Stein Family Wines

Upcoming Events

2011-11-28T12:28:00.000-08:00

12/1: The new website is alive and well--please take a look and spread the word. We're an excellent choice for holiday gifts: wine, clothing, and clubs!

12/12, 6pm: Trade-Only event at TI--please email Terri to confirm.

12/17, 5pm: SFW pours in the Napa Valley Marriott's Great Room--come get your holidays started right!

12/18, 12-5pm: Chili Day in December at TI--go to eventbrite for details. All three winemakers will be onsite and waiting to hear whose chili recipe won the contest--I'm reasonably confident it's me :)

Happy holidays to all--please cherish your families and what you have, not just in December but all year round. Yeah, I'm working on it, too.

Josh Stein, of Stein Family Wines, on KVYN

2011-11-22T21:02:00.000-08:00

Why Philanthropy?

2011-09-20T06:47:00.000-07:00

It started for me with a conversation.

I am a Puente mentor, which means I volunteer a very small part of my time to lend an ear to a community college student, working to make the transition to college and then to the four-year a process by which the students see success and are dedicated to returning to their community--our community--as professionals themselves. As I liked to say when I was a Puente teacher, Puente por Vida -- Puente for Life.

So, there I was having a conversation with my mentee, and she shared that her father had recently received a raise to acknowledge his twenty-fifth year at the winery where he worked. I said that that was fantastic and asked what he was now making.

Fourteen dollars an hour.

Now, this isn't a small mom-and-pop place up in Chiles or Pope Valley; this is a major winery whose owner quite successfully operates several large, international establishments. And this isn't someone who only knows how to pick fruit (though if you've ever done it for more than an hour, you know it's no fun, either); her father helps to manage both the vineyards and the cellar. And we're not talking about inexpensive wines; the average bottle price is north of $50, and they've been there a long time.

I realized I couldn't do anything about that particular situation. But I could try something... Different.

Today's Word of the Day: Balance

2011-03-16T10:53:00.000-07:00

If only there were four extra hours in the day, I am fond of replying when asked that seemingly inevitable question of What do you wish for? I used to be too busy, if you will. Most days are still pretty crazy--except for a day like today, where, because I managed to tweak an old back injury, I've been forced into the slow lane, but I'm still writing a blog post, so it's not a total loss--but having rearranged my time and priorities a bit (shouldn't the success of my own winery come before the success of someone else's?) I can say that it is definitely possible to balance out three jobs, twins, and a marriage and feel reasonably on top of the twirling debris most of the time.

The world at the moment, too, appears to be a bit off-wobble, as it were, bringing to mind for me Mr. Yeats (thanks to Carole Fabricant and Joe Childers for drilling this stuff into my soul):

"THE SECOND COMING"

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

The takeaway, though, in this context, is that it's just the future that awaits--no more, no less. It's on us to decide how we want to live, stand for, and do--which is why Scott Walker can go fuck himself, but that's a whole other blog entry. Our operating principle has always been about balancing the need to bring in revenue with the need not to shit where we sleep (a fundamental which many seem to have forgotten in country at the moment, but what do I know? I'm just a teacher), which is why philanthropy is part of what we do from the core--every bottle of fun (that is why we make wine, y'know?) gets balanced against helping someone else a little bit out of misery (wines are made with an emphasis on the fair). It's not a lot if looked at as only just the one bottle, just like it's not a lot if looked at as only one scholarship for one kid, but it adds up. The more we look for and practice balance, the more we bring the world we want our kids to live in into lived reality. I truly believe that--you fight hypocrisy with honesty, stupidity with knowledge, misplaced adolescence with mature wisdom.

In a wine, balance means listening to the grapes or blending components. They don't speak in words, of course, but they do talk in chemistry and scents and mouthfeel and other ways we call "the razzle dazzle." Our goal is to listen and help the wine be what it wants to be. This always sounded like pure marketing puffery to me until I started to taste a lot of wines professionally, meaning not to enjoy as a drinker enjoys, and then I realized it is possible to taste true structural differences that reflect the philosophy of the winemaker bright as day if you know what to listen for--wines that have been bent into final form, wines that went willingly, and wines that were already waiting for the winemaker to catch up.

Balance in the marketplace is also necessary. We have new wines coming out later this year on our Just Joshin brand--a new sub-brand, if you will, whose name you'll come to know soon enough--and we've been asked a number of times, why go with more releases on the lower-priced, "fun" brand when we could be releasing wines under the more serious, more "wine" (note quotes equal gravitas) brand, Stein Family? Basically, because we don't work from ego. We make what we know people will like and which will match with their lives, creating balance. We price so we overdeliver--we sell more, and that means more checks get written. We often blend the wines we release because balance isn't always intrinsically there in a wine; sometimes it needs a bit of help.

And balance, too, is what led us to Treasure Island for the winery and tasting room. It will be many years, if ever, before we can afford North Bay prices, and places in San Francisco or Alameda were too far away given my schedule. Treasure Island is a perfect compromise given how much of my time is already spent out of Napa on the I-80 corridor as it is. For those who don't know, I have only two toys--my pool table and my 3rd generation MX-5 convertible--and while I don't generally get to use the former much, I use the latter whenever I possibly can; it lets me drive very far, very, very fast. It's a fun thirty minutes to the winery on the freeway, which is half the time to the winery on Spring Mountain, and that was in my own valley! Yes, we feel this location will be a good balance in many ways.

Returning to the point that set this particular blog topic in motion in my head a few weeks ago, balance in life is the toughest and hardest to achieve. Let's face it: it's actually a moving target. When I got to thinking about what has helped keep me centered despite the workload only going up, it was daily, sometimes two-a-day, exercise. My kids are young, but Daddy really isn't any more, so I had to balance my workload and work style to their need for a father--hence the exercise, done every day in front of the TV to kill two birds at once. I got a recumbent bike, which has allowed me to work the cardio, burning off about sixty-five pounds over five months and then keeping it off for more than a year and counting after that. You get more energy. You get more control. You get balance. Just a thought for today.

More soon as permitting and countdowns have begun for TI...

Papers Signed... and Now We Wait: Early March Updates

2011-03-05T17:35:00.000-08:00

So, as of March 1st, we now have a winery and tasting room on Treasure Island. The address is 751 13th Street @ Avenue I :)

View Larger Map

Now we just have to wait on the permitting.

And begin the work on the myriad of details that go into the set up of a working winery and retail location. Moving in equipment is easy enough except for the wrinkle of only having one day a week to do much of it--and when something goes wrong, a dead truck battery this week, for example, then everything gets bumped back a week as a result--so, while I wanted to report that our tanks and such had been relocated from Spring Mountain to Treasure Island, such is not the case quite yet. I truly look forward to the day when I can make this undertaking the primary focus of my day rather than what I can fit in around teaching, grading, and consultant work. With time... *wood-knock*

What else is coming up?

Vaquero, for one--the final wines blends, the final label tweaks, all the paperwork to make it a legal wine brand--all of that has still to be done because of the permitting. I think you'll like what you taste and see, though--think sub-$15 wines that bring smiles every time coupled with some cutting edge label elements (QR codes, anyone?). We'll release images in due time. I plan to bottle within weeks of being fully legal on TI, so the wines are coming soon!

There's also the selection of tasting room tchotchkes--drop us a line with ideas of things you'd like to see for sale. If we can make it happen in an affordable fashion, we will.

We have, additionally, begun the longer term process of reaching out to the various trade groups that help to drive business to the tasting room. This becomes a nicely reciprocal relationship if managed right. Limo and bus drivers, bike and Segway tours, they all live and die by the experience they provide their clients. We need good customers who appreciate what we do and who want to take home with them what we make. The two together can make all three groups very happy indeed. ;)

Lastly, if you are looking for something to do with some not-so-nice weather looming tomorrow afternoon, you can come see us at Oakland Midrasha's Pre-Passover Jewish Winemaker's Tasting. You can find details here. They have secured a one-day sales permit, so our wines will be for sale, with a percentage going to the synagogue (as well as our customary 5% off the top to the scholarship funds). Come on down and show the love!

Spring is Coming!

