Wine making is agricultural business. Following Pliny's advice, our vineyards are typically on the edge of where that particular varietal will ripen with lots of exceptions.

In our case, this means many of our vineyards are located literally in the woods. This years fire season is already rough and we got our first fire call yesterday. There are several fires burning near our Broken Leg vineyard in Anderson Valley. Nothing close enough to worry about, at least yet.

Trying to fall asleep last night, I couldn't help but thinking about the fires. First 80% crop loss to frost, next a fire...

Reading email this morning, I saw a new consumer post on CellarTracker regarding our Brosseau Chardonnay.

Drank enjoyably and uncritically with dinner. Here are some of the things we noticed. This is a unique and unusual wine. It had what we call a skanky nose at first. That isn't necessarily bad and got better as time went on. It had substantial acidity and some mustard green (herbal) and spicy flavors. Cinnamon and nutmeg. It matched well with asparagus (!) and salmon and grilled onions. The acidity pretty much took care of all flavors. There was also a bit of oxidized, sherry flavor in there somewhere which I assume came from the ver jus that was stored and added back. An enjoyable drinking experience but not at all typical. dfeiner

I like to read these reviews in context of the reviewer. You can see all of their reviews here.