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BLOOD SWEAT AND TEARS.

BLOOD - 

This bottle is adorned with my Fathers Face. Truth be told he hates this photo. I took it one morning in the vineyard near the well after one of our daily trailer hitch conversations about the state of things. I am sure he hates it the same way we all hate photos of ourselves and the brutality of the reflection in the mirror.  Most days I wonder who is the old man staring back at me.. 
However, I love this photo. When I look at it, I see a man that hasn't let the world beat him. Every day my father gets up without fail and leaves the door with the full intention of changing the world.

It is he that is brutal, it is He that is relentless, it is He that, whatever the circumstance, bends it to his gravity.  The grey hair peeking out of his hat.  The band of sweat through his hat at the band. The experience that lines his skin. The reason you are reading this right now is because of that man. Rather than sitting back watching the clock wind down he ran into a farm like a man possessed. When we couldn't sell apples, we burned the trees and planted grapes. Brutal. 
The Wine in this bottle comes from our High Hill. My dad's favorite part of his home vineyard. 
When we pick it, he has already passed that vine 20 times. His shadow grows these grapes. 
This man is as tough as a bag of hammers and has a heart that will run into fires. 

The world hasn't beaten him, 
He just hasn't beat the world just yet. 

When you taste this wine, you will know why it has his face on it. 
Beautiful Brutality. 
My Father. 
 

This Review is by a Wine Family Member by the name of Mike Lamberti.
He has no formal wine training but likes to drink wine, a LOT of wine....
Thus he is OUR  KIND OF PEOPLE. 
He is a Wino Not a Snob.

He and His Beautiful, too good for him wife, did this on their own. 
If you want to do it, just email me your notes, I'll post that stuff, I don't care. This isn't even a real business.
 

Blood :

The Look: 
Intensity: Deep
Color: Garnet
Viscosity: Med+

The Smell:
Intensity: Med+
Fruit: Currant, Açaí
Herb/Floral: Green Peppercorn, Sage
Oak: Vanilla, Baking Spices
Earth/Other: Cured Meat

The Taste:
Sweetness: Off-Dry
Acidity: Med+, Tangy
Tannin: Med-
Alcohol: Med+
Body: Full
Notes: Dried Red and Black Fruit, Green Veg, Pumpernickel
Finish: Med

2015 was one of the most difficult farming years in our Farming history.
Farming is not for the Faint of Heart. 

One night you can go to bed knowing you have done everything you can to ensure your crop will be ready come harvest. By the next Morning, you can lose 75% of your crop by no fault of your own. 
That is what happened to us in 2015.  
The Wind Blew and The Rain fell on what was just the wrong day. 
Silently, we lost 75% of our crop while we slept. 

75%

Now if you are buying grapes, you might get shorted a bit off of your order. But when you are the farmer. You don't get paid. You have nothing to sell. You are left holding the bag. Brutal. I suggest if want to know what it takes to be a farmer you read Paul Harvey's 1978 'So God Made a Farmer' Speech.
(included below)
You have to be tough as nails, swallow hard and know you have to get back to work and perhaps work even harder when something likes this happens. You spend the year working, knowing full well that the results you work for, will not be there come harvest.  As we harvested the Syrah, there were some looks between father and son. Deep breaths were pulled, and the metal was set. 

We picked every single grape by hand, as we always do, and said out loud. "There isn't a lot of it. But it is some of the best looking, and best-tasting grapes, we have ever had. We didn't have a lot of it, but we were going to make the best wine we ever had out of what we did have. 
And That We Did. 
We are always precious with our crop, but this year we held it like someone in the desert holds a canteen. 
Every drop sacred. 
You see, this crop not only goes into our bottles, but it feeds our family, it feeds multiple families. We worked all year in the vineyard for that grape to hit our bottles, and we weren't going to let a drop go to waste, and we were not going to spare any expense or time, or any effort to make this the best possible wine we have ever made. 

However, we know that trying moments will happen, and we can count on it as surely sparks fly upward. 

It will happen again, 
I am sure of it. 

The truth is, the grapes spoke for themselves. 
They were in a word perfect.  
The wine, is a reflection of that perfection. 

MORE INFO ON FLOWERING
In the life of the harvest of a wine grape, there is a moment called flowering.  Flowering occurs when average daily temperatures stay between 59–68 °F A few weeks after the initial clusters appear, the flowers start to grow in size. It is during this stage of flowering that the self-pollination and fertilization of the vine take place with the resulting in an individual berry.

SO GOD MADE A FARMER
- PAUL HARVEY -1978

And on the 8th day, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, "I need a caretaker." So God made a farmer.

God said, "I need somebody willing to get up before dawn, milk cows, work all day in the fields, milk cows again, eat supper and then go to town and stay past midnight at a meeting of the school board." So God made a farmer.

"I need somebody with arms strong enough to rustle a calf and yet gentle enough to deliver his own grandchild. Somebody to call hogs, tame cantankerous machinery, come home hungry, have to wait lunch until his wife's done feeding visiting ladies and tell the ladies to be sure and come back real soon -- and mean it." So God made a farmer.

God said, "I need somebody willing to sit up all night with a newborn colt. And watch it die. Then dry his eyes and say, 'Maybe next year.' I need somebody who can shape an ax handle from a persimmon sprout, shoe a horse with a hunk of car tire, who can make harness out of haywire, feed sacks and shoe scraps. And who, planting time and harvest season, will finish his forty-hour week by Tuesday noon, then, pain'n from 'tractor back,' put in another seventy-two hours." So God made a farmer.

God had to have somebody willing to ride the ruts at double speed to get the hay in ahead of the rain clouds and yet stop in mid-field and race to help when he sees the first smoke from a neighbor's place. So God made a farmer.

God said, "I need somebody strong enough to clear trees and heave bails, yet gentle enough to tame lambs and wean pigs and tend the pink-combed pullets, who will stop his mower for an hour to splint the broken leg of a meadow lark. It had to be somebody who'd plow deep and straight and not cut corners. Somebody to seed, weed, feed, breed and rake and disc and plow and plant and tie the fleece and strain the milk and replenish the self-feeder and finish a hard week's work with a five-mile drive to church. 

"Somebody who'd bale a family together with the soft strong bonds of sharing, who would laugh and then sigh, and then reply, with smiling eyes, when his son says he wants to spend his life 'doing what dad does.'" So God made a farmer.