2011-02-20T14:10:00.001-08:00

We're at month thirty-two of our original thirty-six month startup cycle, and I'm happy to report we are ahead of schedule. How so, you ask? I just transfered the last of our startup debt off of short-term high-interest providers to long-term low-interest ones, allowing us to de-leverage and free up a considerable amount of cash flow. For those interested in the business side of wine, it really isn't any different than running any other business--pay down debt, increase cash flow, sell, sell, sell. And on the human side, it's allowed me to take a deep breath in this particular arena, the first in a while, so I'm going to enjoy it, if you don't mind. And if you did, you wouldn't be reading anyway.

Also, we're moving up plans for expanded Direct-to-Consumer (DTC, in the parlance of our times ;D) sales. Take a look:

View Larger Map

This is Treasure Island, and it's where I'm moving the winery and opening a collective tasting room. Yup. For reals. More to come as the details firm up ;)

If you're interested, we've created and will continue to create an archive of recipes to go along with our wines. You can find some of them on the website here and here, and you can find others on Facebook here, here, here, and here. Please let us know if you like, and if you use, please take and send/post pics, etc.

We've got several upcoming events. Now that we're getting the retail side of things set up, you can expect yours truly to be spending more time travelling around to set up accounts, so you folks on the East Coast, be prepared :D

3/6/11 Stein Family Wines celebrates Jewish Vintners in Oakland at Temple Sinai's Stern Hall, 2808 Summit Street, Oakland, CA

5/13/11 Stein Family Wines helps support affordable housing for seniors PEP Housing's 2011 Street Party & Benefit.

6/5/11 Stein Family Wines joins the Tempranillo Advocates Producers and Amigos Society once again for the TAPAS 2011 Grand Wine Tasting at Ft. Mason

I've no idea why there's nothing in April--hopefully, that will be a tasting room opening party--but one way or another, we'll find a way to bring you our wines!

Last, before I go, we're currently finishing up the final design work for Vaquero, our newest Just Joshin releases later this year. We can bottle in 750mL bottles or 1 Liter jugs. Which do you think is the better way to go? Pricing would be roughly $15 for the bottle, $20 for the jug, including the 5% donation and the added costs of using the larger glass. Let us know your thoughts, please.

On the Train to a Tasting Room Part Four: Spinning in Infinity

2010-11-04T17:55:00.000-07:00

Well, it’s been a while since I posted. The middle of the semester combined with the craziest harvest have had a tendency to cause lots of other things to go by the wayside—said harvest which has only ended, by the way, as I write this at the end of the first week in November, for Napa; Sonoma is still bringing grapes in and will be for at least another week!

Remember that old song, “You Can Call Me Al,” by Paul Simon? Great video back in the day with Chevy Chase—back when he was really funny, by the way, kids.

That’s the song that comes to mind as I type this update. Here’re a couple lines with added poignancy at the moment:

All along along
There were incidents and accidents
There were hints and allegations

Why, you say, how could little ol’ Josh get himself tangled up? “Hints and allegations”: Yup, got that, for sure, up on the mountain top. There’s a long history of contentiousness between various parties up on the mountain, and there are all kinds of alternative lifestyles going on up there. You’d think no one would have a problem with a small philanthropic-based winery trying to make a little wine in already existing facilities, but guess what? Some people do, apparently. I can’t go into more specifics until the issue is resolved, but the lines above are quote apt, let’s just say that.

There are other lines, though, that also describe the flipside of where we are today, two years into this project:

He looks around, around
He sees angels in the architecture
Spinning in infinity
He says Amen! and Hallelujah!

And it’s true, too. When you look out at the top of this mountain, the views are… by all rights, I simply shouldn’t have access to those views, and it’s pretty much a minor miracle, all in.

So, here’s the good news. We have our federal TTB 02 license, meaning in the feds’ eyes, we’re now a real winery; the TTB license references a California ABC bonded winery number, meaning ABC, too, at least has us in their system if not yet fully green-lighting us. Now we just have to wait and see how all the I’s get crossed and the T’s get dotted, I guess. Definitely been a long six weeks or so—each day has felt like a week in duration.

Still and all, our wine is now at San Francisco International—Terminal Three’s Wine Wisdom—and we’re in the process of opening new accounts in both Northern and Southern California, which will help to spread the good word.

I’m not going to lie, though: if you’re reading this, the holidays are coming up, and we need to sell wine—got a really nice special holiday package here. And even if you can’t/won’t yourself, please do like, share, suggest, etc. to your friends. We appreciate it, and the kids who get the scholarship checks in time to buy books and pay tuition in January truly, truly, truly do, too. Remember, it’s not just that we make really great wines at super reasonable prices—which we do, by the way—but we also let you enjoy those wines with a clean conscience, having helped to build better futures for all our kids.

Thanks for reading and thanks for your time,
J

On the train to a tasting room... Part 3

2010-08-31T06:35:00.000-07:00

So, okay, what do the numbers mean, right? They mean that, unless you have deep pockets or can scale exceptionally fast, there's no way to stay in business with three-tier as the sales goal, at least not for most small wineries. You know a major corporation with dozens and dozens of brands just made a deal with the largest distributor in the country, right? How many small wineries can compete in that pool?

What is the way, then? Direct to Consumer (DTC) sales. Wine is really funny because it's unlike a lot of other luxuries in that we generally need to taste a wine before we'll consider buying yet--think of how many other luxuries are just assumed to always be great. There are, of course, exceptions to this situation, but I argue the provenances involved--the very idea of provenance itself!--are founded upon others' direct positive experiences with the wines in question--enough of those experiences across enough time and it becomes a given that certain producers' releases will generally be great.

For the other 95%+ of us in the wine business, however, we need people to taste before we can sell.

And that's why the tasting room was created (proof of the overwhelming presence of provenance can be seen in how late to the game so many French producers have been to the idea of wine country qua tourist destination cum tasting room experience). They're not easy to come by in the areas we inhabit because there's a general sense that those who got there first set the rules for those who follow, meaning that without ten acres, you ain't selling F2F DTC anytime soon... As above, there are exceptions--if you've got the cash, well, let's just say "rich boy's playground" is sometimes an apt descriptor of what goes on around here--but if you are building up to these things as we are, you've got to be a bit more lithe. Hence our new process of going for Alternating Proprietorship.

These last eighteen months, we've been a 17/20 wine company--licensed to sell finished wine to consumers (just not as in-person retail) and the trade (like the sale into SFO's Terminal Three wine shop, Wine Wisdom [yay, us!]). But we aren't currently kosher to join certain trade organizations or legal to pour/sell directly for people in most instances (hence the Ft. Mason pourings' importance--that's federal land!). We custom crushed--ironically by me as the Number Two at the host winery--but we didn't fully have control of our own destinies (or at least as much as you can given the highly regulated and taxed alcohol environment in the US).

The A/P changes all of that.

Think of renting an office space inside of a larger office building. You'd have your own equipment, phones and comms, customers, logistics, etc., right? Makes sense that you'd be a separate business inside of another's physical space? That's A/P in a nutshell if you substitute wine stuff for office stuff in your mental picture (actually, just add the wine stuff to the office stuff--we gots lots of back office folks, too!).

We have to show on paper and physically that a portion of the cellar and production areas are ours. As you might imagine, given the power that holding an 02 permit has amidst a sea of 17/20s, TTB and ABC really want to make sure there's no hanky-panky going on.

We're totally legit, as we all know is fully documented herein. I'm not risking the kids' futures for a few bucks or trying to end-run permitting. We're doing it the right way, and have now submitted our paperwork and begun the migration to the winery on Spring Mountain (bad Disney pun there, sorry).

Okay, but why do all of this, right? So, here's the thing: when people taste our wines, they love them, but we need a tasting room for that to happen consistently since I can't be more than one place at one time (and these aren't really wine business issues, just business issues). You can't get a tasting room in most instances in Napa or Sonoma--you know, the wine mothership in the US?--without that 02 license.

Get it? The rule is that you gotta own/sublet 10+ acres to qualify for that tasting room. I ain't got ten acres, but I do know someone who does... And that's why we're now just waiting to once again post those white thirty-day signs so we can be a legal A/P and then a legally open tasting room--we're still shooting for November 1st, but we'll see. Sure would be a great birthday present for the kids or anniversary gift for their parents. *fingers crossed*

Oh, and by the way, the 2009 Gewürz just got 92 points as one of Meridith May's November Publisher's Picks from The Tasting Panel, and, as noted above, both the Gewürz and the JJ Tempranillo can now be purchased and taken as carryon at SFO's Terminal Three. Get on it, folks! Yup, it's been a pretty interesting couple of weeks.

