Harvest 2009

... still no grapes at the winery yet ...

Mauricio took this picture yesterday: rolling rows of ripening Cabernet Sauvignon vines at Snows Lake Vineyard (appellation Red Hills Lake County). The soil really is that red. And the hills are much steeper than they appear.


Probably we'll harvest these grapes in various times of October (different parts of the hill). Last year we brought in some Cab from this vineyard in the 2nd week of October.

More updates to come next week ...

June winery updates

We have been sorely remiss in posting!

It's finally heating up significantly - there's nothing like the smell of baking earth in late June. The dirt under the grapevines to our west smells just like warm, uncured leather. And you wonder why some tasting notes - generally for Zinfandel, Syrah & Cabernet - mention hints of leather.

The grapevines seem to grow each day, they're no longer flowering but now have clustered grapes. It seems a miracle that something so acidic at the moment will later ripen and sweeten.

Our 2007 C&B North Coast Cabernet (fruit from Mendocino and Lake County) was bottled last Wednesday. We all tried it - and enologist Mauricio Livellara couldn't stop raving about it, praising its true-to-Cabernet character, with soft, mouth-filling tannins on the finish, with delicate aromas.

Pictures to follow - and we'll update more in the future. Happy Summer!

Spring Release pictures & end-of-vintage sale

Thanks to everyone who came out for Spring Release Day the other weekend! We enjoyed the 2008 C&B Dancing Crow Vineyard Sauvignon Blanc, the 2007 Paso Robles Cabernet ... and really everything else under the sun. Good food, good wine, good people - what more can you ask for?


And two views of our sunny & cozy new spot:










Be sure to join us on Saturday, June 13th for a clear-out-the-odds-and-ends, end-of-vintage sale! 10 a.m. - 4 p.m. We'll have more info up on the website soon and in June's email newsletter!

May showers

It's pouring here ... and supposed to rain all weekend. The April showers seem to have brought May showers! It feels like February outside, and instead of springy whites, we're opening up Cabernets. (That said, you never know what people will want to drink! When it was 95 degrees the other week, the tasting room visitors were snapping up the Dessert Syrah. )


The grapevines are soaking up the rain, which is sorely needed. We're still facing a drought, but every single drop of water counts.

The new tasting room!

Lynae in the middle & the Gordon brothers and their lovely wives (one crew from Palo Alto and the other from Chicago, Illinois). The 2007 C&B Paso Robles Cabernet was a favorite!



What you can't see is that we're all looking off into vineyards!

Open That Bottle Night!

Dorothy J. Gaiter and John Brecher are wonderful - their Wall Street Journal columns are wonderful, their book, Love by the Glass: Tasting Notes from a Marriage, is wonderful, and their brainchild, Open That Bottle Night, is simply wonderful.

This Saturday marks the 10th(!) Open That Bottle Night! Here's their thought behind it:

"You know that bottle of wine you've been keeping around for that special occasion that never arrives or because the wine is always going to be better tomorrow?

Open that bottle!"

That prompting - along with one of my 2009 goals to drink 25 bottles out of my cellar (closet) before I buy any more wine - means I'll probably be opening a Mount Veeder Cabernet. Nothing too crazy.

Last Saturday our winemaker, Paul Moser, mentioned opening a 23-year-old Mouton Rothschild that ended up being still too young ... at first glance, he would not be a candidate for OTBN. But he too wrestles with: What if the wine is over the hill? What if I'm not around by the time it's ready to drink? What if?

Sometimes you just have to do what you gotta do. And in this case, open that bottle.

What are you opening up?

January-ness, No Rain, Wine awards

It's been a crazy January weather-wise! From morning frost to highs in the upper 70s the other week ... I'm all confused, and the wild mustard and grapevines are no different! (Yes, I am anthropomorphizing them, I admit it.)

A few rain drops have just fallen outside, but they're evaporating almost as soon as they hit the ground, "and I start to complain that there's no rain." Any Blind Melon fans out there?

The folks over at Napa Valley Wine Blog had a neat post about January in the Napa Valley - that it's like stepping back in time. My dad prefers to wine taste in Amador and El Dorado Counties, lamenting that Napa isn't like it used to be 30 years ago ... I'll send him the way of some of their suggestions!

Things have been fairly quiet here, though we've had some fun tasting crews, and this past week we released our C&B Reserve Dessert Syrah, which has been a big hit!

Even better, we were thrilled to find out that a number of our wines took medals at the 2009 San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition! We were honored to be recognized among more than 4,000 entered wines.

The 2005 Lot 205 No. 1 Red is truly #1! It took Best of Class in Bordeaux Blends up to $14.99.

Our other award-winning wines:

2007 Lot 205 Cabernet Sauvignon, Gold Medal
2006 Lot 205 Merlot, Silver Medal
2006 Cartlidge & Browne North Coast Merlot, Silver Medal
2005 Cartlidge & Browne Red Hills Lake County Cabernet Sauvignon (Snows Lake Vineyard), Silver Medal
2006 Cartlidge & Browne Amador Zinfandel, Bronze Medal
2005 Moser Scharding Sonoma Valley Pinot Noir, Bronze Medal

Saturday, February 28, 2009 is the public tasting for the Wine Competition. We'll be pouring our winning wines, and so will all of the other fantastic winery awardees. Tickets are on sale, and the advance purchase price is fabulous!

