la gramiere

Rain, rain go away!!

I never thought I would say that!  After the last 3 years of drought conditions, when we begged for rain, this spring has been a complete turn-around. We've had rain virtually the whole month of May! This week it rained almost every day with a couple of really good heavy rains and thunder storms.  Luckily there wasn't any hail here along with those storms.  Over in Madiran they had lots of hail, some producers losing 100% of their potential harvest this year.  I can't imagine what that would be like. 

Back here in the southern Rhône, we are scrambling to fight mildew and oidium.  Conventional farmers just go out and spray a systemic fungicide and are "tranquille" as they say here, but we who are organic and can only rely on copper and sulfur have to be super vigilant.  Matt has been trying to reduce our copper use in the vineyards, keeping our levels as low as possible, but in a year like this we don't really have a choice.  Matt was out spraying about 10 days ago and yesterday we were out there again. Normally we treat every two weeks, but with all of the rain we have been getting it just gets washed off.  I'm headed back out there this morning to finish what we didn't last night, we're only supposed to have scattered showers today. I've seen some spots on the leaves in various places in the vineyards indicating that the mildew is out there, I just hope that we're spraying at the right times in order to control it.  Our first three years were relatively mildew and oidium free, and organic agriculture seemed to be a piece of cake, hopefully we can pull this one off! 

My computer is having lots of issues these days, I've got a bug that freezes everything up, so I'm having to run Windows in Safe Mode, which is a pain, thus every time I think about posting, I am put off by the idea of having to deal with it!  I think I'm going to have to finally switch computers, but I hesitate because I like my computer!! It's been with me since 2000, shocking, but true!

Home sweet Home

Wow, we had a great trip, but it sure is good to be back.  The month of May is my favorite time of year, all the leaves are out and seemingly everything is in bloom.  The poppies are my favorite, dotted around the countryside, in the vineyards and along the roadside, I can see why they brought a glimpse of hope and happiness to the soldiers in WWII, they certainly brighten my days.

It's been raining here quite a bit!  Things were so busy before we left we didn't have time for a copper and sulfur treatment on the vines, thus we worried the whole time we were gone, and must have driven some of our friends crazy with our phone calls every other day!    

Luckily, upon our return everything looked good, no signs of a massive outbreak of mildew or odium, phew.  Matt got out there Sunday and sprayed all of the vineyards, so we should be ok.  The vines seem to have grown a lot, and the weeds too!  It hasn't rained for a few days so we're hoping that things will dry out enough to get the Weed Badger out this weekend, but right now they are talking about more rain, Saturday and Sunday.  We'll see.

This week is my last push to finish the 2009 version of the Bettane and Desseauve guide, so I'm stuck in front of my computer when I'd rather be out "suckering" in the vineyards.  (removing the "suckers" or vine shoots that are sprouting out in the wrong places. )  I say that now, but after a day or two, I'll wish I had an excuse not to have to sucker anymore.  I have to admit, it's my least favorite vineyard activity, maybe this year will be different though, who knows!?

I'll tell you all about our trip in the coming days, but for now I have to get back to the guide....

Meet me in San Francisco?

Tomorrow morning at o-dark-thirty we'll be leaving for the Portland Indie Wine Festival!  I'm so looking forward to it!  We'll be there from Thursday through Sunday soaking up the Portland vibe and enjoying the discovery of new Oregon wine producers!

After that we'll be working our way down to the San Francisco - Bay Area to spend a few days with the Kermit Lynch sales people, presenting our wine at various wholesale accounts, and hoping that they like it!!!  The 2006 just arrived in Berkeley late last week, so it will be fun to spend some time hearing people's reactions to the wine.  Well, at least I hope it will!  I hope they like it!!!

Since San Francisco is our old stomping ground, we can't wait to spend some time there!  I thought it might be worthwhile to set up a time and place where some of you who read the blog and who live in the Bay Area might like to come meet Matt and I for a drink!  I asked the Kermit Lynch sales staff where, and they came back with the new and oh so natural wine bar called Terroir!  Guilhaume Gerard who runs Terroir has gracious agreed to welcome all who wish to come on Tuesday May 13 from 6:30 on.  So if you read this blog and would like to taste La Gramière, we'd love to meet you there!

Terroir Natural Wine Merchant
1116 folsom street
san francisco, CA 94103
telephone_ (415) 558-9946
email_ info@terroirsf.com

Resurfacing from wedding madness~!

Sorry, I think, I'll be saying that a lot in the next few weeks, but I'm under the gun!  Last week it was finishing the guide and Molly's wedding, this week, the wedding behind us, it's still the guide, AND preparing for our trip to Portland for the Indie Wine Festival!  Yikes, Alice Feiring and Clark Smith have me shaking in my boots!  An oh, I have to finish the guide before I leave!  I don't think there are enough hours in the day, but I really felt I should check in and tell you what's going on here!

Had a wonderful time at the wedding.  From Wednesday on, I wasn't at my computer at all, except to print out programs! Family and friends were arriving non-stop and we were running around trying to finalize all of the last minute details of the big day! 

Tuesday, everyone came over to our house for an impromptu get together, we ordered pizzas and everyone helped "dispose"  (consume)  the samples I had opened that day to taste for the guide.  There were quite a few, but by the end of the evening there was hardly anything left! 

Wednesday we had a "winery visit and tasting"  here and then all went to Terroirs in Uzès for a great dinner on the Place aux Herbs, one of the first warm nights we've had!  I will admit I drank a bit too much wine and was a bit slow Thursday morning, but we were drinking Mas de Libian "Bout de Zan" and Rouge Garance Rosé, they both go down so easily!

Thursday we went to one of our favorite spots, called "Anne-Sophie  Huitres et Vignes"  it's a little old stone house out in the middle of the vineyards that Anne-Sophie restored and now serves ice-cold oysters and crisp white wine.  It's a great setting, casual and fun, and I love oysters!! 

Friday was the wedding, non stop rush from morning 'till dawn.  Saturday, I collapsed, did nothing. 

Yesterday I racked some of the 2007 grenache which is tasting great!  Matt went to the vineyards and sprayed 500 (a biodynamic preparation good for the soil)  with a back pack sprayer.  Fun Fun Fun!

Now I'm writing,  writing, writing, trying to finish before we leave, well you can see, I still found a way to procrastinate!

Weed Badger in Action!

Weed Badger in Action!
Vidéo envoyée par lagramiere

Another angle. It can really get some of the big nasty weeds that are all but impossible to rip out by hand. The special support that the blacksmith made, wasn't strong enough and started to bend, so we had to ask him to solder on another, and much heavier piece of iron, now, I don't think anything could make it bend.