Thanks for your time.

On the train to a tasting room… Part II

2010-08-04T08:34:00.000-07:00

I apologize in advance if math isn't your thing. It's not a lot of people's thing despite their being in business, apparently. *shrug*

Where to begin? Let’s back up for a little bit of history. Why? Because it has an impact on a huge number of wineries and whether they can survive or not.

Prohibition ended with the creation of a three-tier system whereby a producer of alcohol, in most instances, had to sell to a middle person, generally a distributor, who is the wholesaler in a particular area, who then sold the product to a retailer, who, in turn, sold it to the consumer. Sounds convoluted, right? It is, and on purpose, so that each tier gets its piece of the action.

The consumer might pay $20 (before taxes, a whole other discussion) for that bottle, but under the three-tier system, here’s how the money actually breaks down:

Consumer pays the retailer $20.
The retailer owes, one way or another, at least two-thirds of the retail price, in this case, let’s say $13.33, to the distributor.
The retailer owes the distributor the difference between that wholesale amount and the FOB price, which is half of the retail, in this case, that’s $10.
That FOB, $10, is what, nominally, the producer gets for that $20 bottle from the distributor.

Except it doesn’t account for warehousing fees, transport fees, taxes, broker’s skim, and any discounts offered—things like five or ten percent off of three or five cases, ten or fifteen percent off of ten cases, etc., etc.—all of which add to the distributor’s margin and take away from the producer’s.

Here’s the margin for each level based on the above, before any discounts, for that $20 bottle:

The retailer sees $6.67
The distributor sees $3.33
The producer sees $10

Note that the middle person, simply by dint of being the only legal pathway from producer to retailer (or consumer—more on this next time), is making almost seventeen percent on the transaction. And that’s just on one bottle. Before discounts.

Wine, almost always, except with very, very expensive wine, is only sold in cases, mostly twelve bottles to the case. Do the math:

The retailer makes just over $80 on the case, one-third of the sale.
The distributor makes almost $40, about seventeen percent.
The producer makes $120, fifty percent of the sale.

See why there’s quite a margin? And wine is almost always sold in pallet levels or easily produced segments of pallet levels because of how we transport via truck. That means, generally, multiples of fives or sevens, depending on the bottle shape, which affects the case dimensions and how many cases can fit per level. Let’s say this is a $20 Bordeaux red, so we can expect fourteen cases per pallet level, four levels to the pallet.

The producer just had to give fifteen percent on a seven case order to make a market start to open up. Let’s run the numbers:

The retailer makes just over $80 on each case, one-third, as noted above.
The distributor makes $58 on each case, more than twenty-four percent of the sale.
The producer makes $102 per case because of the fifteen percent discount, 42.5% of that $20 bottle/$240 per case bottle.

Math can be interesting, yes?

Find out next time why these numbers mean a small winery must have a tasting room to survive.

On the train… to a Tasting Room! Part I

2010-08-02T21:59:00.000-07:00

So, it’s been about twenty months or so since we began this project, and just about a year since we got into the intricacies of permitting, licensing, and the like, and as we approach our anniversary, we are on the move again. Literally.

We are, in fact, moving to Spring Mountain, home to several illustrious neighbors:

View Larger Map

The universe really does have a plan. If I could have picked one place in the hills where I would want to make wine, it’s this mountain, especially in the location where we’ll be—just over the county line into Sonoma.

How did this happen, and why is it vital to our continued movement out of start-up phase? Therein lies a tale, which I will be sharing in the weeks to come. Stay tuned…

Here's what's on tap for the next couple of months as we work through the permit process (again):

Looking for something to do on Sunday, August 8^th? Come see us at Ft. Mason as VinoModa again presents Crushbarrel Winemaker’s Market!

We were the faves at the last one, and we come bearing terrific deals at this one! Come get $240 cases of Gewürztraminer ($20 a bottle!) and $150 cases of Tempranillo ($12.50 a bottle!). And remember, every sale directly translates into college scholarship and support monies for the children of wineworkers in Napa and Sonoma counties. Why? Because fair is fair. Come see us and drink your wine with a clear conscience!

Sunday, August 15^th has us back again at Del Monte Square, pouring at the SF Winemakers Market:

It’s a great location, and the market makes for great conversation and food, too. Come on down, city and peninsula, folks—the city is nowhere near as busy on the weekends as it has been in years past, so now’s the time to come visit your favorite places and remember again why you picked the Bay Area to live!

Before I go, just a quick note to let you know whom your patronage in the first two quarters of the year went to supporting: Napa County Hispanic Network, Napa Valley College Puente, Santa Rosa Junior College Puente. THANK YOU for helping to change the wine business one person, one bottle, one glass at a time… because fair is fair.

Bottling Number Two: Lessons Learned? Part the Last

2010-07-05T09:56:00.000-07:00

Lesson Number Two: it's worth a bit of extra cost to bottle on our own schedule, and there are other small vendors out there who will work with us easily enough.

How did I learn this? We were all set to bottle four weeks ago. Except we got bumped because the line actually came to a standstill, waiting on supplies from a vendor--not one of mine, fortunately. Production is down because market demand is down, which means instead of a second day, we only planned for one day to bottle in the first place, leaving a very tight schedule. Which means the bottler left at the end of that day to set up for the next day's job elsewhere. And our wine was still in tank.

Oh.

Yeah, bottling sucks.

I dealt. (You know what maturity really is? Shit is falling apart all around you, and you just sigh and roll up your sleeves. I mean, what the fuck else are you going to do, somehow hit a reset button?)

So, there we were with ready-to-go wine and no machinery to get it into glass, labelled, and foiled. Yes, we punted and hand-bottled a few cases because of TAPAS, but that's NOT a longterm solution. To make an already rather long story (mercifully?) shorter (I'll leave the week of food poisoning to your imagination), I did find a very small mobile bottler who cut me a break because of how tiny the lot was. Yay! We're all set, right?

Not so fast.

Like I said, bottling sucks. I made the simple too complicated. When I had ordered my foils, I was ordering glass with a narrower neck width--this matters because a too-small or too-large foil won't fit the neck right, tearing, stretching, or crimping in rather unsightly ways--but I had had to change something like six weeks later because the glass was out of stock. I forgot to check the new bottle's neck diameter.

Oops.

Yeah.

En route to the winery, I got a text message that the foils were too narrow. Time to call the boss since it's his place. But they're so nicely blue. Yeah, but they don't fit. Swell.

"Okay, you keep bottling and I'll go find some more foils somewhere."

Which I did, driving away, pea gravel flying, as the second pallet was being bottled and arriving back just as the final one was finishing--meaning the bottles had to go through the line a second time just to get the foils added, which I had indeed managed to turn up, though the color was black, not blue, but, hey, you take your lumps and learn your lessons, right?

Lesson number three: check. double-check. triple-check. And then do it again. Enough said.

And I've now said plenty--sorry about that :)

---

Last funny image from Saturday's Crushbarrel Market at Ft. Mason (I'll be there again several times next month--definitely a good event)--check out the FB pictures and discussion for others:

So, it's the end of the event, and people are starting pack up while also making last-minute sales, etc. This guy comes up to me as says he wants to buy my Pinot. Great, but I've got Tempranillo? Hmm... he pauses and has a good think for a moment as a woman walks by with a back tat of the fingers touching by Michelangelo (I'm sure it's got a formal name, but I'm not checking right now). He reaches out and touches the fingers. She turns around. There's a spark. I don't know why, but there's a spark. Turns out she's was born in India, educated in the UK, and has an accent which mixes both of these environs. He tells her he hates how people try to lose their accents when they come to the US. She smiles. He asks her her name. She tells him. He asks her to spell it. She does. He asks her to spell it again.

And again.

And again.

And again.

