Markus Niggli, Borra Vineyards’ winemaker, offered up a glass with a nearly clear liquid inside, presumably wine.

“What is it?” I said, before even smelling, as we went through a routine we’d played out many times before.

“I’m not telling you,” he said, practically on cue.

Whatever it was had pure green apples and limes bouncing amidst the fun fizziness of tiny bubbles and minerality. It was warm that day, and I could easily have gulped it down to quench a parched thirst, but I thought it rude at the time.

There was a flatbed truck blocking the driveway serving as a makeshift table conveniently next to a small stainless steel tank holding the mystery wine. Kyle Luke, Markus’s former protégé/assistant winemaker, had been pouring samples into a couple of graduated cylinders to create blends. He and Markus stopped everything and stared at my face to get my first most honest impression of their creation.

When I’m not sure what I’m tasting, I hedge my bets with a safe, but truthful response: “It’s nice. Nice balance of acid with sweetness that comes off as being slightly off-dry. What is it?”

“Vinho Verde!” Markus blurts out, which doesn’t help me much, because I’ll admit I don’t know every wine made by man, though mentally I was google-earth rotating the globe around to somewhere on the coast of Spain that seemed to be associated.

“But isn’t Vinho Verde a super-acid, green style of winemaking in Portugal?”

“Yes, but we’re doing it with Kerner and Riesling from Mokelumne Glen fruit. We’re tweaking the blend, because I like what the Riesling is bringing to the Kerner.”

“Is this going to be another Intuition or something?” I ask, thinking of the blend he started last year of Kerner, Gewürztraminer, and Rieslaner.

“No, this is completely different. It’s got apple and pear with a slight carbonation. And this time we’ll have a student from the university [Stockton’s University of the Pacific] designing the label,” he explains in his excited Swiss accent.

Just a few weeks later, Markus met up with University of the Pacific Professor Michael E. Leonard to review his students’ artwork. Markus and Professor Leonard had hoped last year to have a student design the label for Borra’s Heritage and Intuition labels, but time ran out before bottling, so the professor stepped in and rendered his own design (which you can read about here).

Professor Leonard was happy that Markus kept his promise to come back, “I was excited that this was not a one-time deal. It’s a long-term collaboration between the school and Borra Vineyards,” the professor said. “I try to marry the instructional material with practical experience through competitions, and this was a tremendous opportunity for the illustration class. Students have created movie posters and the University’s Summer Sessions course catalog covers in the past, and I knew it would be a strong competition with lots of talent.”

Markus gives the ground rules for the competition: “I’ve got a lot of connections in Switzerland [where he grew up], and I wanted to create a label that would work for the Euro market. I wanted the pure mindset of an art student. So the only guidelines I gave them were that it was a greenish wine, and I gave them some numbers and letters, and they didn’t know what those numbers and letters meant. I didn’t want to limit their creativity.”

What he got was a whole conference room table full of artwork mounted on black mattes. After carefully making sure that the final designs would work with existing silver Borra Vineyards capsules, Markus was particularly impressed with the work of junior Sheng Moua.

Sheng’s concept was chosen, and she admits, “I was a little confused, at first, by the combination of numbers and letters that we had to use for our design ideas. I knew I had to adapt my ideas to something the winemaker would like on his bottles.”

A pleased Markus relates, “This whole process of collaboration worked out just great, and I call the wine ‘Artist Series’ because I’ll be coming back each year to the university for new artwork from new student artists.”

But the process of developing the new label was still nowhere near complete. Only industry insiders know of the love/hate relationship between graphic artists and printers, especially with wine labels, where designs deliberately push the envelope of what can technically be done with ink, printing plates and steel dies. There is much behind-the-scenes skill involved with prepping the artwork to look great when it’s printed. And that’s where MPI Label Systems in Stockton stepped in with their print prep artists.

The result allowed Sheng’s original artwork to come completely alive. For you print geeks: the labels were printed digitally on dull silver foil so that the silver highlights in the design would match the screwcaps and capsules Borra used on the bottles. The central part of the design was embossed to enhance the core art of the design – the letters and numbers.

But what finally makes it into the bottle behind that label still needs to be equally inspired.