The moment we've all been waiting for!

Weedbadger syrah 2
Vidéo envoyée par lagramiere

Here it is in action! Yes, it's true, the Weed Badger is up and running. We're pretty happy with how it works, now Matt just has to practice! I think he'll get better at it as we go! There's also an automatic sensor that needs to be installed,which will make it much easier, but it is recommended that you learn to use the manual function first. That's fine, but if you screw up, this thing just rips the vine right out! We've only lost a few, but we certainly don't want to lose anymore. I have decided that Matt will be the official Weed Badger operator, I'm not sure I could handle it! Another video to follow...

Oops!

Here's a good one. 

Friday night I was relaxing with a cup of tea waiting for Matt to get home from a business trip to Zurich.  The phone rings and it's Mr. Paume, the man we bought our vineyards from and from who we are renting our white vineyards.  We had asked him to grind up our vine cuttings in all of our vineyard, we don't have a chipper and they're so expensive, it's just as easy to pay him to do it.  Well, he tells me while he was shredding the cuttings he noticed that we hadn't pruned one of the white vineyards, the clairette.  What?? I said.  Of course we have.  We finished pruning it about 3 weeks ago.  No, he said, you haven't.  I was completely perplexed.  We had spend 2 days freezing our butts off with my parents pruning it, attaching the new canes to the wires and everything.  I couldn't understand, I thought he'd lost his mind, and he thought I'd lost mine.  "I'll go look again, and call you right back," he said. 

Five minutes later he calls me back.  No, you haven't done it.  Holy shit,  we pruned someone else's vineyard that happens to be about the same size and right next to it.  Ugh.  Not only did we prune it, we plowed it and put our nifty organic fertilizer on it last weekend!  I said to him," Oh no!  Do you think he'll be angry? "  "No, he replied, I think he'll be thrilled.  But you should call him anyway. More importantly though, you've got to get out there and prune the Clairette right away."

So guess what we did on Saturday...??? 

Unbelievable, but, in the end I suppose it's better than harvesting the wrong vineyard, right?

Vine food and body building

We recently had our the soil of our various vineyards analyzed, and found that some of them were  out of balance and that we needed to give them a boost.  As you certainly remember we spread some horse manure this fall, but we decided that it probably wasn't quite enough.  While we were in Germany last fall for a wine fair, we met some other organic and bio-dynamic winemakers from the Loire -Domaine de Bellivière -who told us about a product that is approved for organic viticulture that they used and had very good results with.  We decided to give it a try.   This is definitely something we don't want to do often; number 1, because it costs a small fortune, and number 2 because we'd like to seed nitrogen fixing plants, and find other ways to build up the humus of our soil naturally without having to have to use these types of fertilizers, even though they are organic. 

The product is called Bio-Post Bouchon, and it is, according to the company's literature, it helps regenerate the microbial life of soil and also helps fix nitrogen.  It's full of micro-organisms and microbial flora that help to revitalize the soil, especially ones that have been weed-killed in the past like ours.  So we ordered 4 tonnes of it!  That's 4 pallets of forty 25 kilo bags.  Yippee!  What a way to spend your Saturday!  We asked the former owner of our vineyards, M. Paume, if we could borrow his spreader, and he of course agreed.  We told him we were fertilizing our vineyards (well, we left out the organic part)  and he thought that was a very good idea.  The only problem was our PTO shaft on our tractor wasn't long enough, so he had to loan us his tractor!  That was super nice!  We got it all set up, Matt driving his tractor (I didn't dare)!  So once we got the first load in the hopper, we realized that I would have to transport all of the bags of "fertilizer" up to the vineyards; otherwise, Matt would spend most of his time going back and forth from the vineyards to the hangar to fill up. 

What a great job.  First filling the back of the car with these 50-pound bags of fertilizer and then unloading them up at each vineyard.  Then Matt would slit them open, lift them up chest high, and dump them into the spreader.  By the end of the day we figured I had moved 4 metric tons, twice and Matt once!  Now that's a great way to get in shape for summer. 

Today it's gently raining on our newly spread soil amendment (I hate the word fertilizer!) and this weekend we are planning on using the Weed Badger to work it into the soil.  Though they are predicting rain all week, so it may be too wet in the vineyards for the Weed Badger!  But we'll never complain about rain here, well at least not spring rain, this winter's rainfall is again far below average, AGAIN, so we are hoping to get more before it gets too hot.

Getting Certified

Since we bought our vineyards in late 2004 we have farmed them organically using only copper and sulfur in the vineyards along with many biodynamic preparations such as infusions of nettles, horsetail, willow and other natural remedies.  We didn't apply for organic certification though,  at the time it seemed unnecessary; for us, farming organically was a life choice, not some fashionable band wagon we were trying to jump on.  Recently though, we've felt differently.  More and more it is apparent to us that we need to have that certification, even if we never put the logo on our label, we must be able to say that we are certified organic. 

The certification process takes 3 years.  The first year you can't say anything on your label or anywhere in your literature about organic conversion.  The second and third years you are allowed to say that your wine is made with grapes that are "in organic conversion" and finally after the third full year you can be organically certified.  Currently in France there is only a certification for "organically grown grapes" and not organic wine or winemaking, that is changing though and we will soon be able to be certified in both, grape growing and winemaking.

It was Martin Kössler our German importer that first asked us to go ahead with the organic certification, he is a big proponent  of organic and biodynamic wines and is planning a convention of sorts in 2009 and wanted us to be a part of it.  Martin felt though, that if we were to participate, we needed the certification, and I agree.  It's too easy to say you're organic and/or biodynamic and then say that you're not certified because you haven't taken the time or because you don't believe in the label, more and more I truly believe that it's an important process that needs to be supported by all farmers who refuse to use chemicals in their fields. 

We met with the agent from Ecocert who will oversee our conversion.  First we visited each parcel (we have 6) he looked at the surrounding vineyards, for potential contaminations from neighbors, looked at the soil, at the weeds growing in our vineyards and at the general state of our vines.  He asked us some questions and finally I realized that he was trying to find out if we were earnest, trying to see if we were hiding anything and wanted simply to be certified without really believing in the process.  Of course in the end it was pretty easy to see that since we have all kinds of weeds and other interesting plants growing in our vineyards, that we were pretty serious about organics.  We then had to take him to the place where we store our tractor so that he could make a list of any chemical products that we might still have in reserve before going organic.  We showed him the half bag of sulfur and the half bag of copper that was left over from last year, both of which are allowed in organic agriculture, and he seemed content that we were on the up and up. 

