2010 Harvest. What's that all about?

Winemaker update for y'all (just got back from Texas).  I think most of you may have heard but we have had about the coolest Summer on record in Napa.  That is until a massive heatwave at the end of August and then another one this last week.  Its kind of a catch 22 situation, if its too cool and foggy you have to pull leaves around the fruit to help it dry out and avoid molds.  Yet if you pull the leaves and then you get a ridiculous heat wave the fruit gets fried and can turn to raisins.

The "Merus" block has been saved from this predicament by Larry's quick action with the water valves.  Sadly, Midorya Hills fell victim to the heat spikes this year.  The good news is the damage to Midoriya seems to only be an issue with the quantity, not the quality of the fruit.  For some unknown reason the fruit that was exposed to the sun just decided to die off.  Hopefully what is left will have twice the flavor.  We will see.  The Berry Lane Chardonnay also shows the raisining effect with most of the fruit in good shape but some of the exposed berries turned scary black.

Our handy de-stemmer machine takes the grapes off the stems and leaves the raisins behind.  So, other than the lack of fruit we should be in excellent position for an amazing year when it comes to quality.

TED

Glass of Wine, Dinner and a Movie!

Prime Cabernet is being poured by the glass at Foreign Cinema in San Francisco. This is a very unique restaurant that plays movies on the back wall while you eat dinner. The food is excellent too (we have been there recently). Here is the movie line up.

The Young Up-Start!

Cheers to the winemaker, Ted! Erol Senel talks about our Cabernet and Chardonnay and we can't help but agree.

http://content.corkd.com/2010/09/14/napa-valley-ushers-out-the-tired-names-of-yesteryear-and-replaces-them-with-up-and-coming-superstars/

Wine labels: Paper vs Silk Screen

Monvera is company out of Ikeaville Emeryville, CA that produces some really cool "glass decor" as they call it.  They just started a beautiful bottle of the week series of videos and PRIME made it to episode #3!  Monvera is a great company with great people and we're excited that they picked our Midoriya Hills Cab for their video series.                                                                                                                                                                     

Obviously, since they are in the business of selling alternatives to paper labels they tend to have an anti-paper bias.  In the video you see our regular label as well as the screen print that Monvera did for us. Apparently more than 99% of wines in the market have paper labels so the screen print is somewhat unusual.
                                                                                                                                                                   It got me thinking, should PRIME go paperless?  I like the look on our "Reserve" wines but is it worth the extra $? Is there something to be said for the traditional appeal of paper? I'm not sure myself but we're always open to suggestions.  As in: comment please, what labels type do you like best traditional paper or fancy screen print?  Thanks!

Cause for Paws

We were invited to pour for the Cause for Paws benefiting Napa Humane and hosted by Mark and Anna Pope of The Bounty Hunter. The people who put this event on know what they are doing! There was a great array of food and wine and a giveaway bag for everyone who came (mostly stuff for your four legged friends, but some coupons for the human variety too).

We managed to mostly control ourselves, despite pouring next to Three Twins Ice Cream (three scoops between the two of us is showing self control right?)

We also met Amy from Oakville Ranch who was a pleasure to share a table with.

All in all, I would recommend this event to all who like food, wine, and animals. They had cats and dogs on site available for adoption, which was equally hard for us to resist. Our cat Baylee and our dog Murphy may have had an opinion on new family members but the kids wouldn't have been upset.

   

Where to find us!

Here are the places that have Prime Cellars wine in Southern California. Thank you for your support!

Broadway Deli - Santa Monica

Capo - Santa Monica

Cedar Creek Restaurant - Laguna Niguel

Cucina Urbana - San Diego

Golden Truffle - Costa Mesa

Sorrento Grille - Laguna Beach

SF Chronicle recommends Prime- read all about it!

It was a great surprise to see a picture of our 2007 District 4 Cab in Sunday's Chronicle.  Its a big honor when the nation's best paper (west coast bias here) recommends people go out and try your wine.

Reading on it mentions that they considered 80 or so wines and booted out all but 15 that appear in the article.  Congrats to the winemaker (-Oh wait, that's me), to Carlos who did the most of the vineyard work and to Lisa who makes everything else happen!

In case you missed that link here it is again.  Also, since we are just releasing the '07 you might notice that it does not yet appear at our online store, we're working on that, it will be up soon.