A couple of months ago, we discussed whether we should start entering some wine competitions. We came to the conclusion that we had nothing to lose and honestly felt our wines would hold up pretty well. So we entered the SF Chronicle Wine Competition, as it was the first one that came up once are wines were ready. It is a huge competition with over 4,000 wines entered. This was our first competition and I had read the results would be published in February in the Chronicle. We knew that judging was taking place last week…
>>> READ MOREOkay…I think this winery thing may have some extra benefits! What a great time we had at Harney Lane’s Open House on December 6th! It seems that most Christmas’ go by so fast that we fail to catch up with many of our friends. So this year we are blessed because so many of you stopped in to see us and catch up on this crazy adventure we are on. Thank you all!!! The winery building was a bit chilly but it was filled with warm hearts and well wishes. (And a fair amount of buying too!) Even the harvester generated a…
>>> READ MOREThe tasting room now has 17 solid cement square pillars. It has been quite a process to get them to this stage. An unbelievable amount of rebar, carefully placed electrical, large column molds placed by a crane, special inspectors for cement, to name a few pieces, all just to get 2′ x 2′ x 10′ pillars! It’s one of those pieces of the puzzle, like so many others, that you would never stop to think how many things had to happen to get the end result. We have found that almost every piece of this…
>>> READ MORENovember 8th & 9th we pulled out all the stops to get ready for Lodi’s First Sip Event! It was well worth the work as we had a great turnout and made lots of new friends already!!! The week before was CRAZY! In fact, we still had to run extension cords for power and luckily…the plumber placed the toilet Friday afternoon. Just in the nick of time! That said, we had lots of positive feedback and people were good sports about wearing their “construction” hats. We’ve been planning for soooo long that it seemed a bit…
>>> READ MOREI made a promise to follow up on our little bud from the first vineyard post. So…..here it is! Same vine….same spur….nearly 5 months later. In fact, this covers the whole growing season for the fruit. The vineyard was harvested just a few days after this picture. It really is pretty amazing how quickly the vine moves through the season year after year. And this year it moved even quicker as it was harvest earlier in September than last year. Part of this vineyard was again picked for our Lizzy James Vineyard, Old Vine Zinfandel….
>>> READ MORE