So we signed a bunch of papers, he gave us a three ring binder in which we now have to keep track of   all of the products we purchase for use in the vineyards etc.  We are on the way to being certified organic grape growers, and as soon as we can be certified for winemaking we will be too.  There's another good one.  There are lots and lots of people out there who grow their grapes organically, then when it comes to winemaking will put anything and everything into the vat including GMO yeasts, enzymes, vitamins... all sorts of industrially produced things.  That seems completely incomprehensible to me.  Our one caveat is SO2,  which is used as a preservative in wine,  I'm not willing to give it up, I've tasted too many funky,  bizarre, unstable wines recently to go 100% SO2 free.   We don't use a lot, and I'm sure could use even less, but we're just not ready to go there quite yet. 

Weed Badger Progress!

I'm sure you have all been waiting with baited breath to find out how the Weed Badger assembly is coming along.  Matt has spent lots of time working on it, and at times has regretted not ordering it pre-assembled.  But in the end he's learned a lot about how the whole thing works, which should help in the event of a problem!  We even had to have our local blacksmith create a part that would help stabilize the arm.  Matt measured and re-measured drew a model and then finally decided to create a model out of cardboard so that he was sure it would work.  We took the model to the blacksmith and explained it to him, he said he would have it done in a couple of days.  The very next day he came by with it, it weighed a ton.  He said;  "you'll have to see, I made this part a bit shorter than the model, the piece of iron I chose was too short.  If it doesn't work, bring it back and I'll fit it."  Hmm, seems like Matt might not have spent all of that time making a model if he felt that the blacksmith could wing it!  Of course it didn't work, it was too short.  Matt took it back, the guy fixed it, but it still wasn't right.  So he ended up grinding some holes out himself and cursing the blacksmith for not having followed his directions.  Ugh.

Then there was the "thingy" he needed to attach the arm to his newly forged part.  The Weed Badger parts included a top link (a part used in a 3-point hitch)  to use to attach the arm to the tractor via our newly crafted part.  The only problem is that our vintage Massey Ferguson isn't quite as big as those new fangled John Deere's that everyone has in the US, so the top link was way too long.  So Matt took it over to our friend Peter Till's house and they had fun doing what boys do, cutting it down and welding it back together with sparks flying everywhere!  Finally we've  got the whole thing put together - well I can't really take much credit- but it's just about there.

We actually fired it up on Friday, pulled it out of the garage and started up the hydraulics, it was all going great until I noticed that there was a small, slow leak in at the oil filter.  Matt tried and tried to tighten it, but it clearly says to only tighten it by hand.  Ugh.  What to do?  There's over 60 litres of oil in the tank.  Do we drain the whole darn thing?  And if so, where do we put all that oil?  Matt had the brilliant idea of putting the pump on the oil drum into the reservoir and pumping it back into the drum.   The fun isn't over yet!!

But we did get it running and even got the head to rotate, so we know he's got 99% of it right!  It's just that little, tiny 1% that's the fly in the ointment.

Don't forget to vote, if you haven't already! :-)   

And the winner is....

Maybe me!  The nominees for the American Wine Blog Awards have just been announced and La Gramière has been nominated in the category for Best Winery Blog!  I realize that my blog has a more narrow focus than most wineries, therefore a bit less of a broader readership, but I'd sure love to win! Not everyone dreams of living in Southern France and making wine, and after reading this blog for awhile, I would imagine that I've convinced some that it's not a dream at all, but more of a nightmare! 

We've spent the last 4 days pruning, this is our last push, spring has sprung here and the sap is rising, some of the buds are very close to bursting open.  So, the pruning has to get done.  By the end of Northern Planting Time next Thursday, I hope to be finished.  The mistral wind has been howling this week, and my poor parents decided to come out to help us prune!  Once again we have our family out there with us slaving away.  I looked up over the vines at one point and asked them if they ever thought for a minute that they'd be spending their retirement pruning vineyards in southern France.  My mom replied; "Retirement, what retirement? " and my dad; "NO, not even for a second!" So there you have it, you never know where life will take you.

Easter weekend is always a time when, according to the bio-dynamic calendar, it is "unfavorable" to do any sort of work in the vineyards, we call these "black days".  Right now we are looking at 3 days where we can't prune or do any sort of vineyard work, I can't say I mind!  That doesn't, of course, mean that we won't be working...  We have an 8:30 meeting at the vineyards which I'll tell you about later,  then it's back to the garage to put the finishing touches on the Weed Badger!!! Stay tuned,  it will be making it's debut very very soon!

So, if you love this blog and you want to see it win, please vote!  And tell all of your friends to vote too!  Check out all of the other blogs in the other categories, there are some great ones out there, and lots of newcomers this year.  It's very exciting!

Le Mazet and the Saladin Sisters

Saturday night we  were invited to a party at a  "restaurant" called "Le Mazet" by the Saladin sisters of Domaine Saladin in Saint Marcel d'Ardèche.  It was in celebration of the first anniversary of the re-opening of the family restaurant called "Le Mazet" (or little house in provençal) .  A Mazet is typically a small stone building that was built in the vineyards for the vigneron to take shelter in during the cold winter months while out pruning or otherwise working in the vineyards.  It's not really a house, but a place to warm up or even cool off in the summer.  Nowadays it's often it's just a small one-room cottage or a small house that is used only in the summer with no heat, but if you're lucky there's running water.

We were invited by Marie-Laurence and Elisabeth Saladin, or as I like to call them the "Saladin Sisters," who are well-known here in the southern Rhône.  These two women stand out for their hospitality and - for lack of a better word - "sunny" personalities.  There really is no better way to describe them, they are the most genuine and generous people I have met in a long time, and their wines reflect their personalities flawlessly.  Natural and honest, never over extracted or over-done, they are wines that you want to drink, and not simply taste.  For me, in a wine tasting, this is one of the most important criteria.  There are many, many wines out there that show well in a tasting, polished, lightly oaked, soft rounded tannins, but somehow not real, if you will.  Wines that are as real and honest as those of Domaine Saladin are rare to find, and a pleasure to drink. 

The restaurant, which is more like a grill, with a short, simple menu, is a breath of fresh air.  No frills here, just fresh, high-quality ingredients that make your mouth water.  Piping hot grilled sardines were served as an appetizer, then they brought out a nettle soup that was thick and concentrated, we could just feel the cleansing properties of the nettles as we ingested this wild concoction. Finally there came wooden plates full of perfectly grilled local beef that just melted in your mouth, all washed down by Saladin Côtes du Rhône.

