Hard to believe it's been that long since our last post - yet not so when we consider all that's happened since. If you've been following our recent adventures on Facebook and/or Twitter, you may recall that during the lead-up to ZAP in December and January, the San Francisco Chronicle gave us three very nice mentions. First, they ranked our 2008 Napa Valley Zinfandel among their Top 100 Wines of 2010. Next, they gave our then newly released 2009 Napa zin a terrific leg up with "Napa Valley Zinfandel: The Chronicle recommends." Then came a second nod to our 09 Napa zin in "From the Notebook" at the tail end of Jon Bonné's insightful article entitled "It's time to heal the great Zinfandel divide."



By the time we attended our 12th annual ZAP Grand Tasting on Saturday January 29th, we were pretty well blown away by the Chronicle's rapid-fire love, having grown accustomed to flying below the radar. We found it interesting that our colleagues in the wine industry seemed to take more notice of our recent press than did consumers themselves, and that was fine by us. The winemaking arm of our little family enterprise - namely our winegrower and brother, David - tends to be on the quiet side (in a "speak softly and produce a stunningly pure and well-balanced zin" sort of way), so we were happy when Dave's beautiful, elegant zins were called exactly that by a panel of judges whose integrity we admire.



Following ZAP - a glorious affair as always - we hit the ground running, propelled by so much momentum. On February 12th we unveiled the second (Spring 2011) issue of our quarterly BE Paper, as well as our newly remodeled tasting room, to Estate members and their guests at our Spring allocation pickup event at the winery. Our entire family (including Mom & Dad!) were present for what felt like a wonderful reunion with old and new friends alike.

Later that week, on February 18th, we poured our 2009 Petite Sirah at "P.S. I Love You." The following Weds. the 23rd Coral and Mom traveled to L.A. for a trade tasting with our distributor there, and last Friday the 25th we did a menu tasting with our friend and BE member, Melissa Teaff, who will be catering our fourth annual Derby Day event in May.

Through it all, we've found that our eulogy for distribution (see previous post here) may have been a tad premature, as most of our out-of-state markets have shown promising signs of reviving.

That brings us current with the updates, and we won't wait another two months to post again... especially as we're preparing to release several exciting new wines and gearing up for our annual online March Madness event! Lots to show and tell.

Thanks as always for reading, and we hope 2011 is off to a brilliant start for you.