Every time I visit my friend Kristi Fountain at her home, what is intended to be a craft day usually digresses into drinking wine and looking at cookbooks. Hours go by and we are lucky if we accomplish anything beside planning out meals for a lifetime. She spoils me and cooks the most amazing lunches ensuring that I come back again for “craft day” and get nothing done. This is Kristi helping out at the vineyard last year (her husband Jeff in the background to the left).
Kristi showing off the grapes 
This recipe I took from one of her books. I neglected to copy the title of the book and will add that in as soon as I get it, but this recipe is a wonderful, hearty, and pretty healthy winter meal. The wine suggestions for this were a full-bodied white wine or various reds. I enjoyed my dinner with the 2009 Syrah and found it a delightful accompaniment!
Fresh chicken eggs made this such a beautiful color!
Brown Rice Cheddar Tart with Roasted Tomatoes & Broccoli
For the Brown Rice Crust
- 1 cup (250mL) cooked medium-grain brown rice
- 1 cup (250mL) shredded Extra-Old Cheddar
- 2 eggs, lightly beaten
- (I also added salt to taste)
For the Filling
- 6 Roma tomatoes, halved lengthwise
- 9 cloves garlic, unpeeled
- 2 Tbsp (30mL) extra virgin olive oil
- 1 + 1/2 cups (375mL) broccoli florets (i used a combination of fresh blanched green beans and sauteed leeks)
- 2 oz (50g) Le Pampille goat cheese, crumbled
- 4 eggs, lightly beaten
- 1/4 cup (60mL) milk
- 3 green onions, sliced
- tarragon (I used thyme and dill)
- freshly ground black pepper, to taste
- (I also added salt to taste)
Cooking Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 400F (200C) and place the oven rack in the center position. Spray a 10-inch quiche dish with cooking oil. (I used a 10 inch cake pan – it worked great! I just didn’t pull the crust up the side.)
- In a bowl, combine the rice, cheddar cheese, and the 2 beaten eggs, mixing well. Spread the mixture over the base and sides of the prepared dish.
- Bake for 15 minutes in the preheated oven. Remove from the oven and set aside to cool. Reduce the oven temperature to 350F.
- Combine the tomatoes, garlic, and oil in a bowl and stir to coat well. Place in a roasting pan and roast for 30 minutes, or until the tomatoes and garlic become soft. Remove the pan from the oven, let cool slightly, and peel the softened garlic.
- Arrange the broccoli over the bottom of the rice crust. Top with the tomatoes, garlic and goat cheese.
- In a bowl, stir the remaining eggs, milk, green onions, tarragon (or herbs of your choice), and pepper; pour over the tomatoes.
- Place the dish on a baking sheet and bake for 60 minutes, or until set.
- Remove from the oven and let cool for 5 minutes before serving.
Enjoy!
What with the lateness of harvest this year, we rolled directly from pressing grapes into the hustle and bustle of the holidays. We now find ourselves back at a normal pace, watching the vineyard tuck deep into a well deserved sleep while preparing this year’s whites and last year’s reds for bottling.
Snowcapped vines
We are currently renovating a structure in Juliaetta built in 1905, a building that has housed several businesses over the past 100+ years. Originally a pharmacy, the building has also hosted an automotive shop, a cafe, and a tavern. Once our renovation is complete, the building will be home to our tasting room and wine bar, which will not only feature our own wines on tap, but will showcase other local wines, beers, and products from our region as well. Our ultimate goal is to create a beautiful and cozy atmosphere for people to hang out and try some great local fare! Stay tuned for updates…
Starting from bare bones, home of our future tasting room
It could not have been a more beautiful day for harvest on the 30th of October. We harvested Cabernet Franc and Cabernet Sauvignon.
Cabernet Franc
The group of just under 20, worked hard and got everything picked by about 3pm.
Kristi modeling the newly picked grapes.
After a lovely BBQ and some well earned wine, grapes went through the de-stemming process, which is pretty interesting. The grapes are loaded up into a machine that essentially dumps them out onto a conveyor belt and shakes them apart as helpers pull out things like leaves, bugs, or any other unwanted materials. You can watch the video below to get a sense of how it works.
This process is so much better when it is cooler because there aren’t as many yellow jackets! Once the grapes pass through the conveyor belt, they go through one more part that separates them entirely from their stems.
Sorting
Just the stems
Just grapes - ready for crush
Then we got to tour the winery, do some barrel tasting, and take turns “punching the cap” on grapes already crushed.
Barrel Tasting
Melissa punching down the cap.
So much fun and such great company. Looking forward to bottling through the winter. Cheers and thank you to Kristi and Jeff Fountain for so many beautiful pictures – you can see more of them on our Picasa web album HERE.
Well, this unusually cold year doesn’t have us beat yet. In fact, it looks like we’ll be able to harvest everything with decent flavors, sugar, and acid levels this year – the fruit has been tasting incredible! Phew!