The proof is in the pudding, and it sure doesn’t hurt when your boss becomes a new wine’s first fan. Steve Borra quickly took a particular liking to the new creation, keeping a private stash in his home refrigerator and admitting to grabbing a cold one after a long day in the field.

I asked Steve how he liked it when I was getting my own stash for purposes of writing tasting notes (translates to “drinking”).

“Oh, you mean the Zipcode wine?” he said, which made almost no sense to me at first.

Steve suffers from a common ailment in Lodi: an almost reflexive giving up when we see a word we’re not going to try to pronounce. (Sort of like how all Lodi winegrowers call the Carignane grape “Kerrigan,” which makes no sense either.) But once you take a look at the front label, you’ll either give up, too, or start trying to solve the puzzle.

Looking at the label, I, myself, can make out “M” and “B” and a “2”, but everything else seems to have fallen to pieces.

Markus explained that he gave the students only “MKBW8872,” not this handy decoder that you’ll want to keep around when you twist open a bottle:

M = Markus (winemaker)
K = Konrad (Markus’s brother)
B = Bernhard (Markus’s other brother)
W = Weesen (where Markus grew up in Switzerland)
8872 = the postal code for Weesen

And that’s what triggered Steve’s nickname, because here in the U.S., of course, we use the term “Zipcode” instead of postal code.

But what does an expert think of it?

Markus gave noted wine writer Randy Caparoso a sneak taste of the Zipcode wine (and two more that we won’t talk about yet, but will release later in the year).

Fortunately for Borra, Randy was so sparked by excitement from the new Artist Series and other new wines to proclaim:

“Borra now produces the most ‘contemporary’ style wines grown in Lodi today, period.”

(Check out his dedicated blog post with the great title, “Borra’s amazing Spring releases” on LodiWine.com. Here’s a PDF.)

By “contemporary,” Randy’s referring to a not-overripe, but natural-acid style that is exactly what cutting-edge sommeliers and wine writers are looking for right now.

Randy continues:

“Mr. Niggli has crafted a mouth wateringly crisp dry white wine that is as light as a feather on a Southern breeze. The nose is effusively fragrant, like Pippin apple and orange peel, with soothing touches of rising bread dough. The acidity is lemony fresh without being sharp, and rounded out by just a whisper of sweetness. The acid still high enough that the wine finishes dry, with a definite minerally feel to go along with the citrusy fruit.”

Of course, I had to double-check his notes, so I actually took a swig straight from the bottle, pirate-style, and boy was it easy to chug, but I don’t recommend it. It’s hard to taste all those flavors when its roaring straight down the gullet.

Rather than explaining in detail how it was made, here are the cliff notes that you can scroll past if they look boring:

2012 Artist Series Kerner “Zipcode”
Appellation: Lodi (Mokelumne Glen Vineyards)
Blend: 85% Kerner, 15% Riesling
Harvested: September 12, 2012
Winemaking: 3 weeks stainless steel cold-fermented, native yeast, no acid adds
Cellar: 4 months, 100% stainless steel
Bottled: January 15, 2013
Cases produced: 42
Alcohol on Label: 13.5%
RS: 2.10 g/L, slightly off-dry
pH: 2.98
TA: 7.73 g/L
Price: $18.00/$14.40 for club members
Size: 750 mL

All that translates into the kind of wine you’ll want to always have in the fridge to get your party started with the perfect welcome, “Here, try this!”

Only 42 cases of this quaffer was produced, and all but 15 cases will be shipped back to Switzerland for distribution there.

We’ve got an inside bet that at $18 per bottle, but only $14.40 for Borra’s La Dolce Vita club members, each and every bottle will probably be spoken for by ZinFest, May 18th.

MAY 10, 2013 UPDATE:
Sure enough, we have sold out before ZinFest! Thanks for your support!

Download Tasting Notes

When the birds started to feast on the vines, and a random grape tasting showed at least some sweetness, the whole field was picked and fermented together in the family’s biggest wooden vat. That process of throwing everything in at the same time is known as a “field blend.”

