The week we were visiting Anderson Valley it was warm and bud break was a couple weeks behind us. it was a spring of optimism and the young buds on "our" young pinot vines were ready to work their magic - producing more beautiful Anderson Valley fruit. The week after we visited the temperatures plummeted and frosts killed off 75% of the starts in the vineyard. We were immediately knocked from a much shorter list of folks that would be getting fruit in Anderson Valley and with heads hung low had to figure out whether A) we were going to stick with it and B) where the heck we were going to find fruit.
With the business card from the Hoopes in hand we called Alan Estrada at Elk Prairie in southern Humboldt County. Having tried (on the Hoopes' suggestion) a Woodenhead Pinot produced from his grapes in 2002 we knew that the grapes could produce great things but we were nervous about our ability to eventually sell (getting ahead of ourselves a bit) wine from Humboldt. Since then we've grown even closer to the grapes from Elk Prairie and the man responsible for those grapes. Our love for the the Elk Prairie grapes is, by this point, much documented.
Yesterday's Wall Street Journal re-reminded me of another reason why the frosts of '08 and our chance meeting of the Hoopes were so absolutely fortunate. In the summer of '08, as the Northern Californians among you will remember, we were plagued by wildfires. One especially hard hit area was the area surrounding Anderson Valley. As the Wall Street Journal article discusses this has left a large portion of the '08 wines out of Anderson Valley with a smoke taint due to the smoke from the fires hitting the valley while the young grapes were already hanging from the vines. This has been a tremendous blow for that year's vintage out of AV and one that probably would have psychologically and financially, especially after paying so much for the grapes,knocked us further back on our heals than we could have recovered from.
Here's the Wall Street Journal Article for your reading pleasure:
Sipping These Wines Is Like Smoking And Drinking at the Same Time
This photo shows us with our stamped LLC docs back from the Secretary of State (yes I'm totally voting to re-elect Bowen next year) - all thanks to our dumb luck, mindless obsession and well... our dumb luck. Thanks spring frosts, due to your arrival in '08 we are further along in our long and (not)prosperous careers as glorified janitors, dishwashers and door-to-door wine salesmen!