Cheers!
Lynae

Happy 2009 from C&B!

Dispatches from the Tasting Room:

All of us at Cartlidge & Browne would like to wish everyone a Happy New Year filled with health, prosperity & great wine!

Thank you all for your support—we wouldn’t be where we are without you. From wine lovers in New York to visitors from Sweden to our lovely regulars from American Canyon and nearby—we love you all!

2008 has been an amazing year here at C&B: Over the months we released several great new wines, gotten settled in our tasting room’s new location (It’s warmer here than the warehouse! We have chocolate daily!) and revamped our wine club. In top 10 retrospectives on 2008, wine writers have hailed this year for the greening of wineries. And we love it! We are dedicated to making eco-friendly decisions when it comes to our packaging (to the point of changing how our case boxes are produced), conscious use of energy, and maintaining a clear vision of our carbon footprint.

We embarked on a new wine venture - Lot 205 Winery. Consisting of six varietals, Lot 205 wines are 100% California appellation wines and sure to please everyone – from novice to connoisseur. Deb Harkness at Good Wine Under $20 enjoyed the 2006 Chardonnay & Gary Vaynerchuk was quite impressed by the 2005 Petite Sirah. Click here for these 100% California Wines with a Twist! And we now have the 2006 Petite here in the tasting room.

RELEASES of 2008!

C&B 2006 North Coast Merlot: Ripe cherry & red currant notes, this wine is velvety with lush cocoa tones. Winemaker Paul Moser called this an ideal Merlot.

C&B 2006 Cabernet Sauvignon - Snows Lake Vineyard, Red Hills Lake County: Hints of cedar, cassis, sweet tobacco and chocolate-covered cherries. Rebecca Scharding Steinschriber, our assistant winemaker, says she can always tell a Snows Lake Cab by the bittersweet chocolate notes. It’s truly a Cabernet lovers’ Cab no doubt! If you haven’t tried a Lake County Cab, I highly recommend this wine. The 2005 vintage is almost gone from the tasting room, and we’ll be moving in to the 2006 in January.

C&B 2007 Pinot Noir: Rich baked cherry, sweet toast with juicy red fruits. Our Pinot Noirs are always sure to please the Pinot lovers’ palate. We are completely sold out of this at the winery, yet if you are looking for another amazing Pinot, you should try our winemakers’ label—Moser Scharding. They produced only 514 cases of the 2005 Pinot, which came from two amazing vineyards in Sonoma Valley – Durell & Parmalee-Hill.

C&B 2007 Chardonnay: Aroma of stone fruits & vanilla oak spice, as well as pear nectar, apple pie & butterscotch flavors. We just released this about a month ago & this may just be one of our best Chardonnays yet.

C&B 2007 Sauvignon Blanc Dancing Crow Vineyard: (ORGANICALLY GROWN) Flavors of citrus, melon, mango & guava. This SB is all about amazing tropical fruit. It went quick—we are sold out of this in our tasting room, but our 2008 is vintage is being released in February.

C&B 2006 Zinfandel Amador County Deaver Vineyard: Ripe black fruit, raspberry high notes. Very generous and rich with jammy lush fruit character and solid mineral core.

COMING SOON! (aka, we can't wait for these fun releases!)

• C&B Dessert Syrah - A delicious port-style wine - we have an extremely limited quantity available only at the tasting room.
• C&B 2008 Sauvignon Blanc Dancing Crow Vineyard, Lake County (ORGANICALLY GROWN)
• C&B 2007 Cabernet Sauvignon – Paso Robles
• C&B 2006 Cabernet Sauvignon – Knights Valley (Totem Ridge Vineyard)

Cheers!
Dylan & Lynae & the rest of the Cartlidge & Browne Team

P.S. What are you going to quaff this evening? Lynae's thinking maybe the 2005 Snows Lake Cabernet with dinner and then a 2005 Domaine Carneros sparkler later on ... Happy New Year's one more time!

What are you going to drink on election night?

I've gotten a few email offers regarding election night wine specials, which I thought were pretty creative.

And I enjoyed this hypothetical blog post about what the candidates would drink.

But that made me wonder - what are people really planning to drink on election night?

So I started informally polling Cartlidge & Browne employees.

Tony Cartlidge told me friends of his are coming over for dinner - they're bringing wine to go with homemade stew. But he also said if things went well, there might be a 1953 Haut Brion.

"I believe that I am going to be drinking Champagne," says winemaker Paul Moser.

Paul confesses that he's not a huge Champagne drinker, but that he has a special bottle picked out - "Mumm de Cramant." It comes from the village of Cramant in France. Paul explains that in France the government sets the kilo cost for grapes, with certain locations setting the standard at 100% of the cost, which others are measured against and therefore receive less money per kilo. The village of Cramant is 100%, and this particular Champagne comes only from Chardonnay grapes.