Yup--this is why even a bad day selling wine beats a good day doing lots of other things ;)

Bottling Number Two: Lessons Learned?--Part the Third

2010-07-01T09:20:00.000-07:00

So, I took a gamble and went afishin', and I went fly-fishing for sure, meaning I just waited to see what would come along within my timeline window of about three weeks. And, sure enough, there is a lot of amazing wine available, and given the grapes that are available, too, I don't see this changing for several years, at least. If I had the scratch, I could be bringing in sub-$15 Napa Valley red wines in eighteen to twenty-four months--which means, since there definitely are people with the cash, that you can expect to see it, too. Why the time delay? These are 2008 and 2009 wines, so they need time to age and finish before release. What starts this Summer must, simply by the numbers, continue until that wine is out of the system. I believe in shitty times that folks want to drink, so the demand will be there to buy those wines, but there is also an awful lot of wine out there (and don't even get me started on the rumors of millions of cases stockpiled in warehouses which must come to market at some point)...

And now, we have vicariously recirculated (all you, Aboo) back to the point: the 2007 Just Joshin Tempranillo, which I sourced from a small grower/winery with too much unsold 2006 already in bottle and lots and lots of '07 and '08 they couldn't bottle because without sales there's no money to pay for the bottling (welcome to small winery life--it may be a sexy lifestyle, but we all balance our revenue/expenditures just like anyone else, just a few too few sales away from a cash-flow stoppage; ask someone in the back office at a winery about September 2009 through to February 2010 if you think I'm kidding). And, to be honest, I was not impressed with the vinification done to date. I ain't claiming to be any great shakes, but I sure do know that a wine with a pH around 4 just isn't going to hang around for long. Not as wine anyway.

[Winemaking geekery alert: If the thoughts/practices of a winemaker are not something you particularly want to delve into given the technical and chemical discussions, skip the next section or just ungloss your eyes when you see ";D"]

If the Gewürz was like my senior thesis to prove I had learned how to make wine, the JJ Tempranillo was going to be a grad-level project in applied theory: just what do you do with a wine, less than twelve weeks before you bottle (or think you will bottle, as it were!) if its chemistry is more than a bit wonky; its free SO2 is way, way down (like close to oxidizing down); and it has a hole in the mid-palate about a half-yard long? Okay, so here's what I did, more or less (I do reserve the right to euphemize certain proprietary razzle-dazzles): first thing's first, we chilled down to get the that bad boy cold stabilized and dosed it with some SO2. Only one catch, which I realized in retrospect--the pH was above 3.8 to begin with (3.91 and rising), which meant the chilling sent the pH higher. Yup.

First lesson learned: request an extra sample of anything you really, really like and do an assay asap before anything else. It's worth the $60 in lab costs and the delay of a couple of days to find out what's really under the hood (and yes, I like to use an outside lab that does thousands and thouands of assays a year--their shit is straight and I'd be second-guessing my chemistry if I did it myself). Had I done this as I will from now on, I would have done step three first rather than last--keep reading for why.

Well, geez, now I'm staring at a pH of 4.13, which means the SO2 simply isn't going to be taken in in any way large enough to actually help the wine. Can't use certain acids at this point for a correction--we're already seeing tartaric precipitate because of the chilling, which is why we cold stabilized in the first place, right?--so tartaric ain't gonna work to correct here. Free bottle to the first person who emails me with what I used to fix this little knotty enological Gordian knot and why it worked (here's a hint--there's 19% Grenache in the Tempranillo), and it really was very simple. So, let's just say I got the pH back into the realm we want it to be, the high 3s--much better for the SO2, which is why my total actually went down even though my free went to where I needed it for bottling: @35 ppm. Perfect. And it brightened. And it freshened. And it still had a hole in the mid-palate.

Step three: I admit it, folks. I USED OAK ADJUNCTS! So what? Filled that hole right up, yes it did, and made a much better, rounded wine. I also think a bit of last-minute simulated micro-ox helped, but I'll leave that discussion for another time. Look, that wine had been in oak and steel for a good bit of time, but if the chemistry isn't right, it's a waste of time, money, and barrels. We did the bench trials, I promise, and I'm telling you, I got better results in eight weeks with my special blend than the wine had had for near three years in barrel and tank. Should this issue really even matter anymore? It's a $15 red wine, after all, and it's meant just to drink and enjoy.

[Okay, you can start reading again! ;D]

Now we had a finished wine, and it was time to bottle. Well, bottling sucks. It just does. It involves lots of little details, and if everything doesn't come together exactly right, it's a domino-chain to exasperation (that one's all you, Chuck). And, we are always last in the queue if I piggyback on job #2's bottling schedule because of the differences in oversight requirements. I have to go last, no matter what, and if we run out of time, guess who gets bumped? Yup.

We got bumped.

Yup.

Find out why on July 4th...

Bottling Number Two: Lessons Learned?--Part the Second

2010-06-28T09:13:00.001-07:00

Because as a winemaker, that's the same thing that can--and just did, several times--put me dead in the water, scratching my ass and asking myself, Okay, Joshie, now how do we get out this fine mess?

Let me back up. Reading the sales market is part and parcel of running any business, and it's been quite clear to just about anyone with eyes and ears that sales of wine haven't gone down at all--just that people have been "buying down" and liking what they've found there because--let's be honest, now--price doesn't really mean jack about the quality, enjoyment, or pairability-with-food of any given wine, and there are plenty of overpriced ego-produced wines and just as many interesting, low-priced commodity wines from "non-traditional areas" or made from oddball (to Americans) varietals.

So, my thinking went at the time, that time being mid-Winter 2010, about two weeks after the joy that was bottling and labeling the '09 Gewürz ("Vacation, I don't need no stinkin' vacation!"), finding a way to go downmarket with a red would probably be a really good thing right about Summer of 2010--right now, in other words. I'm not really a gambler, as anyone who has been in a casino with me can tell you; I like to take in as much information as possible and then make as informed a guess/decision as I can. Sorry, Cath, but this time I gambled (a bit? Well, we'll see, won't we...). How so? I didn't have any grapes, and I didn't have two years to wait even if I did. Market conditions are volatile, highly volatile actually, right now for sure, if not always already (that one's for Shane S, John P, and Jon L), so I actually would prefer not to be tied down like that, waiting years to bring something to market. I know, I know: I speak that beast that must not be named, the animal which heralds the end of what was vis-á-vis the insane pricing that was the Golden Age (hark a herald sings!) of about 1993 to 2008 in the world of wine: the bulk wine market of 2010 (and beyond...).

What the hell is a bulk wine market, right? Wine is pretty much like the Wild West saloon of my Bugs Bunny childhood--someone's willing to buy or sell just about anything involved in this business, and there's a whole secondary market of leftover wine out there. There are some pretty well off folks who go into that market to hunt through and find good deals to buy, finish, bottle, and sell. Ever wonder how there can be some many different brands each time you go back to your Whole Foods, Trader Joe's, BevMo, etc., etc.? The bulk market. It lets large companies get a tremendous amount of wine quickly and easily if needed, and it lets them dump excess wine they don't want or need. The same for growers who lose a contract or who can't find buyers--as is happening left and right at the moment--think of the impact for years to come!--they pick their grapes and custom crush themselves somewhere or, if they are also a winery, they hold it in a nice big, chilled tank, hoping that the finished wine will bring in more than it would have if sold as grapes. I won't belabor what you can research; just google "bulk wine market" and see for yourself.

Find out what I caught on the bulk market on Wednesday...

Bottling Number Two: Lessons Learned--Part the First

2010-06-26T22:58:00.001-07:00

To start off, if you're interested and around, I'll be pouring at Del Monte Square in San Francisco tomorrow afternoon at the Winemakers Market. It's a really pretty spot despite the somewhat tourist-oriented context, honestly. There's an old style SF dive bar which extends outside to face the Square, and there's always a musician strumming away and folks on benches, reading papers and relaxing. The area within the square for the market is perfect in that it's right next to sun but not actually in it from about 1:30 onwards, so you feel warm but cool at the same time. I'll be there with both the SFW Gewürz and the last of the hand-bottled Just Joshin Tempranillo ($150 a case is great for the Summer, I'm just saying), as well as three of job #2's wines I've helped with. Love to see you there.

There's also lots of new stuff on the website you might want to check out, too. Still working on that iPhone app--Yoda, I need you (that's a person, not a fuzzy green muppet)...

And now, onto the main floorshow, Part the First:

I have lost sixty pounds in the last eleven months. I bring this up only as an easy segueway as to how I did it: riding a recumbent bike while watching the DVR--because who has time to watch anything live anymore? Certainly not me and Cath. The bike works great, and if you add in some hand-weights, you can do lifting and cardio at the same time.

