I think it’s safe to say 2020 has not been a great year, and we still have 3 months left! I would go a step further and say if the rest of the decade is going to be anything like 2020, I will be looking for a liver donor! After witnessing the last 3 weeks of ashes covering my truck in the morning, we’ve decided not to risk the possibility of smoke taint affecting the wine. While some would argue the campfire aroma in the bouquet is part of what mother nature can bring to a vintage, we don’t like how it makes our wine taste and we suspect our customers, who have grown accustomed to our style, won’t either. The good news is we still have plenty of inventory from 2017 and we are close to a limited release of the 2018 vintage. While there may be some good wines made somewhere in California this year, we are not going to risk it.
Speaking of the 2018 Vintage
For those that may recall our early notes regarding the 2018 harvest, it was unusual but in a good way. We traditionally harvest our grapes sometime between the first and second week of September (the exception being the mountain Cabernet fruit up the hill which is usually picked in mid-October). The 2018 vintage was an exception. The usual late August 100 plus degree heat that crushes us for 2 weeks did not show up and neither did the early Fall rain that can turn a perfect vintage into a mildew infested nightmare. Instead, the fruit hung on the vines an extra month and the results were amazing. We’ve tasted multiple layers of flavor in the wines, and we’ve been treated to complex expressions of the fruit we have never tasted before. For the first time ever, we let one varietal stand alone; it was just so good by itself. The 2018 D’Seta, will be 100% Barbera. We tried adding several different percentages of Petite Sirah into the D’seta and went back and forth on what we liked. Finally, our wine maker Brandon, who is usually the voice of reason, simply said, “I wouldn’t add anything to it. It’s that good”. Turns out he was right. We bottled the D’Seta along with the other 2018 wines in April, and we’d usually release them sometime in October. However, similar to the harvest, it’s late. It’s not ready yet. We will keep you posted when it could be released.
Grown, Gone, But Not Forgotten
If you look on the back of one of our wine bottles, you will see an artsy looking picture of 2 little girls picking grapes. Those are our daughters from 8 years ago in the middle of our vineyard which is how the name Due Ragazze (translates to “two little girls” in Italian) came about. Turns out kids actually do grow up and sometimes they don’t want to get into the family business (SHOCKER!). It was a bitter sweet moment when we dropped our youngest daughter Gabby off at UCLA last week. While she is not sure of a career path, (what teenager is!) she knew that picking grapes and pulling weeds was not a life-long dream of hers! We are incredibly proud of her and we are still holding out hope that we can at least get her back for an occasional blending trial or harvest.
Until next time.
