Fermentation

 

Nate punching down the Malbec wine in our garage during primary fermentation.

Fall Family Picnic

 

 

 

 

Nate and Julie attended their school's fall family picnic the day before the big rain storm. We entered our cyclops cake for the cake walk and took home many prizes, including Nate's correct guess for the dinosaur jar guessing game.

Spiders (by Nate)

SPIDERS!

I like spiders. Did you know that some tarantulas are as big as a dinner plate? But the bird-eating spider is bigger than a tarantula. Did you know that all spiders are poisonous it is like you trying bite the wall. With out spiders there would be too many bugs. Did you know that scorpions are arachnids? Spiders have fangs. WOW! Spiders have tow kinds of body parts they are the abdomen & thorax. Some spiders are hunters & some spiders make webs. Some tarantulas spin little webs but the other tarantulas pounce on their food. Spiders eat flies & sometimes spiders battle with praying mantises & big spiders will attack other little spiders. Did you know that spiders will eat dragon flies & damselflies & lady bugs & other insects? Tarantulas will flick hair at you. Tarantulas are found on Mt. Diablo. Some spiders have 8 eyes. Did you know black widow spiders are actually more poisonous than a rattlesnake it is like if you have a gallon of black widow spider poison and a gallon of rattlesnake’s the black widow spiders wood be more stronger?

(This is what you get when you teach your child how to turn on the computer, load Microsoft Word, and autosave files.)

Malbec

 

 

 

With close monitoring of sugar content readings and a forecast for heavy rain, I decided to harvest over 300 lbs of Malbec on Friday. The grapes were from the Dry Creek area of Healdsburg which is over an hour drive from Lafayette. What a gorgeous area of the state, especially in the fall. The grower of the grapes was a winemaker at Jordan Wines, and she provided lots of great suggestions for better fermentation and showed me around the vineyard to explain her growing practices. Three bins are in the garage generating heat and hopefully lots of great phenols.