That, too, by the way, is just a sidenote to get to the point (can you tell much of my research was amongst the work of Barthelme, Coover, Pynchon, and the like? I guess you can take the geek out of the PoMo, but can you really get the PoMo out of the geek?? ;-%): I think I can now say why it is people fail on Top Chef and other shows of its ilk, meaning the only reality shows I will watch willingly--you know, the ones where someone actually has to do something rather than just show up and have sex?

They fail because they took something that should have been left as simple as possible and made it more complicated than it needed or wanted to be. Why, you are now asking yourself, am I thinking about reality TV if this is supposed to be a blog to document the experiment that is Stein Family Wines?

Read Part the Second on Monday to find out...

Happy Pi Day

2010-03-14T17:07:00.000-07:00

Busy times, and I've been meaning to post, but there have just been too many fires and not enough hands. As we say at job #2, good problem to have :)

First bit of news is to announce that you can come see us at several upcoming events:

3/27 A Taste for Literacy at the Yountville Community Center from 5-10pm. Steven Cannel is the featured guest, and we will be matching wine with local chefs' dishes.

3/30 Stein Family Wines pairs our 2009 Los Carneros Gewürztraminer with appetizers at Cuvee in Napa from 5:30-9. Here are the Facebook link and Evite. It's free!

5/1 Vina Moda's Save Angel Island Wine Festival--come visit us! We should have a special extra something-something with us :)

Note that we've nothing set up for April yet--let us know via Facebook or Twitter if you've got a suggestion.

___

Next bit of news: got an Android phone? Have we got the app for you: yes, the Stein Family Wines app is ready for you--easy way to keep track of what we're up to. And before anyone asks, yes, we've submitted it for the iPhone, but Apple has its own separate vetting process, and we're another week or two away from approval. It's coming, though!

___

What's on the horizon?

How about 50ml bottles of SFW wine for easy samples? Yes, we're using TinyBottles to turn a case of wine into about 170 little--but fully legal--bottles. More on this as production happens next week.

The new label is almost done. Won't say more than that, but we're using another old friend (I've only known this one for a quarter-century) who is absolutely the greatest artist I've ever worked with...

___

Last but not least, here are some shots from the party we had in January at Hog Island at the Oxbow in Napa:

Why Gewürztraminer?

2010-02-01T12:05:00.000-08:00

I get asked this a lot, especially in the context of people's asking about the new wine business: when did we start? why? what have we made?

The answers, of course, are not that hard to explain, except when it comes the last one. I get a lot of semi-blank or questioning looks--until I pour the wine for them--and then they get it.

Gewürz is simply a fantastic varietal when made the way it wants to be made, meaning, as with all of the Alsatian varietals--Pinot Blanc, Riesling, Gewürz--that you pay attention to the acidity and seek to create balance against it with residual sugar. Check out the IRF's information about this here.

What does that mean for the wine drinker, who may or may not care about the chemistry? The core fundamentals of pairing foods and wine are to either enhance the flavor profile of the food (matching like for like, essentially) or to cut across the grain of the food, if you will (acidity with richness, for example). It can get a lot more complicated than that in some registers, but that doesn't mean the consumer has to care.

(An aside I'll come back to at a later date: really, me and my compatriots, we're actually not much different than a car salesperson. It doesn't matter if I like the car--it's your money, so if you don't like it, you don't buy it, correct? So, why allow that to happen with wine? I cannot use the same language as my mechanic--Dave Parker on Soscol; really great mechanic--and it doesn't matter: if the car runs as I want it to, he gets paid. For us, the same goes for wine--you have to like it 'cause it's your money, so making it fancier than buy what you like is pretty silly!)

And that's why Gewürz is so perfect. So many people have said to me that they're "big reds" drinkers, but again and again they get a shock when they have our Gewürz with food: it pairs with just about everything you can think of, and it does so in a way that it enhances the overall experience.

Why? Because its floral notes work well with subtle flavors that need enhancing--think sushi, for example--while also cutting across roasted flavors. I guarantee to you, you can drink Gewürz with roasted meats--it has an amazing way of working against the richness of the meat--the umami, in the language of professional food--while enhancing the roasted flavors. Do your own research. You'll see that Gewürz is one of the only wines for pairing with turkey, for example.

How can it do this? I thought a lot about that, and it was a puzzle for quite a while, but then I got the point. When making rich red wines, the tradition in many parts of Europe and some areas of the New World is to co-ferment a bit of white grapes in with reds, giving acidity and helping to enhance the organoleptic experience of the finished red wine. That's the power of acidity, and I think it's what makes Gewürz so good for food.

You're welcome ;)

Oh, and by the way, the Stein Family Wines website is mostly live here.

From the Winemaker's Wife: December 30th, 2009

2009-12-30T13:25:00.000-08:00

I'm so incredibly proud of Josh and his alchemy with our first wine. I'd tasted early samples, of course, but having the finished wine out of the bottle paired with some Chevré was absolutely delightful and a proud moment. The Gewürztraminer almost dances on your tongue when you first sip, then stay there and lets go of a wonderful bouquet--quite lovely. I'm not a sweet wine drinker, and some Gewürzts are so sweet I can hardly taste them, but ours is dry and sophisticated--more of a grapefruit taste mingled with the previously mentioned blossom-type aromas.

It's also flattering that so many of our friends and acquaintances have been cheering us on and are just waiting for our website store to go live so that they can purchase some. Thanks! What's also wonderful is that every time we look at our first label, we see our Leyna's swirl artwork. She's so proud too that she "works" for daddy to produce more artwork to help out our fledgling business. What a girl! And our buddy boy Arlo proudly wears the first Stein Family Wines charcoal hat. Very smart indeed. He even took it with him to bed last night.

And so, in these last few days of 2009, we look ahead to the debut of our first Stein Family Wines release and hope you all will enjoy it as much as we do. Happy New Year to everyone. Salud!

We Are Legal

2009-12-28T18:34:00.000-08:00

I am sitting at my dining room table--the one we, like just about every other couple we know, use as our working desks because, really, who has time to use the dining room to dine?--the one which, as of the 24th of December, I licensed with the state of California's ABC.

Yes, as part of the permitting process, I had to draw where on the premises business would be conducted. And, well, I do a lot of my business from my dining room table--just my half, mind you, but, still, I wanted to be in full compliance.

I figured starting the story of the trek to legality with a bit of humor would be good because it would let you know that though the journey had its really, really low points, we made it through to the other side and can even see where there was humor amidst the dismay and despair of other sections of my tale. Just remember, we are legal, and the wine is ready for sale...

I've written in the past about the permitting process, and I don't want to rehash anything, so I will only add that while the process isn't technically difficult, it does require a good deal of attention to detail during the time in the startup process when attention to other details--like fermenation temperatures and rates of alcohol conversion or daily cash flow or a thousand other little time-sucking issues--demand a lot of time and attention, too.

The use of consultants aided the process, for sure, but at a fairly steep cost--at least, it was for us. I'd still be scratching my head at the statutes had I--all four advanced degrees in English of me--been the one doing all the application-creating. That there is some impenetrable language, but that there was some expensive help--considerably more than grapes, for example.

Regardless, it was the wait that made that part of the assemblage so tension-filled. It was an always naggling question mark throughout every day, an itch I could never locate to be able to scratch: Would TTB and ABC issue us permits or not? That itch--it's gone now ;)

Bottling and labelling, though, were another story entirely--the one that was our rollercoaster ride for the end of November.

I was at the winery one afternoon, just after the Thanksgiving weekend, when I got an email from my label rep, letting me know all was good to go with the printing for the labels they were doing and that they'd be in on December 14th. Great. Oh, wait. Err. We're bottling on the 8th and 9th.

Yes.

You can imagine the email I fired off and then the phone call I made as I searched my sent mail to see when I had requested delivery. I hadn't lost my mind: I had specified in September we needed delivery the first week of December.

Oh.

A mad scramble took place, I'm sure, as the printer worked to get the labels done on time. I went into an afternoon-long meeting on Monday the 7th with a confident email in hand that a courier would have the labels to us by the end of the business day, just in time for bottling the next morning.

I came out of the meeting to an email and a voice mail.

Shit.

"The labels got printed just fine."

"But..."

Wait for it.

Wait.

Wait.

"The die cutter is missing."

"It will be a week until a replacement arrives."

