The ONX Odyssey

ONX Wines: new land, new wine maker and new blends.

As we all lurch into the New Year after a bountiful holiday season of gourmet foods and top notch wines, I thought it would be fun to give a re-cap of some new things that ONX has in store for us this year.

The first is that we have hired on Associate Winemaker, Jeff Strekas.  When asked to give everyone a little bit about himself here is what Jeff replied:

"Who is Jeff Strekas?  My fun answer would be to describe my personality as one-third Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, one-third Bulfinch's Mythology, and one-third Dr Bruce Banner. "

Above is a shot of Jeff, center, as he walks the rows with Ben and Brian.

Sound interesting?  Yes with his innate quirkiness and refined winemaking skills, he will be a great addition to the team as we kick off the new year.  Jeff brings to the team a scientific background with some bio-chemical engineering thrown into the mix.  After college while exploring what he wanted to do with his new found love of wine, he enjoyed a lengthy trip to Africa to travel around Egypt and Tanzania and to climb Mt Kilimanjaro. He has worked at such refined wineries as Merryvale Vineyards in St Helena, Franciscan Estate in Rutherford, Mollydooker in McLaren Vale, Australia, and most recently at Round Pond Estate in Rutherford.  We welcome Jeff with open arms and can't wait to see how his mixed background lends itself to our wines.

Second we have added 61 acres to our Briarwood estate.  This prime plot of land was not easily won, but is in yet another exemplary location as it abuts our current estate in the Westside of Templeton.  We saw another example of our fabulous location last year, as our fruit was not as affected by the frost as some other vineyards due to our Templeton Gap local.   

Lastly though we have not yet released them to the public, with the new year comes our newest 2009 blends.  First to be release will be Brainchild and Uprising.  Brainchild is a complex blend of five varietals (Tempranillo, Cabernet Sauvignon, Grenache, Syrah and Petite Sirah).  Thanks to the tannin-rich character of Tempranillo and Cabernet Sauvignon, Brainchild is incredibly structured despite its medium bodied frame.  Uprising is our Syrah-driven cuvee.  It has power and complexity, which is driven by its diverse blend of Syrah, Petite Sirah, Grenache and Cabernet Sauvignon. These new wines are currently only available to our ONX Collective Wine Club members, however will be released to the public in early 2012.

We hope everyone has a safe and prosperous New Year.  Cheers to a great 2012!!

The ONX Odyssey - Happy Holidays!!

Well it is almost that time of year where we can all sit happily after a year of ups and downs, great wine and wacky weather and enjoy our friends and family.  This week's blog is short and sweet as I know we all need to get back to our shopping (hint, hint, there is still a few days to purchase one of our Holiday Packages and get it in time for the weekend)

We want to take a moment to wish everyone a happy holiday season.  Here is hoping that everyone has a safe and joyous week and that you all enjoy your friends and family to their utmost.  Please enjoy this fun Holiday card as we all barrel into the New Year.

Best Holiday Wishes

Vineyard Update

As harvest has ended, our wine club orders have all shipped out and our holiday packages are officially for sale, we thought it would be a good time to let everyone know what is happening at the vineyard.  Once the stress of bringing in all of the fruit is gone, there is still much to do.

It is a gorgeous time of year as you can see from this shot taken recently on a rainy day.  Here is a vineyard update in Ben's words:

We finished our harvest in November and close to 1 month later the vineyard has officially been "put to sleep"...and just in time- we finished on Friday and yesterday, 4 days later, we received rain!  Old Mother Nature was waiting for us at Briarwood Vineyards to finish up and we thank her for that.   During the last month we completed all of our fall tractor work, which involves tilling the soil and sowing seed in the vine rows to stabilize the soil and replenish nutrients.  The seed will grow with winter rains, helping with stemming erosion and will add valuable organic matter when we turn everything back into the soil in spring.  The past few weeks have been pleasantly warm during the day and ferociously cold at night.  Temperatures at the vineyard when I arrive have been in the twenties, with our coldest morning hitting 18 degrees.  Brrrrrrrr! 

Wine Club, gifts and holiday fun.

It's official our November shipment to our ONX Collective wine club members has shipped!  As we progress as a winery and get more and more members it is amazing to see the support we are getting.  Friends from far and wide, new friends we are meeting and people that met a friend that tasted the wines and wanted to taste them themselves ( a little bit of the 7 degrees to Kevin Bacon).  Every week it feels like we are getting a continuous stream of people that are requesting a tour or tasting and we love to accommodate them!  What is wine for if not to share with others? 

