Thursday, June 26, 2014

The Desert Wine Guy - The Story Of The Desert Wine Guy - Part 2

   Welcome to part #2 of the story of The Desert Wine Guy. When part #1 ended I had brought my family outside to see my grapes. Thinking I had arrived I thought I could just sit back now and enjoy smooth sailing. I was wrong, way wrong. Lets now pick up where we left off last time.
   One day while in the pool I was watching my grapes grow....go ahead, laugh all you want....I did also :) I noticed that my leaves on the vines were disappearing. Oh no, what is going on? I got out of my pool and went to inspect the vines. I noticed that the leaves were all gone except for the veins in them. Now there was nothing to shield the direct sun from my grapes. What happened? I eventually noticed some small ( approx half inch ) Caterpillars crawling all over my vines. I did what most others would  do and that is pick them off and put them in a bag and headed to the trash can thinking that was that. There was a lot of damage already done to the leaves. My grapes were being exposed to the sun and there was nothing I could do. They were literally destroying my vines. I noticed that a lot of the bunches were drying out already and there was nothing I could I do. There were still a couple of bunches left and I figured I was lucky to have them. Thinking I had gotten rid of the enemy I licked my wounds and was thankful that I still had a couple of bunches that remained. About a week later while again in the pool I noticed that the enemy I thought I had defeated was now back and as hungry as ever. I immediately took a couple of leaves with the Caterpillars on them and threw them into a small plastic bag and drove down to the plant store. I pulled one out and probably looked so sad when I asked the employee “what are these” ? I was quickly informed that they were called “Grape Leaf Skeltonizers” and yes they would eat all my leaves which would mean that my grapes were done.  I thought that I had gotten rid of all the Skeltonizers but I was wrong. The employee sold me a white powder (poison) and instructed me in how to use it. I went home and applied it as I was instructed. It stopped the Skeltonizers and even though I didn't have grapes anymore I was ready for next year.
   That was the first year and I thought I will not make the same mistake next year. Next year comes now and the Skeltonizers come back. This time I am ready though I had my poison and I applied it and it worked, I stopped the deadly army in it's tracks....for a little bit. I wasn't happy with putting poison on my food though. I again didn't check my vines and the same thing as last year happened. I lost my leaves and grapes. This was solely due to my being lazy and nothing else so I had no one to blame but myself. I guess the good thing was that I had proved that I could grow grapes, that was important. I just had to be more responsible and I would have some grapes to eat or make wine with in the future. I also realized that there was so much that I didn't know. I didn't know about pruning of the vines. I didn't know about watering etc; My vines grew all over the place. There was even a branch or two that grew into the pool and I had to cut it.  While I still knew nothing about the growing of grape vines other then that they grew on wires I still had green, full vines. So for the last 2 years I have grown Cabernet Sauvignon vines in my backyard. I had not yet become The Desert Wine Guy and I was in shock. I had  thought I new everything there was to know about growing grapes. WOW, I guess it was back to the drawing board and school. I soon discovered something called YouTube. I saw that there were videos for everything and a lot of times by professionals in their field. The people who were most instrumental in my learning was One Acre Wine (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-H20LSRis0)  and Jack Sanders of The Sanders Family Winery http://sanderswinery.com/. My wife and I went for a day to Jacks vineyard in Pahrump Nevada and while he was pouring wine my wife and I we struck up a conversation with him. He seemed very interested in the fact that I was developing a small vineyard in Las Vegas and was very helpful with tips on pruning, pest control and developing good wine grapes.  These two people are awesome and while I learned so much from the YouTube channel I was actually able to meet Mr. Sanders in person. I continued to have the opportunity to go to professional vineyards in Temecula California and I started to ask questions and take pictures. I started to observe how they were growing grape vines. Hey they did their drip systems? The distance they spaced each plant from one another. The materials they used. I also started to ask questions of the vineyard grower.   I learned that all I thought I knew was nothing in reality. That is when I decided to rip out the vines I had and do this right. I sat down with a pen and paper and designed the Vineyard that I wanted. All the while I am watching videos on watering vines, pruning vines etc; I had my design installed and I found a great nursery on line that sold various organic grape vines for very reasonable prices. The final Vineyard layout is Angel vineyard which is named after my oldest daughter because she is such an Angel and a wonderful person and Mirror Image Vineyard which is named after my two identical 3.5 year old twins. I ordered all the vines I needed and got down to the hard part, planting. I started up a Facebook page dedicated to wine and The Desert Wine Guy was born.
   I have just recently had bud break on my Sauvignon Blanc as well as my Cabernet Sauvignon vines. I am currently just evaluating things day by day and watching the vines develop now that it appears the temperatures are going to be rising.
   Today June 26, 2004 I am going to publish the completion to The Story Of The Desert Wine Guy - Part 2 so here is the latest. The company I went thru for my vines http://www.groworganic.com/grape-wine-cabernet-sauvignon.html ended up selling bad vines. I planted my vines just before the heat set in here in Vegas and was happy to be in the shade drinking a glass of wine when the heat finally did hit. Well......things didn't work out as planned. I believe I ended up buying around 20 vines and 10 of them never did anything. We are well into the hot weather now and they are still sticks coming out of the ground. I e-mailed the company and let them know about the problem and they responded saying I had to pull the vines back out and send them back so they could make sure that rats or other rodents didn't eat the roots or vines. I responded back assuring them that my Vineyards are backyard Vineyards and not that big where I wouldn't see rats or other animals. I continued by informing them that there are no animal holes of any kind and that the solution they provided was unacceptable. I informed them that I would be willing to take a picture with each dead vine with a newspaper next to them so they could see the picture was current and they agreed. I decided in the end though that I could not trust their product and I just left it at that. I now have around 10 vines that need replacing next year and I think I will be going to the nearest plant store. I guess sometimes trying to save money does not pay. By the way the vines on line were $5.99 and the vines at the local store are $25. I also was not happy with the way the vines that did come out of Dormancy were growing. I had to do a lot of pruning a week ago in order to cut off branches that had a lot of dead buds and were not growing leaves. I think I have gotten to the point where the vines that are alive are starting to take off now and I have even been able to form some Cordons.
   Well folks that is it, that is my story. I hope you have enjoyed what you read and I hope I have inspired some of you into growing your own Vineyard(s). I am still enjoying every minute of working in my Vineyards. there are still many months here in Las Vegas of heat and i am hoping by the end of the year the vines that I have pruned will develop nicely. I have also added a Twitter account to my social networking system so please check out all my links I would love to hear from all of you.
   Here are my links.