Ooooof.*

"Okay. Bottle the shiners and we'll go from there."

And that's just what we did. For about three weeks, we had wine in glass--with real nice corks and foils. Real nice. But we had no labels. (psst: you can't sell wine without labels)

Fortunately, the printer stepped up and took responsibility, finding a company to do the labelling. Even better, they were literally right next door to the warehouse where our bottled-but-unlabeled wine was hanging out.

Should be easy, then, right? Just stick in a forklift and go, right? Thirty feet, no biggie, right? Guys? Buehler? Buehler?

Four days.

Why?

You really want to know?

I'll tell you, but only if you really want to know...

Okay.

You asked.

The regulatory environment for alcohol is quite intense in this country.

Every drop has to be accounted for at all times until it's sold and taxes are paid.

Every. Drop.

At. All. Times.

Fortunately, we survived. The wine tastes great. It looks great. (Thanks again, Lindsay. I got nothing without your help)

And we're legal.

A couple of years ago, I woke up on my birthday, and I realized that I had to do something to create a future for my kids, a future that would be tangible, that would be a thing I could actually give. And that's where this project began.

Here's to drinking wine with a clean conscience. Here's to better and brighter futures.

* Technical term for stomach deflation as when punched unexpectedly.

The Clock is Ticking...

2009-12-03T13:12:00.000-08:00

I'd like to stop for a moment and mention the passing of my grandmother, Claire Stein, on December 1st at age 95. I already have a special project in mind for the future to honor her memory. Always, always, always in our hearts.

...because everything is in motion. I had my telephone interview with a TTB officer today as part of the permitting process. If all goes well, in a couple of weeks, we will be legal in the eyes of the feds. The ABC permit is in process, too; I've got one of those 36"x18" ABC notices on the window next to me as I type this. Our business license for the city of Napa is going through the process, also. *Knock on wood* January 1st was our goal, and we're still on the timeline for that.

Bentonite fining for heat stability took place last week, and the cold stabilization is just about done. Given the cold nights we've had and will have before bottling next week, getting done well below 32°F has not been an issue. Special thanks go out to Rebekka Swanson at Scott Lab; although I couldn't use the advice and suggestions she worked on for me, her customer service was off the charts.

Speaking of bottling, unless the huge storm front coming in next week knocks us off course, we're set to filter and then bottle the middle of next week. If the storm comes, we may have to punt to a back-up facility to bottle or wait until into January. That would be no fun, for sure, but we also have to work with what the weather gives us--at all stages of the lifecycle of the grape.

Also, the Stein Family Wines website, steinfamilywines.com, will go live very soon. Another special thanks goes out to Matt McParland of 27stories.com; he's working on the newest iteration as you read this--I expect to launch within two weeks. Everyone will tell you not to work with friends, but to me, friends are the only ones I trust: mutual NDAs on childhood and adolescence will do that. The people now nodding their heads know what I'm talking about.

That about wraps it up because no one wants to hear about the myriad of small details that have to looked after which are simultaneously inconsequential and totally having the potential to derail our timeline. Such is a startup, I guess. Or, at least, it's our startup. On a personal note, and not to get too personal motivation late-night coach, I am now down in December to 166 from a high at the start of July of @215. It can be done--just find an hour a day to ride a recumbent bike. Quite weird to have more energy as my birthday approaches ;)

Pre-Gobble-Gobble Update

2009-11-24T12:22:00.000-08:00

Here's what I just posted to my facebook account:

Finishing up the work on the 2009 Los Carneros Gewürztraminer in preparation for bottling in early December. Permitting is in medias res--we're sort of almost semi-legal is the best way to put it. Please pass the word that wine should be available from our website around 1/1/10, give or take. We hope to launch that site around December 1st at the latest. We're moving, that's what I keep saying, we're moving.

That kind of sums up my morning and the last few weeks (and months). It makes it sound nice, anyway. I'm sure it's the same for everyone else working what is basically a one-person operation and using outside vendors where possible, but that just means a hell of a lot of us are dealing with this same schlep, and it is one true slogging through mud. It's no one's fault, but it is of marathon proportions. A slow, silent, patiently waiting kind of marathon, but a marathon for sure, nonetheless. I will spare you the details, but I have all the spreadsheets to show whomever and whenever. Just ask and I'll be happy to let you peak behind Oz's curtain a bit. Someone is missing out on something lucrative: there is huge potential for reality shows for business start-ups. Anyway, I will have more to share after T-day. Gobble-gobble to everyone--bright stars and happy nights for us all!

Where Did October Go?

2009-11-12T10:24:00.000-08:00

I have no frakking idea.

Really.

Once crush begins, things are just a blur for me. I have club shipments to try to get out while also getting ready for bottling and working on labels, doing bench trials on blends, managing employee issues which always seem to come up as we transition out of high-tourist season and we get to see where our processes and logistics have been worn down by the stress of the Summer season. And that's just at job number two.

Our wine has been in tank, thankfully, sitting on the lees, just aging away, creating creaminess and evolving the chemistry which produces the compounds we smell and taste. I know, my description lacks a bit of the romance, but anyone who knows me knows that I love the process of winemaking MORE now that I know and understand the science than I did when I only thought of the more prosaic side of the business.

Anyway, what I've worked on are different ways to bring out the terpenes in the wine, which are some of the flavor molecules we really want for the bouquet and the palate. It's complicated and probably not of much interest to anyone not in the trade, but I will say that the upshot has been really, really educational. Lesson number two of the year: judge a winemaker and her team by the whites they produce. Reds are a hell of a lot more forgiving; want to see how clean their winemaking is? How controlled their balancing of the chemical elements of the wines? Check out their whites, especially anything unoaked. An unoaked white wine is truly naked to the eye and tongue--you cannot hide anything, so you have to know your chops. I'm telling you, I know the common perception is that big reds show a winemaker's skills, and they do, but in a different way and not nearly as much as the whites.

There was also a whole bunch of permitting stuff, but I'm still worn down from it, so I'll save it for the future when I ponder the journey that was our attempts to become legal.

So, that was October. November is about getting ready to bottle. We're waiting on a heat stab ility test from the lab; if there's a potential for cloudiness, we will use a bit of bentonite to help precipitate out any large particles. Then, we move on to cold stability, putting the wines down to 4°C for two to three weeks to precipitate out any tartrates that might show up in people's bottles if they put them in the fridge to get cold. Tartrates are totally harmless, but they look like shards of glass, so some consumers might be a bit upset at their presence in the bottle. Cold stability is basically taking out the tartrates before the wine ends up in the bottle. Then, we filter*, using a .45 micron sterile crossflow system, and bottle in mid-December. More on that later.

*Winemaker's exegesis of interest to very few ;D: we have to do this with this wine because it has about .7 residual sugar, which isn't a lot by any means--most people can't taste sweetness at all up to about .4 RS--and given the acidity and pH of the wine (9.38 g/L and 3.28, respectively), it simply helps to cut back some of the lemony citrus elements into the oranges for a broader impact on the nose and tongue.

Back Label is FInalized and Ready to Send Off to TTB

2009-09-15T19:05:00.000-07:00

Yup, on this one, I'm actually pretty good to go and ahead of schedule *knock on wood*

Take a gander at the back label for the 2009 Los Carneros Gewürz. This was most ably designed, once again, by the inestimable Ms. Lindsay Hull.

Please let us know what you think. Obviously, with the website rising on my to-do list but not yet having crested into Do Now territory, the link isn't active yet. I'll post soon some of the copy that will be on those pages. Let me just ask this, though:

Wouldn't it be nice to enjoy a wine, knowing you had contributed to creating equality at the same time?

More to come...

From the Winemaker's Wife: Mid-September 2009

2009-09-13T19:18:00.000-07:00

Life is pretty hectic these days. Although we have our first wine in the tank, Josh still has to watch over our little baby just as he did with our real babies when they were small. Now Arlo and Leyna can watch and somewhat understand the process of winemaking--at least they get to run free and eat grapes, which is a funny/beautiful thing to see. I love the way the kids see us designing labels and such and see it merely as part of our life and not something that we worked so hard (and are still working hard) to get to. Our days are filled with making meals for the kids, reading to them, grading, teaching, and Josh working furiously on the mountain of paperwork that must be filed and practically triplicated before you can call yourself a brand, a label.