Along with the wine club November shipment of our yet to be released 2009 Brainchild and Uprising wines, we also sent out our holiday gifts this week and mailed out some just released holiday wine packages.  Yes I tried to cut down on packaging when doing this but really how can you pack a wine globe without getting it broken?  Anyway we hope our members enjoy their holiday surprise and know that we sincerely appreciate all of the support. 

Now onto more holiday fun.  Here are some new cork re-use ideas that I picked up online at Etsy.  Save all of your cork and you too can one day make these environmentally friendly designs as well.

Cork Napkin Holder

Also these cork votive holders:

Less we forget the cork picture frame:

And for the finale...

A cork armchair!!!

Now who would not want to sit in this chair?!!

Off to do more shopping, send out our ONX holiday cards and check on how the guys are doing with the 2011 blends.

 

What made the difference in Vintage 2011

Harvest has come and gone in a flash after what seemed like endless weeks (or months!) of waiting. Mother Nature delt Paso Robles a challenging and unpredicatable hand of cards for 2011, and it will officially go down as one of the latest and craziest harvests in recent history. The frost event in Spring set the vines back so far that we ended up picking Syrah, one of our earliest ripening varietals, on the same day as Mourvedre, our latest ripening variety! That certainly had our heads spinning. But regardless of all the challenges we faced this year, we have made the best of it and in the end have actually produced some phenomenal wines.

In the winery, we are just getting around to pressing some of our earlier picked varietels such as Zinfandel from Quarry block and Petite Sirah from The Divide block, and we are more than thrilled with the early stage wine quality. Zinfandel is showing gorgeous dark red fruit, great balance, and well structure tannins. Petite Sirah is showing dark, savory characters of meat and soy, along with blackberry fruit and big tannins. We feel confidient that these wines will be excellent components to the 2011 blends down the road. Our clone 470 Syrah from the Mesa block is also already proving to be one of the standout wines of the year, showing incredibly complexity and balance.

It’s been interesting to watch how many have struggled through this challenging season, and since I am friends with many of those who have had it rough, I can’t help but have sympathy. In years like this, there are a few factors that were large contributors to whether you made great wine or potentially average, or in many cases, below average wine.

1. Production – in years like this, being a large winery with hundreds of tons of fruit to crush can be your worst enemy. The ability to spend extra time sorting fruit, micromanaging fermentations, and keeping a close eye on quality was essential this year, and larger wineries simply do not have the time or resources that allow for such detail.
2. Impeccable viticulture – High rainfall, devastating frost, ridiculous mildew pressure, rain, variable yields, rot, and cool weather caused more headaches for vineyard managers that they previously thought possible. Those who were not watching their vineyards every day and using their ‘sixth sense’ to negotiate the challenging vintage conditions paid the price. Those who were greedy with yields ended up with unripe and often rotten fruit that wineries rejected. Those who lacked the commitment to work 3x as hard for ½ as much fruit ended up being the ones who struggled to get top quality fruit into the winery.
3. Location – the better vineyard sites fared best in 2011. Those in windy locations were blessed with drying winds after rain in October. Those in higher altitude, less frost-prone areas were also blessed with better yields and less variability. Sites on heavy soils also ripened more slowly, which was not any benefit this year.
4. Patience – cool years require patience to wait for the fruit to reach optimimum ripeness, even when weather begins to become unfavorable late in the season. Anticipating rain and risking losing yield to rot and mildew, many growers picked prematurely in 2011 and this ended up being a significant quality impact. The trade off of having more fruit at lower quality or less fruit of higher quality is very apparent this year, and those who chose the former route often fared better. However, many vineyard reached a point this year where the increased ripeness was offset by rapidly progressing rot so picking was absolutely necessary.
5. Work Ethic – it really did take a lot more work to make great wine this year. In many cases picking, processing, and vineyard passes took 3-5 times as long. The importance of slow, meticulous attention to detail was very apparent this year. Those who didn’t have the energy to go the distance or cut corners in quality will unfortunately see it in the wines.

 Now that we are all in, I can safely say that we performed well on every level and brought in beautiful fruit across the board. No rot and no underipe fruit, but I will admit to being pretty damn tired! I feel confident that although 2011 will go down for many as the worst vintage on record, we at ONX produced some of our best wines ever. Thankfully we stuck to our guns and had the benefit of some of the factors mentioned above.

An Amazing Photo Shoot with Alan De Herrera

Wow it feels like the holidays are approaching quickly.  Now that the harvest is complete for all but a few rows it feels like reality is kicking in and the end of the year is approaching at warp speed.

