I'm Franco-American again!

I usually tell people I'm an American making wine in the south of France but the truth is that I'm a dual citizen or at least I was born that way. It gets tricky because I let my French passport expire, and trying to convince the French government that I'm still French was a hoot and a holler (a phrase I'm afraid to teach anybody over here since they'd probably pronounce it:"Ay 'oot an' ay 'oh-lehr").

To get a new passport I had to show them a National ID. To get a National ID I had to show them a passport. You know the drill. Well now I can show them both! In the end I had to prove to them that I had NOT renounced my French citizenship after turning 18. As it turns out, it's rather hard to prove an absence of an act, but surrender isn't in the French dictionary. ...not when it comes to bureaucracy!

Somebody remind me when this is about to expire.

So, above is my mandatory sourire-sans-dents face. The photo booth encouraged me to look happy but reminded me that smiling is not allowed if the photo is to be used for an official government ID. And those joint stipulations were thought-provoking. I reflected quietly upon the true nature of happiness while the photo booth timer ticked away. First photo was a botch.

What was even more distressing was the second photo when the photo booth knew I was smiling. I guess the computer in there can tell the difference between my pearly whites and my wan face.

The third picture I tried keeping my eyes wide and my teeth hidden, while expressing some degree of joy. That sickly smirk is now my official identification in France. I got the best of it in the end I suppose... unless this is all a roundabout way of getting me to look exceptionally smug in my official French ID. Clever system, clever.

Still running

I've been back in Tampa a couple days now and I'm starting to miss mom's cooking. But it's good to be in the city that raised me, checking out the old stomping grounds and living in the house I was in before we started this crazy vineyard thing. For those who don't know, I'm from Tampa so this is where the wine's marketing and distribution is headquartered for the time being.

---

Home, Sweet-Mother-of-@#*!, Home.

[[VIDEO REMOVED]]

The video isn't working entirely right... I'll have to get my mom to reupload it. Regardless, that's a glimpse of the house my parents built before going into wine. They made the houses like they make wines WAY BIGGER THAN MOST PEOPLE WOULD EVER EXPECT.

---

Anyway, I'm in Tampa and I'm ready to start selling wine. A lot of new contacts from the Sarasota Wine Festival. I met David and Deb Hunt from Hunt Cellars, several of the family member at Stanley Lambert including (Jim Lambert, self-proclaimed wannabe winemaker), the lovely family behind Silkwood Wines, and the Michael half of Michael-David Winery (who make Earthquake, Incognito, Pride, 7 Deadly Zins and many many more). They were all fantastic people and I will be keeping in touch with each of them.

I also got to snoop a little behind the scenes, sneaking around the service corridors of the Ritz Carlton, salvaging floral arrangements from the hotel's trash, and pouring more than a thousand samples in three days. I even got invited to an after-party thrown by one of the bigger distributors and it was fun drinking behind (what some refer to as) enemy lines. At the end of so much good wine, everybody can be good friends.

Soutirage Update

We spent most of the day doing soutirages on some of the Syrah for the 2007 Reserve. It had a lot of lies (that's pronounced leez and has nothing to do with obfuscating the truth) and it was exceptionally important to make sure that this grape deposit should be separated from the wine at this time.

We also took advantage of this move to put some of the barrels in the center of the room on that new oxoline shelving I was bragging about a couple days ago. It took a long time, but it should be easier on the remaining barrels we have to go through.

More to come!

France in April

I just celebrated my 23rd birthday at the beginning of the month and after an incredibly busy pair of weeks in Florida, I flew back to the vineyard. I am currently typing from my office above the winery and I am excited to announce that I finally got around to making a short vineyard video. Hopefully, I'll keep these coming as a web series on O'Vineyards that can shed some light on some of the cool things we get to do, the way we tend to grapes and wine, our love for this work and this area, all the sweet toys I get to play with, etc.

This installment is on a topic I'm very excited about. I've been gone since crush at the end of 2007. In my absence, my parents installed a brand new oxoline system to shelve our barrels. This actually sounds a lot like an ad for them, but I'm not getting paid. (We should look into the sponsorship opportunities, but) This is just a friendly look into one of the cool new gadgets I get to use.



For people who can't see the video cause they're at work or on dialup or somesuch:
My barrels used to be stacked on top of each other which is the way it's been done for a long time. Once they're full, they're exceptionally heavy and it's a little difficult reaching the bunghole (that's the hole in the barrel, not the naughty part of your body). The shelving system uses space age innovations like wheels and tubes to shelve each barrel independently. This makes the hole accessible, makes it possible to turn the barrel around while full with minimal effort, and turns the difficult process of emptying the last bits of the barrel as easy as turning it upside down. I'm sort of surprised it took centuries of winemaking before an affordable shelf with wheels was invented, but at least we have it now.