Wise Acres Winery

Last night I opened a bottle of Grout Cellars 2003 Cabernet from the PMR Vineyards. This was a wine made in a panic. I had not made wine since working for Cronin Vineyards around 1990. There had been one batch I tried in 1991 in the parking structure of Byron’s and my apartment but it was crap–a total loss. By the way, coming to the decision to scrap an entire vintage of wine is a very sad but enlightening moment. Better to pour it out than to pawn it off on your friends like that first batch of beer PJ and I made (that’s another story).

So back to the Fall of 2003. Harvest is upon me and I suddenly remember that I have a basement!! I can make wine again. Oh shit! A quick email to Barcley, the response from his Crackberry learns me that the grapes are being picked the following day. I scramble to clean and sterilize vessels, rent/buy equipment, etc.

The next day I am driving my 4-runner up the rutted Mt. Eden dirt road, the back filled with plastic bins and carboys.

The Cabernet grapes were ready, I loaded them into the truck, then waited for the boys to press the Chardonnay and fill my carboys with nectar. I tried to pad and brace them as best I could, but that drive down the mountain with 15 gallons of juice in clanging glass containers was slow and sweat-filled.

Eventually I made it home, inoculated the Chardonnay and thought about how to crush the cab. I had been unsuccessful in getting a crusher and decided to just do it by hand and foot. My daughter was two-years-old and enthusiastically volunteered to help me hand de-stem the grapes. After about five minutes I realized the value of child labor. Those tiny nimble hands made short work of the grapes, and most even made it into the bin. It was getting late so she went to bed and I kept working. After de-stemming, I found that foot stomping in a five-gallon bucket was the best technique.

Back to the present, I opened a bottle of this fine hand/foot made wine with trepidation. It had never been very good, but time can change wine considerably, so I hadn’t written it off yet. Well, this is what my friends like to call a Gardner Story, lots of lead in to a rather unexciting ending: the wine is still not that good. It has a poor fruit showing and too much tartness. I added to much tartaric acid. At the time my lab numbers showed it way low, but my lab works is B- at best. So I added too much and I blew it. One interesting note is the staining of the bottle on the low side of where it rested. It is almost completely opaque.

I am not yet ready to huck (not Chuck) the batch yet, it is still a not-too-shitty light-bodied Cab to enjoy with pizza and burritos, and…it’s mine.

Chuck and I bought a crusher/stemmer a few weekends ago from a very interesting–and award winning–winemaker name Richard Watkins, from Scott’s Valley, soon to be from Paso Robles. He shared a bottle of his own Tempranillo, it was delicious. If anyone wants to buy a gorgeous house in Scott’s Valley, all set up to make wine, look him up. his cellar is amazing.