Nowadays, we’re able to instantly read the sugar and acid of grapes as they ripen to pick a tiny section of a particular vineyard – perhaps because it ripens earlier than the rest – and make a very specific wine of that certain clone of grape. There’s all kinds of control, but sometimes you lose the romance.

That’s why Borra has been making an old fashioned Field Blend exclusively for their La Dolce Vita Club members over the past few years. And now Borra is bottling that romance under a new label called “Heritage” to capture the tradition of grape growing handed down from one generation to the next in Steve Borra’s family.

Only a three minute tractor drive down the road from the winery, Church Block was once part of a 60-acre vineyard owned by the Racca family – a brother and two sisters, none of whom married. They sold five acres to the Stockton Catholic Diocese (of which St. Anne’s is a member) for a future church or school. Steve farmed the vines for about ten years before purchasing the property in 1990.

The block was planted back around 1920 – almost a century ago – to an acre each of Petite Sirah, Carignane, Alicante Bouschet and Zinfandel, but the Zin is now gone, because, “That’s where Gina planted her house,” per Steve.

Borra’s winemaker, Markus Niggli, has to pick the Barbera ahead of the Church Block so he can get an idea of crop size before committing to make either a pure Barbera, Field Blend, or both.

Steve’s Barbera has had a rollercoaster ride in popularity over the years. It went from an unknown red to being very popular with wineries like Napa’s legendary Louis M. Martini in the 1980’s. It hit a slump around the turn of the century, but has become a big hit since then with wineries throughout the U.S.

“We usually have more orders for the Barbera than we have grapes. In hard years we don’t even have enough grapes to make all of our own wines, but 2010 was a very big year and the crops of the different Field Blend grapes for once all got completely ripe. There was a rare perfection of growing conditions. We still didn’t have enough for both a 100% Barbera and a Field Blend, and I wanted to make a Field Blend, so I had to hide six bins of Barbera in the barrel room so Steve wouldn’t know. Otherwise, he would have shipped them across the country. But the new Heritage was worth the risk.”

Fortunately for 2012, the amount of Barbera that came in was sufficient to make a Field Blend as well as a pure old vine Barbera, so Markus gave the order for a handful of bins of Church Block grapes to be added to one of the tanks where the previous day’s Barbera was chilling down. (A couple days of refrigerated pre-soak releases more color and extracts more complexity.)

In terms of percentages (for those of us wine geeks), 2012 will come pretty close to those of 2010, which were 47% Barbera, 22% Petite Sirah, 18% Alicante Bouschet, and 13% Carignane. (And if you want to get super-technical and take into consideration the hundred yards separating the Church Block from the Home Ranch, you could say they weren’t all from the same field, but it’s all pretty much the same terroir in my book.)

The winemaking recipe is about as simple as it gets: no yeast or malolactic bacteria are added during fermentation; the grapes aren’t even pressed afterward, but only drained off. There is no fiddling around. Just natural winemaking so you can taste the vines.

There is, however, always the question of oak. Too little, and a wine can taste just simple and fruity. Too much, and all you taste is oak paving over the vineyard.

Markus felt, “Due to the wine’s heavy structure, we used 45% new French oak barrels for the 2010 – more than usual. We knew the wine would be powerful and rich.”

Borra’s official winemaker notes describe this almost indescribable wine as:

“Wild fragrances of rich black cherries or black currant, bathed in a tapestry of an incredibly-reduced demi-glace of beef broth, shift untamed with perhaps smoky bacon or cloves or scorched earth. Luscious tangy black cherries and the concentrated essence of blackberries with molasses and coffee strike a powerful and exciting balance that is always enticing, but couldn’t be termed sweet. The flavors dance for minutes before resolving into cedar and textured deep rose petals. Very versatile with foods, especially great with rosemary roasted lamb, duck or virtually any beef topped with a reduction sauce. In many ways, our Heritage is itself a sauce in a glass. 250 cases produced.”

Off the record, Markus says, “It’s hard to keep it in the bottle. It screams to get out. The glass just pops.”

“It is unequivocally, deliciously and deliriously fantastic – a red wine for the ages – from its almost psychedelic purple colored head down to its deep, saturated toes: compact, concentrated black cherry/raspberry liqueur-like fruit aroma tinged with caraway and whiffs of animal skin and organic, loamy undertones; luscious flavors barely contained by zesty yet viscous textured, medium-full bodied sensations, flowing like proverbial rivers of Babylon.”