https://twitter.com/DesertWineGuyLV
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgCUb3w1n2S_UGU2yYRkFYQ/videos
https://www.facebook.com/DesertWineGuy


                                                                                                                    The Desert Wine Guy


Sunday, June 8, 2014

The Desert WIne Guy - 2010 Charleston Peak Barrel Reserve - Petite Sirah

Yours Truly at in the Display Room of Pahrump Vineyards.
   Good afternoon wine lovers. Here we are again for another review. Here we are today once again for what is also going to be another very short wine review. Two wines in a row where the wines being reviewed are less than worthy of wasting your time drinking. Today's review is on the 2010 Charleston (Mount Charleston here in Las Vegas) Barrel Reserve Petite Sirah. there is not much available as far as the origins of the wine other then the grapes seem to have come from Amador County, C.A. The Brix (sugar level ) at harvest time were 24.0.
Corking Machine.
   The Pahrump Winery is located in Pahrump Nevada which is about an hour north of Las Vegas. The Pahrump Winery is a nice place to visit and is set up as a professional winery you would see in Napa or Temecula California, it is worth the visit if you want a break from the desert or gambling. When I was there I met Gretchen Loken who is the wine maker and wife of Bill Loken who together both own the Pahrump Winery. The small tour they offer with one of their employees in the actual Vineyard was followed by a tour of the barrel room by Gretchen where the corking machine and the crusher as well as the wood barrels and stainless Steel casks are kept. Gretchen was very informative and her great personality kept things light hearted and interesting. On now to our review which will be straight to the point.
   The wine poured into the glass a medium Plum in color but was much lighter, almost a Bing Cherry around the edges. The wine was clear of any cork or sediment.
   The Bouquet of this wine was of chemicals (paint) mixed with Molasses and Blueberry.
   Now for the actual tasting. I will keep this very simple and to the point. There was heavy Molasses and other sugars that completely overpowered anything else in the wine, if there was anything else in the wine to taste. There was nothing else to say about the wine. The wine tasted more like a fortified wine that you would buy in a convenience store next to a cheap wine  such as Thunder Bird. The wine was much sweeter that a wine cooler. To describe the taste even more, the wine tastes like an overly sugary Madeira, a fortified dessert wine, a sipping wine.
  