We were lucky enough to arrive early before the crowds of villagers, family and friends filled the restaurant.  It was even more crowded due to the fact that it was windy and raining outside which is rare for our region, bad timing, but lots of fun with a fire in the fireplace and a band singing in the back room.   We talked and talked wine with Marie-Laurence and Elisabeth, tasted their 2007s and then our 2007s.  Finally they were pulled away by the call of their guests that were thirsty for more of their delicious wine, so we made our way home down the windy roads of the Ardèche and the Gard happily recalling the wonderful evening we spent with our new friends.


Definitely seek out these wonderful wines!  They are imported into the US by Becky Wasserman Selection

If you're visiting the area:                    Restaurant Le Mazet

Saint Marcel d'Ardèche Tel : 04.75.90.50.46

restaurantlemazet@orange.fr

 

Checking in

Well, this week went by without me writing one blog entry, and without me really even thinking about it!  Of course it's always in the back of my mind, but for some reason I really didn't consider taking the time to write until now. 

Let's see, all of sorts of fun things happened this week, I made an appointment with the accountant, always a fun thing to do.  I think I might be her very least favorite client.  The first year I arrived with a file folder full of receipts and handed it over to her.  She was nice enough explained a few things to me that I needed to do and that was that.  The second year was a bit bumpier.  I am not good at keeping track of accounts and expenses etc.  I have a folder I put all of my receipts into it and hope that magically at the end  of the year we will get a big chunk of the VAT the we paid out back. 

The VAT is basically a 19.6% sales tax that we are able to get back when we buy any equipment, bottles, tractor parts, have work done in the cellar etc.  Pretty much anything winery related we can get this money back.  Subtracted out is the VAT that we collect when we sell wine from the winery directly to the consumer.  We don't sell much wine out of the winery largely because we're not very well set up for it, we haven't taken the time to promote the "winery" being open to visitors and mostly because it means that one of use would have to be here to greet these potential customers and sell the wine.  The amount we get back can be pretty substantial so, I've been getting better at keeping track of things.  Isabelle, out accountant has also gotten much better at reminding me to bring her my receipts ahead of time so that she's not inundated with my mess right at the last minute, like she was last year!

Anyway that's boring.  But my week seems to have been a series of boring things, things that have to happen in order to keep plugging along here.  I've finished all of the Côtes du Rhône tastings for Bettane & Desseauve, so now I've been trying to buckle in and get writing, but there's always something that slows me down.  Writing this blog for example, or contacting several wineries asking them to send samples of wines that haven't been tasted yet.  Or having Thierry Desseauve ask me about a certain winery that didn't send samples, then I have to track them down to find out why.  It could be that they don't want to be in the guide, it could be that they simply forgot, but all of those things take time.

Yesterday we shipped out 100 cases to Kermit Lynch's Berkeley store and 28 cases to Cavatappi Distribuzione in Seattle.  That was yet another story!  I get a message on the answering machine from the driver saying that he didn't know where our place was so he was parked in front of another winery about 10 km away from here waiting for my call.  Hmm.  That's interesting, he's a truck driver and he doesn't even have a map, or sense enough to at least follow the signs to our village???  Even better, he didn't leave his number.  Luckily our voice mail gives you the number before the message, but I had to hang up and call back to get the number!  About 20 minutes later he pulls up in front of the house in a huge semi.  I run out to greet him, look at the back of the truck and realize that there's no lifting apparatus on the back of the truck ( I don't know what you call the tail gate part that lifts merchandise up and down from trucks, in French it's called a "hayon".) 

I run up to the cab and ask him.  He says no, he doesn't have one.  What, you don't have a fork lift?  ARGH!  I felt like saying, "listen buddy, last year we had a dirt floor and no pallet-mover, this year we have concrete and a pallet-mover and now you want me to have a fork-lift!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!???????????  Where exactly would I put one?  In our front courtyard?  He looked at his paper work and at the date the shipment would be leaving the port in Marseille, well maybe we could come back.  No way, I'm not missing that boat! He came all the way here I wasn't going to send him away.  There is one fork lift that I know of in our village at the local garden store/agricultural supply luckily we've become friendly with the staff, maybe they'd come to help us.   I hopped on my bike since it would be faster than the car, and as luck would have it the guy I know best was out in the parking lot.  I begged him to help, putting on my most charming and coy smile.  He asked the other guy if it was ok if he took it for a few minutes, and it was a done deal.  Twenty minutes later the wine was loaded and headed to the port.  Phew.  The whole experience left me with a happy feeling inside, it's great to know that you live in a place where others are willing to lend a hand especially in a tight situation like that!

Otherwise, things are just about normal, well I suppose even that is normal these days... 

Indie Wine Fest - Here we come!

A couple of months ago I got an email from Alice Feiring asking if I had any plans to be in the US  this May.  Hmm, I didn't really have any plans to go, but it could be arranged, why, I asked?  Well, it turns out Alice - blogger, wine writer, and now wine book author extraordinaire - is organizing a seminar on Natural Winemaking for the Portland Indie Wine Festival, and she was thinking I might be a good person to invite to participate in the seminar.  Wow! Me?  I'm certainly no expert, we're just trying to figure things out here, I don't even have an enology degree or anything, and it seems like we've had nothing but problems from the get-go.  Well, for Alice that was precisely the point, I could be a real-live witness to the trials and tribulations of natural winemaking.  But just that phrase already poses a problem...

Here in France there is a big movement taking place called;  "Vins Naturels."  A vin naturel here is a wine made without SO2 a preservative that is added to most wines.  Not to add SO2 is taking a big risk, bigger than using naturally occurring yeasts, not adding enzymes or not filtering, all of which we do, except the SO2, we add SO2.  So to me, I wasn't sure if Alice wanted to include me.  It turns out that I am natural enough for her definition, especially given that our total SO2 numbers are way lower than most.  So I've been invited and I am thrilled to be taking part in the Portland Indie Wine Festival!

The seminar is on May 2nd from 3-5pm at the Hotel Vintage Plaza in Portland, Oregon and is entitled: Natural Winemaking in the Age of Technology and Robert Parker.  Other participants in the seminar are Clark Smith of Vinovation and Doug Tunnell of Brick House Vineyards in Oregon.  It should make for a very interesting discussion!  I just hope I can hold my own with these guys, after all, I don't consider myself a winemaker, we're really just farmers who make wine with their grapes.   Alice will also be celebrating the publication of her new book, The Battle for Love and Wine - or- How I Saved the World from Parkerization .

