A prime example of Vegasian excess is the 42 foot high wine tower at Charlie Palmer’s Aureole.  It’s encased in lucite so you can watch the “wine angels”  gracefully climb up and then rappel back down with your trophy bottle of wine.  I have to admit the concept became considerably more intriguing when we learned that our 2006 Madder Lake Zinfandel is on their wine list and therefore housed somewhere within the amazing tower of wine.  Could it possibly be that an athletic/angelic young beauty has scaled to the top of the tower to retrieve a bottle of Jus Soli as part of a happy couple’s first romantic night of their honeymoon?  We don’t think we have to worry about an older sugar daddy wining and dining his high class hooker with our vino since he would clearly buy something showier, right?  And should you happen to visit and find out that our wine is situated down near the bottom within easy reach of any staff member, please don’t ruin the fantasy for us.  We like to think that the angels are responsible for bringing our wine down from the heavens for the enjoyment of mortals before they head off for their night of depraved adult entertainment.

Best of Class 2007 Dry Creek Valley Zinfandel

Double Gold 2008 Dry Creek Valley Sauvignon Blanc

Gold 2007 Sonoma County Roots Red

Gold 2007 Romano Vineyard Syrah

We’ll be pouring our winners at the SF Chronicle Wine Competition Public Tasting from 2-5pm on February 20th, 2010 at Fort Mason.  See you there?

And their Cheese Pairing Suggestion?  L’Amuse Gouda from Fromagerie L’Amuse, Beemster, Holland.

Read about this cheese in the Cowgirl Creamery Library of Cheese.

We know one place you can’t buy this cheese, the Monty Python Cheese Shop.  Still worth a visit if you have 5 minutes or so to watch the classic sketch.

Check the Jumbo-tron — not one, or even two, but three giant bottles of Jus Soli Wines!  That means three big awards at the 2009 Sonoma County Harvest Fair for little tiny us:  Best of Class in Rhone Reds for 2007 Sonoma County Roots Red (two vintages in a row), Double Gold for our 2007 Dry Creek Valley Zinfandel and Gold for our 2008 Dry Creek Valley Sauvignon Blanc.

Note:  Now that 2007 Roots has entered the world, we’ll get everything on this site updated shortly so people can actually buy it from us too!  Be sure to e-mail us about it if you just can’t wait to get your hands on some.

Our latest project in greening our business was switching our label printing to a certified green business in our home county, Paragon Label.  Check the link to read about their impressive conservation efforts, including innovative recycling projects and carbon neutral manufacturing facility.  But having battled the painful label printing process many times before, we knew that we were subjecting ourselves to all kinds of potential headaches by starting again with someone new.  And all went swimmingly except for a little confusion over one very important part of the job, our bottling date.  Alright, it was very close to a huge disaster requiring us to bottle all our wine without labels to run them all back through the line at some later date at considerable extra expense but let’s skip over the part about assigning blame and head straight for the problem solving part, which thankfully Paragon embraced along with us.

The main issue was that our labelstock didn’t arrive until the day before bottling so I was on call to race over to press check as soon as they unpacked the boxes and fired up the press.  Thankfully, the main colors were very close from the start but the digital background needed considerable work.  We tweaked and tweaked and finally dialed it in at 5:30 pm.  Then they printed and cut the big rolls overnight in time for me to pick up at 6:30 am the next morning to bring to the bottling line for an 8am start.  All my partners and everyone else at our facility seemed shocked and impressed to see me arrive with the label boxes before the bottling line labor crew had even arrived for duty.

It certainly could have been smoother, and I still have a giant box of pressure sensitive backing paper to bring back to Paragon for recycling to complete the process, but thankfully all turned out well in the end.  Our new vintage is labeled and looking the way we like it, and we took another important step in reshaping our business.  But if there was a soundtrack to the whole situation, it would undoubtedly be the Kermit the Frog classic.

Our lunch inspired a quick stop at nearby Bottle Barn for a wine to bring along to the Tuesday night farmer’s market in the Sonoma square.  I selected a 2008 Le Clos du Caillou Cotes du Rhone Rose (North Berkeley Imports) to go with our typical market meal of bread, cheese, and salami supplemented by fresh produce from the market.  And in case you’re picturing wine surreptitiously poured into dixie cups, the square in Sonoma is one of the few places left where you are actually allowed to publicly consume alcoholic beverages.  On market night, some tables have staggering amounts of open wine bottles and a wide selection of microbrews can be spotted as well, particularly near our blanket.  Our 2007 Jus Soli Sauvignon Blanc, the Rose and cold beers all cut beautifully through the still 90 plus degree heat.

Back home and kids in bed, we topped the day off by watching the recap of the day’s Tour de France action.

The only way to have been more French for the day would have been to wear berets and smoke cigarettes while debating whether Godard or Truffault was our favorite Nouvelle Vague film director.  With the benefit of hindsight, I’m thinking we hit it just right.

Besides simply enjoying the beautiful grounds and impressive ruins of the original church, we were also excited to pay homage to the site of the first vineyard and winery in Alta California.  The vines were planted in 1779 and first wine produced in 1783.  The audio tour mentioned that opinions on the wines produced at the mission ranged from “wonderful” to “awful”, which confirms that as soon as there were wines in California, there were wine critics.  I’m guessing even they asked for a second glass as there were obviously no alternatives available.

Here’s a picture of the exterior fermentation vat.  Think Junipero Serra ever lost a bet and had to swim in it?

And of course there will be no shortage of shameless plugs whenever we win awards like our recent haul from the 2009 San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition. Double Gold for our ‘06 Syrah, Gold for ‘06 Madder Lake and ‘07 Sauvignon Blanc and a Silver for our ‘06 Roots Red (Best of Class winner at the 2008 Sonoma County Harvest Fair and rumored to be deep in the running for Sweepstakes Red but apparently some people call that kind of wine “silver”).  

In fact, we’re going to name a category “shameless plugs” and write an entry right now about being Tweeted about or Twittered over or however you’re supposed to say that.

Best question (from ZAP ’07):
“So where exactly are you in relation to the nearest Red Lobster?”
Answer:  The nearest Red Lobster to both the crush facility we use in Santa Rosa and our home office in Kenwood happens to be in Rohnert Park.  That’s 10.4 miles away from the winery (approximate travel time of 13 minutes), and 17.9 miles away from our home office (approximate travel time of 30 minutes).

Best use of complimentary baguette (from ZAP ’05):
Cell phone casing.  The handiwork of a young woman who strolled around the place loudly gabbing away on her bread phone.

Best mistranslation of our winery name (also ZAP ’05):
Soul Juice.  By a famous winery owner no less.  We’d use his name here but he’d probably sue us as he’s well known to be a frequent practitioner of the petty lawsuit.  Someday we’re going to get all famous and sue him just for fun.

Best overheard interaction from neighboring winery table (ZAP ’08):
A confidently tipsy woman walked up to the bearded winemaker next to us demanding to know “What’s with the Grizzly Adams beard?”  He simply stared at her without making a move to fill her glass until she said, “You’re not going to pour that for me, are you?” He shook his head, she walked away.

Oddest ZAP story from a good friend of ours (ZAP ’04):
When she casually mentioned how she somehow managed to lose both her sunglasses and her safety glasses.  Safety glasses?  We had no idea which follow-up question to ask first with that one.