Cima Collina

Archive for the ‘Wines’ Category

Hello All — I’ve taken a little break here, at least somewhat. We hosted our annual harvest party at Hilltop Ranch this past Saturday. The weather was wonderful, the band — “The Furry Chaps” — a fun, local bluegrass band kept us all entertained; all in all, quite good fun. We brought in the last load of grapes on October 10 — a mix of Bordeaux varietals (Cabernet Franc, Petite Verdot, Malbec, Merlot) from Lockwood Oaks. I kept the Malbec separate for a possible small bottling next year, but all the others are a “field blend” in one of our bigger tanks and all of it is just now coming into the homestretch — in other words finishing primary fermentation. We have drained and pressed a few tanks of Pinot so far — as soon as I’m done with this entry, I will drain a tank — but will dedicate ourselves more to that task next week……

Winemaker’s Dinner: Friday, November 7 at 7pm.

Yes, We’ve made a Port (all of 25 cases). I’ve had so many people ask for one, and I have played around with different varietals (traditional port varietals are difficult to come by here in Monterey — as they should be) and came up with this. I got the brandy for the fortification part of it from Germain-Robin up in Redwood Valley. Personally I do not like or drink sweet wines, and admit I had a difficult time separating my personal and professional judgements on this one, so this is neither as sweet nor as alcoholic as a traditional port. I have poured it at a few events recently and people seem to really like it — even those like myself who don’t like sweet wines. So, I’m getting a label created for it and it will go on sale in our tasting room sometime mid-November.

• Posted in Cima Collina, Food & Wine, Harvest, News & Happenings, Winemaking, Wines
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A Sea of Blue…..

Here is Cara putting the finishing touches on our 2005 Hilltop Ranch Pinot Noir.  We are excited about this wine as it is the first vintage from our own estate vineyard in Carmel Valley.  This will be a special package and will be released in November 2007……

• Posted in Cima Collina, Uncategorized, Wines
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 Happy New Year to One and All!

Recap of recent events:

We had a fun-filled, riotous evening at the Cima Collina Winemaker’s New Year Dinner at La Playa Hotel in Carmel on Sunday night (damning and embarrassing pictures forthcoming, I promise).  There was music and dancing throughout the evening, and we premiered our own estate 2005 Pinot Gris (of which we made only 35 cases) that night .  Ashton and Frank are the wine directors there and were graceful hosts and share an off-the-wall sense of humor which I realy appreciate.  Thanks La Playa for organizing this event and thanks for your unflagging support as well!

 Cima Collina was poured at the Pac Rep’s New Year’s party and I hear that all had a great time.  At last count, 230 folks attended, but more were expected, and the evening was filled with musical performances, food, and, of course Cima Collina.  We hope the folks at Pac Rep have enjoyed working with us as much as we them.

 Now, over at chezPim, Menu for Hope raised over $60,000 for the United Nations World Food Programme.  This figure was well and above their goal of $35,000……Congratulations to Pim and all the folks who organized and participated.  Events such as this prove the strength and commitment of the blogging community.

Coming Up!

Tarpy’s, a fine and fun local restaurant will feature Cima Collina wines in it’s “Wine Down Wednesday” event on Wednesday, January 24th.  Call them at 831-647-1444 for more information.

At Grasing’s on January 31 will be the First Annual Cima Collina Winemaker/Wild Mushroom Dinner.  Seating is very limited for this event, so please call them at 831-624-6562 for reservations.

• Posted in Cima Collina, Food & Wine, News & Happenings, Wines
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Yes, it is that time for draining tanks, shoveling, filling barrels.  Here are some photos from yesterday’s pressing of Pinot Noir from Chula Vina.  Here’s Will in the tank and James getting the equipment set-up. 

• Posted in Harvest, Winemaking, Winery, Wines
• Comments Off on Pressing Matters

….from the grasp of “bottling” and all the time, energy, deadlines and nerves it takes to prepare and get through it.  I had luck holding my right hand and work tugging on the other, which left me without a free hand with which to type.  But now, I’m back.  Whew!  No matter how much one plans and prepares for blending, finishing and bottling wine, there are always fires to put out — well, not literally, thank goodness  — but at the very least, there usually seems to be machines breaking down, mistakes, snafus, misjudgements, oversights.  The thing is, even with all of that stuff happening, everyone works together, the job gets done and everything works out well.  Go figure.  Here are some photos: 

 

Harvest Update

As I posted a few weeks ago, I will start a harvest diary-type of blog as soon as harvest starts.  It looks like a later start to harvest this year, so stay-tuned for that.