This past week I had the fun of having a photo shoot for our 2009 wines, our holiday packages and our crystal stemless glasses.  Every day that goes by it seems like there is something new and fun being done for the winery and this was one of them. 

As the day began our incredible photographer, Alan De Herrera set up his equipment and got us ready for the first shots.  Well if you are not a professional photographer you would tend to think this would just take a few minutes right? 

Well that is where I was wrong as I had no idea what incredible detail goes into lighting a bottle for a photo shoot.  It took around 3 hours to get the shadows and lighting exactly right so that we could shoot our first bottle.  Once done the shots turned out magnificently and showcase our new silver label for our 2009 wines to perfection.  I am sure it did not help however that I kept kicking the lighting by mistake and messing up the shot.  Sorry Alan.

Next it was onto the holiday packages that we will be offering this year.  The first will have our 08's and an ONX wine globe minus the Black Orchid (sorry to all of you Black Orchid lovers but it is all sold out).  The second package will have some of our 09 wines plus two of our crystal ONX stemless glasses.

Then finally it was onto shooting just the stemless glasses, which did not want to cooperate and had to be finished another day as we just did not have enough time.

Anyway the reason I am writing this is so that you can all enjoy Alan's photography, which you can view here.    He is an incredible photographer and photojournalist that has traveled the world to get some of the amazing shots you will see on his website.  Below is one of his shots he took on a recent trip to Haiti after the earthquake. 

Enjoy Alan's photos and look for the holiday packages coming soon on our website.

Bringing in the fruit, Harvest 2011 at ONX Estate Wines

The season has come to a rather dramatic and quick ending with the turning weather. Starting in the end of October it began to get very cold at night, which triggered the vines to begin shutting down. This became most evident in Tempranillo and Syrah first, with their leaves turning and falling rather quickly. It has progressed through the vineyard and now most everything is looking rather colorful.

We picked the Sauvignon Blanc first in September, followed by the Viognier and Zinfandel in October. These were all picked at peak times, their flavors were excellent and the wines look flawless.

Due to cool weather, rot pressure following rain, and another threatening storm, we picked the Tempranillo, Petite Sirah, Syrah, Malbec, and ½ of the Grenache the first week of November. Although we picked all of these varietals on the same day, flavors were exceptional and Brian and I feel confident the wines will be outstanding. I’m especially happy with the Tempranillo and Syrah.

It is currently wet and very cold at the vineyard, the daytime temperatures barely reaching 60F. Today we picked the last of the Syrah that was purchased by Chronic Cellars. Tomorrow we will pick Mourvedre and Grenache for our own ONX wines, followed by the Mourvedre that Tablas Creek has purchased.  The picking of Cabernet Sauvignon for ONX will follow on Wednesday, which is the last of our fruit. A large storm is arriving Thursday, but we will be finished with everything by then.

Harvest has thus finished 2 weeks earlier than 2010 and the wines should be tucked into barrel by early December.

Halloween, Harvest and Happy Kids

As I sit here and ponder how my house suddenly got filled with 8 pounds of candy, empty wrappers all over my floor and a sticky substance on the marble, I realize life is sweet.

Yes my kids got waaaay too much candy and our dog is OVER the hat he had to wear, however the evening and overall the year has been an incredible one and so I thought I would step back and see just what has happened at ONX this year to give everyone a sense of how far we have come.   

First we had our inaugural launch with our 2008 Mad Crush, Black Orchid and Fiery Nights wines.  Can we just say wow?!  They have been received so well and shared among so many friends that we just want to say thank you for all of the support.  As we don't have a traditional tasting room, word of mouth is everything to us so please continue to spread the word and get ONX tasted by the masses!

Second we successfully designed and printed our new 2009 labels with only a little bit of a date snafu.  Believe me this was much improved from the previous year's labeling where we had to re-label all of our 2008 wines due to their less than perfect application.  Here is a preview of one of our upcoming 2009 wines, Brainchild.  If you want to be one of the first to taste these wines sign up for our wine club here and you will get your first shipment in November of our new 2009 Brainchild and Uprising wines.

Finally we have had incredible retail and restaurant success.  Aaron and I have hit the road a bit this year and tasted a few stores, bars and restaurants on our wines .  They have been welcomed with open arms.  A few of the owners even found us such, as DaVine Wine in Dana Point, when they toured the Westside Templeton area and toured the vineyard.  As a result ONX is now being represented in a few key locals to further spread the word on our delicious wines.