2010 Charleston Peak Petite Sirah
O.k Lets end this  review now. I think this wine is terrible and we have wasted enough of our time here. I drank a half of a glass and I was done. That is saying something for me to dump out a whole bottle of wine. I have done tastings on a few wines that have been less that worthy of drinking and have never been unable to finish the bottle. Sickeningly sweet juice is what I would call this. I felt that if I drank any more of the bottle I would have a splitting headache the next day from the overpowering sugar. Well folks that's it. There is nothing left to write about this tasting, until next time. Thanks for reading this article.



                                                          DISTURBING UPDATE!!!



   A very disturbing thing happened while I was in the middle of writing this article. I wrote about half this article and I decided to break away for a couple of minutes to clear my head and do a short review on the Pahrump Winery's website for that particular wine. I gave just the basics that are in this article about the overpowering sweetness etc. When I went back just before publishing time to see if  anyone had responded I discovered that my review was gone. BAD, BAD, BAD decision folks. With a Facebook https://www.facebook.com/DesertWineGuy following of almost 2,000 fans, a wine blog http://www.desertwineguy.blogspot.com/ that gets a large amount of traffic daily as well  as a brand new Twitter https://twitter.com/DesertWineGuyLV account I don't believe that was a smart marketing or business decision but I will let you readers decide for yourselves. I will simply leave my readers with one question. If they took off my bad review of one of their wines, how many other bad reviews have been removed?


www.facebook.com/DesertWineGuy?fref=nf

https://twitter.com/DesertWineGuyLV

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgCUb3w1n2S_UGU2yYRkFYQ/videos





                                                                                                                 The Desert Wine Guy


Tuesday, June 3, 2014

The Desert WIne Guy - Trader Joes - 2011 Grand Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon

   Todays review will be one of those very short ones which is reserved for those wines that really warrant not much being said about them.  With that established we move on.  Here is another wine that has a very nice looking label. If you knew nothing about the wine and were looking to try something different to drink you would be drawn to the wine by simply looking at the label. This would probably result in you doing what I did .....buying it. Well that would be a BIG mistake (and it was) as you will see as you read on. Lets get started here by first talking about the establishment of Trader Joes themselves.
   For those of you who don't know what Trader Joe's http://www.traderjoes.com/ is. Trader Joe's is basically a higher end grocery store that actually is a wonderful place to shop. Trader joe's carries many different lines of food that aren't commonly seen in the major grocery stores. While their stores are not usually big they pack a lot in them. They carry a small but decent line of organic food, have a nice produce section and have a fairly decent wine section which is of course divided nicely into sections by varietal. Trader Joe's also has a variety of their own wine labels that appear on the outside to be professionally done and enticing. They also , by the way carry the Charles Shaw (2 Buck Chuck) line of wines. They also carry a "Trader Joe's Coastal" line as well as "Vintjs", "Trader Joe's Petit Reserve", "Trader Joe's Reserve" and "Trader Joe's Grand Reserve" (this particular review wine). It should be pretty obvious that they take wine seriously. Today's wine review is the first wine I have had from Trader Joe's so I won't condemn the whole lineup at this time, I will however follow up by doing a review on one of their other labels.
   O.k on to the tasting now. The bouquet to this wine is filled with Black Pepper, Licorice & Blackberry. The bouquet was nice and seemed to promise a decent wine. The bouquet was obvious from the very opening of the bottle also.
   The wine when poured in the glass was a deep Burgundy. That is about all I can say about it since it was so dark.
   The taste of this wine is the deal killer here. The wine had a burnt, peppery taste. Plain & simple, that is all. All I tasted was Pepper from beginning to end, Pepper. It started with pepper on the tongue and it's finish was of Pepper. There was also a sort of burnt taste to it.
   Final note - The wine is not good and I strongly recommend you stay far, far away from it.
   On the Desert Wine Guy rating scale I give it 74 points.


www.facebook.com/DesertWineGuy?fref=nf

https://twitter.com/DesertWineGuyLV

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgCUb3w1n2S_UGU2yYRkFYQ/videos



                    
                                                                                                                The Desert Wine Guy

The Desert Wine Guy - 2021 Fox Run, Dry Riesling

     I don't know about you but for the most part, I am not into sweet white wines. There, I said it and I feel so much better. Now you ...