The time we get to sit and read to/with the kids is special, and although we are watching our new addition growing alongside our family, we remember to stop and enjoy the really important things and hope that we will instill that same kind of appreciation in our kids.

Fermentation and Permitting are Moving Along...

2009-09-13T00:04:00.000-07:00

So, it's a bit of a quiet moment right now as we wait for the yeast to multiply and begin to do their thing. Monday we'll take a sample and do a hydrometer reading to see what the Brix level is. Once fermentation really takes off, it's exponential, and we try to guide that runaway train through the use of temperature. So, we track the must and wine's temperature as well as the Brix. They become more data points in my constantly evolving spreadsheet for this wine. Everything we do to the wine, we track it. In this case, this helps us determine the speed of the fermentation--this is crucial for white wines because the faster the process, the warmer the environment, and thus the loss of more of the elements of the wine that contribute to the bouquet. We'll try to goose this along at no more than about 57°F. It slows down the fermentation--we've had some reserve whites take until well into the subsequent Spring before they finished--and preserves all that we like about steel-fermented white wines: purity of nose and palate.

Edit to add: <<---- Here's the final version of the Gewürz label, courtesy of Ms. Lindsay Hull.

I've also been continuing to work through the permits--at last count, I was up to eight or nine federal, state, or local ones, each with their own requirements, hassles, hoops, and generally interconnectedness to other permits. Imagine erecting a house of cards by climbing inside and underneath the pile and pushing up to force the various pieces in place. That's kind of what this feels like.

Rains came in yesterday and continue today and into tomorrow. Then it's supposed to get really hot again, which will not be good as it can set off uncontrollable growth of botrytis. The last time this happened in a big way up in the North Coast was 2006. We were able to get a fantastic late harvest Chardonnay that came in beyond our ability to measure the Brix (like 60+) with clouds of botrytis spores when the grapes were dumped into the hopper along the way to being de-stemmed. The resultant wine was and will continue to be for many decades absolutely fantastic. The Pinot Noir field right next to those Chardonnay vines? It melted away in an afternoon. Here's hoping the weather change is gradual...

Checking Up on the Must

2009-09-07T17:40:00.000-07:00

We took the kids over to the winery today to check up on the must. The glycol chiller was doing its business as the temperature was down to about 43°F. Here's a shot of the kids in front of one tank:

Here's a shot of them in front of another tank--this one is 450 gallons versus 350 for the one above:

Lastly, here's a shot of the whole fam, with the organic garden in the background:

That's about it from the Valley for today--lot's done on permits and licenses but nothing to write home about as it's like a stack of dominoes--each one needs a number from another permit: figuring out which can be filed for first is tricky, to say the least...

Definitely a Slantways Move*: Crush 2009

2009-09-04T20:48:00.000-07:00

Yes, it's true. We brought in our first grapes today. Here are two nice shots (thanks, Ernie!) of our Gewürz (the dappled pink grapes) with some of the Chardonnay which was interplanted within the vineyard--an old European technique to create natural blends in vineyards, which was done quite a bit all over the North Coast by the original Italian growers, though it's rarer to find this style of vineyard these days:

These grapes came in at 23.6° Brix, which means, if the numbers hold up after the juice is racked off the settled solids in a couple of days, that we should see approximately 13.5% alcohol with 1% residual sugar--I'm betting we end up a little higher on the alcohol and a little lower on the RS because of the "slow stop" of arresting the fermentation: think stopping a boat and you'll get the idea.

Next, we have shots of the grapes going into the press via an augured feeder. Since we whole cluster pressed these, this is a bit tricky because it takes up more room within the press and creates more material for the compost from within it, too, meaning only small lots can generally be processed outside of very large wineries' equiptment. Since all we've got is a small lot, we were good to go:

Once into the press, the grapes go through a series of cycles to wring the juice from the skins with as minimal a contact as possible with them, the seeds, and the stems. What comes out is grape must which has had most of the large solids removed. As you look at the shots below of the must leaving the press, note the color, remembering that all grape juice--reds, whites, greys, doesn't matter--is clear until there's contact with the rest of the grape:

The must then went into the tank to cool down and allow the rest of the solids to settle. We'll rack off the then-settled must in a couple of days and then do the yeast innoculation (58W3, if anyone's interested :)), which is when the fun will begin for reals. Here are two final shots of a sample from the tank, sitting on my car outside the lab in Napa where I dropped it off to have a few pre-fermentation analyses done:

* BTW, the first person to correctly identify the source of this post's title gets a free bottle of wine once we're legal in December/January.

Crush has officially begun for Stein Family Wines

2009-09-03T19:31:00.000-07:00

Or, at least, it will tomorrow morning. Yes, our Los Carneros Gewürztraminer ripened a lot quicker than we--meaning the grower and I--had thought, like fourteen to twenty days early. It's been a bit of an odd year, weather-wise. We started out a bit behind because of the Spring heat and wet, but we seem to have caught up: seems like everyone is bringing in white grapes now and next week. Because of the heat spike of the weekend at the end of August, our grapes went from 21 to 23.9° Brix, meaning that with a decent conversion during fermentation, we're already looking at going beyond 14% alcohol if we don't arrest the process to leave a little bit of residual sugar (which we will be doing--somewhere between .5 and 1.0% RS is where we'll be stopping what I like to call "the golden crawl" of white wine fermentation--but more on that in a later post). But if the grapes are coming, I need to make sure things I thought I wouldn't have to worry about several weeks are taken care of toot sweet. First lesson learned of the season: have everything in place by mid-August even if it means a little more money--that's worth the tradeoff to the last-minute scramble.

So, in addition to still working through all the licensing and permitting--a whole series of other posts--I also had to go find out all about glycol system plumbing and the variety of ways you can link a tank into a glycol chilling system. The grapes are coming in tomorrow--that means my tank and glycol connections have to be working; I cannot make white wine without their being in working order. Fortunately, we have some time because white grapes are pressed pretty much immediately upon arrival at the winery whereas reds are crushed but not separated from the lees and grape solids for a while. We have a tank ready for the juice, and since the must needs to literally chill out for a couple of days, that will give it time to settle out the solids. Then we rack out and return the juice to begin to do the yeast innoculation. All of this is possible to do but not done at all well without keeping the temperature really, really low--like 50-55°F whenever possible. Some white fementations can take many, many months. Fortunately (*knock on wood*), this fermentation should take ten to twenty days at most, and then I will arrest the fermentation and we sort of put the wine to sleep for a while until we start to get ready to bottle in December. All of this is dependent, of course, on the ability to let it be low and slow--the golden crawl that will pay the bills come January!

Wine Scores

2009-09-01T11:57:00.000-07:00

Here's an excerpt from an email I just got in my other moonlighting gig:

The latest issue of the Journal of Wine Economics (Vol. 4, No. 1) will be released tomorrow (see also www.wine-economics.org/journal).

The lead article is again by Robert T. Hodgson, who analyzes the reliability of Gold medals awarded at 13 California Wine Fairs. “An analysis of over 4000 wines entered in 13 U.S. wine competitions shows little concordance among the venues in awarding Gold medals. Of the 2,440 wines entered in more than three competitions, 47 percent received Gold medals, but 84 percent of these same wines also received no award in another competition. Thus, many wines that are viewed as extraordinarily good at some competitions are viewed as below average at others. An analysis of the number of Gold medals received in multiple competitions indicates that the probability of winning a Gold medal at one competition is stochastically independent of the probability of receiving a Gold at another competition, indicating that winning a Gold medal is greatly influenced by chance alone. ” The full article can be accessed free of charge at Abstract Full Text (PDF).

This issue also contains a symposium of five papers edited by guest editor Jill McCluskey of Washington State University.

Below you will find the content of the current issue with links to abstracts. Members have online access to all papers (from Wednesday on). If you want to renew your membership or want to join the American Association of Wine Economists (AAWE) go to http://www.wine-economics.org/membership/. It is still $39 per year ($45 outside of the U.S.).

So, what do you know? When I took over doing tasting and competition submissions, I, being the data hound I am, tracked every submission. Well, with more than six years' results in the excel spreadsheet and something like thirty to forty tastings and competitions each year, I can tell you that in my experience not only do wines that get Double Gold or Gold get lower or no medals at other competitions, but there is a distinct pattern in our results of where to submit or not to submit altogether. There are some competitions I send everything to--and remember, competitions charge you, from $25 to $75 or more per wine entered (we run almost thirty active SKUs)--and there are others to which I simply no longer send anything because I know how the wines will do before I even send them. There was research done within the year demonstrating the variability of judges within a single competition--almost all could not give the same score to the same wine in a different flight, and many gave wildly divergent scores and medals repeatedly.

