The Covered Bridge Cellars Blog: August 2008

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August 2008

Time to Bottle Some Juice: Watch via the Live Webcam

Tomorrow is bottling day for Covered Bridge Cellars. Both our wines have been aging quietly for about ten months in Francois Freres zebra barrels and now they must make that last--and oh so critical journey--to the bottling line! Bottling is a nervous time for wine folks as the hibernating juice must interact with the likes of this mechanical monster where all sorts of bad things can happen--contamination, label jams, overflows, etc.

Click the image for the large version

We won't be in San Francisco to watch first hand our juice go into bottle, but we will be watching the process via Crushpad's live webcam. They actually have two cameras setup in their state of the art facility and both can be controlled remotely over the web. This means we can zoom in on the action as if we were standing right there! Ok, well, you get the point. If you want to check in on things you can go to the "CrushpadCam" at this address tomorrow at 5:00pm PST.

http://www.crushpadcam/ccam.php

The camera window also has a chat functionality so fellow gawkers can interact while watch the action. In any event it should be pretty interesting. Hopefully everything goes well and at the end of the process we will have somewhere around 50 cases of finished wine. While we are not experts in commercial wine bottling methodologies, we do know a little about the process based on our own experience making wine in our garage. Here, see for yourself:

Drinking on the job!

Making sure things are going smoothly on the line.

Give and amateur winemaker a hammer and everything becomes a nail.

Jeremy

August 26, 2008 in Announcements, Packaging, Technology, Winemaking | Permalink | Comments (0)

2008 Harvest Approaching Fast!

With summer winding down the time for harvesting grapes is upon us. Over the next few weeks the first fruit of the 2008 vintage will be picked. I noticed on the Crushpad website that the harvest countdown timer is officially at 13 days. Being able to follow the progression of the crop first hand is one thing that we miss out on completely being so far removed from where our grapes are sourced. We do get to tend to our deck garden, but I'm not sure if a few cherry tomato and pepper plants are really as exciting as watching the evolution of such noble grapes as Pinot Noir and Chardonnay thoughout the growing season.

A Solid Vintage
By most accounts this years grape crop in CA should be very good. Frost, drought, and smoke from wild fires have wreaked havoc on some growers and will be the signature of the 2008 season. There is a silver lining, however, and that is that lower yields, smaller berries and smaller clusters should lead to more concentrated wines and higher overall quality. Of course, anything could happen between now and the time all the fruit is harvested--rain, heat, wind, drought, and anything else Mother Nature can throw at the industry. I guess we wait and see!

Vineyard Updates
This year we are sourcing Pinot Noir fruit again from the Hein Vineyard and have also added Annahala Vineyard to the mix. I have a post coming soon that provides more insight into these choices, but the bottom line is that we wanted to focus on Anderson Valley Pinot Noir before branching out into other regions and these two sites are our best choices. Below are the vineyard updates we have received at the end of July from Crushpad, I would expect more updates to come along soon as we move through September:

Hein Vineyard - 7/29/2008 - Hein escaped frost damage which wreaked havoc on vineyards adjacent to the property. All 3 clones have well balanced canopy with controlled shoot growth as veraison is near. There is a touch of light frost damage in the 115 block but nothing to worry about for the remainder of the growing season. The canopy should be open this week on the AM side.

Expected harvest begin data: 9/18/2008, end date: 10/02/2008

Annahala Vineyard - 7/29/2008 - Both the 115 and 777 blocks look very good this year with no frost damage. There was a bit of shatter on the PM side of the rows, but nothing to be concerned about moving forward. Leaf thinning is complete on the AM side and there is a well balanced canopy to support the crop load. Looking forward to working with this fruit again in 2008.

Expected harvest begin data: 9/26/2008, end date: 10/10/2008

Again, as more updates come in we'll be sure to update the blog. Hopefully it's smooth sailing from here on out and everyone can clear their fields with minimal issues. And since all blog posts should have at least one photo attached, I thought I would put this one up, it's from our Anderson Valley trip back in January when the vines were wispy and wild looking. Click on it for a larger image:

Jeremy

August 23, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0)

QR Codes and Wine Labels

First things first, what is a QR Code? From Wikipedia:

"A QR Code is a matrix code (or two-dimensional bar code) created by Japanese corporation Denso-Wave in 1994. The "QR" is derived from "Quick Response", as the creator intended the code to allow its contents to be decoded at high speed. QR Codes are common in Japan where they are currently the most popular type of two dimensional codes."

This is the QR Code that represents our mobile blog URL:

http://blog.coveredbridgecellars.mobi

These codes are used on product packaging and other collateral and can be embedded with all kinds of information such as a phone number, text message, email address, or web address. QR Codes are decoded by readers that reside as software on many types of mobile phones and other PDA devices that have cameras. A person picking up a product with a QR Code on it can scan the item with the phones camera--you do this by taking taking a picture of the 2D image--and instantly get the information embedded on it. If it's a web address, the QR reader on the phone will open up the phones web browser and point to a product page, company website, or some other page. The QR Code could also include a special message, or, a promotional offering in text format--the possibilities for how these codes could be used is virtually endless.

Creating a QR Code

The code above is one I created for our mobile verison of the blog. You can easily create a QR Code--in any number of sizes--via any of the number of online generator sites. I used http://qrcode.kaywa.com , but there are others that are good too. Simply go to one of these sites, enter the information you want embedded onto the code into the form and hit the generate tab, in about 2 seconds you will have your own QR Code, available as a downloadable image file.

Our Plan for Using QR Codes

Starting with our 2008 wines (we found out about QR codes too late to get them on our 2007 wines), all of our back labels will contain a QR Code specific to that particular wine. The code will be embedded with a link to a mobile friendly web page with lot's of product information, including the wine plan, harvest notes, tasting notes, technical data, and images. We'll be using MoFuse, the now completely free service I blogged about here, to create all these mobile pages. QR Codes can also be used on other material, such as brochures, post cards, business cards, tasting notes, technical sheets, etc.

QR Readers

I'm not really sure how many phones have QR readers built into them and I guessing there are not too many wine geeks out there walking around just waiting to come across a bottle to scan, but nontheless, mobile commerce is moving at an amazingly fast pace and it will be nice to be a little ahead of the curve here. Millenials and the facebook/iPhone crowd in particulary are a key segement that we are targeting so providing information to them about our products via their mobile device is important.

I have a QR reader on my iPhone that I downloaded and the first time I got it to work I thought to myself, "wow, that is pretty cool!" I embedded our blog, took a picture of the code and up came our page! However, I have yet to see a product with a QR Code on it anywhere, and I certainly haven't seen one on a wine bottle. There are though a number of wine producers in other countries that have had success with QR codes on their bottles.

From the blog All About Mobile Life:

http://mobile.kaywa.com/qr-code-data-matrix/wine-and-qr-codes.html

As you can see, it seems like early days still for this technology. Below is a sequence of screen shots of my iPhone's QR reader in action as I pull up the mobile version of our blog:

#1. The QR Code application, iMatrix, can be seen in the lower right hand corner of the screen: