'11 on 11th - 2011 Barbera Release and Wine Tourism Day Party

Rosa d'Oro will be participating in the first annual Wine Tourism Day on May 11th with appetizers AND the release of our 2011 Estate Barbera! Many Lake County wineries will be participating next Saturday so be sure to check in with our neighbors at Wildhurst as well. Visit Facebook for more details. See you there.

April Flight Night Menu - Morocco

Here is the menu for next weekend. It will be Moroccan Night! Please email info@rosadorowine.com or call 707.279.0483 to check on reservation times. We are pretty close to full though. We will also have the last bit of 2009 Sangiovese and 2009 Primitivo (People's Choice Best Red and SF Chronicle Gold medal-winner) available also!

April 2013 Flight Night Menu

Spiced Moroccan vegetable salads with

ras el hanout vinaigrette

- paired with Chardonnay

Spring Harira soup with Merguez sausage

and shrimp

- paired with 2009 Lake County Sangiovese

Crispy chicken Basteeya pastry with fennel and tomato jam

-      paired with 2009 Estate Primitivo

(People’s Choice Best Red 2011)

Walnut nougatine with yogurt mousse and honey

-      paired with 2011 Muscat

Kelseyville Olive Festival April 21st

It is that time of year again, bring the whole family! 

Fourth Annual Kelseyville Olive Festival

Sunday, April 21, 2013 from 11am to 5pm

at the Chacewater Winery & Olive Mill

5625 Gaddy Lane Kelseyville

Join us for a day of family fun dedicated to the ancient and majestic olive with

Olive Mill Tours

Product Samples

Cooking Demonstrations

Vendor Booths

Olive Pit Spitting Contest

Silent Auction & Raffle

Local Beer & Wine Tasting

Hula Hoop Contest

People's Choice Olive Oil Contest

Children's Booth

and more!

Irish music from 1 to 3pm by Uncorked!

The event is FREE!

Local beer and wine tasting for $15 

Event proceeds benefit local non-profit groups.

Primitivo takes a Gold Medal at the Consumer Wine Awards

The People have spoken, and Rosa d'Oro Vineyards received a gold medal at the fifth annual Consumer Wine Awards held in Lodi, California. This one is particularly interesting because all of the judges are regular wine consumers rather than "industry professionals" - something we actually appreciate even more. There will be a pouring of the gold-medal wines on April 20th, and we will be there. Don't forget that the Kelseyville Olive Festival is happening the next day on the 21st as well!

Visit http://www.consumerwineawards.com/#welcome for more information.

Nebbiolo, etc.

The Longest Year...

This was the longest year in so many, many ways. And also the most action packed, intense and almost cerebral, if a winery can claim that. No matter what we want to call it though, it was very busy.

Crush
We get super excited about crush and cannot wait for it to start every year. As a former kitchen guy I thrive on the focused and controlled chaos of fermenting grapes everywhere in everything while pressing, bottling, crushing and picking at the same time. But holy cow, did this one go on forever.
Muscat Canelli and Giallo came in from Yolo County and were crushed on September 5th. Aglianico was pressed November 27th. That was the spread in time. We did a record 17 grape varietals this year. Aglianico, Barbera, Dolcetto, Primitivo, Sangiovese, Refosco, Tocai Friulano, Greco, Chenin Blanc, the Muscats, Sagrantino, Montepulciano, Nebbiolo, Cab Franc, Carmeneré, Tinta Roriz, and Petite Sirah. Many of these were in multiple lots of different clones - Sangiovese and Nebbiolo in three, Primitivo, Barbera, Refosco and a couple others I can't remember in at least two lots. Despite good crop control we also had record amounts of our estate varietals, pushing the ripening back a little bit. Zinfandel and Primitivo had an odd year on the North Coast with many surprised with huge bunches and little in the way of hens and chicks. We will likely squeak by under 14% with ours while a little more on the brambly rustic side - no complaints here.

Planting
We are running out of land. We completed planting our Sangiovese blocks this year, adding the Biondi-Santi clone of Brunello to the usual FPS 06 Brunello clone, but we are banking on the lowly Romagnolo VCR 23 clone as the foundation for our (probable) cuvée. We also have some Vino Nobile in there as well. We are just a big test garden after all. We also got our Sagrantino in, cobbling together some of the only vines in the U.S. and taking a road trip to Washington state to pick up what we couldn't get in California. And we added another clone of Barbera in a small block. The two blocks we have are producing shockingly different wine and there is hope of a spicy bridge between the two in the future.

