Varietal Focus: Zinfandel

We’re all watching a lot of movies these days. If Zinfandel was an actor it would be John Wayne: rustic with an edge, confident with a smooth delivery. Zinfandel is a character that belongs relaxing by a campfire.

Speaking of fire, it’s been a hard year in California. Our hearts go out to all those affected by the devastation. We feel blessed that our region was largely spared from ash and smoke damage. 

As such, our 2020 Zinfandel is looking great. We picked it on October 5th when a toasty, fall heatwave rolled through the Central Coast. We were pleased the “fruit-set” on the vines was pretty light this year, meaning higher quality berries. And, we still received our allotted four tons yielding about 275 cases of wine.

We expect the 2020 vintage to resemble the 2017 we’re currently offering in the tasting room. 

2017 Zinfandel Quick and Dirty Tasting Notes:
A touch of oak on the nose. Soft, supple texture, raspberry and blackberry with a dusting of white pepper on the finish. Pair with a Tri-Tip over a red oak fire. Enjoy by 2024.

Chemistry (For those of you into this kind of stuff):
2017 Zinfandel - ONX Vineyards - Templeton
Alcohol by Volume: 15.4%
pH: 3.71
TA: 0.68
RS: 0.22

Zinfandel Fun Facts:

• “Old Vine” designation has no government regulation, but usually means the vines are older than 40 years

• Zinfandel was widely planted in California during the Gold Rush

• White Zinfandel was created by mistake (some say it still is ;-)

• Zinfandel is genetically identical to Primitivo

• Zinfandel is originally from Croatia

• Todd and Kendra were suppose to go to Croatia next year but, yeah, pandemic

ONX Vineyards just after dawn

Trailering the 1/2-ton picking bins out to the vineyard

Getting ready for Wine Club!

In the spirit of the year 2020, we have decided to do the November shipment a bit differently…!

All that really means is we are shipping everything out the last week of October. Why are we doing this? Well, since it’s an election year, we are going out on a limb and assuming that everyone, one way or another, is going to need plenty of wine on Election Day! Shipping out on October 26th is the best way to make sure this happens. You’re welcome in advance!

In other news, the Scarecrow Festival is all setup, and Highway 1 is now open all the way through to Monterey. Finally! It was closed for almost two months due to the Dolan Fire, and it’s nice to have the coastal route open again! Driving through Big Sur is something everyone should do at least once. It’s absolutely beautiful, and worth the effort to get there.

As far as our harvest goes, everything is still looking great! The abundance of smoke across the state has not affected any of our fruit this season (*knocks on wood*). We are collecting Gewurztraminer and Zinfandel next week, and a bit of Petite Sirah shortly thereafter. Overall, we’re very happy with the fruit this year, and excited to get everything squished, fermented, and into barrels for aging! Of course we won’t see any of these red wines for at least a couple years, but it’s great to have something to look forward to!

We’re also happy to announce we’re going to have our new vintage of Pink Elephineaux available for the upcoming wine club release! The 2020 vintage will once again be dry, with 95% Grenache, 3.5% Albarino, 1.5% Tempranillo, and 100% delicious. We will have it in the tasting room in about two weeks, so stay tuned for tasting notes!

Speaking of tasting notes, we’re still pouring wine out on the courtyard. SLO County recently moved into the Red tier (which, for some reason, is a better tier than Purple. Who makes this stuff up?!) for COVID-19 precautions, but that doesn’t affect our situation at the moment. If we move up one more tier, we’ll be able to have a limited number of people inside for tastings. We have no idea when that will happen, so for the time being, we’re just enjoying being outdoors in the nice weather!

Thanks for reading our silly little blog. It seems monthly updates are a reasonable (and attainable!) goal at this point, so unless something amazing happens, we’ll check in next month!

Cheers!

Grapes!

Harvest has begun!

Yes, you read that right!

We collected our Viognier grapes last week, and we’re working on the upcoming Pink Elephineaux. The Elephineaux is currently fermenting, so we’ve still got some time before we can bring it out. If all goes according to plan, we’ll have it ready to go towards the beginning of November. *knocks on wood*

We’re still waiting on most of the grapes to ripen fully, but at least we’re off to a good start!

We’re also getting ready for the next Wine Club shipment! We’ll not be releasing anything new for this shipment, which is rare (thanks COVID…), but at least the Pink Elephineaux is not too far off! We’re also working on some surprises for our Club Members, so stay tuned for that announcement!

Other news includes the Scarecrow Festival modifying their plans to include 5 distinct ‘scarecrow walks’ in Cambria and San Simeon. Like everything else, this is a COVID related change to keep it organized and allow the viewing of the scarecrows without having to wander about town. Click here for more info.

That’s it for now. We’ll have more harvest updates soon. Cheers to you!

No tastings today!?

So…yeah. This is a new one for us!

A fire broke out North of us in Big Sur and we are getting TONS of smoke in Cambria. We’ve suspended all outdoor activities because it’s really just not healthy to be outside. That means we aren’t pouring wine since COVID-19 forced us to move all wine consumption outdoors.

We are still selling bottles to go in the tasting room though.

The takeaway from this is that we’re staying positive: We’re not on fire. We don’t have COVID. We’re still open.

That being said, we are more than ready for 2020 to end!

Just a bit smoky around here…