2013 Happy New Year

Just a quick note to wish each of you a very Happy New Year as we round out a momentous 2012 and look forward to many exciting challenges ahead in 2013. Thanks to you, 2012 has seen us launch our new wine company, so far with good success, and make significant progress toward our objectives. The attached photos capture a few moments during a very busy harvest season.

Fermentation is complete and we now have over 5,000 gallons of wine in our tanks and barrels under Mike’s watchful eye. Our vineyard performed well in 2012, generating very nice fruit and some helpful cash flow. It is now sleeping and recharging for another year while receiving tremendous rains. Our design team is hard at work finishing our initial building plans and working with the contractors. And we continue with county permitting activities and initial state and federal licensing work.

2013 begins quickly as we will be bottling our first wine, the Sauvignon Blanc, in February! Work is under way to begin our initial marketing and public relations activities as we prepare to formally launch the brand later in the spring. Our red wines will continue to age in barrels for most of 2013 and we have already begun planning for the next round of farming and grape sources for 2013’s harvest, right around the corner.

 2012 has been a very good year for us. We hope it has met your expectations as well, and we look forward to seeing each of you soon in Sonoma. On behalf of Jack, Jim, Mike and myself, Happy New Year!!   

Fabulous Harvest 11/16

Overall a fabulous harvest, our wines are fantastic and have great potential all around. All are characterized by excellent prominent varietal aromas and flavors and very very nice phenolics great mouth feel and presentation, excellent mid palate and generally very good to excellent and long finish. None are over-extracted and the alcohol levels, should run in the low to mid 15's. Acidity levels seem very good in the mouth, clean fruity characteristics, not tutti - fruity, more jammy with nice " freshness ".

Fermenation update:

Wine terminology clarification - Malolctic fermentation convert Malic Acid to Lactic Acid in doing so directly influencing wine quality related to starting alcohol, ph and malic acid levels impacting overall mouth-feel, aroma and flavor.  Malolactic fermentation often is said to generate sensory impression such as buttery, vanilla- like, fruity vegetative, nutty fuller and rounder. 

The malolactics on the zins have made good progress, the pinots have gone completely.  I expect the SB has done a little malo, even at the very cold temps some malo is likely to happen. It adds a bit of mouthfeel and takes a little edge off the acidity so I think it's a good thing.

Petite Sirah is nothing short of magnificent at this point and is easily the " biggest " statement. I hesitate calling it the " Flagship " because that is based on certain criteria, but if the criteria is unnaturally fruit forward jammy blackberry blueberry mouthful that is also luscious with a finish that goes for minutes.............. then I guess that would make it a flagship ! Can't wait to get this in some really nice wood, WOW !

The zins are really attractive and doing very well in the wood. Virtually all of them and can show the progression in " richness " in the wood choices they're in.

SB is I think really nice, great citrus pineapple, pear finish. The pear should be much more noticeable after I bentonite it and let it settle. It will also show just a bit more sweetness cleaned up but I will let it continue a little past that point and should end up with final sugars closer to 0.7 - 0.8% at bottling, almost dry.

It's Over ! 10/29

10/29/2012

Harvest is officially over as of today at noon when the last 3 bins of pinot from Torres arrived at the Torres crush pad. The fruit made its way to Valdez by 1400 hours.
 
In summary, although we have a couple small batches not finished / finishing, the vast majority of the lots look smell and taste pretty much as our wine maker had hoped they would. for our first year we all should be quite pleased with the characteristics of all the wines. We really look forward to getting the rest to barrels and then immediately begin to " elevate " them to what I think will be a very very attractive lineup of wines. We've learned quite a bit the first year working with the vineyards and have ideas where we can improve, and the wines are all in a very good starting position, some already have a " finished " character that is charming already.

Let the bubbles begin

CAST cellars
1st harvest

It's harvest time! And... We Have a name!!

We have chosen the name CAST Cellars  after much exploration. Cast is an old word

which has a slightly contemporary feel, compact and easy to pronounce and remember. Casts are

used to create sculpture and long-lasting products and to bring about repetitive quality – great

wines, vintage after vintage! The term also evokes an appreciation of the cast of characters 

needed to grow our grapes and make our wines, including you, our investors who provide the

capital. Last but not least, we are reminded every morning here, when the fog lifts and the view

materializes out over our vineyards, of the spell this place cast on us when we first saw it! 

Harvest update:

warm sunny days and cool nights. Testing is occurring almost daily now on all of our vineyards as Mike

tastes the grapes and measures the sugar content. Our first harvest and cellar crush has now been

tentatively scheduled for next Wednesday the 12^th – our Sauvignon Blanc from El Diablo Vineyard.