May Borra’s Heritage bless you and yours over the coming holidays! Cheers!

I pulled through the north gatepost at Borra’s Gill Creek Ranch Wednesday morning just before dawn, knowing the picking crew was already building up a sweat.

Though not quite as challenging as finding a needle in a haystack, when you’re dealing with 40.7 acres of Old Vine Zinfandel, it can take time to find a bunch of hunched-over pickers. It’s sort of like finding your mother down a supermarket isle when you’ve become stuck in the candy section a bit too long.

Sure enough, I caught up with about ten familiar faces dropping pristine bunches of dark purple grapes into yellow lugs faster than I could ever manage. If you’ve picked grapes, you quickly become reacquainted to seldom-used lower back muscles – what with all the bending over, squatting and twisting to dump those lugs into half-ton, chest-high white Macrobins.

A near-perfect cloudless morning in the fifties made for a pleasant photo shoot. And the ability to randomly reach out and snag a snack of a delicious berry of Zin was a convenient bonus. The berries tasted rich, but not sugary, with hints of something more exciting going on that was definitely not raisin. These are the sorts of flavors you know are going to taste special in the bottle.

Being the 26th day of September, timing of the pick was within a week of the last two, cooler years. 2010 Zin was picked on the 28th and the 2011 was picked on the 21st. Sugars are a bit higher at 26.3˚ Brix, compared to 24.9˚ B in 2010 and 26.2˚ B in 2011, but that’s to be expected in a consistently warm growing season, where temps seemed stuck in the upper 90’s all summer – several times crossing the 100˚ mark.

The main difference in vintages is that the acids are lower this year: pH’s for this year and 2010 and 2011 were 3.82, 3.54, 3.56, respectively, with TA’s at 4.7, 5.8 and 6.3.

I chatted with Borra’s winemaker, Markus Niggli, today, two days after crushing, and he said he’s happy with this year’s Zinfandel: “We were worried about the amount of crop we were going to get, but it turned out pretty well. We got 3 tons per acre. Last year we only got a ton and a half per acre.”

Describing the season and the results, he said, “Fruit set was good. And this year we had pretty heavy foliage, giving us a better ratio of leaves to grapes. The heat gave us much more fruit, and it’s all pristine and clean with no bugs and absolutely no sign of rot. We see smaller berries and bigger clusters, and the grapes have a good typical Zin flavor profile.”

One of the challenges in farming Borra’s Gill Creek Ranch Zin is a swale and subtle rise running through the vineyard that creates complexity simply from a range of ripeness along each vine row.

Another challenge is that these 46-year-old vines regularly produce maybe only a quarter of the output of their younger counterparts – but what you do get tends to be more interesting than the huge fruity horsepower young vines provide.

Of the entire yield only 11.1 tons were crushed and destemmed into tank #5 specifically for Borra. The rest will be shipped off to other wineries eager to make their own award-winning Lodi Zin.

Many of us in the wine world will tell you there is one thing harder than making wine – and that is selling it. Most of you who drink our wines feel pretty comfortable when you see “Chardonnay” or “Zinfandel” on the label, but what do you call a blend of 60% Kerner, 20% Gewürztraminer and 20% Rieslaner, all from Mokelumne Glen Vineyards?

I asked Markus what process he went through to wrench his brain to cough up something catchy, and he simply said, “These names come out of nowhere. They just pop in your mind when you’re working in the vineyard. Many times it takes intuition to grow perfect grapes when the vineyard floods, or to know when to leave a wine alone to make itself.”

THE ARTIST

With two of the most important items accomplished – a solid wine and a unique name – the only obstacle left was coming up with a label worthy of all this work. We could have modified the Fusion label, but Markus directed, “With this new blend, I wanted a new label.”

Markus turned to accomplished artist and illustrator Michael E. Leonard, currently an Adjunct Professor at University of the Pacific in Stockton and at San Joaquin Delta College. Michael’s award-winning work had been published in more than 30 books and 200 articles. (And it didn’t hurt that he holds a master’s degree in medical and biological illustration from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.)

