Wine Enthusiast Ratings are in!!!

The Wine Enthusiast ratings are in on Lost Canyon Pinot noirs!

- 2006 Morelli Lane Pinot noir, 92 rating
- 2006 Las Brisas Pinot noir, 91 rating
- 2006 Widdoes Pinot noir, 88 rating
- 2006 Saralee Pinot noir, 87 rating

These results will be published in the April addition of Wine Enthusiast. We are very excited with these scores!!!

Cheese Tasting, Lecture, and Wine Pairing

January 19th was our first event of 2008. It certainly went off with a bang!
We had Jill Giacomini Basch, of Point Reyes Farmstead Cheese Company come by Lost Canyon Winery and talk about 7 different local cheeses that were all presented and tasted with our 2005 Syrahs. We had over 75 people show up and unfortunately couldn't let them all in due to amounts of space and cheese. Thanks for everyone coming out!! See you at the next event, Feruary 23, 3-5pm, where we will feature our "world class" grower, Saralee Kunde.

Lost Canyon Winery in the studio with Gene Burns!!!

Jack and Bob (2 of the owners) were on Dining Around with Gene Burns, January 12 at 10:30am. For those of you who don't know, Gene Burns talks food and wine on Newstalk 810, KGO Radio. This was a spontaneous happening, they had a whole to fill in their program and we jumped at it! We brought a 2007 Viognier barrel sample along with some of our 2006 Pinot Noirs. If you missed it check this link to listen the original show. http://www.kgoam810.com/article.asp?id=549358

Happy New Year! We hope to see you in 2008!

All of us at Lost Canyon Winery wish you a Happy New Year!
Please check in with us in January for a list of events for 2008.
We will be lining up an event every month and the blog will be active reviewing the events.
Hope you are celebrating with Lost Canyon Wine!!

Holiday party and December 2007 Open House

We have been preparing for weeks for our wine club member annual party and the December 1 and 2 Open House and now they are a glimmer in the past. Friday night was a great evening. The cellar cleaned up nicely, hard to remember those grape covered days. Jack chopped down a Christmas tree from half moon bay and we had it decorated near the entrance for all to enjoy. Randy put up the spot lights, highlighting the barrels containing our 2007 wines and we had the Christmas lights wrapped around the ceiling beams on as well (they are up all the time, but this is the only time of your we have them on). Martha had been preparing and cooking for days. This was the menu...the food was fantastic!!! Enjoy the photos from the event. Thanks, Wine Club members for making Lost Canyon Winery what it is! Also, thanks to the volunteers that helped out with the craziness on Friday night and the open houses. We really couldn't do it without you all. Happy Holidays!!!!

Beef & chorizo empanaditas

Pair with Trenton Station Syrah

Prosciutto and fig jam on baked brie crostini

Pair with Stage Gulch Syrah

Vegetarian version: fig jam & Gorgonzola cheese crostini

Pair with Alegria Syrah

Roasted five spice duck in scallion-hoisin crepe

Pair with Morelli Lane and Widdoes Pinot

Vegetarian persimmon, pear, golden raisin relish on Fontina crostini

Pair with Saralee Pinot

RRV Pinot Noir release party

The RRV Pinot Noir release party was this Saturday from 1-5pm. It was a success. Martha did all the delicious food. There was toasted brie on bread, Gruyere puffs, Pate and olives.
There were a lot of local wine events going on....Periscope cellars, Urbano Cellars, Rosenblum Cellars and Dashe Cellars. At our release party, we had some media and trade friends show up along with new walkins and lots of wine club members (this was the first time they could pick up their futures).
Our wine club members have been very excited about our new Pinot Noir, Widdoes vineyard from Dutton Ranch. These grapes are in the Green Valley AVA, which is a smaller AVA in the larger RRV AVA. This wine consists of only 1 clone, the Berringer suitcase clone, also known as the Martini clone. If you haven't tried this one yet, get down to our tasting room Friday-Sunday from 1-6pm for a tasting. This Pinot Noir will go quick. We only made 350 cases!! I was pouring Widdoes Pinot Noir on Friday to some chemical sales guys and one of them described the smell of the Widdoes as the inside of a new Cadillac. I don't personally agree with his nose, but I thought it was a cool description.

Roy's Art show with Lost Canyon Wine

I know this post is a little late, but there was a lot of work to be done. We are planning many upcoming events that are going to be a good time. We promise!


Roy Tomlinson's event at Lost Canyon was Nov. 3 from 3-6pm. It was a great turnout!! We had about 100 people come through and check out Roy's photos (not his usual media) from around the 'hood. Roy also opened up his studio space for folks to walk through and check out his paintings. Check out his website for more info on his paintings: http://roytomlinson.com/ They are dark and sophisticated. Roy has got some serious talent, we are very lucky to have him as our neighbor!!!
This Saturday is our Russian River Valley Pinot Noir Release Party. It is from 1-5pm and we will be pouring all of our new releases all day! This new vintage is fantastic, but I may be biased because this is my first vintage as assistant winemaker. Come and taste for yourself! The event is $10 at the door, free to wine club members and this includes some delicious snacks paired with our wines.

Harvest week Oct. 29-Nov. 4

While I was basking in the sun, vacationing in Michigan for the week (just kidding, I was there for my little brother's wedding), Randy, Jack and Martha were hard at work finishing up the crush. On Tuesday, they put the 07 Stage Gulch Syrah into barrels!! Hurray, we have finished. All of our babies are resting in their barrels. Now, we will continue to monitor their fermentation and top them off every 3 weeks.
Harvest is over and all the events are coming! Nov. 17 is our 06 Pinot Noir release party from 1-6pm, our wine club party is on Nov. 30 from 6-10pm, and our Holiday Open House is Dec. 1 and 2 from 1-5pm. The cellar will be all cleaned up and decorated for the holiday celebrations.

