The Virtual Vintner

Must Be Good Branding

In a previous life, I was involved with Best Buy Co., the proud parents of The Geek Squad .

For those of you unfamiliar with The Geek Squad, they are the nerdy/cool computer guys that make housecalls and get your technology stuff straightend out and talking to each other again.

I am not sure what that has to do with Corks, but a local cork company decided to "borrow" the trademark. This is Aaron, our cellar mammal. (More evolved than a rat, but not quite a bi-ped) He looked a bit concerned when I told him he might be wearing a lawsuit.

Adopt-a-Grape

The Best of Both Worlds

We interviewed every big name vineyard manager in the valley for Fantesca.

I grew up in farm country, so I know how much difference it makes to have someone at the top of their game.

I decided the best fit for us was Hugo and Lupe Maldonado. Lupe has farmed Newton Vineyards on Spring Mountain for 30 years. He knows our mountain. His son, Hugo has a viticulture degree from UC Davis and has worked with him side by side for over a decade. To me, it is an unbeatable combination of experience and education. Also, everyone that works for the Maldonados knows that Lupe has done every job in the vineyard; Well.

He takes pride in his vineyards and the respect that his workers have for him takes them to a higher level.

Working with the Maldonados is Tom Prentice. Tom is highly regarded in the valley, but he carries himself like one of the guys. I was concerned about how the "science" guy communicates with the "farming" guy. As soon as I saw Lupe and Tom together, I knew I had nothing to worry about. They had the easy comraderie of old friends. Giving each other a hard time, but respectful of each others skills and experience.

In my experience, the greatest plan is worthless without execution. You have to have both AND you have to have the communication to assure the plan can be altered on the fly. Nothing goes as planned; Especially grape farming.

-Duane

Welcome to Adopt-a-Grape

You May Now Say to all your (non-attorney) friends that you have “A dabbling interest in a Napa vineyard & winery.”

We will keep you posted on what is happening to your adopted grape throughout the growing season and harvest. We will also keep you posted on the wine made from all our grapes.

You can choose the block that your grape comes from or we can assign you one randomly.

To sign up, just respond to this post with your e-mail address or sign up on www.fantesca.com

Example of Authenticity Certificate

Your 2006 Grape comes from Fantesca Estate & Winery

Your Grape is located here:

Block 4

The Terrace

Row 17

Inside Row

Vine 876

Cabernet Sauvignon Clone 337

110R Root Stock

3^rd Cluster on Right

The terrace gets the first sunlight of the day in our vineyard.

The inside row means the vine grows in difficult soil. The topsoil of your row was cut away and pushed to the outside to create the level terrace. This makes your grape smaller, but with more intensity and concentration of flavor.

Your vine is young and fighting to catch up. It had to be replanted in this spot to replace a vine that fell to disease.

Your rootstock is known for its health and hardiness. It does well in rocky soils like our mountain.

The varietal Cabernet Sauvignon Clone 337 is known for exceptional color and flavor extraction.

Being on the third cluster is a tricky spot. Only approximately half of the clusters this far from the center make it to maturity. The other half are cut off and dropped in the vineyard to encourage the vine to concentrate sugars in the remaining grapes.

But you are in luck. Since we have approximately 6 million grapes in the vineyard, we shouldn’t run out of spots for adoptive parents for some time.

From time to time, we will assign grapes to famous people just for fun. These grapes are the ones that have something bad, funny, or unusual happen to them.

For instance, last year, Donald Trump’s grape had a nasty bout of mildew, was cut off the vine, thrown on the ground, and eaten by a raccoon in the dead of night.

We will keep you posted on what is happening to your adopted grape throughout the growing season, and harvest. We will also keep you posted on the wine made from all our grapes.

Right now, you don’t even have a grape. You just have a pre-emergent bud. It looks like a bump on the dormant vine. One of these buds will become the leafy canopy that photosynthesizes energy for the vine; another will become the grape cluster.