The plan was to get Michael’s students to compete or collaborate with each other on ideas for the label, but Federal label approval regulations, tight print deadlines, and the need to preserve exciting, but delicate fruit aromas in an early bottling conspired against the idea. So Michael took to drawing up designs himself.

INSPIRATION

At some point, Markus and Michael came across a photo I took back in late October 2009, during Cabernet Sauvignon harvest at Borra’s Gill Creek Ranch, north of the town of Lockeford. Catching a free ride in an empty Macrobin on the back of a tractor, I swung around with my camera in time to capture Steve Borra coming down the vine row for an inspection:

Pulling from Michael’s skills, Markus felt, “I wanted a label with sketching, like the famous video song ‘Take on Me’ from A-ha.”

“It was the breakthrough of sketches-meet-video back in the early eighties when I was a typical teen. It stuck. Back in Europe, A-ha was very popular and their video got quite some noise:”

After a draft or two, Michael hit on Markus’s desired “walking-in-the-vineyard effect to capture Steve.” And here is how “a very classic Steve shot” was deftly transformed into our new Intuition label:

A PLEASANT SURPRISE

After a nine-month process, the label design was essentially complete. However, there was one last step out of respect for Steve.

Markus completes the story, “I first got permission from Bev [Steve’s wife]. She said, ‘I’m sure he will like it.’ When he first saw the label, Steve said, ‘Whoa, I really like it.’ His first taste was a week after it was bottled. This was my surprise to him. I know that Steve is humble and doesn’t want to be in the center point, but it is recognition of his work out there in the vineyards.”

Read more about Intuition in our blog “Rules. Who need ‘em?” or just get a bottle or two right now.

Back in the ‘70s, Lodi was known only for big co-op wineries, producing sweetish jug wine.

Then along came Steve Borra.

Steve wasn’t interested in following the pack, and went about founding Lodi’s first boutique winery, even before the county made up rules to define what a boutique winery was. He was bottling his Estate Barbera years ahead of Robert Mondavi’s establishment of Woodbridge Winery.

In the vineyard, Steve bought up a large tract of land along the Mokelumne River near Clements to prove that Lodi could make a fine Cabernet Sauvignon, despite many naysayers scoffing that it wasn’t possible to do that in California outside of Napa.

He also took a gamble planting Rhône varietals, like Viognier, Syrah and Petite Sirah, which are only recently paying off with respected recognition in wines such as the 2008 and 2009 Fusion Reds. And whereas the majority of growers plant their vine rows in a north-south or east-west direction to fit as many vines as possible, Steve planted most of them at a 47.5 degree angle to protect delicate grapes from the damaging afternoon sun.

Building on that foundation was Borra’s winemaker, Markus Niggli, itching to challenge the status quo.

INTUITION

Marc Landolt

The accent betrays Markus’s Swiss upbringing. Last May, he returned home to connect with his family and friends, including Marc Landolt, head of Landolt Weine – a successful wine business in Zürich. Marc has the privilege of farming vineyard acreage belonging to the City of Zürich (which translates to Stadt Zürich in Swiss). From a select 6 acres of these prized vines in the Burghalde-Riesbach Appellation, Marc is allowed to create a special white blend of German varietals he has labeled Stadt Zürich Barrique, meaning the wine is aged in barrels.

And that was the first rule to be broken. That’s when Borra’s new wine, code-named “Swiss blend,” was born.

“The idea comes from there,” explains Markus. “From the minute I opened Marc’s Stadt Zürich I was attached to it. The appeal jumped at me and wouldn’t let me go. I wanted to try it out in a different country with different growing conditions using the same techniques.”

The rebel technique was putting traditional white German varietals in brand new oak barrels (Barrique). Over a few glasses of wine, Marc detailed to Markus how new oak and stirring the young wine on its lees every two weeks (known as battonage) can round out the edges and reduce the bitterness you can get in varietals such as Gewürztraminer. However, tradition dictates that German varietals should be free of the taste of oak, and made only in concrete or stainless steel tanks, or large oak casks which have no extractable oak.