Cima Collina Folks

It is about high time I started highlighting all of the people around here who keep it all clean, make it run, and fix it when it breaks, and will do that soon, as well.  We are also looking forward the the arrival of our harvest intern — Tanya — from Paul Cluver Winery in South Africa.  Yes, South Africa.  So, we will have a little international spice coming to this little winery which should be good fun.

• Posted in Cima Collina, Uncategorized, Winemaking, Winery, Wines
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These days I rarely go to wine tastings because I am a) starting a winery, and b) I have a 4-year old, and c)I don’t like big, crowded “hog-call” wine tastings (more about this later). But a few weeks ago I decided that I needed to get out more, so I hoisted my periscope out of the water to have a look around, and found “The Pinot Noir Summit”, by Affairs of the Vine in San Franciso on Saturday, March 11. “Taste thirty-five luscious Pinot Noirs top rated wines from The 4th Annual Pinot Noir Shootout in a blind tasting. Pit your palate against the expert panel” was the billing on their website. This intrigued me: a blind tasting and of only 35 wines that had already passed through a judging. There were also seminars on various topics, and I thought it would be fun to sit in the audience and listen to my winemaker peers talk, something, again, that I rarely get the opportunity to do. So I went.

It turned out to be an interesting, fun and thoroughly educational event. There were (I’m guessing) 150 attendees, some of them winemakers, winery owners, winery employees, or wine journalists, but most seemed to be regular wine-interested folks. There were 44 wines to taste blind and were spread out within a relatively large room. Each bottle was wrapped in foil and color-coded. The room was a little cool for tasting red wine (the wines were not as aromatic as they probably could’ve been), but it was pretty well organized otherwise.

My impressions of the 44 wines: there was an incredible wide-range of style and quality in this tasting. A few negatives: there were many wines that were almost undrinkable and had some really awful glaring defects (it surprised me that these wines had made it through a previous judging). There were also a shameful amount of corked wines (although apparently each wine had been tasted as it was opened, there were still corked wines on the tables). But there were far more positives: a delightful variety of different styles of Pinot, a big range of flavors and aromas, oak attributes, color, weight, etc. My own, personal preference, is that I generally don’t like light-hued Pinot — these wines to me tend to be thin and lackluster. But in this tasting there were some light Pinots that were really beautiful wines: elegant, interesting flavors, spicy, and a nice suprise. Some Pinots tried for a darker hue/heavier weight/darker fruit profile that just didn’t work — the tannins were rough or overextracted or (many times) the oak profile was awkward or coarse. But there were other, darker Pinots that were elegant, interesting and well-made as well.

Some Surprises

Casa de Caballos was a wonderful surprise. They are located in the Templeton area, more generally in the Paso Robles region which isn’t known for producing great Pinot, but they are about 12 miles from the ocean and the vineyard is at 1200ft. The winemaker/owner, Tom, says that it can get to be 100 degrees during the day, but will cool quite quickly into the 50’s or lower at night. This was a very nice wine, elegant, subtle, med-bodied.

My friend Sal Godinez (we worked together at Saintsbury for a few years) has his own wine label out called Carneros della Notte and he is putting out some dynamite, medium-bodied yet sophisticated Pinot. Go Sal!

Now, I’ve heard tidbits here and there about Laetitia wines, but never really have had the opportunity to taste them or learn much about them. If you get the opportunity, check them out. Their winemaker, Eric Hickey, has been there for quite some time and is doing a dynamite job. For you folks interested in Pinot clones, there is an old clone called Martini that has been in California for years, but it is, by and large, relatively unremarkable on its own. It almost acts like Syrah in that it is dark and has, for Pinot, a lot of tannin, but unlike Syrah has very little character on its own. Eric brought along a wine made entirely from Martini clone that is grown on their La Colline vineyard and it was a fabulous wine on it’s own — by far the best wine made from Martini I have ever tasted.

Blind Tasting Format

As the day wore on I met up with friends I haven’t seen for quite some time and was able to catch-up and (hee hee) gossip a little too. I met some new friends as well. I prefer this type of tasting to to other big tastings that aren’t blind for many reasons: there is more time in which to savor each wine and appreciate it for what it is (or isn’t); an event that has a smaller attendance (such as this one) is more conducive to meeting people and catching up with friends; tasting blind completely throws out any hype associated with a certain winery, style, pricepoint, etc; it forces the taster to accept what is in the glass without any predetermined notions. I hope to see more tastings like this in the future to help folks evaluate wine in a slower-paced, intimate and unbiased environment. Good job Affairs of the Vine!!

• Posted in Wines
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• Carmel Valley, CA 93924
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