Crush Has Begun!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It has been awhile - sorry we have not posted more blogs. My sister called me earlier today and told me my blog is getting dusty!! Now I am in trouble. That must be what happens when you have two kids under three.

Harvest is upon us - we picked some Buchignani Old Vine Zin yesterday. It looks great - we will do a cold soak for three days and then start the fermentation in small open top fermenters. The crop was 50% of what it was last year - the early frost we had and the dry weather have produced a lighter crop throughout Dry Creek.

Things have been getting ripe very quickly - we have had some very warm days and they have caused our Zin to reach maturity much earlier than last year.

We will be picking the fruit off the Old Vines at the Puccioni Ranch at the end of this week and the Lambert Bridge Petite Sirah we buy should come off next week.

We are extremely happy with the quality so far - now it is just managing the fermentations.

We still have a few cases of the 2005 Old Vine Zin left - let us know if you are interested. We will be releasing the 2006 in a few months.

I will work on being more active with my writing.

Be a Mule - Stubborn about Puccioni Wine!!!!!

Thanks Glenn

2005 Puccioni Old Vine Zinfandel Release

We are officially releasing our 2005 Puccioni Old Vine Zinfandel on Dec 15th - but we have made it available to some of the people that have been so supportive of our little brand - and if you order a case by Jan 1st there is a savings available. Just clink on the link below if you want to take a look at our order form.

Link

We had a very nice Thanksgiving with Family and Friends yesterday and did a 2004 and 2005 tasting - they seemed to both do fine - but there was a preference with the 2005.

Not sure how many of you hunt for wild mushrooms out there - let me know if you do - but it has been great to far this year. With the early rain and the warm fall weather - the bolete's have been plentiful. If you go, make sure you take somebody that knows what they are doing - it can be dangerous if you pick the wrong one.

We hope all of you had a great Thanksgiving.

Thanks

WINTER UPDATE

It has been awhile since I updated our blog - two kids under two years old does seem to sap away any and all of your free time. Above is our oldest son Joshua - he may be ready to hook the mule up to this plow sooner than we thought.
We have had a busy year - but it has been a very good year. We crushed almost 9 tons this year of Old Vine Zinfandel and Petite Sirah and barreled our wines down about a month ago. They are going through ML fermentation as we speak. The quality of the wine has been excellent - the year started out with a bang - we had a fairly warm heat spike in late Aug that got our fruit almost ripe and then it cooled down for a few weeks. We let our fruit hang through the cool period hoping to take advantage of extra flavor development the added hangtime can give - we were glad we did this and think it had very nice benefit.
Now we are just getting the vyd ready for winter - it is important to get the grass growing and open all our drains - we want to be prepared for that first downpour - we are ready.
We are releasing our 2005 Old Vine Zinfandel on Dec 15th - we think this is our best wine yet.
We will be a little more active in keeping our blog up to date.
Wish everyone the happiest of turkey days.

Glenn

Spring Already!! Here comes the Sun

Our 1946 Willys Jeep - Bringing back to life!

WOW!! Time does fly when you are having fun.

Vineyard:
It has been too long since we had a chance to write a post. But things are moving right along. This winter was a moderate with rain levels 50% of average in the Dry Creek Valley. Hopefully that will not be a problem - especially for us because we are virtually dry farmed. We finished pruning on the old vines and doing some replanting of misses on the young vines. We are just seeing bud break in the vineyard now ( that is when the bud begins to open) which is about normal. We have begun to mow our covercrops that we let grow over the winter - we use these to prevent erosion and add organic matter back into the soil - it makes a better vine.

Wine:
We are almost sold out of our 2004 Puccioni Old Vine Zin - we have had great response from our individual orders and have also placed our wine in some very nice accounts. We are getting ready to bottle our 2005 Old Vine Zin next month - we are very excited about this wine it is tasting very nice. Regarding our 2006 wines - we finished malo-lactic on them and have topped and racked them. Besides our Old Vine Zin in 2006 we will be doing a limited release Petite Sirah which we are very excited about. We know you will enjoy that.

Other Ramblings:
We have a Willys Jeep on the property that was driven by our grandfather everywhere he went and when visitors came to the vineyard he would use it to tour all his guests. It has been sitting idle for a few years - but we have decided to put some resources in it and bring it back to life. So I am reading all the articles I can find about refurbishing and rebuilding our Jeep. Above is a picture of it - you can see we have a little work to do.

Salute!!

Enjoy Puccioni Zin

Glenn

ZAP 2007 Puccioni Vineyards - What a Time!!

Our Team: l to r Laurie, Glenn, Joel, Angelo, Bart - taking the pic Amy.
We had a great time pouring Puccioni Old Vine Zinfandel at the ZAP festival yesterday. We got there at 7am and left at 5:30pm - it was a long day. All I can say is when you are on your feet]that long get a floor mat(we did thanks to Laurie). There were some great wines to taste. We had great response on our Zin - we are still new so people would come up asking us who we were etc, but once they tasted the wine they took a card and said they wanted to get our our mailing list. For a small winery like us this is a great opportunity to get exposure with some very knowledgeable Zinfandel fans. If you have not gone to this event - make sure you go at least once in your life!
Glenn

Puccioni Old Vine Zin Reviews - Good Stuff

We wanted to share with you some recent reviews we have gotten for our 2004 Puccioni Old Vine Zinfandel . The Connoisseur's Guide liked the wine and gave it a puff - which means they consider it to be an outstanding wine. The Wine Enthusiast gave the wine a 90 score and liked the rich character the wine offers. We are appreciative that we have been able to recieve these types of reviews - but our hope is that each of you who drink this wine get more than just the flavors or tastes or remember the scores - but that you take pleasure and time to enjoy each and every sip and in some way we have helped you make life just a little better. And of course its nice to know people have been tasting wine from these vineyards for over 100 years. All The Best!

Glenn Proctor

Appreciate any comments.

Harvest 2006 Puccioni Vineyards

The 2006 Harvest at Puccioni Vyds has begun. We harvested the Nicoletti blk and the Old Back Blk at the Puccioni Ranch and we also harvested Zinfandel from the Buchignani Ranch. Just to make the day more fun we also harvested the Lambert Bridge Vyds Petite Sirah on the same day. As you can see the whole family participated.
(Laurie, Joshua, and Glenn)