The last few months of 2010 were wonderfully busy at the winery. Crush, which took place between the months of August and October was a huge success! Our partner Vineyards in Napa and Sonoma delivered beautiful fruit that hardly needed to be sorted. The addition of NEW 2010 variety's to crush kept the staff on its toes and created new and exciting challenges for our resident winemakers. Alongside crush season, we bottled, corked and labeled wine from 2009, and in between wine profiles and general winemaking for 2010, we had a holiday party for barrel owners. Thanks for the turn out, it was a great way to usher in the new year!

Corporate Branding

Another accomplishment of 2010 was the creation of the Vintners Own  proprietary Syrah. Our own custom blend and label involved a search for distinctiveness, boldness and clarity. As Marty Neumeier says: “The long term survival of a brand depends on staying focused and as positioning  expert Jack Trout succinctly puts it, "differentiate or die." As any marketing guru or branding expert will tell you, keeping a brand alive and in focus involves a lot of creativity. Once any company has created a logo, there is always the challenge of communicating its brand to as many  consumers as possible.

For businesses, custom branded wine is great for delivering, rejuvenating or changing a brand. It’s also a great way to keep products and services in sharp focus. In 2010 we created custom labeled wine for: Stewart Title, Jackson Cooksey, Wavestream, and the Ferrari Club of America to name a few. During the holiday's, we put together custom wine gift baskets for Greg Reid a principal of RDG Capital, which was acquired by Salient Partners in early December. Custom labeled 'Salient Partners' bottles eased the transition from one solid brand to another.

For restaurants, creating a proprietary wine blend with a custom label is a great way to add additional visibility and cut through market noise. Just the way driving a car gives a sense of the make and model (is it a smooth or bumpy ride? Is the car sleek and racy or safe and reliable?) Creating an in house wine blend can give consumers a test drive of your brand. Whether a Syrah with hints of dark cherry and vanilla or a buttery smooth chardonnay best communicates the personality of your restaurant or business, a proprietary wine adds a little more brand identity.

The smell of buttered popcorn is permeating the winery which can only mean one thing: Malolactic Fermentation. MLF which occurs shortly after primary fermentation is the process where malic acid is converted to a softer lactic acid. The conversion which creates a rounder and fuller mouthfeel in wine is extremely popular in California especially where Chardonnay is concerned. However, commercial MLF has only been a scientific part of winemaking for the last 50 years. Before the 1950's, this second fermentation was not induced it just 'happened' sporadically, if it happened at all. In France it was the mysterious 'thing that took place in the cellar'. Sometimes, to make matters worse, it happened after bottling.

The story of the first induced Malolactic Fermentation involves the beautiful new Hanzel winery in Sonoma County and its Pinot Noir. The resident winemaker Brad Webb had a serious problem initially with Pinot Noir because it refused to undergo malolactic fermentation. Perplexed, he visited John L. Ingraham, assistant professor of enology at UC Davis to seek out help.

"The malolactic fermentation in California had a long, solid reputation for capriciousness and independence. Most winemakers of the era became aware that the fermentation was under way only when tanks of wine began to rumble softly, usually in mid-winter. Winemakers didn’t start it, and they couldn’t stop it; it just happened. But why only then? The malolactic fermentation seemed to have a mind of it own. It occurred where and when it chose."

Ingraham had intently been searching for a bacterium that would induce MLF and made history when he isolated a strain of bacterium which he called ML34. ML34 which he dubbed 'Martini' originated as a sample taken from a tank at Louis M. Martini's winery in Saint Helena. The bacterium which had probably been living there for years proved to be the key to the first successful induced malolactic fermentation.  

 Read Wines and Vines Article on Hanzel and ML34