Olson Ogden Wines

wine literary awards 2008

I attended the 2008 Wine Literary Awards two Friday's ago with my better half at the California Culinary Academy's Careme Room in San Francisco.  If you have not been to the Careme Room it is in a beautiful old building with high ceilings and period architecture.  The event was a get dressed up (black tie optional), eat excellent food and drink lots of great wine (a few thousand bottles of wine were open from what I heard during the presentations).  It was the first time we attended this event.  We also submitted our 2006 vintage wines to be tasted by the food and wine media prior to the award dinner.  Charles Sullivan, the noted wine historian, was honored with a lifetime achievement award.  Everyone who attended got a signed copy of his book A Companion to California Wine.  It was a relatively uneventful event until Charles Sullivan was presented his award and he began speaking.  About half way through his remarks a woman from the audience decided to go up to the podium to have a private conversation unbeknownst to anyone in the audience including Mr. Sullivan.  For an uncomfortable moment or two she stood there speaking to Mr. Sullivan who was clearly bewildered at the situation until members of the Wine Appreciation Guild quietly escorted her out of the room (removing her glass of wine in the process).  Long story short...the police were called and even though they gave her the opportunity to leave quietly this woman decided to come back and say something to the policeman who then decided to put her in cuffs and cart her off to the police station.  Quite an ending to the evening, one I am sure the Wine Appreciation Guild would have preferred not to be remembered.

frost damage will hurt pinot noir

With the recent frost up and down the North Coast of California in late April, we are hearing from growers that pinot noir vines have been significantly affected.  Not surprising given the delicate nature of pinot noir but nonetheless disappointing to us as we try to secure long term relationships with pinot noir growers.  Pinot Noir was already hard to come by with prices per ton continuing to climb even for mediocre vineyards.  Coupled with the ongoing demand for California pinot noir, this will only serve to further cramp our plans to solidify and expand our pinot noir program in the upcoming 2008 harvest.  Nothing like trying to sail into a headwind! 
by John

rhone rangers san francisco

We participated at the Rhone Rangers this past weekend where all things Rhone are in vogue.  Tim attended the winemaker dinner on Saturday night where we auctioned off a winemaker "bootcamp" that raised $500 to go towards scholarships at UC Davis.  On Sunday, we both attended the grand tasting (photo at left) where we poured our recently bottled 2006 syrahs.  Despite being just bottled, the wines showed amazingly well...we were both very pleased.  The grand tasting was well attended (photo at right) and there were a lot of great wines being poured.  I planned to write my thoughts on all the wines tasted but during the grand tasting we met Christopher Null of Drinkhacker and also saw Alder Yarrow (lower left photo) of Vinography.  Chris did a nice job of recapping the event which you can read here and I bet Alder will have his notes and thoughts up on his blog soon as well.  Needless to say this a fun event year in and year out and we always enjoy participating.
--by John

2006 vintage safely in the bottle!

                                                         We bottled up the 2006 vintage on Wednesday.  Since we have such a small production we pay a company to bring in their mobile bottling line to handle the job.  It makes no financial sense to own such an expensive machine when we have so little wine to bottle and only do it once a year. 

The operation is quite an impressive display to witness.  What looks to be a horse trailer contains the bottling machine.  They get the trailer situated just outside the large roll away doors to the winery so the hoses can be easily hooked up to the bottling machine to get the wine from the blending tanks.  To get the job started, all the doors are opened, the machine is cleaned inside and out to make sure the wines don't get contaminated, then the hoses get hooked up to start the flow of wine, then empty bottles start to get fed in through the rear of the trailer.  The bottles go through the bottling machine getting filled and corked as they head towards the front of the trailer then get labeled and foiled as they head towards the back again.  It takes one person to load the glass into the machine (who also helps to stack the boxes of the finished product since the in and the out are side by side), one to man the flow of the wine into the machine and troubleshoot, one to keep an eye on the transition from bottling to labeling, one to pack the boxes and one to tape the boxes up and stack on a pallet.  That left Tim to drive the forklift moving the empty pallets of glass to the proper spot and taking away the full pallets of wine to be shrunk wrapped and stored. 