So far we’ve harvested (in order) our Gewurztraminer, Chardonnay, Syrah, Zinfandel, Sangiovese, Grenache, and Merlot.
Crushing Zinfandel
Grenache ready for the pick
Next on the list is Riesling, with Cabs closing up the 2011 harvest season. We should be done picking come the first week of November. Our goal is to get everything off the vine before it freezes hard, so we can water the vines and put them to rest for the winter. They’ve worked hard for us this year and deserve a break!
Soon we’ll be starting the renovation of our new tasting room in Juliaetta, slated to open Spring 2012. Watch for updates, photos, and party announcements! Until then, grab a glass of vino and enjoy this beautiful fall!
Sunset on the vines
Gewürztraminer
Had a fantastic visit down to the vineyard and winery a couple weekends ago. South Dakota Eschenbaum family – Carol Sanborn’s brother Jim and wife Teresa – came in for a visit and we all headed down to Juliaetta for a grape picking extravaganza. This was just a little picking excursion the family participated in.
Teresa working on the vines.
Brother Mike in the vines.
Just a few rows of Gewürztraminer that yielded, oh, a teeny bit over 950 pounds of grapes. That is right 950 POUNDS! Wow! I had no idea it could add up so fast! That is one of the best parts of working at the winery – you get to watch them weigh your hard work and see that you did actually do something – even if you felt like you were going too slow or whatever.
Weighin' In
It was a gorgeous day and after picking, the grapes were crushed immediately and juice extracted.
Ready to be crushed
One of the neighbors brought his Gewürztraminer over too and our total came in at 1360 lbs of grapes, 102 gallons juice which is about 40 cases. After cleaning up, we made sure to do some tasting and take a tour of the new homestead Mike and Melissa have been patiently waiting to move into. We hung out with the Auntie and Uncle Eschenbaum, the cats (the real managers of the vineyards) and then headed back home. A perfect day!
The important work.
Relaxin on the deck.
Cats
View from the deck.
Now that the grapes are starting to ripen, the dreaded task of netting the vines is upon us. After dusting off the pile of nets that daunt us 10 months out of the year, we netted the first of the vineyard this week, starting with Gewurztraminer and Tempranillo.
Bird netting
Bird-netting requires 4 unlucky people: 1 on the tractor, 1 unleashing the netting from its stuff-sack, and 2 to walk along either side of the vine row, draping the netting over the vines. Draping the netting is an art itself – if you drape too low, the netting collects sticks, weeds, chickens, cats, and anything else on the ground, and if you drape too high, birds are able to sneak in under the netting and negate the entire effort of protecting the fruit. Once the netting is on we are limited to what we can do to the vine for the remainder of the growing season, so we know there is a small window of rest between netting and harvest. I said small.
In order to help the grapes ripen to their full potential, we manage the amount of water each vine gets. This practice is called deficit irrigation, which for the most part means stressing the vine by slightly starving the vine of water. Vines are very clever, and they want to develop the most perfect berry to attract birds (see bird-netting above) and other critters to help spread little grape seeds and continue the cycle of the species. When stressed, vines will concentrate on ripening fruit rather than increasing canopy size. We approximate the degree of stress the vine is under via a Pressure Bomb.
Pressure Bomb
A leaf sample is collected and inserted into a pressure chamber. Depending on how much water is held in the leaf, a proportional amount of pressure is required to force water from the leaf stem. This measured pressure value is used to determine the degree of stress the vine is under, and helps us determine, through a series of calculations, how much water to apply to the vine. Just one more way for us to obtain the best fruit possible, to make the best wine possible. Pretty clever, eh?
We’ve finally hit verasion in the vineyard, the time in which the grapes start to turn color and ripen. Our Tempranillo is the first to turn, and we’re predicting it will be ready to pick in 4 weeks. Everything else is a little behind, but we expect things to really start happening in the next week or two.
We started a new project this summer: propagating vines. We built a small greenhouse equipped with misting emitters to propagate clippings we took from an old vineyard about 15 miles to our east. The vineyard was supposedly planted in 1905, and while complete sprawl has occurred over the past century, there are still signs of vine rows.
Vine Sprawl
Mike & Mike collecting cuttings
Last year we sent in cuttings from the vineyard to the University of California, Davis for DNA analysis, where they identified a few of the cultivars. Based on those results, we spent a morning in July collecting Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot, and Petit Syrah cuttings from the site and started them in our greenhouse. They have since developed a root system and are starting to form buds.
Cuttings
If we can get the clippings to survive this winter, we’ll have some ‘super old’ vines to plant next spring. Come 2014, we will be able to crop the vines, and in 2016 we will have wine; from what we’ve gathered, it will be the first time commercial wine will be produced from the vines, only 110 years after they were planted. Patience is truly a virtue…
Ahhh summer, it’s finally here. The vines are blooming, and the floral aroma throughout the vineyard is intoxicating! We just finished putting the last of the new vines in the ground, and the rush and hustle of spring in the vineyard is slowly winding down. Throughout the summer we water, thin, and hedge the vines, but for the most part we just let them bathe in the heat and develop delicious fruit.
