Rosé sale. 20% off. For the last hot days of summer.
Just 7 cases remaining. Who wants some?
Cellar find! We found 7 perfectly pristine cases of 2020 Rosé hiding in plain sight. Our beautifully aged rosé is made in the French saignée style, meaning ‘to bleed.’ Most rosé is made by going straight into the press when the fruit when arrives at the winery. That approach often results in a light cotton candy colored wine, with little to no tannin but nice fresh fruit. In the saignée style, the red grapes are first processed into a fermentation tank. Then some liquid that has sat ‘on the skins’ is ‘bled off’ and then fermented as a rosé. What remains in the tank becomes a more concentrated dark red wine. And the resulting rosé in this approach is a darker red, slightly more tannic, slightly crisper, and is thus actually age-worthy vino. And that is what we’re offering here. Aged 4 years in bottle in the winery cellar. Pristine condition. We recommend drinking it ice-cold on the last of the hot summer days still ahead.
Rose sale! 20% off instantly. Because you are a subscriber to this blog, you are automatically in our “friends and family” discount program! When you order, for UPS shipping or pick up at the winery, enter this discount code for an instant 20% off: FF20
What I did on my summer vacation (only because some subscribers asked)…
Dear Teacher, bottling and harvest starts this week with work in the winery likely lasting through Thanksgiving. So we jumped on the motorcycle for our summer vacation. This year, we rode to the Canadian Rockies and back. Thousands of miles. 3,508 miles to be exact. The ride took us through Kalispell Montana, crossed into Canada, headed north to Edmonton (and went to the Metallica 72 Seasons concert) then rode back to Calgary and met up with nine friends on their moto bikes, rode west to Vancouver via Banff, Revelstoke, and Whistler/Blackcomb, then turned back east to Kamloops and Kelowna, and then finally headed south to home – via Yakima, Bend, and Klamath Falls. It was an epic adventure full of great roads, wildlife, hiking, food and drink. And a very important new cultural discovery – Hawkins Cheezies, a corn meal and cheese snack far superior to all other cheesy puffs! Not kidding. Have a look.
Metallica at the Commonwealth Stadium in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Click here if you need to bang your head – Wherever I May Roam, oh come and click it, even if you don’t like metal, you’ll enjoy the buzz!
Motorcycle riding through the spectacular Canadian Rockies from Calgary to Vancouver and back with our riding group from Florida, South Dakota, Arizona, and NorCal
Hiking the Rockies
The famed Canadian bar “drink-in-meal”, called the Giant Bloody Caesar. What the heck is this you may ask? It’s a monster Bloody Mary, plus two giant loaded sliders, a few fried zucchini sticks, some veggies, and a lot of napkins, it just goes on and on…
The famed Hawkins Cheezies, which we discovered on a fuel stop. Don’t laugh. Like no other cheesy puff you have ever had. For real. Super crunchy and cheesy. Made from corn meal, not wheat. Available only in Canada. And as it turns out, you can get em from a supplier via Amazon.
Oh, so this is where Cynthia gets her superpower!
3,508 miles, and the bike and us safely back home in time for bottling and harvest
In the next blog post…
- Bottling the 2022 vintage of Sonocaia Sagrantino.
- Racking the 2023 vintage of Sonocaia Sagrantino.
- Harvesting the Sonocaia Sagrantino. The 2024 harvest is now just around the corner. This week, brix (sugar readings) were in the 24.3 range. Shoots are lignifying. Seeds are turning coffee colored. I am hoping to push the harvest out as late as possible as Sagrantino’s thick skin loves a long growing season. And the refined tannins are way more important than sugar water measurements. But as always, the weather will be ultimately in charge.
- And soon, a full report on a new professional colleagues wine tasting event we’re launching here at Sonocaia
P.S. – The Sonoma Valley Vintners and Growers is hosting their annual Vintage Fest. Click on this link to see the entire schedule, buy tickets, bid on auction items. Sonocaia and Dysfunctional will be pouring at the Plaza Barracks on Saturday eve, Sept 28th, at 6:00pm.
But wait, there’s more…
Sonoma International Film Festival
27 years of the best in film, food, wine, and fun – it all starts up again on March 19-23, 2025. Four days of amazing film, food, wine, and parties. It’s an all-walking film festival around the Sonoma Plaza. Feature films, docs, animation. Buy your passes starting on October 1st: Purchase tickets here for SIFF. This week’s SIFF’s monthly film featured “Giants Rising”, “the secrets and superpowers of the Redwoods”, and winner of more than six film festival awards, at the Sebastiani Theatre on Sonoma Plaza. Sold out crowd. Great film. See images below.
SIFF Executive Director, Ginny Kreiger, introducing the film, Giants Rising
Director Emeritus, Kevin McNeely (left) doing a great job with the Q&A after the screening of Giants Rising.
Sonoma Farmer’s Market
At one of the last Tuesday night Farmer’s Markets of the year, where a Doors tribute band rocked the Sonoma plaza. And we dined al fresco with friends. And drinking Dysfunctional vino.
Bobcats
Wildlife is a constant presence here at the Hydeout Farm. It constantly ebbs and flows as rapidly-reproducing animals at the bottom of the food chain (like mice and rabbits and squirrels) get consumed by apex predators who are higher on the food chain. Two weeks ago, a pregnant Bobcat appeared, and then a week later, two baby Bobcats showed up. It’s been interesting to observe how rapidly the population of rabbits and squirrels drops off – whether they are eaten, relocate elsewhere for safety, or both. Even the raucous and very pack-like black crows have vanished.
Red Tail Hawks and Cooper Hawks
Life is dangerous for the apex predators too, but in different ways. In this first image, a Red Tail Hawk adult stretched its wing near some power lines, causing an electrical arc and sadly, the hawk exploded with 7000 amps of juice. I found its severed foot at the bottom of the power pole. Very impressive claw! One week later, an adult Coopers Hawk was training a fledgling to hunt. But sadly, it hit something… maybe misjudged a tree, and broke a wing. We found the young hawk sitting in the driveway looking dazed. When we approached slowly, it just fell over. We collected the hawk into a box and drove it up to the Santa Rose “Wild Bird Rescue.” We’re waiting on news of its recovery, and hope to repatriate the fledging bird back to its home soon.
Sustainable vineyard farming practices
Our Sonocaia and Dysfunctional Family wines are 100% organic. We do our best to balance old world methods with modern science. We never use toxic chemicals of any kind; after all, we live on this land, eat the food, and drink the water. As the grapes ripen, wild birds and other animals positively lose their minds on the sugary grapes. One of the best deterrents is to install bright reflective tape in the vine rows. As the breeze blows and the tape shimmers, little blasts of confusing bright light reflect out in a kaleidoscope fashion. The streaky light makes the birds nervous. It’s not perfect, they do learn to overcome their fear. But hopefully we minimize damage to the fruit we’ve worked so hard to grow over the previous 9 months. I like to say we’ll keep 4 acres for the humans and the wild life can have the other 7 undeveloped open acres.
New Rooster and chicks
Some weeks ago, 20 new baby chicks arrived from the nursery. And just 10 shorts weeks later, they are ready to be introduced to the adult population. In this first photo, you see the chicks just as they arrived, little baseball-sized fluff balls. In the second image, it becomes quickly obvious that one of the babies was incorrectly sexed at the nursery and is in fact not an egg-laying hen, but a rowdy teenage rooster. Note: “Slim” is available for adoption (we already have 2 adult roosters which is twice what we need or want!)
-
New summer chicks
-
...ten weeks later
0 Comments