So, do scores matter? I would say in the vast majority of cases, not really. The only time I trust them is when I can see a wine has been submitted to multiple competitions and has done well in all. Given the different kinds of competition logistics, numbers of tasters, panels, etc., that's about as good a vetting as can be done via scores and results alone.

From the Winemaker's Wife: September 2009

2009-08-30T01:07:00.000-07:00

It's really happening. I remember when Josh and I came to this valley when I got the job at the local college. We were excited coming to live in Northern California, especially the wine country, and where we would be closer to our families. We had no idea we would also be raising our children and starting a family wine label as well. During one of our fancy free tasting weekends trying to visit each and every winery in the valley, we happened to stop by a winery where in a matter of minutes Josh had procured a tasting room job.

Since that time many years ago, Josh was able to learn all the facets of a small winery. He was especially interested in the alchemy that is winemaking and supplemented his apprenticeship with enology classes at UC Davis. He eventually rose to assistant winemaker as well as brands manager for the family winery.

We started to dream. Why not build a family legacy for our children who will soon be 4? We saw other family wine ventures making a go of it--even if it meant starting in their garage. We didn't have to go that far, but we do indeed have a home office that is exclusively Stein Family Wines. We had no visions of grandeur; i.e. the MacMansions on the hill where the rich live in luxury off of their wine or grape sales. Our vision was more modest: we wanted to leave something for our kids and at the same time give back to the community that has given us so much.

We especially admired the work that Clinica Olé, NEWS, Napa Valley Hispanic Network, Cope Family, The Aldea Foundation, and others did and determined that if we sold wine and could be sustainable, that they would also benefit from our sales. Josh also saw intimately how many of those who worked in the fields and picked the grapes for this rich valley were hardly compensated for their laborious work--much less had enough to support their families. We decided, as Josh says, that "fair is fair" and we would try only to support those who fairly compensated their workers as we planned to.

Idealistic? Probably, but it's happening. We're so close to our first bottling and we have already created labels with the help of our friends. Exciting times!

As so many are doing in this shaky economy, we're taking a risk and creating something that is proudly family-owned and something that gives back.

The Uphill Push Against the Forces of Entropy

2009-08-30T00:48:00.000-07:00

I can admit it--we--well, me--I underestimated the amount of red tape, the number of licenses and permits we have to file for--and pay consultants to help us with--and the amount of times and money the process takes.

There are so many levels of mandatory permitting for the wine business, it's almost breath-taking (and not in a good way!): TTB basic permit, ABC licenses of various kinds, state Franchise Board sellers license, Napa sales permits, the list goes on an on.

In trying to get through this miasma of permitting, I have again had to ask myself, Why wine? Why do this? You're approaching middle age--why not settle into it comfortably and enjoy some free time? The truth is, on a day-to-day basis, wine is a pretty smooth, chill, fairly unproblematic kind of gig. You're making something to help people relax and enjoy life, after all. Starting up a business to get to that point? Forget about it.

So, why wine?

For me, it's about transmutation--the origin of which comes from attempts at turning lead into gold--and it's taking something from the soil and using it to produce a product which can be enjoyed for years and years afterward. It's also about agency--creating opportunities for our kids that we simply didn't have. And if we can do that while also benefiting others' kids, too, then why wouldn't we?

If we can pull off even half of the ideal business plan, our kids' futures will be forever altered. And I will look myself in the mirror with honor because we will have done that while also changing a lot of other people's futures, too.

It's funny; I have never really taken the time necessary to step back to see the arc of my family's existence: the question of the moment is, in this time of economic churning, will people respond to the story of the wine-that-by-all-rights-never-should-have-been and its philanthropic mission? Do people still want to support the underdog as it fights for survival??

I've been buried in creating a formal business plan and plotting out the financials for the next five years--it's exciting but scary, hubristic but also realistic: a strange moment of caesura that reminds me of a mid-summer Jersey summer storm, feeling the wind blowing in before the rain fell. The air was full, pregnant with pause, heavy with waiting.

Final Form of the Vertical Labels!

2009-04-15T09:12:00.000-07:00

We didn't disappear, promise! All winter was spent working on labels and logos (look up--we've got one!) so that we'd have something for Spring just as budbreak happened. Well, okay, we missed it by a couple of weeks, but here are the final versions of the label in its vertical form. The horizontal will be next, and that's going to look even better than these! The vertical labels are designed to work with the longer, thinner "hock" bottles which are used for Alsatian varietals like Gewurtz and Riesling--two varietals I love and which are incredibly food friendly and perfect for restaurant lists. Take a look below and let us know what you think!

EDIT: our thanks go out to Ms. Lindsay Hull Moskow for her excellent design work--without her, we'd have one of the other labels and still no logo! We thank her husband, Jonathan Moskow, too, for telling us, as she and I worked through designs late one Sunday evening, "Hey, that design doesn't suck." :)

We Have a PO Box!

2008-10-23T13:50:00.001-07:00

Yes, that's right--you can now send us mail! Our address is:

Stein Family Wines
PO Box 10920
Napa, CA 94581

It seems like a small thing, and it is, really, but there's something quite neat about having a physical presence.

Another Label Courtesy of Leyna

2008-10-05T13:19:00.000-07:00

Cath and I are really liking this as it involves the kids and definitely draws your attention to the labels. What do you think?

Today's Label--Courtesy of Leyna "Lala" Stein

2008-09-27T19:20:00.000-07:00

Okay, I Lied...

2008-09-25T12:50:00.000-07:00

...because working on labels is more fun than grading:

One More for Today

2008-09-25T12:03:00.001-07:00

This is actually the original design I came up with a while ago--for those requesting a kinder, simpler design:

Two More Labels

2008-09-25T08:35:00.000-07:00

Here are two more, and for those that have asked (thanks for paying attention, by the way!), that's how the kids say "Itsby Bitsy Spider":

"Why Stein Family Wines?" -- Part the Second

2008-09-23T10:20:00.000-07:00

It's important to us that the work we do be authentic, in whatever context in which we are working. Cath and I both chose community colleges because only working with those destined to succeed at universities didn't really interest us--working with students who have "ganas" (desire to succeed at all costs, doing whatever it takes to make it happen) lets us know we've really made a difference in our students' and their families' lives.

We hope to bring that same authenticity to what we do in the wine world, and in fact want to combine the two when we can. That's what I meant when I posted in Part the First about having to stand for something rather than just against what you don't like or want. So now you're wondering, Okay, but what does that mean for wine? Well, here's some back label copy I've been working on. I think it says it best. It's not finished yet, but I think you can see where we're going with this project:

Because we simply believe in doing what's right. For our family, for your family, and for the families of unseen workers who were instrumental in the creation of this wine. The Stein family thanks you for your contribution to a more equitable future for all of our children.

A portion of the sale of this wine has been donated to the Napa Valley Hispanic Network to provide college scholarships for the Latino students of the Napa Valley. Go to steinfamilywines/nvhn to find out more.

That, in a nutshell, is our m.o. Can I guarantee that every single person connected with each wine, its packaging, its development, etc., has not been exploited? Probably not, but that doesn't mean I'm not going to try as hard as I can--and by that I mean putting my family's money where my mouth is--to make sure people are paid living wages for the work they do on our behalf. Will this mean higher pricing to the consumer? Yes, but I'm willing to bet people will pay more for exploitation-free wine. You've got to stand for something. And, no, it's not about politics whatsoever. It's about doing what's right. I can't start a business to give my children a future by stepping on other people's kids. Could you??

Here's a different label design I came up with today. It's Ari and Lala's favorite song:

It's a little rough, but I think it does what I've been advised to do by someone in the know (right, Lindsay?). Whatcha think??

"Why Stein Family Wines?" -- Part the First

2008-09-14T11:16:00.000-07:00

Because it's not enough to be against the things you don't agree with--you also have to stand for the things that matter to you. More on that later--we've a number of things to say about the wine business.

Here's the current iteration of the label design. Let us know what you think!