stayed and maybe we will be back for another sunburned day like last Wednesday when we saw the Giants win............ Tomorrow we will do the first stage of Harvest. We could have done some Sparkling last week but I was away SO on Wednesday........I digress Yes tomorrow, we will harvest 1.5 tons of 6th zin, young vines to thin it out. And then into the Petite Sirah which are only 10 years old and as young things are, I remember being 10.................I digress.......That wine will go into my big experiment which I have talked about before..............more tomorrow...........tomorrow is another day and I am ready.......... Tuesday July 28, 2015 10:00 Pm: ...... I have tried for years to make what I did wrong before. years ago I made a big disturbance. I have made big disturbances before and this was one of my most. Back in I guess 1980 or before, it has been a long time, I made a disturbance in Modesto at Pat's parents place. There was someone there I did not respect. He owed me some money..........long story so I confronted him and made everyone upset.............I regret it to this day............I digress..........I am a complicated person and Harvest is here so it will be a challenge........I love challenges................ Today we had fun but it was complicated as I hoped. We harvested three bins of fruit, about 1.3 tons I guess........I did weight so I will look at it tomorrow, but the bottom line is we got 18% sugar, enough for 4 barrels of wine SOoooooooooo we have a start!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! OK hear............ We took in Petite Sirah and the Rai Zin section in Block 6, young vines both.............so way in the past this is fruit that would be dropped on the dirt and was lost in a week or so SOOOOOO we harvested in three bins this left over, thinned fruit SO we can harvest better fruit later in the year to make our RAi Zin and Petite Sirah. These young vines want to produce a lot of fruit. The old vines are happy this year and have a reasonably low crop. These young vines need to have a balance of less fruit. I love this challenge, that is what I am about................ So we have in three bins, fruit with a ph of 2.9 and a ta of well over 11 so very high acid. Friday we will add, 2010 wines with 16 alcohol and 2014 left over barrels with over 15 alcohol, long story but I am aiming for a wine to be about 13.5 alcohol but the problem will be balance?????????????? Do we have too much acid............tomorrow will be fun: Pinot for sparkling!!!  Wednesday July 29, 2015 I forgot to mention we are experiencing a big heat wave, with lows in the 50's and highs up to 105 degrees. A 50 point range is not unusual around my property, down the valley near Healdsburg it could be 5 degrees lower and in Russian River we probably see 40 point ranges, meaning a high 90 or so and a low of 55 or so, depending about fog which could keep the low up a little. , That is why I am happy here. I have been around now here for 37 seasons I think. I know this vineyard and this is a special place,................ So I am saying we had a high yesterday of 105 and today of 105. We had a low of 54.6 and a high of 104.8 today. What does this mean? We will be harvesting Pinot Noir at 25+ sugar next week, no one can say that. So I will also say maybe we will be the first to make wine from Red grapes in the North Coast, I am so excited. I love what I do..............  I am heading to Millbrae to see my Mother tomorrow. It will be a short visit and it will be the last place I go more than 30 miles until October 24.................. We harvested Pinot for Sparkling today and it went well. I will have more to say on Friday when my new electric forklift will be here...................... Thursday July 30, 2015 I am back from a visit to see my Mother's heart doctor. It was a 210 mile drive there and back and I still had 16 miles left showing on my Model S.  I have asked Tesla whether I could change to a larger battery so we will see what they say. I want to explain in more detail what we did on Tuesday, July 28.......... I got back from our visit down to family and San Diego on Monday afternoon. I talked to everyone when we arrived about 2pm. I had been thinking all the way home so I instructed everyone involved to set up Harvest on Tuesday. We brought in thinned Petite Sirah and thinned Zin as I said before. We have three bins fermenting now after two days and we hope to start adding 2010 wines and 4 barrels of settled wine from our recent 2014 vintage. So this will be called Dave's Cuvee.......non vintage. I am concerned if the mass does not get hot enough since the sugar is only 19%. We added 3 pounds of yeast but with such a low sugar, I am not certain it will get hot enough to ferment to dryness, when we start adding a still wine (In other words, no sugar left) to wine fermenting. what could happen: The low sugar wine fermenting could go into shock with all this alcohol, with no sugar left infusing into this mass of activity, so it could stop fermenting and I will have to deal with it. I don't know anyone who would try this, but it will be fun. Remember we harvested grapes we usually drop to the ground to thin TO let the rest of the fruit get ripe and produce better wine............so I have little to lose Friday July 31, 2015 I am having trouble to decide if I like French better than Italian.........languages are complicated for me. I only really learned English somewhat. I flunked the English test at UC Berkeley in 1961 when I was17. I was somewhat surprised but I knew I did not care about any language as long as I could speak it and have good grammar, but these hard people want you to compose a piece of paper and write something that was not important at this time when I was 17 so I had to take Bone Head English as we were told.  I met Joe again at that time. He was from Bolivia and had trouble with the English Language, but he had an excuse:::::::::He did not grow up in the USA. I did, so I was fascinated with him if as you know I mentioned before.......look it up on our search, about Joe........... I digress..........There has, so many things happen today and none about the Market so it was different. I always watch my stocks at all times, even in Long Beach, another story. So today was special At 8:15 I got a call so I answered the phone down in the office. I was told this nice guy was at my front gate. Catarino ran up and I opened the gate. Wow what a fun time ! ! ! ! Josh came in right after that and jumped right on the forklift. He was familiar at his last winery which had one of these great..............all.........electric..........forklift. All this great time we still had to deal with our now fermentation.......... OK so the experiment is still going on and I am more confident it may succeed. So we have 19% sugar grapes fermenting at was high acid but today after three days the acid has come down and we have put 21 cases of 2010 wine into the fermentation. What has concerned me is the temperature is on 70 degrees SO we lived with lower temperature and thus less activity, but I decided to add a few case of 2010 wine and then a few hours later, up to 21 cases. This wine is still low in alcohol at maybe 3% and thus we have time, especially with such a low temperature. Tomorrow we will add many more cases, probably 30 and see what happens.................... By Tuesday we will rack off the skins and put into barrels to finish fermentation...........I want to rack at 8-10% sugar which will give us good color already,.........long story........ We should have about 10 barrels of this new, experimented wine. I want to sell this experiment wine at a very low price but Pat says I would ruin my Coffaro brand. I do not agree and I will not make up a second label...............   Saturday August 1, 2015 8:45 Pm: Cory my male Kittie was out with me just now and it is still a little light. We were harassed by the barking dog but we went back to enjoy:......... Cory, Fancy Feast.......... and me on the computer and reading my book later,.after the Giants game so I still have things to do. So now I can write about my life again. This diary is about me mostly so I can document these things for the future, who knows. I do not read back what I say except..............just after I publish so it usually takes me about 10 minutes to correct what is up before. I  See I make mistakes. Usually these mistakes are small and just grammatical, but some times when I make a mistake........it could be interpreted in a different way than I intended So I do go back like even tonight and read over many times.........sure maybe I will miss something but I do my best.,,, The fermentation, of course is keeping me loving what I do............. Today was another complicated day. We added much more wine to the experiment. We now have about 8% sugar so we will have to press Monday. I am concerned that when the sugar level drops below 5 the low temperature will drop even more. It is interesting for me to make a fermentation of red wine at a low of 73, yes the temp has gone up from 68 to 73 in three days BUT all my other red grape fermentations in 37 years have gotten up to 85 or even 95 So this is new and a challenge.
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	For any comments or questions I encourage any of you to e-mail.....david@coffaro.com Dave
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