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January 1 - January 28, 2017

Thursday January 5, 2017

Happy New Year to all!!

We finished blending our 2016 wines last week and this week we are preparing to bottle our new white blend, Luminaire, Fresco Rose and non vintage DC Fusion. We hope to start those wines next Monday. It is always an adventure to organize where all these new wines will be stored in our buildings. Yesterday we received our shipment of bottles and since it was raining we stored the stacks in our winery tasting room. Today was clear so we moved them to other buildings across the way.

Next Tuesday we should be ready to start bottling our 2015 16 Month wines. The rain is scheduled to come back with a vengeance this Saturday and all next week. It will not be fun to bottle in the rain since we have to move wine back and forth to the buildings. The bottling line is now set up in the winery so come and see the action. I will have more about that next week.

My Mother Vivien is getting anxious to go home. She was moved to a skilled nursing place last week. She needs to get stronger before she goes home next week.

I drove my Model S down to Long Beach and back and got back Tuesday. It was raining in Long Beach most of the time and then on Tuesday we received a lot of rain in the Bay Area. The Tesla was fun to drive but not as much in the pouring rain. The drought is over!!! 

Wednesday January 11, 2017

As you may know we have had a lot of rain!! It was so bad yesterday we had to take off a day of bottling. On Monday we bottled our new white blend, 2016 Luminaire, our 2016 Fresco Rose and our non vintage DC Fusion. Today we bottled barrel aged 16 month wines which included our 2015 Italiano, My Zin, RaiZin and Carignan. It will be nice to taste them tonight compared to 2014 and the 2015 Italiano aged 10 months. Tomorrow we hope to bottle our Block 4 and Zinfandel unless there is too much rain. It will be fun........

Saturday January 14, 2017

Usually we have trouble bottling on the first day but this year it happened on Thursday the 3rd day. We started off fine and then the labeler stopped working. It took us many hours to figure it was a belt that snapped. We bottled the rest of the Block 4 and Zinfandel without labels and on Friday we replaced the belt and finished labeling. We have this big event today and tomorrow. We hope to start bottling again Monday with 4 more days to go to finish.

Tuesday January 17, 2017

Finally the Stock Market is open today, one of my big passions

We will be offering some big sales. That means the lowest priced wines we have ever sold. As I have said before we have a lot of Estate Fruit coming on in the next few years. We will be selling Dave's Cuvee at a great price and we will be hopefully selling 400 cases soon. I do not need the money!! I just want to be known as a Winery Owner who wants to sell great wine at a reasonable cost.

Pat is questing me. She says many other people around me here ( I have not heard this) think I would be selling wine at too low a cost. Sure you are thinking, she is right, but I bet you customers think it will be a great thing for you. You could ask all those people around me: Do you want me to sell wine at a higher cost?

I hear rain tomorrow and we have only two more days to go for this complicated bottling of our 2015 16 Month wines. It will be a challenge to finish in two days. We are ready.......... 

Thursday January 19, 2017

This will be short since I have a tooth ache which has not gotten better in the last three days. I have a dental appointment tomorrow. We are finishing our bottling today, YES!! It has been raining the past two days but I did have a few breaks to transfer the new wine to our storage buildings across the parking lot. I have not tasted the last few wines bottled because of my cough and Tooth. Tequila works better...........

Sunday January 22, 2017

I was in two dentist offices Friday so I missed the celebration after 10am, of course I could not miss the acceptance speech, there have been many before but I thought this was the most unpredictable. I want to give Trump a chance, but why is he still upset with people..............

OK, I am back feeling better after suffering Friday. I was in the most pain in my life, physically, not from Trump

I had a tough day, I had constipation which was worse than the pain in my tooth........I will not go in detail

And of course I had the tooth ache, so at 11am on Friday I went into the first dentist and he said OH, you have to go to this great dentist and he will give you a root canal. I said I know this will take hours........."Oh, no, this great dentist will complete the root canal in 45 minutes, I'll order the antibiotics". I actually believed him since he is my dentist, right....Not 45 minutes........

I headed in at 12:50 Pm, 10 minutes before my appointment with the great root canal doctor. I was greeted with very nice people and they knew who I was right away (I found out later they only do emergencies on Friday, gee I asked how long will you be here today, and she thought about 4 more hours with a few more emergencies. I sat for 50 minutes and finally I was moved quickly to a nice room. I will call this dentist Controlled. I suppose That is good for a dentist....

He "finally", sorry for the word again, came in about, 1:45. I was offered a lot of reading material before that. So I was injected several times with injections through my gums. He told me he would be back in 15 minutes. I decided then to drift off and take a nap, but I do admit it is hard in a dentist room when you can hear constantly doctor talk in the room next door with a small wall and then Controlled went into another room and I could hear him being very nice to a Patient, so I figured he would be back maybe in 30 minutes and then I wondered if the drug he gave me was going to still be working. He finally showed up at 2:40 and I said "Is the drug still working". I have only been gone for 40 minutes and it will be fine, he said (No it had been 50), but I was not going to question a dentist. He was so nice, energetic and said this will only take 5 minutes, but he said he would only relieve some of my pain from the infection and I would have to come back in three weeks. What happened to the 45 minutes?

After about 5 minutes of drilling I got more interested, and everyone was acting fine. After another 10 minutes I finally thought it was over. But then They started drilling again, there was no pain so he was right about the drug. I was "finally" out in another 30 minutes and on my way to Healdsburg to pick up my drugs. 

When I got to the pharmacy I was shocked: the first doctor had forgot to call in the antibiotic. I was so upset, but at 9:30pm "Controlled" called and assured me it would be OK to start the drug the next morning. The first doctor never called but he had called in some pain pills.

When I got home on Friday, I was in more pain from constipation, like I said I will not go into it. It would be a long story. The pain pills do not help that condition. "Finally" about midnight, I got relief and I was much more happy...........Today I am on recovery and may taste some wine. I have been enjoying Tequila since Wednesday and no wine.......

Monday January 23, 2017

Is it day 4? or 3

So I am happy........... most of the time...............TSLA is up big........... so should I sell........hard decision...............Maybe I should get a twitter account and tweet?.......no

OK, I am heading up to the movie rooom

I am watching the first press briefing tonight. It could be interesting. I loved watching Nixon when I was young because he was so intelligent but made other mistakes. He was brilliant at news conferences.......so I always watched the first briefing to the press in a new president Sean Spicer

Make your choice...........