Blooming Cabernet Franc
Summer heat means summer wines, and while relaxing after a hot day of planting this week, Mike, my mom, Carol, and I enjoyed a chilled bottle of our 2009 Umiker Vineyards Rosé of Syrah while munching on a simple and tasty watermelon salad our friend Emily had shared with us. It was the perfect afternoon pairing to be shared with friends, an appropriate dish for the coming 4th of July. Our friend José gave us a similar recipe, though we have yet to make it ourselves. Give it a whirl, experiment, and let us know if you come up with any additional ingredients that we should try. If you can’t get your hands on a bottle of our rosé, seek out a dry rosé to try the salad with, you won’t be sorry. Bon appétit and Happy 4th!
Mint, feta, and watermelon salad with Rose
Watermelon, Feta and Black Olive Salad
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Recipe By: Recipe by Nigella Lawson from Forever Summer With Nigella
Ingredients:
1/2 small red onion
3 limes, juice from
1 lb. sweet ripe Watermelon, (about 1/4 of a large watermelon)
1/3 lb. Feta cheese
1/2 bunch fresh flat-leaf parsley
1/2 bunch fresh mint, chopped
4 tablespoons Extra Virgin Olive Oil
1/2 can pitted Black Olives, sliced in half
Black pepper
Directions:
1. Peel and halve the red onion and cut into very fine half-moons and put in a small bowl to steep with the lime juice, to bring out the transparent pinkness in the onions and diminish their rasp.
2. Remove the rind and seeds from the watermelon, and cut into approximately 1-inch triangular chunks.
3. Cut the feta into similar sized pieces and put them both into a large, wide shallow bowl.
4. Tear off sprigs of parsley so that it is used like a salad leaf, rather than a garnish, and add to the bowl along with the chopped mint.
5. Tip the now glowingly puce onions, along with their pink juices over the salad in the bowl, add the oil and olives, then using your hands toss the salad very gently so that the feta and melon don’t lose their shape.
6. Add a good grinding of black pepper and taste to see whether the dressing needs more lime.
With the release of our new wines this spring, bearing our recently renovated label, a lot of people have been asking, “Who does your labels?” We’ve been lucky to have our great friend, artist Joan Giannecchini, work with us in designing a label that reflects both the landscape and history of our area. Joan is very knowledgeable about wine, so it felt right to partner with her in this endeavor.
Joan received her B.S. in Art and Science from State University New York, and an M.A. in Environmental Studies from NYU. She was vastly active in the arts in New York City for several years. She is also published on several environmental and social issues. Her most recent project, The Celestials, helps bring to attention Chinese immigrant experiences in the Old American West.
Joan’s love of travel has no doubt influenced her art. She has been around the world and then some, and lived on multiple continents. She enjoys gardening, practices bikram (hot) yoga, and fosters bull terriers and other dogs. She is also an exceptional cook, and her brown sugar cookies can make you weak in the knees.
She, her husband, Stan, and their dog, Tulullah, currently split their time between their farmhouse in Northern California and their home in Tuscarora, where she is also involved in the local art scene. She is an avid taster and critic of Colter’s Creek wines.
For contact info, to learn more about Joan, or to view The Celestials, visit her website at www.joangiannecchini.com.
Yes, we’re at it again this year! We are adding another 4-5 acres of red grape cultivars this spring (or should I say summer already?), bringing our total planted acreage up to 15 acres. We decided to plant live stock this year, as live plants are known to be more disease resistant than dormant stock. Unfortunately, the nursery we source our vines from got hit with a nasty freeze this winter and much of their stock was damaged, setting us back at least 4 weeks. So if you were wondering “Why in the world are they planting in the middle of June?”, now you know. Lucky for us, the weather has been moderate to date, and the vines seem to be handling planting like true champs.
The beginning
We finished planting the first 2500 plants last week, and are now waiting for the remainder from the nursery. What are we planting? Until all 4000 vines are in the ground, I’m not exactly sure. We’re taking what we can get at this point with regards to clones and quantities, but if things work out like we planned, we’ll have a few new clones of Merlot, Cabernet Sauvingnon, Cabernet Franc, as well as vineyard newcomers Petite Verdot (a Bordeaux blending grape) and Mourvedre (typically used in Rhone-style blends). We’re super excited about the latter 2 cultivars.
Over halfway there
The next round of planting starts next week, so if you missed out on the first 2500, there’s plenty more vines to fulfill any unleashed planting desire you may have. Did I mention there’s wine involved…
Over half of the new planting completed in the upper Coyote block