Havest week Oct. 22-28, Almost done!

Tuesday, we barreled all of the Trenton Station Syrah. This took up about 30 barrels! Wednesday, we started our last press for Stage Gulch Syrah. We had 13 bins and usually we do about 3-4 bins into the press before we run it. Today we pushed it and loaded in 5 bins for 1 press so we could do it all in only 3 stages instead of 4. It all fit and we were feeling pretty good about ourselves. We were eating lunch when the press was running so we could keep an eye on it. All went well. The press finished and we emptied out the dried skins and stems and got set up to do the 2nd out of 3 presses. I started to hear this beeping noise like an alarm clock. We looked around to see what it was and it was coming from the forklift. It was an error message saying BRUSHES. We shut it on and off and it was still beeping. Randy called the service station and they said we had to stop using it immediately or we would cause permanent damage. They thought they could get a service representative out either today or tomorrow. We were so close to being done! We waited for a bit to see if the service person would be there in a timely manner and fix the forklift so we could continue, but he arrived at 2pm and fixed the forklift until about 4pm. Needless to say, we had to clean up and continue the next day to finish the press. Next week, we just need to barrel the Stage Gulch and it will be all quiet in the winery. The babies will be in their barrels!

Harvest week Oct 15- 21, 2007

Earlier this week, we prepared for the "Uniqueness of Syrah" Seminar. This involved shopping at K&L wine shop in SF to find wines that we wanted to be represented in the presentation. We bought a Syrah from Northern Rhone, Southern Australia, Chile, and Lodi region. Then, the research began...we had to sample all of these wines, along with our 2 Syrahs and take tasting notes. The event was on Saturday from 3-5pm and 32 people attended. It was a hit! On Thursday night, Jack and I poured at the Taste event sponsered by East Bay Express at the Swarm gallery in Oakland. It was a nice event. Check out this weeks copy of the East Bay Express, there is an insert that has the local wineries (Dashe, JC, Periscope and Rosenblum) map along with a bottle shot.

On Friday we pressed the first Syrah, the Alegria vineyard, and barreled Widdoes, the last Pinot Noir. Sunday, we were back in the cellar putting in a full day of pressing Trenton Station, which was 12 tons, and barreling the Alegria. The Syrah grapes seemed to be juicier this year, because we calculated how much juice we thought we would have from the press and we seemed to have more. When we checked the back tank, we were right to the rim!!!! We monitored closer for filling the next tank! Randy and I were trying to move a hose to the other tank with the use of the pump and we failed to shut off the valve so we both got lots of wine if the face. Oh, the joys of winemaking...guess we got our yearly wine shower!! We are just one press and 2 barrelings away from being done.

Harvest week Oct. 8 - 14, The grapes are all in!!!!

Monday, we pressed the Saralee 115 Pinot Noir. The previous week, we got a call from Peter, our grape broker for Stage Gulch, he thought the grapes would be ready sometime this weekend. However, with the forecast of rain for Tuesday there was a scramble to get the grapes picked. The grapes were picked Tuesday morning and were delivered to us on Wednesday afternoon, 9.94 tons. This was such a good thing, since it rained Tuesday night and again on Friday!!!
We lined up several volunteers to help out with the sorting and destemming. The whole process seemed to take a long time, but I think it was just because we were tired from all of the other crushes. We are truly happy to have all of our grapes in.
The Stage Gulch grapes will cold soak for 2 days and then we will inoculate them with yeast. In this time that they are fermenting, about 2 weeks, we do 3 manual punch downs a day, everyday! The yeast are converting sugar to alcohol and give off carbon dioxide which pushes the skins to the top of the bin. We want the skins to be in contact with the juice for maximum color and flavor extraction. So, when we do the punch down we are pushing the skins back into the juice. Check back in next week for more barreling and pressing!

Harvest week, October 1- 7, 2007

It is Syrah time!!! Syrah grapes have thicker skins than Pinot Noir and the clusters aren't so tight together. These are the Alegria grapes.


This week we barreled the Morelli Lane Pinot Noir and pressed the UCD 18 Las Brisas Pinot Noir on Wednesday. Thursday, Jack and Randy rented a truck to drive up to RRV to get the Alegria Syrah grapes. Martha and I stayed behind to clean and set up all of the equipment so we would be ready to go when they returned with the grapes. However, things did not go that smoothly....Randy and Jack got stuck in traffic and didn't arrive at the Alegria vineyard until 10:30am, then they had to wait for the pickers to pick 5 tons of Syrah grapes. They got back on the road around 2:30pm and ended up at the winery at 4pm (we had projected they would arrive at Lost Canyon Winery at 1pm!!!). This crush took way longer because the grapes were picked in 1 ton bins and we had to dump them into 1/2 ton bins to fit on the sorting machine. We acted quickly because we had to maximize our use of daylight hours. The grapes came in at 27brix. Most volunteers bailed due to the lateness of the grapes. However, Mike Hardie came to the rescue and a new volunteer showed up too, along with Jack's son in law!!! It was a long night and their help was very appreciated. After everything was all cleaned up it was 9:30pm!

Saturday, we had our biggest crush, 12 tons! We had 5 volunteers come in to help us with Trenton Station Syrah. These grapes looked great, and were at 25 brix. The crushing process was done in record time, 11am-2:30pm we crushed 12 tons. I thought we would be going until 5pm. The sorting crew was awesome! Thanks, volunteers!!

Also, took some photos from the point of view at the top of the crusher. Enjoy! Only one more vineyard to go.....Stage Gulch coming next week.