Purple Cow Vineyards

Wine Club Pick-Up and Release - At the Vineyard ONLY

Wine Club Pick-Up is scheduled for November 12th and 13th from 11am - 5pm at the Vineyard ONLY. Please come and join us for tasting, relaxation, and a chance to try the 2009 Pinot Port

This is the perfect chance to bring your Christmas wish list

- PCV Staff

Tasting Room Opens For The Season

Well it is that time of year again.  The winery has been busy this winter and the grapes from 2010 are well on there way to being amazing wines.  The Vineyard is under control and we are looking forward to pruning and bud break. We have been catching up on paperwork and working on the website...

The only thing missing is time spent with old friends and meting new ones.  But we have an easy solution for that...

The tasting room will open for the season on Saturday February 12th at 11AM.  Come out and joins us for the start of a wonderful and exciting new year.

-PCV Staff-

 

 

Today's Menu

2009 Muscat
2007 Sophie Pinot
2007 Kelsey Pinot
2008 Primitivo
2006 Tempranillo Reserve

Mention this post and try the 2008 Sophie Pinot that Galo is hiding under the bar. Cheers!

Feb 27/28 - sale and design exhibit

It’s a pleasure to announce the next phase in our winery construction project. We at Purple Cow have gathered the designs and information needed to submit for permits to construct an incredible gathering space for us all. The new facility will not only improve our ability to provide great service and beautiful vistas, it will allow us to increase the breadth of our product line with additional hand-crafted small-production wines. The next steps require much courage and energy, a journey Purple Cow hopes to make with your help.

We have progressed funding the designs, engineering, and information gathering from the success you have given us.  For the next large step in our future, and with today’s lending atmosphere, we must have permits approved before we receive any funding from our bank. This next step in submitting requires substantial application fees for land use and building permits.

With this said, Jon is making an offer to you, our friends and family, to help us forge forward in obtaining success in this next phase of our future. Jon has put together a rewarding opportunity for you to obtain our wonderful wines at generous pricing, hoping you all will invest in the future of your gathering space and your personal cellar.

	Was	Is	Case Price	Case Price Savings
2005 Elena Tempranillo	$32	$29	$250	$76
2007 Sophie Pinot Noir	$24	$20	$180	$45

If you don't live close but wish to take advantage of the offer, please email as the web ordering system doesn't handle special pricing offers.

We will open 11-5 both days this weekend to make this offer as accessible as possible.

We will also have design documents on display this weekend for your perusal. Many thanks in advance for your interest and participation. –Dave-

More exciting products coming soon

I'm excited for our winter bottling day. One might think we're ready to bottle the 2008 Pinot Noirs or Estate Tempranillo, but we're going to hold onto those in barrel longer. We selected the 2008 Marechal Foch, 2007 Durif, 2007 {censored secret}, and 2007 Tempranillo Reserve.

2009 Harvest Complete

We had 3 wonderful days of picking that spanned 3 weeks.  The weather cooperated better than usual.  Here's an inventory of what we collected:

Kelsey Pinot - 6 barrels
Sophie Pinot - 6 barrels
Estate Tempranillo - 2 barrels (yeah!)
Marechal Foch - 1 barrel (hooray!)
Pinot Port-style - 2 barrels (ooooohhhhh)
Muscat - 300 gallons - ~130 cases

I am really excited about the future of trying these out as they mature.  Now for a round of thanks.

Doug & Cheryl Barlow, Ardna, & Basil
Rob & Renee Herb
Dave Sandage
Navindra Gunawardena
Lin Silver
Willie & Sari Ashe
David & Carol Kaysen
Don & Carol Stearns
Matt Talley
Briana Rogers
Marc & Kari Inness
Wendy Armstrong
Dave & Jolyn Rasmussen
Cathy Riecke
Elena Galindez
Jose & Milagros
Graham Keavney
Wilmer Morales
Neil Frederickson
Bob Jones
Brent & Katie Hudgins

These stalwart bee swatting, heat ignoring troopers picked the ripest and cleanest fruit to bring you a fabulous 2009 vintage.

Growing Season Begins

Today is the day that the first bud broke out at the Cow.  Marechal Foch has decided to peek out and start working on another wonderful vintage.  Some of the Pinot Noir is wooly, as is the Tempranillo.  Muscat always likes to sleep-in, don't worry. 

On a down note, looks like we lost the majority of the Tempranillo we planted last year.  The weight of all that snow and ice seemed to be too much for baby plants.  We're working to get it replaced as soon as possible.