Brian Clothier, our CFO, says his beverage of choice will be "either Pinot or vodka."

VP of Awesomeness and erstwhile sales analyst Marc Wittenberg continues in the "Either/or" vein: "Either a bottle of bubbly, or a shot of Old Crow."

Dylan, whom you've met in other blog posts, is planning to go with the C&B Snows Lake Cabernet.

Jim Reed, our Director of Operations, says: “Probably a good Zinfandel. A little spicy, a little high alcohol.”

And me? Well, some sort of sparkly bubbles. Perhaps a Schramsberg Blanc de Noirs. I love that their wines have been served in the White House under various administrations and at state functions. Perfect for watching the presidential campaigns wind down and the returns come in.

What is everyone else going to drink on election night?

On the enology side, Cabernet in the lab - video

Our enologist, Mauricio Livellara, has been with Cartlidge & Browne for seven years. He and the lab staff are constantly monitoring our wine - as it goes from grapes to juice to fermented wine. They test for sugar, acidity, pH. They make sure there are no odd microbes or bacteria growing in the wine ... and they work closely with the winemakers to make sure everything is going smoothly.

Check out the video below for a brief snippet of what goes on in the lab:

Crush video!

So, we just got our last grapes in ... now we've got punchdowns, fermenting, putting wine into barrel, racking, etc. all to go. Of course, some of that is already complete with various varietals. But I know everyone is relieved and will get a brief moment to catch up with life.

And here's a brief video of Snows Lake Cabernet grapes arriving the past month! As we get more edited of crush and winemaking, we'll post them here.

Updates from C&B

Harvest is beginning to wrap up ... Vineyard Manager Chris reports he had his first weekend off in ages and promptly got up and showered and got ready to go ... and then realized he didn't have anywhere he had to be.

Winemaker Paul Moser says this has been an unusual vintage - certainly not an ideal one - but everyone is very excited about the quality of the grapes.

After the little bit of rain the other week, it warmed up some here. October in Northern California! There's nothing like it.

Dylan went to Sonoma's Petrified Forest Road (up near Calistoga) and snapped some photos of our Cabernet getting picked:



Those grapes will go into Moser Scharding Cabernet. Winemakers Paul Moser and Rebecca Scharding Steinschriber produce limited release Cabernet and Pinot Noir - depending on the grapes and the vintages. Right now in the tasting room we have their 2004 Cab (part from Petrified Forest Road Vineyard and another from Mulhner Vineyard) and their 2005 Pinot Noir. The next vintage will be 05 Cabs - there will be two - one from PFR and one from Mulhner. So exciting! We tasted the Mulhner today, and it was swoon-worthy.

I'm currently munching on candy corn (yay fall!) and trying to figure out which wine I'm going to take home - something that will go well with football tomorrow. It's a toss up between the Moser Cab and the 2005 Snows Lake Cab. Decisions, decisions!

Happy Friday!
Lynae

Welcome from Dylan, C&B's Marketing Manager!

Meet Dylan Elliott - I’m the Marketing Manger for Cartlidge & Browne, and I look forward to sharing the C&B Love with you!

I can't believe harvest is almost over. I'm not ready for the rain that Fall & Winter is going to bring, but I'm more than ready for the cool nights in front of my fire with my bottle of Snows Lake Cabernet. There are even rumors of a tasting room exclusive C&B Reserve Dessert Syrah that will be released just in time for the winter weather.

We are expanding the Food & Wine pairing section in our new web site. I’d love for our Cartlidge & Browne wine lovers to send in a recipe that pairs with their favorite C&B wine.With that I’m going to share a recipe to pair with our C&B 2006 Zinfandel:

Crab-Stuffed Portobello Mushrooms

* 4 large Portobello mushrooms, wiped clean. With stems removed and diced
* 5 tablespoons olive oil, divided
* salt
* freshly ground black pepper
* 2 tablespoons butter
* 1/2 medium onion, diced
* 2 garlic cloves, minced
* 6 ounces crabmeat, drained
* 1 cup provolone

1. Preheat your oven's broiler.

2. Brush both sides of the mushrooms with 3 tablespoons of oil. Sprinkle lightly with salt and pepper, and arrange on a lipped cookie sheet. Broil on highest rack, turning once, until golden and almost cooked through, about 5 minutes. Remove mushrooms and reset oven to 400 degrees.

3. Meanwhile, heat remaining oil and butter in a medium skillet over medium-high heat. Stir in mushrooms stems and onions and lightly seasoning with salt and pepper. Cook until tender, about 4 minutes. Add garlic and cook until fragrant, about 1 minute longer. Transfer mushroom mixture to a medium bowl and crabmeat.

4. Spoon a portion of filling into each mushroom cap and top with cheese. Bake on middle oven rack until filling is heated though and cheese melts, about 15 minutes.

If you are a mushroom lover, these are nothing short of amazing!

Cheers,
Dylan