Weather
The weather was interesting this year. Rainfall for the winter was around 14" with a dry Spring,  substantially below the normal 25" mark. And, no frost. In the Kelseyville area we had the eight-day stretch over 100F in August many had, but things were pretty smooth for a low rainfall year. The dry-ish beginning to the season forced the hard choice of either very early watering to replenish groundwater or use the  early water deficit to control vine growth cycles and hope for an earlier end to vegetative growth. We opted for the later. The .7" of rain on October 21 which was basically in the middle of reds for a late year rattled some nerves with a lot of grapes still hanging but everytime we got nervous the sun came back out and the heat came back on. November 6th hit 82 degrees here, and it could not have been more timely or just right. Whether or not it was an amazing vintage still remains to be seen, but it feels pretty good. That late rain slowed things down but the weather was good and the sugars remained in the ideal zone. Flavors were slow though, and those growers in other areas who got excited by the prospect of a "normal" year and heavy crop who then picked early like little 25-brix seeking robots so they could go on vacation early may have missed out.

Lake County
Lake County continues to be in a state of proverbial one step forward back and one step back. On the negative side tourism has been declared to be at an all time low. We are a wine country two hours from the Bay Area and that is simply too much for many. This is an historical dilemma that goes back over one hundred years and had effects on the timber and mining industries here. It is ironic to think that tourism thrived here 100 years ago, when transportation was slower and more arduous. Lake County's virtues of high and pristine isolation is also it's curse. Restaurants and resorts close and sit. Everything is poised to begin a growth cycle. But, waiting.

On the positive side Lake County wine continues to receive more press and recognition (like here) and outreach has continued to grow. Lake County's grapes are the third most expensive in California, eclipsing Mendocino's and all of our friends to the south. Things like Chacewater winning best California Winery at the state fair are important components of a general and continuing forward surge.

On the don't-know-what-to-think-yet side we now have to ask what happens when the job is done too well? What does it mean when Gallo buys Snows Lake ($42 million is the number I have seen - article here) which was one of Lake County's benchmarks, and might strip Lake County off the label forever? Will Foley buying a controlling portion of Langtry be an asset to the region or not?

Olives

Freshly harvested Tuscan Blend Olio Nuovo is available today! After last year's statewide olive deficit this year could not help but be better. The majority of our Tuscans have been harvested and the Arbequinas are ripening up nicely and should progress as long as the frost remains minimal. Olives are on the late side like the grapes though, and as the winter progresses we get a little bit anxious to get them all in. One stretch of good weather after all this rain will put everything in the zone.




Food
Yes, we have been cooking some food now too, and monthly 4-course flight nights are selling out every month. Next Friday - rustic French.

Lake County, Napa's Neighbor, Gains Respect

Reposted from the Wall Street Journal, October 26

By LETTIE TEAGUE

Enlarge Image

Lianne Milton

CHEERS FOR THE LAKERS | Arpad and Peter Molnar, owners, and Alex Beloz, winemaker at the Obsidian Ridge Vineyard

NEAR THE END of the Civil War, the U.S. government gave away 160 acres of land to anyone willing to help settle the West. Vineyard owner Andy Beckstoffer has his own version of that Homestead Act: He has offered famous winemakers and vintners a free trip by helicopter to California's Lake County to check out his vineyards—along with "favorable terms" for the purchase of grapes.

Although adjacent to Napa Valley, Lake County is a world apart with cheap land, low production costs and no social infrastructure-but it's become the destination for California wineries making Lake County wines or "filling out" their Napa and Sonoma bottles. Lettie Teague has details on Lunch Break.

Mr. Beckstoffer is one of the largest—not to mention most enterprising—vineyard developers in the county. He owns about 1,000 acres in Lake County and about the same amount of land in Mendocino and Napa counties. But right now Mr. Beckstoffer is particularly focused on Lake County, which he believes has the potential to produce some very good, very reasonably priced Cabernet. And he's not alone; almost two months ago, the Gallo family made a very big commitment to the county with the purchase of the 2,000-acre Snows Lake Vineyard, whose 800 acres of vineyards are primarily planted to Cabernet Sauvignon. According to Gallo Senior Vice President Roger Nabedian, it's the largest purchase that Gallo has made in at least 10 years, in terms of both money and size.

In its pre-Prohibition heyday, there were close to 3,000 acres of vineyards in Lake County, and its lakefront resorts attracted top Hollywood acts. But over the years, the vineyards were almost entirely ripped out and replaced by more-profitable walnuts and pears (and the top acts all migrated to Lake Tahoe). By the 1980s, the walnut and pear markets had dried up as well, and Lake County's economy—and profile—declined even more.