But Markus’s intuition told him it would work in Lodi, “If the moment is right I will do it,” hence, the name “Intuition.”

SQUARE PEG, ROUND HOLE

Meanwhile, back in the late 1990’s, Lodi’s Koth family, headed by Bob and son Brett, decided to do the unthinkable, by planting German varietals – reputed to be best grown in the world’s coldest winegrape growing regions. The Koths planted their Mokelumne Glen Vineyards alongside the Mokelumne River just east of the City of Lodi, imagined by many critics as being much too hot, thereby breaking another hard-and-fast rule.

However, as noted wine writer Randy Caparoso pointed out in a recent blog on Intuition, “Lodi is not as ‘hot’ as many people think. But great for German grapes? Perhaps not for pure Riesling, which demands an ultra-cold climate to be at its best (even Napa Valley and most of Sonoma is too warm to grow great Riesling, which is why they don’t). But grapes like Kerner (a crossing of Trollinger and Riesling) and Rieslaner (a Silvaner x Riesling crossing) were actually developed to excel in warmer, larger production regions of Germany, like Franconia and the Pfalz. Gewürztraminer grows best in Germany’s Baden region, along the Rhine River, which can get quite warm.”

In fact, Lodi is the only source for Kerner in California, with the Koths producing most of the 3.2 Tons crushed in 2011. (Borra bought 1.8 Tons, earning the distinction of being the biggest Kerner crusher in the state.) And Rieslaner is so rare that the U.S. Federal Government doesn’t even permit it to be printed on wine labels.

And don’t get us started regarding yields.

Lodi growers routinely get around 7 to 10 Tons of winegrapes per acre, though in mammoth years like 2005, it wasn’t unusual to get 15 or even 20 Tons to some acres. So when Markus insisted on going against the grain to savagely reduce yield to a Ton per acre, it didn’t exactly make him popular with his (still good) friend Brett Koth.

“The main point to this wine is to have very concentrated fruit, due to a low yield. There was shatter and we dropped about 50% of the fruit. We had a big discussion of when to drop or when not to drop whole clusters,” recalls Markus.

Using the Landolt Stadt Zürich wine as a blueprint, Markus planned his grape variety purchases with the Koths before the 2011 vintage, ordering up Kerner and Gewürztraminer varieties. 2011 provided in most ways an excellent growing season, but yields were even lower than expected, partly due to huge volumes of water released from the upstream damn, which allowed two-foot-long catfish to swim in and out between the vines on the first of July. As a result, Markus had only about 80% of the grapes he needed:

“2011 was cold – a perfect year, but I needed to make up the 20%. It’s mostly Rieslaner, but also a mix of vines from Riesling and Weißburgunder (Pinot blanc). The Koths have a lot of different varietals all planted together there.”

THE WINEMAKING, ACCORDING TO MARKUS…

“The grapes we wound up with made the final blend about 60% Kerner, 20% Gewürztraminer and 20% Rieslaner, all from the Koth’s Mokelumne Glen Vineyards. The oak is 50% French and 50% American Seguin Moreau, all new. Batonnage every two weeks, sur lie. Otherwise, the winemaking is very basic: nine months oak, heat and cold stable, sterile filtered and bottled June 3rd with no R.S. (residual sugar) and not one single gram of acid added. This is what this region can make. Pure vineyard. The wine has an intense freshness to it.”

DRINK DIFFERENT

Markus continues, “You have Kerner with unique minerality – a very interesting grape for mouth feel and structure. Gewürz and Rieslaner bring a floral aspect, and oak integrates all these layers. People should understand how sick it is to put German varietals on oak. We’re used to dry whites and dessert wines made in all stainless steel. You never make wine from your own personal liking, but I made this wine from my own personal liking. I think it’s killer.”

Randy Caparoso agreed, “The 2011 Borra Intuition Lodi Field Blend White is a beautifully perfumed white wine, with white tropical flower (suggesting Hawaiian plumeria, or frangipani) and rose petal/peppercorn spices, with undertones of fresh cream and Chinese lychee fruit. The wine is even better when you taste it – bone dry, feathery light in its medium body (just 12.8% alcohol), and a pointedly tart, clean, lemony edge that makes the palate cry for more (more wine, or for some great summery foods!). Meanwhile, the spiced fruit flavors signaled in the nose channel through the mouth like soft, silky waves upon tropical shores. Very sleek, contemporary, and as refreshing as a dry white wine can be.”