It's a whole weekend packed with great winetasting events and seminars. There's two afternoons of Grand Tastings at Urban Wine Works and a VIP Cellar tasting which will allow you to taste rare wines from the Indie Wine Festival Cellar.   Oh wait, I forgot to mention that the wineries at Indie are small producers, people producing 2000 cases or less, people just like us.  It will be a great way to find new wines and talk directly to the people who are making them, not to mention to get a better idea of the "young" Oregon wine scene.

So, if you can't make it to France, why not come to Portland for a great wine and food weekend?!  Matt will be coming along too, and he'll certainly have some interesting things to add to the discussion, we'd love to see you there!

What were we thinking???

Every once-in-awhile, Matt and I ask ourselves that question; "What exactly were we thinking?  Who's idea was it to buy vineyards???"  This coming off of our third weekend in a row of vineyard work and now labeling, yet again.  Yes, you all must be getting sick of hearing about us labeling wine and packing boxes for shipment.  But, that's why you read my blog right?  To hear about the glamorous life of a "Winemaker" in southern France?! Well this is the reality of our "living the dream." On Thursday after pruning for awhile, I drove 2 hours to a town north of Beziers to pick up the labeling machine and capsule crimper, then 2 hours back.  Friday I pruned most of the day since it was the end of the Northern Planting Time for this month- the bio-dynamic calendar is what I am referring to here.  Then Saturday we got up early to get started boxing up our next shipments: 100 cases to the Kermit Lynch store in  Berkeley, 28 cases to Seattle, and 15 cases to Maryland!  Great news, we are thrilled that the wine is shipping, BUT!- we have to get it ready. 

Setting up the label machine always takes awhile, getting the spacing right between the front and back labels - not to mention trying to remember how to properly thread the labels through the maze of the machine.  Ugh, that was the first slow-down.  Then we go to plug in the capsule crimper and there's an error message on the display. Double Ugh.  Nothing doing, we call the man we rented it from, he has no idea, and is 2 hours away, he's no help what-so-ever.  Finally we realize that it's not going to work and if we're going to get these shipments ready for the end of the week, we'll have to find another capsule crimping machine.  Luckily our dear friends at Rouge Garance, have one and were willing to loan theirs to us for the weekend.  Once again I ask myself how we would get along with out them! 

Finally after getting it all set up, we started out about 3pm.  We got about three quarters of the way through the big order for Berkeley and we called it a night around 8pm. Poor Serge, who happened to stop by, got roped into helping us for an hour or so, which was a wonderful boost to our morale, his son Matthias loved helping and was a spitfire when it came to speeding us all up.

With the help of the Till family, we worked all day today, getting almost everything labeled, even beyond what we are immediately shipping.  We sent them home around 3 and decided to keep on working, we had another 500 or so bottles to label, plus maybe some magnums.  The only problem was to get to the magnums, we had to move a bunch of other bottles.  By this time our bodies were so sore from transferring the bottles, boxes, pallets, etc. around all day we just wanted to climb into a hot bath!  This was when I looked at Matt and asked him; "What were we thinking when we bought these vineyards??!!"  We both laughed, decided to work a bit longer and then call it a day, this is at about 7 o'clock.  Both of us have busy days tomorrow, I'm starting 3 days of tasting Côtes du Rhône and CDR Villages, and he's busy with his paying job at Cisco!

After we finished dinner, I was reading and he was studying up on some biodynamic practices.  Matt went upstairs to print something out and he discovered a fax that had arrived yesterday and had fallen onto the floor.  It was from Kermit Lynch.   He had just opened another one of the  bottles of the 2006 that we sent for him to taste late last year.   He was happy with it!  Saying, among other things... "it is a neat wine and should be a success."   

Just what we needed to hear.

A taste of home!

Saturday night after pruning we had the brilliant idea of making Carnitas burritos!  Oh, I can't even tell you how good it was to have a taste of home.  Brian, Matt's brother, who is visiting from Switzerland told us that they had discovered an easy recipe for flour tortillas and that gave us the idea to make carnitas thanks to David Lebovitz who posted a recipe on his blog a few months back...  (David is a cookbook author and former Chez Panisse chef who now lives in Paris, thousands of people live vicariously through his blog, it's one of my favorites - check it out.)   To add to the Amerifest we asked our fellow expats Denis and Kirstin to come on over and partake it the gluttony.

Browned, slow cooked pork, then shredded mixed with lots of delicious Mexican spices and then cooked again,  slowly for a very long time.  Closest thing to heaven I've ever experienced.  My sister Molly was here too, she made some delicious guacamole and fresh salsa while Bri made the tortillas and Matt mixed up his famous Blood Orange Margaritas.  Denis brought some good Mexican beer and we had all the fixins for a perfect burrito fiesta. I made my burrito so big, that it was impossible to roll up, which was disappointing since I had grand illusions of being able to roll and squish and roll and squish the tortilla into a perfect burrito, just like they do in the Mission.  I guess I'll have to practice some more. 

What a wonderful taste of home. It's funny, there's not too many things I miss, but good California Mexican food it one of the things that I long for from time to time.  Now that we know it's not so hard, and we have David's amazing carnitas recipe, we'll be able to indulge more often!  Thank you David.

New York- here comes La Gramière!- Thanks to Thirst Wine Merchants!

We packed up 28 cases of 2006 La Gramière and sent it off last week.  As usual, there were a few hiccups in our plans...

Remember when I posted the photos of us labeling and putting capsules on the bottles?  Well, that was all great, we were able to get out first shipment off to K&U in Germany, and since then we've even shipped a second order.  We were being so clever getting over half of our bottles ready for shipment.  Only I forgot that to ship to the US we have a different back label, a back label that hadn't been approved by the government organization formerly known as the BATF (they have a new name now and I can never remember it!) Hmm, so that means that we don't have any bottles labeled and ready to go to the US... The labels aren't that big of a deal, since you can, although it's not preferable, stick them on by hand.  But the capsules can't be cinched onto the bottles without a special machine.... Ugh.  Luckily our friends at Rouge Garance have a portable capsule crimper that they are willing to lend us from time to time.   So I borrowed that and we set out to label and capsule 300+ bottles for our NY shipment.  Ah, did I forget to mention that Matt's sister Melanie and her family just happened to be visiting from Seattle??  Lucky us, lucky them!  They got roped into helping as most of our family members are, each time they visit!  So, in the first round Mel's son Avery had the job of placing the capsules on the bottles, I used the crimping machine, and her husband Scott stacked up the newly capsuled bottles.  In the second round, Mel, Matt, Scott and Avery labeled the bottles and then packed them up into the boxes.  With all of us working on it, the whole process went pretty quickly...poor Mel, we didn't even give her the chance to get dressed!!

Now the pallet is en route to the Winebow warehouses in Ho-Ho-Kus NJ.  This order is largely thanks to the great people at Thirst Wine Merchants, an amazing neighborhood wine shop in Brooklyn.  This is my kind of wine shop, check out the owner Michael Yarmark's description of the store design:

Knowing that we were going to be spending an awful amount of the next period of our lives in the store, we wanted to make it comfortable, unique, personal, contemporary. The rather small wedge-shaped space was a challenge. We worked with Brooklyn-based designer-fabricators, known as 4-pli, who did a great job using eco-friendly materials, such as paperstone, bio-fiber wheat, and sustainably harvested birch, to build the display racks, cash counter, tables, glass rack, sliding door, sink area.

Amazing!  Michael and Emilia sound like exactly the kind of people that we would like to hang out with, the same eco-minded people that we are, or are striving to be.  Two summers ago, when we were just starting out and so were they, Michael and Emilia were on a trip in the region and we tried to meet up.  Somehow we kept missing each other, so we are hoping to get the chance to show them around the next time they come.  Since then they have been loyal fans of the blog and have been trying to get some La Gramière for some time now.  So, I'm sure it's largely thanks to them that the 2006 is now on its way to NY & NJ.  If you live in the NYC area and are looking to taste La Gramière, you should give Thirst Wine Merchants a call and have them save you a bottle or two!

Thirst Wine Merchants
187  DeKalb Ave @ Carlton
Brooklyn - In Historic Fort Greene - one block from Fort Greene Park
718-596-7643
Hours: Sunday - Thursday 12-9
Friday 12-10
Saturday 10-10 (Farmer's Market - what a fun way to spend a Saturday!)

 

Rayas Meets La Gramière...

We had another great visit to Chateau Rayas this year.  Rayas, for those of you who are unfamiliar with it, is one of the legendary properties in Châteauneuf-du-Pape.  It has a unique terroir and setting in Chateauneuf, all it's vineyards being surrounded by woods.  There's often more humidity and "fraicheur" which leads  to the creation of a very special wine, unlike any other in Châteauneuf du Pape.  The property is now run by Emmanuel Reynaud, nephew of the late Jacques Reynaud whose fiery personality was almost as legendary as the wines he made.  Emmanuel is quite a character in his own right, not mincing words, and often skeptical and wary of the people that come to visit.  Once you break through the surface though, he is quite charming.   The first time I met him, I was with Thierry Desseauve and his wife Nadine.  As we stepped out of the car, he quickly scanned us and said; "I hope you're not wearing any perfume." 

This is one of those situations, where being blond, female, fairly young, and an American are serious counts against you, and one where being able to say that I am a fellow vigneron, tend to wipe all of those doubts away.  I think for Emmanuel Reynaud, that was the only way I would really ever be accepted as someone who might taste and write about his wines.  Of course,  it's Thierry Desseauve who will write about Château Rayas, but it's me who will write about  Emmanuel's own winery Château des Tours in Vacqueyras.  Château des Tours makes excellent wines, very different from other Vacqueyras wines. They are often released much later after several years of barrel aging.  As barrels are decades old,  you are benefiting from the slow oxidation process and not at all from a new oak influence.  The winemaking at Rayas is much the same.

We first took a walk around the vineyards.  It was late afternoon, and the light was just beautiful.  Emmanuel has taken great care to replace a lot of the missing vines that have died off over the years and the state of the vineyards was impeccable.  We then went into the winery to taste.  As a test, Emmanuel always starts the tasting with a barrel of Cinsault, not exactly what one expects at Rayas.  It doesn't have the complexity and depth of Grenache, and that usually throws people off.   As we proceeded through the tasting, I would often ask questions about the vineyards or vinification and Reynaud would often say things like; "Well you should know, making wine yourself, you've had the same experience at your place."  Or he would ask me how we did things at our place, or how our wine was tasting, or what varietals we had.  At one point I can't remember why, I was making some comment about our wine and said that I'd like him to taste it.  He said he would be glad to taste it and that I should bring it by sometime.  Well, here I had to open my big mouth and say that I had a bottle in the car, and would he like to taste it.  He said sure, we'll taste it at the end before we taste the whites.  Oh boy.

We finished tasting through all of the reds in barrel and then the reds in bottle.  I was secretly hoping that he would forget about tasting La Gramière, and secretly hoping he wouldn't.  But in the end what did I have to lose.  Sure enough he remembered, so I ran out to the car to get of bottle of our wine, and thought to myself, geez! What were you thinking??? Tasting La Gramière at Château Rayas, one of the greatest wineries in Châteauneuf-du-Pape??  It started off really well.  He said, " Hmm this is good.  It's a good wine.  The best thing is that there's no oak!"  Then we got down to the nitty-gritty.  He asked me a bunch of detailed questions about when we harvested and how we made it.  He gave me some really great insight about what we could do next year to make it better.   It's clear that we're very far from being in a league with Rayas, but that's not really what I ever dreamed of.  Like I told Kermit Lynch when he was visiting, we're not trying to change the world, we're just trying to make a wine that we like to drink.  I think we've done that, but I think that there's so very much we can learn from people like Emmanuel Reynaud.  Hopefully, our wine will progress over the next few years and Emmanuel will like it even better the next time he tastes it.

Three Cheers for City Wine!!!

The folks at City Wine in Denver, Co have been real supporters of La Gramière.  They've sold more of it than anyone else in Colorado, and possibly more than in the entire US of A.  I have a confession to make though, it might be due to the fact that I used to work there!  After we left San Francisco, Matt and I spent a year living in Denver before we moved to France.  Steve Heinz, one of the co-owners of City Wine,  also happens to be the distributor for Kermit Lynch wines in Colorado.  We became good friends with Steve and his wife Anne, and enjoyed a lot of great wine together over our year in Denver.

I suppose that's why Steve and City Wine have been such great supporters of ours, and that's why Steve sent me an email the other day asking why City Wine had never been mentioned on the blog.  Oops! That's a huge over-sight and I'm correcting it now.  So, if you live in Denver or anywhere nearby, go check it out.  City Wine has a great selection of wines from all over the world, often eclectic.  You'll find wines there that you've maybe never heard of.  The staff is great, and will steer you in the right direction.  Believe me, I know, we tasted lots and lots of wine while I worked there, that was what made it such fun! 

Merci, Merci, Merci to City Wine and it's great team of La Gramière supporters!

