As Spring is starting to shine through here in Northern California, there’s no better time for a guest blog from our very own Scotty Prawalsky, one of our NorCal sales folks – enjoy! ~MP

I had the pleasure of spending last weekend at the Clarksburg Wine Growers and Vintners Spring Fling wine event at the Old Sugar Mill.  For those of you that are not aware, Clarksburg is an AVA about 15 miles south of Sacramento in the delta, and the source of the Don & Sons wine The Crusher.  The Old Sugar Mill is just that, but it has found a new life as a custom crush facility and winery in addition to housing tasting rooms for six wineries and a special events facility.

Over the course of Saturday and Sunday nearly 2,000 people made their way from Northern California to Clarksburg to attend the event and try the wine of 11 local wineries.  The response to our wines was overwhelmingly positive, with the biggest hit being the 2010 Rose of Pinot Noir.  Our table had the longest lines of all!  It didn’t hurt that it was 80 degrees and sunny.  The 2009 Petite Sirah was favorite of many as well.

The thing that stood out the most to me was the sense of community that this small region possesses.  I had multiple conversations with farmers who grow our grapes, each one of them wanting to try the fruits of their labor.  Among them were Ken and Sandy Wilson, who Don and his family have buying grapes from for years.  I got the sense that the people who work the land in Clarksburg were winking at each other with the realization that their little secret wasn’t so little anymore, that all of these wine lovers had caught on.

If you haven’t had a chance to get down to Clarksburg in person you should set aside a little time.  Or at least try some of the wines.  I might be able to recommend one or two. ~SP

After all the rain we have had this winter and early spring, the past few weeks have brought us some much needed sunshine.   This weather has stirred the vines to come back from dormancy to start their vegetative growth.   This is what we call bud break.    The vines carry all the necessary cells for growth of canes, leaves, and grape clusters in what are termed buds.  A bud looks like a little knob on the grape vine.   After the previous harvest, in the fall, the leaves fall off the vines and the vine go to sleep for the cold winter months.   In the winter, growers go through the vineyards and prune back the grapevine to leave a few buds per cane (or grape branch) to prepare the vine for growth the following year.  And that is what we are seeing now in the pictures linked.   You can see the pruned branch with the vegetative growth coming from the bud.   These buds are starting to break through and show leaves and branches starting to grow out.  The grape clusters wait until later in the season to start their growth once the vine is healthy enough to support it.  Overall, this growth tells winemakers that we should go on vacation soon because harvest is once again around the corner.   With that said, I am out of here.    Your winemaker, Greg.

Last week, my family and I had the tremendous honor of accepting the Vintners’ Hall of Fame induction of my grandfather, August. The event, held at the Culinary Institute of America, was an amazing gala. Wine industry royalty were in attendance and as you might guess we ate and drank pretty well too.

The 30 or so members of the Vintners’ Hall of Fame is, understandably, filled with mostly iconic producers of high-end Napa wines: Mondavi, Grgich, Martini, etc. So you could see how we felt a bit like the Clampetts driving down Rodeo Drive in their old jalopy. But… It was heartening to see other Sonomans, like Joel Peterson, founder of Ravenswood, and other value wine producers like Bob Trinchero, proprietor of Sutter Home Winery, both inductees.

I did not have the opportunity to give an acceptance speech. Because no one asked. But if I did, I would probably reflect back on a story my Dad told me from a few decades back…

Dad was out to dinner and someone asked him if he was associated with the winemaking Sebastiani family. Feeling proud and almost-famous, Dad puffed out his chest and confirmed, indeed he was part of our clan. The gentleman nodded and said, ‘I love your wines! I drink them all the time. They go great with dope!’

From being paired with a joint to the Vintners Hall of Fame… We’ve come a long way…

Does anyone out there follow The Haggler, the series of NYTimes articles chronicling horrible tales of customer service injustices and cold corporate bureaucracies? This story is the opposite of those stories.

A fan of ours in Roswell, Georgia wrote us a letter in early January. We’ll call him Rob. Rob had an issue with an in-store mail-in rebate of ours–he purchased several bottles of our wine over the course of 3 months, but he didn’t see that the rebate required that all purchases be made at the same time to be eligible. Naturally, he felt pretty upset–duped by the fine print– and he wrote both Publix (his local grocery store) and Don & Sons in Sonoma to voice his grievances.

After writing him a letter in reply and giving him a call from our GA sales guy extraordinaire, Sam Miller, explaining the situation and personally insuring that he would receive his rebate as promised, he wrote us a second letter:

“I do not recall ever receiving a more thorough, impressive and professional response to a letter of complaint than I received from Publix and Don Sebastiani & Sons. Bravo to all of you!”
“I know from experience how difficult it can be to write a point-by-point response to a complaint without sounding argumentative, and I was most impressed by the thoughtfulness which [sic] went into Mr. Peck’s letter to me.”

While we don’t always get it right, we certainly work hard to take care of our fans. Thanks for the kind words “Rob”!

If I were a seller of bulk wine (particularly overpriced bulk wine from Napa Valley), I would run – not walk – to my local wine broker’s office to sell all of my wine while I still can. May as well take advantage of the ridiculously high prices that wineries are paying for that juice today…

Because that party is about to end. It was crashed today by the 2010 Preliminary Crop Report, in which it was announced that the 2010 crop – which was forecasted to total 3.18 million tons – will actually total 3.58 million tons! A 9% increase over the average crop from the last four vintages.

In Napa Valley, a category from which savvy post-great-recession wine shoppers are fleeing, that could be a problem. Too much supply and declining demand will force significant price deflation.

Have you found any crazy values lately? If not, you will soon!