Here's to the hope of a fabulous 2009 vintage.

2007 Sophie's Edition Pinot Noir Overview

We're getting ready to release the 2007 Sophie's Edition Pinot Noir.  It's time for a little backgound on this product.

First off, it's dramatically different from the 2006 Sophie's Edition.  We're all clear that 2007 vintage was a lot cooler than 2006, but there is more to it in this case.  First, the fruit is from a different source.  We no longer use the all-Pommard fruit from the Ruby Carbiener Vineyards.  Starting with 2007, the Sophie's Edition is produced from Dijon 777 and Dijon 667 growing at Provincial Vineyards, located on top of the same hill.

Secondly, we extended the barrel time by 4 months.  Increasing the barrel aging to 13 months added texture to the palate that we expected to be absent with the lighter fruit.  It's amazing how much structure this wine has when you look at its light color before tasting it.

Third, the aforementioned vintage differences.  2007 experienced a rainy late summer and early fall.  It delayed sugar intensity which resulted in adding 2 weeks to the hang time.

To sum it all up, I don't know exactly how this wine is going to turn out.  We know it will be light.  I think the aromas are going to trend toward pie cherry and more acidic berries like elderberry.  There's lots of oak on it and it is easily picked up both on the nose and on the palate.  I plan to enjoy this in accompaniment of fish and white meats, an excuse to eat healthy.  -Jon-

Buy this wine online.

Wine Club shipment ready March 7th

Hi folks.  I've put some thought into the Wine Club offering for this quarter.  I think the first weekend of March is a great way to ring in the new season.  We've also been considering the right pair of wines to share and we're leaning heavily on the following:

2006 Marechal Foch.  People keep asking for this wine.  I think it's time to share it before it gets chipped away to the point where we don't have enough for the club.

2007 Sophie's Edition Pinot Noir.  This is going to surprise you, even for a young wine.  We bottled it in early January, but it already has a wonderfully soft palate courtesy of the extra oak.  The nose will be back in a couple weeks and we'll all see what we got to together.

I'll get an email out to mark you calendars shortly.  Looking forward to it. -Jon-

Thanks for a great 2008

Perhaps it is a little early for annual post-mortems, but aside from a wine club event, we're all done for 2008.  The tasting room will be closed to the public until Valentine's Weekend.  Check our list of retailers or hit us up online if you've run dry.  Upon reflection, it's been good year.

• We had a fantastic result in the vineyard that promises to be the best wines yet.
• We had a great year selling some incredibly good Pinot Noirs. 
• Wendy started a successful wine club.  Heck, it's almost like extended family.  I admit not liking the idea at first and continuously challenging it.
• We created what promises to be really nice wine from one of the most difficult growing seasons (speaking of 2007).
• We actually grew the business despite the Q4 economic collapse.  
• We discovered and put in motion 2 new experimental vineyard ideas, gems for future years. 

It wouldn't be Purple Cow unless we admitted our failures, here's the ones that come to the top of my head:

• I wish we had delayed planting the new Tempranillo field because the 90 degree weather on the day we planted seemed to cause great mortality.  I can attribute it to this because there's a clear trend where the areas planted early in the morning are fine while the ones planted late in the afternoon have the high mortality rate.  With careful consolidation, it will work out fine (see next bullet for reason).
• I also wish I changed which clone of Tempranillo we planted in the new field.  After the 2008 harvest, I have some new concerns about clonal variation in ripening characteristics.  We conducted our experiments with clone UCD 3 and then mass planted Duoro.  Given that the sugar on the Tempranillo was lower than the Pinot Noir this year, I'm now wondering if UCD 3 ripens eariler.  Maybe we're lucky we lost some plants in the new field because that's space that can be recycled.
• I wish we ordered a little less Tempranillo because we moved the intended plot for the winery over the top of the planned vineyard expansion.  We really had to be creative to find spots for all the new plants. 
• I wish we left 2007 Kelsey's Edition Pinot Noir in the barrel a little longer.  The Sophie's Edition is doing very well in the barrel and the Kelsey is going to be great, but we actually delayed it's readiness by early bottling.  We were fooled by 3 things. 
  • Supply stress.
  • Light color fooling us into thinking it wouldn't barrel age well.
  • Habit of bottling after 10 months.
• I wish we'd hired a bookkeeper at the start of the year.

That's about it.  In light of the fact that a couple nearby businesses didn't make it, I'd like to thank you for helping us be one of the survivors for another year.  I look forward to earning the opportunity to grace your table again next year. -Jon-