July 15 - July 28, 2018

	Saturday July 21, 2018  This has been a trip, not my trip to Italy, it was easy compared to this renovation. I work every day. I am down here on average at 6:45 Am. I get here at 6:45 because I live here. Catarino, Martha, Salvador and now Carlos are here at 6:15 Am. We are working on sparkling now.... We have wine we fermented for sparkling from the 2017 harvest. So the wine has been in the winery for the last few weeks while the construction is going on. Seriously, this winery has only been making sparkling wine for 9 years. We produced our first Pinot sparkling, labeled 2009. Matt said he put too much in to the wine so it had more carbonation than any sparkling I had tried.........so I tried to get Matt to duplicate the formula but he wanted to follow the traditional method of controlling fermentation which has less carbonation and I preferred the first Sparkling we made and it is still great with loads of tiny bubbles. Finally after a few years, Matt made a great sparkling, of course my preference, a Mourvedre. Now it is easy making wine especially sparkling. Grapes ready for harvest to have intensity should be at a sugar content of 23% or higher. I have mentioned before Bordeaux can not on a normal year bring their many varieties to full sugar. I know Bordeaux allows wineries to add sugar to there fermenters. We are not allowed in California to add sugar because we can get high sugar with our daytime highs of 90 degrees or more. The average daytime high for Bordeaux in a summer month is 79 degrees and can fall to 75 in September. So Bordeaux wineries  harvest at about 20% sugar and add additional sugar to bring the fermenters up to 23%. I know Bordeaux wines are the most popular in the world but i prefer Spanish and Italian wines where the highs for the summer can bring wines naturally to 23%. Here are a few more pictures to show the progress in the winery. Below is a picture of the side section where a French Door and Window will be. It is amazing, 10 feet high Here is just to the left of the last picture showing the opening for the new tasting room. In front will be 22 feet wide of four 10 foot high glass doors Here is the opening to the new kitchen across from the tasting area Sunday July 22, 2018 8:30 Pm: so my mind is thinking all the time. I do not get much sleep I am always thinking of the next thing. Tomorrow is another day...................what will happen? I have to worry about TSLA and what will happen tomorrow and  the next week in this remodel. it will be an adventure..................... Friday July 27, 2018 I am barely surviving, tequila and our great Aglianico helps. This has been another stressful day. yesterday was not easy either. I had to go in and drop off Pat so she could go into The City to see Giants Baseball games  SSOo I dropped her off in Santa Rosa 30 minutes away SO I went off to Costco after that and had a nice time and then I HAD to go to my eye doctor and get my eyes dilated. He is nice and now has a Tesla after asking me questions for years. he says his wife has the car and won't let him drive it.........she has never loved a car so much so he is confused: Why? I digress as usual so I had to drive home at 3pm from Healdsburg only 15 miles on the freeway........with my eyes in trouble, not seeing well So of course I put the Model S in Auto drive and made it home driving at 60 miles per hour......... Now today: I had heard yesterday the plumbers would come in today. So I got up early as usual 6:15, no plumbers!! At noon two guys showed up and after an hour they came in distressed: "How do we get the water off to the winery so we can hook up your new water heater"  Good thing I was here because I had to show them the only way I know is to turn off all the property. So I had no water in our house for several hours SO I went to Safeway to have fun purchasing everything I needed for dinners in the next few days. Pat is away so I cooked Pork belly with roast potatoes tonight and made a blue berry pie......I digress when I came home from Safeway at 4pm the plumbers were just turning on the water again. Great, right? Well someone turned off the valve to our sprinkler which is needed to wet down our empty barrels in the great  canopy. I had to move down in a hole to turn on the valve again. I know they were trying to turn off all valves they could think of but I have no idea why they would turn off this small valve off the side. I moved down to this hole and somehow turned the valve back on but in the mean time I was attacked by many blackberry vines and was in dyer straits with several cuts. I had to go up and take a shower to stop the bleeding. Before i left for Safeway I got an email from our label company and was told our labels for the 2017 10 Month wines are ready So she would bring them up next week. Of course we can't bottle until August 22 but is nice to have the labels ready So after my bleeding I went down stairs and I saw a message from N who wanted to deliver our labels at 5pm. I had told her earlier just before my shower that the gate was closed at 4pm  So after surviving and a couple of bandages, and then saw the message at 5pm that N was at my gate, sorry it was now 5:15. I felt so bad but what could I do? It was to be delivered next week so she was up here and thought she might as well take care of two things?..............Tomorrow is another day.....seriously this is part of the day.............still fun and a challenge Saturday July 28, 2018 I dislike the weekends for one reason: I am here 24 hours and waiting for input whether it will be Harvest and now this new adventure: the remodel of our winery. I know, i retired in 1972 so I never take a day off................ back in 1988 I was the managing contractor to make an addition here, 2400 sq feet  and I got things done a lot faster than this remodel .........I digress but maybe I mentioned it................. So I am here on a Saturday and if I was younger I would be doing things to help progress this remodel ............to get ready for Kate's Wedding TSLA is down so I will buy more............... NFL starts soon and I am ready for all my favorite teams.........of course Raiders  First and then 49ers because of Jose and then Seattle and then Packers. I like all those teams and I will be rooting for them.............tomorrow is another day..............................................................
	Dave For any comments or questions I encourage any of you to e-mail.....david@coffaro.com
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