This is the time of year when a tug-o-war occurs between “not enough time” and “wanting everything to be perfect”.

The calendar for the next five weeks is filling quickly and happily! Bill and I are hosting two gatherings around our table: a post-Thanksgiving lunch for family visiting from Missouri, and a traditional Christmas Dinner for 24 longtime friends.  Then there will be friends dropping by (read: “Surprise!”), dinners at friends’ homes and nights out at favorite restaurants. It’s a busy and fun time of year! 

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Welcome to our new website! It was brought to life by feedback from patrons and implemented by Scott and Kate, with photographic expertise from Sandy. In fact, everyone at HV helped in one way or another. The goal was to allow patrons to see more of what’s happening here by increasing the size and frequency of photos, reducing what viewers have to read, simplifying the order process and creating a way to share stories with patrons and friends on a weekly basis. We hope that you enjoy the changes and welcome any thoughts you have.

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Every Saturday morning, you’ll find me at the Healdsburg Farmers' Market.

I like to support local farmers because of the quality and the variety and because it is local. The market began in 1978 and continues to be as vibrant and lively as ever. Most of the purveyors have farms within ten miles of Healdsburg. They bring many different provisions from wild fish and locally raised meat to fresh eggs and cheese to the most abundant…seasonal vegetables and fruits.

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When it comes to picking grapes, harvesting by machine is the best way in my book. It is incredibly efficient because the grapes go from being on the vine to crushed and into a chilled tank within the span of a half an hour. When grapes are picked by hand, that process takes a minimum of four hours.

If you visit Wine Country during Harvest and happen to take a drive in the middle of the night, you would almost certainly come across a machine harvester at work. Many people wonder why we harvest at night. It’s simple...

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I am the lucky one during harvest – I spend my mornings sampling, measuring, tasting, evaluating each lot of Chardonnay to ensure that the fermentations are progressing well. Just after the grapes arrive at the winery, I check their sugar content with a refractometer by putting a few drops of juice onto this hand-held instrument. Within it, there is a scale that reads the sugar level by refracting light through the juice. I taste the juice and record the grape aromas, the sugar content and the details of the fruit – which vineyard block and clone the grapes came from, the tonnage and the quality of the fruit. A day or two later, the juice is inoculated with yeast and I begin measuring the fermentation rates with a hydrometer. This tool is a glass tube that is weighed on one end and measures the density of the sugar and the temperature of the liquid by floating in the fermenting juice.

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