We bottled 767 cases of wine (9,204 750 ml bottles) in about 7 hours with the mobile bottling line.  By contrast, the small amount of magnums (1.5L) we make get hand bottled, corked, labeled and waxed which takes two people about the same amount of time.

Now that we are all done with bottling the 2006 vintage, it will sit in bottle until the official release date of June 1.  (With the notable exception of the wine we sell direct to our mailing list on a pre-release basis which is going on right now.)

--by John

we've moved...again

A rolling stone gathers no moss...or something like that must apply to Olson Ogden Wines because we have moved our wine making operations again.  After a short stay in Santa Rosa on Coffey Lane we have  moved back to the Sebastopol area to Cahill Winery on Ross Road near Fred Scherrer's place.  The facility in Santa Rosa was too small to accommodate us and our landlord who was also making wine.  When we moved in we thought it could work but it became apparent after the 2007 harvest that it was not going to be a place we could make future vintages of wine.  If you happen to be in the area and would like to schedule an appointment to barrel taste at our new facility, please let us know.  We are always happy to take a break and drink a little wine with guests.

- -by John
 

syrah symposium

I read an interesting article about syrah recently on appellationamerica.com.  It talked about a syrah symposium that took place in the Santa Ynez Valley last year that sounded like quite a treat for syrah lovers.  I can relate to many of the issues surrounding syrah's identity in the marketplace and the eyes of the consumer that are discussed in the article.  I see it firsthand at consumer tasting events and when I am out selling wine to the trade.  It is at times frustrating but also fun educating people on all that syrah has to offer.

--by John

syrah responsible for vodka's demise?

Apparently no one cool drinks vodka any longer according to an article I read on the New York Post website recently. While the article did not attribute the decline in vodka coolness to Syrah, I have to wonder if we might be seeing this decline in hipness due to the increase in popularity of Syrah.  One can only hope!
--by John

half bottles of wine

I am a fan of half bottles of wine (375ml).  It is a great way to get introduced to a wine at a restaurant or wine shop at a little over half the price of a regular bottle of wine (750ml).  It sounds like the reporters of this article in the Wall Street Journal are as well.  I wish more wineries would bottle some of their production using half bottles, including our winery.  While we currently hand bottle and wax some of our production in magnum bottles (1.5L) based on mailing list demand, we have not been able to even contemplate bottling any of our production in half bottles.  As our production grows a little bit in the coming years, I hope we will be able to allocate some of our production to half bottles and give people a few more choices at their favorite restaurants and wine shops.
--by John

dc wine dinner

While I was in our nation's capital visiting relatives for the holidays, I had the opportunity to catch up with some friends over dinner at the Tabard Inn this past Thursday.  (see picture - that is me in the middle with my eyes closed!)  This was no ordinary night out.  It was a dinner with people that really, really like wine!  So instead of ordering wine from the wine list, we all brought a bottle or two from our cellars to share with our meals.  We had a small group and had the pleasure of sampling five wines throughout dinner.  (wines are listed below)  I started with a cesar salad then the pan roasted moulard duck as a main course and ended it all with a banana chocolate mini pie concoction.  The food, wine and company was great and the atmosphere at the Tabard was cozy and comfortable, perfect for a December evening.  Oh, and we only got dinged for one corkage fee ($15) which was very cool.  Thumbs up for the Tabard Inn! 

2003 Joh. Jos. Christoffel Erben Ürziger Würzgarten Riesling Kabinett

2002 Catena Angelica Zapata Cabernet Franc Alta

1996 Chateau Pichon-Longueville au Baron de Pichon-Longueville Pauillac (Pichon Baron)

2005 Olson Ogden Unti Vineyard Syrah (guess who brought this one?)

2004 De Lisio The Catalyst

--by John

wine in plastic bottles?

My wife forwarded me an interesting item on the Luxuist recently.  The British store Sainsbury announced they would introduce wine in plastic bottles this month as part of their green strategy.  While I am not sure substituting glass for plastic is more environmentally friendly (anybody know the carbon footprint for producing a plastic bottle vs. a glass bottle???), I am sure if given the choice between the two types of wine packages I know which one I would be reaching for to buy.  I just got used to screw caps for goodness sakes!
--by John