During a private tasting, we asked Randy what Intuition could pair with, and he replied, “The barrel ferment added to the textural quality a little viscosity, a little glycerol. You can serve it with oils or butter, ginger, chili spices, or anise. Usually you want to serve it with seafood, though even a vinaigrette salad would be nice. A ham and cheese Panini would work well because the cheese, when melted, gives creaminess. Try spring rolls with bean noodles, cilantro and shrimp or pork served with peanut sauce. It would taste good with sausage too, perhaps linguica from Lockeford Meat Company.”

Intuition will be released on Saturday, July 28, 2012 at a special event open to the general public at Borra Vineyards from 1pm to 4pm. The price will be $22 per bottle ($17.59 for La Dolce Vita Club Members). There were only 146 cases of this rule-breaking wine produced, and it will be available only at the winery and a handful of the best restaurants.

We hope you can join us!

First, we celebrated our 2008 Red Fusion being chosen as a Wall Street Journal winner. Next, we made it through April without a bite of frost. Now, we’ve been chosen as 2012 Winery of the Year by Visit Lodi! Conference and Visitors Bureau.

On May 1st we were all honored at the 6th Annual Tourism Luncheon at the Wine & Roses Hotel Restaurant Spa, with the superb gourmet creations of Chef Didier Gerbi.

Keith Colgan of LODI360.com was on hand to captured the event nicely in these photos. Just about everybody we know filled the room, including Lodi City Councilman, Bob Johnson, and City Manager, Rad Bartlam. Nancy Beckman, President and CEO of Visit Lodi! served as master of ceremonies.

Also honored for contributions to the Lodi tourism effort was Frank Gayaldo, addressing the crowd (above), from Embassy Wine Distributors.

One of the most wonderful tributes was the following video, produced for Visit Lodi! by Baja Media Productions:

We took the opportunity to lift the following quotes from the video by our friends:

“The Winery of the Year award is given to a winery that has made a significant contribution to the tourism industry over the last year. People like Bev and Steve really make my job so much easier. They have such a great vision and everything they’ve done really makes Lodi a destination worth coming to.” – Nancy Beckman, President & CEO, Visit Lodi!

“Steve’s wines show a quality and commitment to character that really show up well. We’re very proud of their accomplishments.” – Bob Lauchland, Chairman, Lodi Winegrape Commission (seated on right with Stuart Spencer, Program Manager)

“I am just elated to have the relationship I have with Steve and know that he’s gotten this recognition.” – Leonard Cicerello, Owner, Lodi Wines (standing on right with David Lucas and Steve)

“The number of people that come back because of meeting Markus or having their wine at one of our pourings is enormous.” – Clint Reed, Geweke Hospitality

We, at Borra Vineyards, throw out a huge THANK YOU to all of you who have visited us over the years. Please come back soon and bring all your friends! Cheers!

It seems like the last time we had this much rain was back in October when we didn’t really want it, before we’d picked all our grapes.

So far, over in Lockeford, where most of our winegrapes are grown at our Gill Creek Ranch, we’ve accumulated about 6 inches of rain since the beginning of October. Compare that to close to 16 inches we had at this point in the season last year, and you can see we’ve had a pretty dry year – the third driest winter on record!

On Monday, before the storm blew in, Markus Niggli (our winemaker) had a chance to snap some photos of our neatly-pruned Gill Creek Ranch Chardonnay and old vine Zin. He also chatted with local wine writer for LodiWine.com, Randy Caparoso. (You can read the story either here or at their site.)

The abundant rains last year filled upstream reservoirs, such that some pretty major releases of water were apparently required to manage capacity. These releases flooded Lodi vineyards along the Mokelumne River that supply us with German varietals we use in some blends.

The river got so high that it sent water up through the pesky gofer home network under our low-lying Gill Creek Ranch Viognier vineyard block. With no breach in the protecting berm surrounding the vineyard, we wondered where the water was coming from at first – before we noticed the gushing gofer holes.