At the winery in Napa, we have been keeping busy bottling wine for a majority of our programs.   Our sales, due to consumers like you, have been keeping us on our toes and moving through our bulk wine inventory.   As of last week, we bottled the last of our 2008 vintage wine and are well into the 2009 vintage on most of our programs.   This is a very good thing for the consumer since the 2009 vintage was really strong and this vintage is drinking beautifully.   Go out there and start finding these 09′s at your local wine shop, supermarket, or restaurant.  You won’t be sorry.

Given this movement with the 2009 vintage, it means that our wine making team is gearing up to start getting some of the early season varietals for our 2010 vintage ready for springtime and summertime bottling.   We have just finished getting our 2010 Rose for Crusher ready to bottle in early March.  We are also getting ready to heat and cold stabilize our 2010 Clarksburg Viognier for the summer as well.   (Heat stabilization involves pulling the incremental ammounts of protein out of the white wines for clarity.   Cold stabilization involves settling out naturally occurring salts in white wines for stability in the cold temperatures of your refrigerator.)  Lastly, we are getting ready to move some of our 2010 Chardonnays off their lees (fermentation solids that settle to the bottom of barrels and tanks) in order to start cleaning them up as well. 

So there you go.  We are rolling with the 2009 vintage.   The 2010′s are just around the corner.   And the weather in California has recently been beautiful (sorry everyone east of the Rockies, hang in there).   Keep warm, look out for the 09′s, and hold the ones you love tight.

Over and out, your winemaker,

Greg

Paso Robles after the rain

Running my family’s wine business is a fun challenge – every day brings something different.  I always hate when people ask, “what do you do for the company?”.  It is a difficult question to answer.  Worse yet, when my family asks the same question… Eh.  Tough to explain.

My favorite thing is when I get “face time” – thrust into the spotlight as the day-to-day man-in-charge. OK, it’s not my favorite but someone needs to do it right?  So when it came down to filming a fire-up-the-troops video for our upcoming national sales meeting (“Looniversity” 2011), someone signed me up to do this…

Now my wife and kids can actually see what Daddy does all day.

Happy New Year everyone! I don’t know about you but I’m really excited for 2011. There is so much happening here at Don & Sons! So many exciting things I can barely contain it…but you’ll have to wait to find out. Sorry. I know you must be dying to know. OK I’ll give you a hint: it involves brand new wines from two totally rad California appellations, and music. Lotsa music. :) Check back soon!!!

One of the new members of the DS&S team asked me the other day, “now that harvest is over, what are you doing?”   This is actually a pretty common question that I seem to get year in and year out.   When we are not crushing grapes and racing around vineyards, what do you do?    Here is a short list of what we are up to right now.

1- At this point of year, most of our fermentations have gone smoothly.  But there are always a few lots that do not cooperate with us.   We are still working on a few stuck ferments (which still have sugar to ferment to completion) as well as stuck malolactic ferments (some wines require converting malic acid to lactic acid in what is called secondary fermentation).   We coordinate treatments and are constantly looking at lab results as we push these lots to completion.  

2- We are buckling down our wines to fill barrels and tanks to prepare for storage and aging on our different oak products (oak staves, chips, and tannins).  Some tanks are getting set up with Micro-Oxygenation for aging and softening of the wine.   Micro-ox or MOX is introducing small increments of pure oxygen to the wine in stainless steel tanks on oak to mimic the oxygen transfer through the stave of a barrel.  This is how you make tank wine taste like barrel wine.   Winemaking is full of cool tricks!!

3- We are working on new blends as the 09′s are preparing to bottle across the board. 

4- The least glamorous part of winemaking, we spend time catching up on paperwork.  As you can imagine, wine is a strictly regulated business here in the USA.  So after harvest, we have a lot of paperwork to tackle in order to make sure our books are done correctly.

5- Lastly, we re-introduce ourselves to our families and friends who have not seen much of us in the past few months.  We generally start in August and go 6 to7 days a week until mid-November.   Early mornings and late nites do not leave much time for loved ones for almost a quarter of the year.   Currently, I spend a lot of time cuddling with my daughter and wife.   If you travel for a living, I am sure you can relate!! 

So that is what we are up to now that the grapes are off the vine.   It was a good harvest for us and we have some great wines for the 2010 vintage.   But go out and check out the 09′s that are hitting your local wine shops.   There is some great wine in the bottle to help keep you warm this winter.  

Over and out, your winemaker,

Greg

Our apologies for the Thanksgiving blog hiatus–from October through December is the busiest time of year for wine sales, and the few days before Thanksgiving are the biggest wine selling days of the year. Needless to say, we’ve been swamped.

But this does make us think about all the corks that people are popping nationwide this time of year, so it’s time for blog #2 on Portugal and the cork industry. As many of you may have noticed, we’ve quietly switched out our synthetic corks for a natural “agglomerated” cork over the year. Not the sexiest name, but these new corks are noticeably easier to open. They also have a nice, high-quality feel to them, which fits with the continuing investments we have made in our wine quality.

The big question seems to be: which corks are greener? It’s somewhat of a toss up actually. Our synthetic corks were 100% recyclable, just like any regular plastic. However, our new corks can be made from the scraps of high quality solid cork that would otherwise go unused. Cork is a renewable resource and a natural product that biodegrades over time. The vast majority of cork forests are also privately owned and protected.

Check out a few of these great photos from Amorim, the world’s largest cork producer (and sponsor of our trip to Portugal!):

Those are huge piles of cork bark, drying outside of the processing facility. So much cork!

Check out the stacks of cleaned, steamed cork, compared to the raw cork

A great shot to see the different levels of cork quality

And here you see how it actually happens. While Amorim has tried to automate this process, nothing works better than a skilled human hand for cutting cork.