Karly Wines

It appears the cold deluge is finally ended as there has been no rain for a few weeks and it is ninety degrees so I guess it is summer, no spring this year. There is a lot of moisture stored in the ground and the vines are loving the heat. Budbreak was a full month late but it looks like the vineyard will bloom not much later than normal. It is too early to say, but it does not look like a large crop. But the amount of moisture remaining through July will have a lot to say about that. We could not do the normal March through May operations in the vineyard because of all the rain, and we are a bunch of maniacs trying to catch-up now. It is also past time to rack the 2009 wines, so it will be a busy summer.

We released an experimental batch of 2009 Rolle to the wine club, and after sending it out, we have a few cases left if you are the curious type ($16). The rest we are going to drink ourselves. We also bottled our first Petite Sirah since 2001 from our new vineyards and it just won “Best of Class” at the California State Fair (2008 vintage, $26), not a bad beginning. It is real fat and ripe fruity, and our wine club customers are loving it. We have a pallet or two still on hand, so give it a try.

New wines released for the holidays, 2008 El Alacran and 2009 Sauvignon Blanc. Visit the wine section to read about these great wines, or buy some for your (or a friend's) table!

...or, which wine is your favorite?

I am often asked this at tastings or in the tasting room. My stock reply is “which of your children is your favorite?” It is an appropriate response. They are all different, have different attributes and personalities, and all can be beguiling. How can you choose? You don’t have to choose. You can enjoy them all.

And that is what I do. I think there are more wines from more wineries from more countries than ever, or at least there are more labels. I want to taste them all, but I haven’t enough days in my life and I refuse to hurry through them. So I try to learn about wines and regions and then sample a cross section. I seek the artisan producers and crafted wines as opposed to large producers, wines that have been made with passion and simplicity and have something special to reveal about their place of origin. So I don’t have a favorite, although I do collect wines I particularly enjoy with food Karly and I like to eat. I collect a few really odd wines I could not recommend to anybody. Often, they were at first losers, but on some unusual occasion we opened a bottle and Bingo! They were great with that particular dish we were eating. So I keep a small number of really strange wines in our cellar, and we create meals from time to time using weird wines to relive a novel experience.