But the past 10 years have been a time of resurgence and regrowth. There are now more than 8,000 acres of vineyards in Lake County and a few dozen wineries as well. (A few decades ago there were just four.) Five subappellations were drawn up, most notably Red Hills, Clear Lake and High Valley. According to Mr. Beckstoffer, these subdistricts were created by growers as much to recognize their distinctive geography as to distance themselves from the less-than-illustrious Lake County name. "Lake County had a reputation for bad wine in the 1990s," said Mr. Beckstoffer, naming the decade he first ventured north from Napa.

Enlarge Image

Close

Nick Elias

Andy Beckstoffer's Amber Knolls Vineyard

One of the reasons that the wines were so bad was the grapes were planted in "all the wrong places," according to Mr. Beckstoffer—an opinion I heard expressed several more times from several more growers during my visit last month. The grapes—particularly Cabernet—were planted down in the valleys instead of up in the hills, and the fruit didn't ripen properly. Valley wines also lacked the intensity of wines made from hillside fruit. Not that most wine drinkers had an opportunity to distinguish the difference between the two as most Lake County grapes were added to blends of various grapes from various places, including Napa Valley.

Mr. Beckstoffer and I had this conversation on the way to Steele Wines, one of the earliest wineries of modern Lake County, founded by Jed Steele in 1991. Mr. Steele was the much-heralded creator of Kendall-Jackson Vintner's Reserve Chardonnay but left fame and fortune behind when he moved to Lake County and opened a decidedly low-key place of his own. The Steele winery is a world apart from his past corporate life, which is to say it's quintessential Lake County: a low-slung building just off of the highway, across from a purveyor of farm equipment and pet food.

Although many growers, including Mr. Beckstoffer, believe that Cabernet Sauvignon will make Lake County respectable if not renowned, others, like Mr. Steele, seem to believe that the right grape for Lake County is…everything. Mr. Steele turns out a veritable alphabet of wines—from Aligote to Zinfandel and just about every varietal in between. But not all of his fruit comes from Lake County—sometimes it's from places as far away as Washington state.

Other winemakers have backed other varietals, most notably Sauvignon Blanc or, in the case of Gregory Graham, Viognier. In fact, Mr. Graham, a Lake County pioneer, told me he thought Viognier would "rule the world" in the late 1990s. Although his Viognier is very good, that never happened, and Mr. Graham makes many other wines as well—Cabernet, Grenache, Chardonnay and Syrah.

Sonoma-based superstar winemaker David Ramey, who consults to Brassfield Winery, in Upper Lake, believes that aromatic white wines like Albariño, Gewürztraminer and Roussane are the right grapes for Lake County. And he's quite keen on Malbec, too. That red varietal has a "tremendous future" in the county, said Mr. Ramey, though there are only 25 acres of Malbec in Lake County right now.

If the absolute best Lake County grapes have yet to be determined, they are, at least, still quite reasonably priced. For example, Mr. Beckstoffer charges at least $8,000 a ton for grapes from his top Napa Cabernet vineyard, while at his Red Hills outpost in Lake (which he farms exactly the same way), the cost is $2,500 a ton for Cabernet. The Lake County average is $1,800.

And yet only about a third of the winemakers buying Mr. Beckstoffer's fruit are making Cabernets with a Red Hills label, he estimates. Most, like winemaker Dave Guffy of the Hess Collection in Napa, are using it in blends. (Mr. Guffy uses 45% Lake County fruit in his Hess Select red.) The same is true for other growers—Gregory Graham estimates that he sells 60% of his fruit to Napa Valley wineries who bottle it into a blend. (A wine may be labeled "Napa" as long as 85% of the fruit is from there.)

Peter Molnar, chairman of the Lake County Wine Grape Commission, makes wine in Lake County as well as Napa and Sonoma and showcases Lake County with his wine, Obsidian Ridge. His 2009 is a wine he calls "a hillside Cabernet for the rest of us," priced accordingly at $28 a bottle. Marked by dark fruit, currant and tobacco, it's intense and impressive—one of the best Cabernets I tasted on my visit.

Like many of the producers I met during my visit, Mr. Molnar doesn't live in the county, but several hours away in North Berkeley. Others commute from Sonoma and Napa. That's another big challenge for Lake County—finding winemakers who actually want to live there. Even though an acre of land costs a fraction of what it does in Napa (about $10,000 plus the cost of developing a vineyard), there hasn't exactly been a stampede of would-be resident vintners. Maybe it's just a matter of time—and a few more good wines in the market with Lake County on their labels. After all, it took not one but three Homestead Acts to get the West settled.

See wine videos and more from Off Duty at youtube.com/wsj. Email Lettie atwine@wsj.com.