Last Thursday we bottled the last of our 2008 wines.  “Last” sounds like we made many wines, we only made wine from two vineyards, but it does feel good to have our 2008 vintage safely in bottles. Now we wait for the delicate Pinot to recover.  As many of you know, wine goes thru a shock when it is bottled and needs some rest to recover before it is ready to drink.

Even though the bottling process is mostly automated, contrary to our home wine bottling in the last 7 years, we still make sure we touch every single bottle and leave our prints on  it. Such are the joys of winemaking.

Take a look at the steps in pictures:

First the bottles are emptied of oxygen, filled with wine and the wine level is adjusted.

Bottling Machine

Corks are inserted and the red sleeves are put on and spun into place.

Corks inserted and bottle sleeves put on.

Next, the labeler applies our lovely label to the bottles.

Labels applied to Stomping Girl Pinot Noir

Then the bottles come off the line and are boxed by hand.

Kathryn boxing Stomping Girl Pinot

This past Sunday we participated in the annual Corona Creek Olive Harvest.  Corona Creek, in addition to it’s excellent Pinot Noir vineyard, has an olive grove.  Chris makes the most incredible olive oil out of these olives.

A crowd of about 50 volunteers descended on the olive grove early in the morning and got busy pulling, shaking and generally having a good old time helping Chris, the owner, bring down as many olives as we could before the lunch feast at noon.

Picking olives

Kathryn setting up the olive capturing tarp

Ben 'working'

french baby picking olives

One of the main reasons we elected to source grapes from Corona Creek is due to the fact that it is a small family farm with sustainable practices growing a variety of vegetables in addition to the grapes and olives. In other words, it is far from a mono culture farm.  In fact, it is quite multi-cultural.

In any case, olive picking was a lot of fun.  We met a lot of people from all walks of life.  The kids and dogs had a great time through the trees and the vineyards and we learned a bit about what makes good olive oil while enjoying our fellow pickers’ company. Afterward we enjoyed a lovely meal along with some of Corona Creek’s own Pinot Noir.  To top it all off, a lively singing trio was on hand to entertain the crowd during lunch.

Singing trio

Berkeley turkey

Everyone this time of year seems to be either writing or wondering about what wine goes with turkey.  Personally, we always serve three types of wine for Thanksgiving at our house — a bottle of bubbly, a Chardonnay and a Pinot Noir.  We open the sparkling wine to drink with appetizers while the turkey finishes in the oven.  Then the Chardonnay (which goes well with traditional side dishes such as sweet potatoes) and the Pinot (which goes well with turkey) are opened and served with dinner.   But you can find articles in the Wall Street Journal, Wine Spectator, SFGate, etc., to tell you what wines to serve at the Thanksgiving table.

What I want to tell you about is what went really well with Uzi’s famous spit-roasted pork loin seasoned with rosemary and garlic the other night–Pinot Noir.  We opened a special bottle of premier cru Chambolle Musigny to go with it.  And just to gauge our winemaking expertise against this Burgundy benchmark, we also opened a bottle of our 2007 garagiste Carneros Pinot Noir.   Though they are very different wines and I almost hesitate to mention the two together in the same breath, they were both fantastic and both went splendidly with the pork.

So go cook one of these later this week when you’re tired of turkey and open up a bottle of Pinot Noir.  And next year, when you’re planning your Thanksgiving dinner, consider a 2008 Stomping Girl Pinot Noir to go with the turkey.

Pork roast and Pinot

]]> http://blog.stompinggirlwines.com/2009/11/22/wine-with-thanksgiving-or-pork/feed/ 2 stompinggirl turkey porkroastandpinot http://blog.stompinggirlwines.com/2009/11/07/1991-calera-mt-harlan-chardonnay/ http://blog.stompinggirlwines.com/2009/11/07/1991-calera-mt-harlan-chardonnay/#comments Sun, 08 Nov 2009 04:39:10 +0000 stompinggirl http://winey.wordpress.com/?p=1223 ]]>

1991 Calera Mt Harlan Chardonnay

We recently had our good friends over for dinner and were looking forward to opening a special bottle from the cellar.  It was a 1991 Calera Mt. Harlan Chardonnay we had picked up on a visit to the Calera winery last year.  Calera has an incredible and inspiring story and their wines are really quite unique for California Pinots and Chardonnays.

Look closely at the picture above and you will see the large (some may say disturbing) amount of tartrates. Tartrates had solidified and ended up on the bottom of this old bottle of Calera.  Looks bad but it is not a fault.  It was a 1991 for god’s sake.  And, in fact it is a testimony to the quality of the wine and the natural winemaking methods used.  Read more about tartrates here.  The Calera was fantastic and was a perfect match for rich halibut we served.

By the way, for those of you looking for Thanksgiving wines, an old Calera Chardonnay Mt. Harlan would make an excellent addition to your turkey dinner…so would a Pinot Noir.

We at Stomping Girl have just gotten through harvest and can finally take a bit of a breather.  Now, mind you, “harvest” means much more than just harvest. The term refers to everything from harvesting the grapes to crushing the grapes to pressing the wine.  It takes about 2 weeks to take one of our Pinots from harvest to press and we had three harvests this year.  Check out some of our photos taken during these last several weeks during Stomping Girl’s ‘09 harvest.

How many girls does it take to stomp 4+ tons grapes?  Watch us as we stomp away at our handcrafted and foot stomped Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir!

Overrun by fermenting grapes

OK, this time of year I expect to find multiple vessels containing fermenting grapes at the winery and even downstairs in our home wine cellar.  But I did not expect to find this in my kitchen this morning.  It is a small sample of our Sonoma Coast, Corona Creek Vineyard, Pinot fermenting naturally with native yeast…naturally in the mixing bowl of my Kitchen Aid.  I’m afraid to check the bath tub.

We had our first harvest this week for 2009–our Beresini Vineyard Pinot Noir.  The fruit, beautiful, tasty and at perfect Brix (sugar) and pH levels, was telling us it was time to pick.  Those of you in the Bay Area know that Mother Nature was not in agreement, however.  She handed us some rare and unexpected thunder showers just before our planned harvest date. Luckily Beresini is in the Carneros appellation just north of most of the weekend showers that hit our area and with a minor date adjustment, we were able to pick, sort and de-stem the fruit without a problem and under sunny skies.  Uzi was in the vineyard to help harvest and take the video and then met us at the winery with the grapes.

Sorting Beresini Pinot Noir

our fig tree

Sausages.  Figs.  Grill.  Pinot Noir.  Need I say  more?

Now that figs are in season, both in our backyard and at our neighborhood market, I’ve had a steady supply in my kitchen.  So I also picked up a package of Niman Ranch (Andouille, I believe) sausages and thought that with a few additional ingredients I’d come up with an impressive dinner.  Dinner time rolled around and I found myself out of time.  So I just threw the sausages on the grill, whole.  When they were almost done, I put on the figs, halved, cut side down.  I sliced a baguette and opened a bottle of Pinot Noir and we found ourselves enjoying a very tasty and easy summer treats.  And it was that simple.  By the way, if you want to serve this as an appetizer that doesn’t require a knife and fork, do this:  slice the grilled sausages crosswise, top each slice with a halved or quartered fig and stick a toothpick in.  And don’t forget the Pinot.

For my previous Pinot Noir-friendly food post, click here.  Now, I have to get back to harvest.