Yes, There is Such a Thing as Being Too ...

If you are a long-time reader of this blog, you’ve no doubt read about our vejus adventures here and here. And you are aware of the influence of Cousin John, our ultra natural friend, who convinced us to embark on this enterprise. That would be Cousin John who is so natural he makes wine out of road kill. Despite the fact that we are farming organically and biodynamically, the...

Livin’ La Vida Verjus

It hasn’t even been a week since Cousin John talked us into making verjus. (Read all about that caper here.) Already we are in the lifestyle. Yes, we’ve converted. And once you go verjus, you never go back. We made about 8 gallons — which we’ll split with Cousin John. Yesterday, a work colleague of Andy’s wondered out loud whatever were we going to do...

The Great Verjus Caper

First of all, this was Cousin John’s idea. (Those of you who don’t know Cousin John can do your background research here.) The rest of you know Cousin John as the Sonoma/San Francisco Mr. Natural. He’ll basically try to make foodstuff out of anything. He’s the ultimate hunter-gatherer. Cousin John, if you don’t stop him, will make pemmican or wine from...

Bee Cool

As befitting a farm started by two city slickers, we’ve got another possible town/country rivalry set to start. This one is about bees. Remember back in late March I told you Hector Alvarez of Hector’s Bees had decided our lavender fields were a good place to place some of his hives. One book on Sonoma calls Hector "a gentle man who smells of honey." That's...

The Return of Cousin John’s Yeasts

Cousin John, as you’ll remember from this post, is a purist. He makes wine, but spurning our carefully crafted and specially raised UC Davis yeasts, Cousin John uses whatever is floating in the air. In fact, Cousin John only uses au natural techniques and ingredients to make wine. He’s been known to wander the byways of Sonoma picking wild fruit for fermentation....

A Tale of Two Presses

Today we tackled the Cabernet press and again, we were lucky enough to have Cousin John to help us. But that also meant two different presses as we are still in the throes of an interesting experiment. Andy and I are processing our Cab with UC Davis yeasts and modern methods. Cousin John, who we “paid” in grapes for his help with the crush, is defiantly Old Skool:...