That's it for now as I reflect on all that has happened so far this year.  Stay tuned as we approach the end of the year, release our 2009 wines and offer up some fun holiday packages.

Jenny

 

Vee-Own-Yay and Chilly Fruit

Harvest is slowly (really slowly) ticking along here at Briarwood Vineyards, as the weather has been warm but relatively mild overall, keeping the grapes ripening slowly and evenly. We picked our Viognier on Sunday night, beginning at about 3am (I guess that is Monday morning) and finishing around sunrise. As is typical of the nights in Paso Robles, temperatures we in the low 50's and by the time we got the fruit into the press at the winery, the juice came out a chilly 52F. The fruit was pressed and the beautiful pale straw colored juice was placed into a tank for chilling before it goes into barrel this afternoon and begins fermentation.

People often ask me why we pick our fruit at night, wondering if we do it simply because we like to torture ourselves and our vineyard workers, or if there is indeed some method to the madness. There are actually a number of reasons why picking at night is a preferred method, so I'll outline a few of them below:

1) Lower Microbial Risk - Picking at night brings the fruit into the winery cold, which means that any microbial or oxidation risk is vastly reduced. Think of what happens to fruit left on the counter vs. that left in the fridge. We are trying to preserve the full integrity of the fruit and its flavors, so cold fruit is critical.This is important for both red and white grapes, but especially important for whites. We try to avoid oxidation of the juice of white grapes, which can damage the delicate aromatic compounds.

2) Physical Integrity - The colder the fruit is, the less the skins break when going through the processing equipment (see the clusters on the sorting table above) We try to maintain whole berries during fermentations, and cold fruit makes this possible. When warm fruit comes into the winery, it often comes out of the equipment a juicy, sloppy mess. Not good.

3) Cold Soaking - Prior to the beginning of fermentation in red wines, we often like to allow our fruit to soak on the skins for a period of time before we inoculate with yeast. This improves color and the extraction of flavors. To do this, it's very important that the fruit is cold before it goes into the fermentors. If the fruit was warm, the native yeasts on the skins of the fruit would initiate fermentation right away and produce flavors we don't care for in our wines.

4) Weather - It's much nicer to be picking in the cool of the night than during the heat of the day! Spending hours on a tractor and doing tough manual labor is simply more pleasant when it's cool outside. In addition, it prevents bug activity (yellow jackets are a menace!) and minimizes dust.

So while we do value our sleep, we also know that during this time of year it's all about the wine and all about quality, so we will gladly sacrifice sleep to ensure we get our fruit off the vine in A+ condition.

Pourings, Pairings and Party's!!

In the midst of harvest I thought we would take a short break from reporting on how the grapes are progressing, how much fruit has been picked and when we think we will bring in all of the varietals (though you should look for this next week as we close in on the reds).  Nope instead I thought I would talk over some of the fun events we have had in the past few weeks and some that are coming up.

Two weeks ago I had the pleasure of pouring our 2008 Mad Crush and our 2008 Fiery Nights wines at DaVine Wine in Dana Point.  The owner, Steve is an incredibly down to earth gentleman and really knows his wines and cheeses.  He actually found us while he and his charming wife were out doing some wine tasting in Paso Robles.  Being a huge Paso wines fan, he routinely tries to travel up here and loves finding unique wines that are not well known to the public.  Once he tasted our 08 wines at our estate vineyard, Briarwood he was hooked and ordered them for his retail store.

 
We had the pleasure of pouring our wines for the grand opening of his tasting bar this past weekend and let me tell you it was fun.  He had superb cheese pairings, incredible wine of course and fun boutique items that every wine lover would enjoy. 

 
The next events on the horizon will be when the Cambria Wine Appreciation Group comes to the vineyard at the end of this month.  They also reached out to us as they wanted to pair up with an eclectic winery that would have a diverse portfolio of wines.  Well that is us, so the group is scheduled to tour the vineyards, meet with our Winemaker and taste some of our 08 wines. It should be fun!

Next month we welcome the Spaghettini group as they come by for a private tour and tasting.  Spags is a very well known restaurant and jazz club located in Seal Beach.  Their menu is insanely good, their wine selection is above the norm and their live jazz bands take the edge off of a tough work week.  We can't wait to host them at the vineyard and potentially have our wines represented at their restaurant as we know it will be a great fit.

That is it for now as we wanted to give you just a taste of some events and fun things on the horizon.  Look for more  tastings and parties to come as we ring in the New Year with some of our upcoming 2009 wines.