hurry up and wait...

all right, here's our Paul Hobbs Winery harvest team processing our very 1st grapes of the 2008 harvest...some delicious pinot noir from the Valdez vineyard...

time to crush some fruit...

...it's crazy...it's the end of august, but it's still august and we received our first lot of chardonnay...albeit for a custom crush client, but still...it's pretty bleeping early! this means that the madness of harvest begins again. this year will be a strange harvest for me since this will be the first time that i WON'T be a harvest intern. i'll actually be in charge of a couple of harvest interns (or sample bitches as their nickname will most likely end up being :). it'll be intense and it'll be a test of my managerial skills, but it'll also be most interesting. i'll have to try to keep the blog updated on how everything goes.

well, at least i got in one last weekend in san francisco with my newly minted boyfriend (yes, that's right...mj has finally snagged a man...poor sucker...hahah) before he won't be able to see me for days on end. it was an interesting weekend as well since we went to the friday outside lands concert in golden gate park. that was madness on a poorly organized level. there were way too many people and the artist line-ups were way too close together. i only got to see half of the black keys (while eschewing beck since i assumed, and correctly, that there would be way too many people trying to see beck) before i felt that i had to make my way over to the main stage for radiohead. i didn't even get that close to the stage (as you can see from the blurry photo below). it was good to hear them play their new stuff, but i will always hold dear to my heart the concert i saw on their ok computer tour at the rosemount theatre in chicago...center section, third row...it was most amazing...almost a life-altering experience. well their light show has matured with the new technology, but they are still one of the greatest bands ever. we left halfway thru their encore because we were afraid of the onslaught of drunkards trying to get out. it was a correct decision since i heard a riot almost broke out in the tunnel that leads to one of the exits. luckily, a friend has an apartment on geary street so we got to drink beers while watching the poor souls waiting forever for a jam-packed public bus. ah, that is the way to do it...

pinot mania @ ipnc

well, i'm fresh from a road trip that i took with my roommate katy (of flowers winery) and my good friend rebecca (of schramsberg winery) who was interning at domaine meo camuzet in 2005 while i was at maison champy in burgundy...yes that's right...a trio of enologists! we drove up to mcminnville (oregon) in the willamette valley (about an hour drive from portland) for the international pinot noir celebration. we three are quite the pinotphiles, so it was high time that we did some serious tasting of oregon pinots (as well as the californian, burgundian, and kiwi wineries that were also pouring). we were highly impressed with penner-ash winery and a few others. there is some great potential for pinots there. the quality is defintely there in the grapes. the winemaking could be tweaked. in the end, this trip pretty much confirmed my desire to move to and (hopefully) settle in portland. i miss city living (so not the case in petaluma) and i miss new england. the willamette valley and portland hold the keys to resolving this! i can live in a city and just drive 45 minutes to an hour into wine country, ski country, and ocean beach country. and i can be among the evergreen forests that remind me of home.

i also ran into dimitri bazas, the winemaker at maison champy, my old boss, and now a good friend. his palette is unbelievably amazing. the wine literally speaks to him, so it was very interesting to taste with him and refine my palette as well. who knows, dimitri and this trio of enologists may be doing some interesting things in the future...les anges...dimitri and i before we dug into our delicious fried chicken...
becky searching the horizon at penner-ash winery...
super katy at archery summit winery...

view of the estate vineyard at archery summit...

p.s. these photos were all taken with my new favorite thing...my new cellphone, the lg dare, or verizon's answer to the iphone...

hallelujah! the sun rises again...

it's been awhile i know and i'm sure most of you have lost interest, but things have been pretty much business as usual in petaluma/sonoma county with nothing very exciting to report let alone take photos of.

there has been one thing of note that has been going on in northern california...wildfires. i didn't get any photos of how hazy it was and there's no way to instill the smell of bbq that permeated the sonoma county air for a week, but it has been wicked hazy/smokey out here since last weekend. the sunrises and sunsets have been weirdly amazing and it's been ridiculously cooler than usual because the sun couldn't infiltrate all that smoke. from my office window, you can usually see the napa mountains and mt. st. helena, but you couldn't even see 100 yards away into the next vineyard. petaluma has been far from danger, though, so i'm quite lucky.

and happily, today, i looked outside and i could see the sky...

budbreak

spring is here, which most of you know, but i've been a little slow in updating my blog. however, with spring, comes budbreak and the rebirth of our vines. it's very exciting to see the vineyard come alive again, especially since i pruned some so it's good to see that i didn't kill any vines ;).
it's also been exciting because our new winery for the 2nd label is almost finished being built. i went over last week to help guide kieran move tanks with the forklift. i also witnessed how they actually lift these giant tanks up...
i also took in a a's vs. twins game because it was a special $2 ticket/$1 hot dog night. it's nice to see that even at the colliseum, you can still find yankees haters in the girls restroom. it was a great game made even greater 'cause i got to spend it with my roommate katy and my best friend katie!

wait a second...

...i'm not in my 20's anymore?!? alack and alas, as most of you know, i turned 30 last week. it seriously just crept up on me. and you all know that i still act like i'm 25!

well, i decided to attempt to embrace it by having a party in san francisco at the wine bar, amélie (props to amelie for putting up with our party). i wished more of you could have been there, but i do realize that not all of you, unfortunately, live near the bay area. but there were still enough people (some of whom i haven't seen in awhile...that's you, former uc-davis labmates!) to make it a fun time. jenn even snuck away from the hospital and flew up from san diego! a lot of wine was drunk , but not enough dancing occurred...well the venue wasn't really appropriate for dancing and we stayed too late to try to find a nightclub before they closed. i would highly recommend amélie to anyone looking for hip wine bar to hang out in san francisco. i won't regale you with the photos dannie took of me trying to be a model (including the one that is my new facebook profile pic), but please enjoy the group shot of some of us below ...i have to thank dannie and jenn for being the photographers of the night. the photos seen here were taken by dannie, so i have to include her artistic photo from our hotel room below...

9th Sonoma County Pruning Championship

it's leap day, so as a salaried worker who is not getting an extra 8 hours of pay, let's take a field trip to the sonoma county pruning championship! the main draw is the individual race where you're judged on speed and ability/finesse. however, there's also a "celebrity" contest with winemaker/vineyard manager teams representing some of the AVAs in sonoma county. our intrepid winemaker/vineyard manager team of megan and scott (in the photo below) were entered in to help russian river valley win it all in the relay pruning race. unfortunately, it was not meant to be...damn you, alexander valley! however, we did get some great action shots and one of the sweeping vista with the ritchie vineyard.