City Wine
347 South Colorado Boulevard, Denver, Colorado 80246
Phone: 303-393-7576 ~ Fax: 303-393-1725

Visiting Tavel

Well, I can't tell you about all of my tastings, and not all of them are all that interesting to tell about, but my visit to Tavel was particularly interesting last week. 

Funny,there was a nice article in the NY Times yesterday about Tavel,  all except for the picture that was posted on the "front page" of the website and at the header of the story.  It's an article about Tavel, which to anyone in the wine world means Tavel Rosé, a very dark rosé,  in a distinctive tall skinny Alsatian style bottle.  The lead picture they used was taken 100km away at a beach side town and the rosé on the table was clearly not Tavel.  The bottle was a squat Bordeaux-style and the color of the rosé was far from what a Tavel would be.  Although the producers of Tavel were surely thrilled to have an article about their appellation in the NY Times, they were most certainly disappointed that they chose that photo, which for them has nothing to do with their wine.  Every time I see that picture it drives me nuts!  I can't believe the editor approved it.  It's very disappointing.   He/she obviously knows nothing about Tavel!!!

Ok, I'll stop ranting.  I spent a wonderful morning tasting in Tavel.  I have to say it's one of the most difficult tastings I do.  It's very hard to taste 20 Tavel rosés in a row, most of which are good to excellent quality.  How do you select the best ones?  I admit I have a hard time with this, so I choose more than I should and wait to taste them a second time with the big cheese, Thierry Desseauve.  Yes, a cop-out in a way, but I prefer to rely on someone with more experience rather than eliminate some potentially good wines because I want to look like I know what I'm doing.

After the tasting,  Vincent De Bez of Château d'Aquéria and Guillaume Dugas of Prieuré de Montézargues took me on a little visit around Tavel.  We visited the Prieuré de Montézargues which is an absolutely amazing property with views of the Mont Ventoux that will take your breath away.  Then Vincent took us into the village to show us the old gardens of the villagers.  There was a time when most people in the village had a small plot of land just outside the village.  They were separated by stone walls and water was brought to them by a series of canals that led from the village "lavoir" or washing basin.  It was so interesting to see these ancient gardens, some of which are still in use today. 

It's funny,  last year I wrote about my visit to Tavel too.  I think it's because Vincent de Bez is so passionate and well-informed about the history of the area that he makes it come alive.  Since I love to hear stories and historical information about the places I visit, Vincent is the prefect ambassador of Tavel! 

Our missing Menu for Hope Winner~!

Has just surfaced!  Some of you may have been disappointed not to win our prize of "hard labor" ;-) at La Gramière, and may have even begun to wonder if anyone really did win!!??  Well,  just this week I received an email from our winner, Kate McWiggins!  I had actually been thinking about contacting Pim to see if we should re-draw a winner since I hadn't heard anything from Kate since the prize winners were announced.  But lo an behold, there she was in my inbox!! How exciting.

Here's what Kate had to say about she and her husband and their adventurous lives!:

My husband and I are Americans who immigrated to New Zealand from San Francisco 2 years ago.  So, it sounds as though we have both embarked on new journeys in our lives.  We live in a small town on the North Island about an hour outside of Wellington, the New Zealand capitol and close to the Martinborough wine area which specializes in Pinot Noir. We are just enjoying a slower pace of life here in New Zealand and have not embarked on any new careers after hectic lives in the Bay Area.  We bought an old cottage and have worked on fixing up the house and the garden.  We enjoy good food and wine, of which there is an abundance here.  Although my husband is always in sticker shock at the cost of wine here, there is no equivalent of the Wine Club in San Francisco.

How exciting for them, and for us!  I can't wait to meet them and hear all about their adventures.   I have dreamed of visiting New Zealand and have never had the chance yet, so we'll look forward to their visit this fall.  I'm already thinking about what fun things Kate and George will get to do while they are here!

For the last 10 days straight I have been pruning, trying to get as much done as I can.  My good friend, Anne-Elizabeth Peyroche d'Arnaud,  amazingly spent the whole week with me pruning.  This is a picture of her and her dog Cannelle (cinnamon) when we finished pruning the Syrah.   The weather has been beautiful.  My face and hands now have a nice winter sun-tan.   The rest of me is as white as snow... it looks kind of funny when I'm not wearing a turtle neck!

A Weed Badger update for those who are curious about that.... Well, there's still lots of pieces and parts laid out on the table.  Matt spent the last two weekends pruning with us, so there's not been a great amount of progress. This week may be the week, we'll  see.

I am starting my tastings for the wine guide, so please bear with me.  It's going to be a very busy, but very interesting 2 weeks.   I'll do my best to keep you up to date. 

Your comments...round 2

Just so you know, I love them!  Really, I do.  I so appreciate it when people leave comments on the blog, and I love to discover that I have a new, or maybe old reader, that has just found something worthwhile to say on the blog.

I know how it is.  If you are a blogger, then you are also a blog reader.  I have my favorites, that I read regularly, and every once-in-awhile I want to weigh in.   Often though, I start the comment, then doubt creeps in.  Is this comment really relevant?  Am I like some of the other commentors, just trying to draw attention to myself and my own blog?  Well, no, I only comment when I have something valid to contribute, or feel some sort of connection with a particular post.  But I always wonder - belittling myself and raising the comment receiving blogger up onto a pedestal that they may or may not deserve - will they think that my words and opinions are worthwhile???

OOPS!  Wait I hadn't finished this!!   This first part was accidentally published last night, when Matt was installing a new fancy Cisco router and was doing me a favor by clicking the save button!!  Little did he know that it went directly onto the web.  I didn't realize it was published until this morning when I received the comment notification email for the comment from Ryan!  Oops!  At least it seemed somewhat coherent, though unfinished!  (For those of you who didn't see the first post, sorry for the long explanation!)

Anyway where I was planning on going with this post was to highlight some of the people who comment most often on my blog, I figured if they were willing, we could all get to know them a bit better... so here are those who chose to respond to my request for information:

Steve Lanum: I met Steve  back in 2001 or 2002 when we lived in Paris.  He's a San Francisco resident who we met through the Kermit Lynch store.  Unfortunately, he tells me he's not tech savvy enough to send me a photo!  Steve spends a fair amount of time in Paris, checking out the latest "natural" wines and hopefully he'll make it down here for a visit someday...

John G: Better known as Mr. Quaffability, I think the first time John left a comment was when the 2005 arrived in the Bay Area,  but I'm not sure.  Since then we've emailed back and forth several times and he even came for a visit last summer with his family.  When he's not busy blogging, or combing the shelves of Trader Joe's for great wine deals, John is a web developer in Santa Rosa, CA.

Tim Stephens: Tim, along with several other people, went to an amazing amount of trouble to get a hold of some of our 2005.  Tim is a "home" winemaker, as he describes himself, making about 20 cases of wine per year.  But he knows a heck of a lot more than I do about wine chemistry.  Sometimes when I read his comments I think that he should have been the one to come over here and buy vineyards, not me!!  We have lots of back and forth chats over email, I'm sure some day we'll have the opportunity to meet in person.  Check out his blog here : Château Bon Chien

Iris: Iris has a winery not very far from here, about an hour as the crow flies, yet we have never had the chance to meet.  She also has a wonderful blog, and is much more courageous than I am, in that she maintains her blog in French and in German - her native tongue.  As she said in her reply to my questions, she often is doing the same things as we are, at the same time, celebrating rain or lamenting the lack there of.  She often looks upon things with humor and good will, even when the boars came and devasted a large part of one of her vineyards.  I like to think of our winery as small, but Iris is even more artisanal than we are, she even bottles her wine barrel by barrel with a small unit that fills 4 bottles at a time, then proceeds to cork each bottle with a manual corking device.  Pretty amazing.  If you read French or German take the time to visit her at her  Blog de Lisson.

Greg Hirson: Greg first got in touch with me when he discovered our 2005 on a wine list in Portland, he even sent us a picture.   Since then he regularly pipes in on various posts, always with a generous enthusiasm that makes me smile.  Greg is at UC Davis getting a graduate degree in Viticulture & Enology.  He's even making his own wine this year at a custom crush facility with some friends.  Greg is also quite a passionate cook, he chronicles his explorations of various cookbooks and cooking techniques here: Greg's Food

There are many others, that either wish to remain anonymous, or didn't have time to reply to my email, I know how it is, so I hope that they continue to comment, as I do so enjoy getting all of your feedback and kind thoughts!  Thank you all!

Aloha La Gramière!

Our first shipment of 2006 La Gramière left this week for Hawaii!  I wish I could have packed myself up into one of those boxes to accompany it!  A tropical beach vacation sounds just about right.  Although I can't really complain about the weather here.  It's been cold at night, just a few degrees above freezing, but absolutely beautiful during the day.  I'll be out pruning all next week, so I hope that the weather holds out.  We've got to make some progress on the pruning.  Then the week of February 4th, I start full-on with my 2008 Southern Rhone wine tastings for the Bettane & Desseauve.  Lubéron, Ventoux, Tricastin, Vinsobres, Costières de Nimes, Vacqueyras, Gigondas, Beaumes de Venise and Châteauneuf-du-Pape.  It's going to be quite an experience.  There are also two big trade shows coming up, Millésime Bio next week in Perpignan and then Vinisud at the end of February in Montpellier.  The fun never ends.  And in the mean time, I've got to get those vines pruned, we've got to get the Weed Badger put together, and lots of other things!

So, back to Hawaii... A great big THANK YOU, to the person at Southern Wine & Spirits that decided to order some of our 2006! Next time I'll come personally to deliver it!

It's a bird, it's a plane, it's a ....

Weed Badger!!!  Yup, Matt's new toy is called a Weed Badger.  One of our biggest issues over the past few years has been lack of rain.  When it does rain, the weeds that grow in our vineyards tend to benefit more from the rain than the vines do.  Since we are organic and don't use any chemical week killers, the weeds have progressively gotten to be more of a problem.  There were some this year that were taller than I am!  So we really wanted to get on top of it this year.

First of all we have been doing a fair amount of plowing to uproot the weeds in the rows.  In our biggest vineyard the previous owner had planted grass every other row to prevent erosion and to provide a bit of competition for the vines, in essence to make them less vigorous.  Well, vigor hasn't really been our problem, and erosion isn't that big of an issue either, so we decided to plow up the grass too.  The grass also tended to drink up any rain water that we got.  Matt has been spending a lot of time going over the grassy rows trying to break up the well-established grass.  This will have two effects, one will be as I said to keep the rainwater for the vines, the second will be a nice boost to the soil with the decomposing grass, it will be good organic matter for the soil.  That along with the compost we spread, will hopefully give our vineyards the oomph they need for the coming year.

Back to the Weed Badger though!  There are many incarnations of this sort of machinery on the market.  It's basically an in-row tiller, it tills the soil between the vines, eliminating the weeds at the base of the vines that are impossible to get with a regular plow.  Of course we could do this by hand, but some of the weeds have very tough roots and are next to impossible to pull out, and secondly, it's about the last thing on Earth I want to spend my time doing!!  The great thing about the Weed Badger is that it tiller is situated on the side of the tractor and not behind it, so you only have to look down to monitor the progress and not behind you, which is very tiring for your back and neck.   Additionally, the tiller is round with lots of metal tines.  It turns in  circle and rips the weeds out, contrary to what other in-row machines do which is to plow then up, which often displaces the dirt away from the base of the vines.

Matt thought that this machine would be best suited for our purposes.   The biggest hitch though was that instead of coming from France, Italy, Spain or Germany, where other machines of this type are made, it comes from the US!  Leave it to us to have heavy farm equipment shipped over here.  Of course we couldn't find what we needed here.  Matt has a certain knack for finding the most obscure and hard to get equipment and then deciding that it's the one and only thing that will work for us!  So after 4 months, we finally have received the Weed Badger.  We have very high hopes for it.  Now we just have to figure out how to put the thing together since they couldn't ship it assembled!!  Stay tuned for more news on that!

Note: The two middle photos are from the Weed Badger website.  www.weedbadger.com

The Box - what do you think is in it??

There's a mysterious box that was delivered to us Monday... It has been sitting in our courtyard ever since.  Every time I look at it, it makes me think of the first season of Lost when they were staring at the hatch.  I imagine a strange sound emerging from it, just like on the TV show.  What do you think it could be??? I have to wait until Matt returns from Sweden this weekend to open it up! 

Is it a reverse osmosis machine?  Since we've been in drought mode and our alcohol levels are high, maybe we decided to take matters into our own hands????

Is it a new tractor that Matt found on the internet for a good price, the only catch is we have to assemble it ourselves?

Or maybe it's a whole bunch of soaker hose so we can start irrigating the vineyards?

How about a new super fancy peristaltic pump!? That would be cool.

It could be a dynamizer so don't have to spend an hour swirling the bio-dynamic preparations around in a barrel by hand!

In any case it's the most expensive piece of equipment we've invested in so far, so let's hope that's a good one!

Stay tuned to see the unveiling!

PS- you see that tarp covering it?  Yes, that means we've been getting even more rain.  It's great!  Though I have to say I miss our Provençal sun.