We should be able to get by on last year’s bank of water, but not without irrigation. Even old vines with deep roots can’t survive if their entire root system dries out and remains dry for too long.

In fact, Markus was quoted, “We’ve already turned on the irrigation twice this year, to let water soak into the ground — the first time in the seven years I’ve been here that we’ve had to do that in the winter.”

Our real concern is frost.

“The last thing we need this year is to lose crop to frosts, just as the vines are in bud break,” Markus told Randy.

In particular, that same Viognier vineyard loves to collect frosty morning air that travels along the river. A few years ago we installed an overhead sprinkler system and frost alarms to protect the crop that has suffered a number of vintages.

Last year, Steve and Markus were awakened a few times in the wee hours to activate the sprinklers when the temperature crept down into the low 30’s, threatening to kill the tender, new, inches-long green shoots.

The dry, clear weather has made for lower lows and higher high temperatures over the last several months. Plus, dry soils lead to less humidity in the air, which allows temperatures to drop further. This threat of freezing temps usually extends through most of April around Lodi.

To push off budbreak – and therefore to keep new shoots out of as much of April as possible – Markus and crew rescheduled pruning for two to three weeks later than usual, “especially for grapes like Viognier and Barbera, which might have already been in bud break if we hadn’t delayed pruning.”

The current forecast of more than a week of clouds and rain, mostly below the low 60’s should thankfully help keep budbreak delayed, hopefully past the end of March.

But ask any seasoned Lodi grower and they’ll tell you that somehow everything works out come harvest.

Not long after sun-up on a Monday a couple of weeks ago, I snapped a bunch of pictures while Steve described the art of pruning.

There had been a few days delay in our photo shoot while the perfect pair of long red, pruning loppers could be imported back from the shed over at Gill Creek Ranch near Lockeford. While it’s possible to snip off last year’s woody shoots with scissor-sized shears, in professional hands the large loppers slice through old-vine, inch-thick wood like butter.

To begin work, Steve picked a row of the same Carrú Vineyard Barbera he planted in 1972, right up against the north side of the gravel parking lot near the winery on Armstrong Road – the Borra’s Home Ranch.

Steve decided to plant Barbera because Ernest and Julio Gallo said it would be the next big thing. Unfortunately, in this somewhat fickle business, three short years later the next big thing was White Zin. Rather than sell all the grapes, in 1975 the family made nearly 400 cases of the boutique winery’s first bottling of Barbera.

To get close into one of the two outstretched cordon arms of an old vine, Steve lops off a few upward dangling shoots that would otherwise knock off his glasses or the hat that has become his omnipresent trademark.

“This would be easier if we hedged all these rows.”

He’s indicating that a mechanical pruning could chop off all the long shoots allowing him to get right against each spur position and make only the most educated cuts, rather than having to machete through the jungle of long shoots.

“See that bud?”

I lean forward and snap another one of about 83 photos while listening attentively.

“That one’s pretty thin.” It’s on a shoot that’s about the width of my pinky finger. “This other one is stronger, so that weak one is coming off.” He works the shears to make a strategic cut, removing the wimpy shoot.

Steve then makes another cut, leaving the classic two-bud spur that will give rise to two strong shoots, each with one or two clusters of lusciously-complex Barbera grapes.

We then move less than a foot down the arm to look at nearly the same set of shoots and buds – but there are differences. Each spur is hand-trimmed with a vision of not only what the grapes will look like, but also an idea of which way the shoots will grow and even what they might look like during next year’s pruning.

After we get going I realize no one’s talking.

I break the silence, “What are you thinking?”

“I got into the zone,” Steve answers. “It’s really relaxing working the puzzle of one spur after another. You can tune everything else out.”

In the early days of selling his Barbera, Steve says, “Most grapes were packed in lugs labeled Zinfandel, which they said they’d re-label, but who really knows?”

No one cared much that his grapes were Barbera until the 1980’s, as they came a bit back into fashion when Napa’s legendary Louis Martini grew to be a big fan of Steve’s vines. Martini would send his son to collect the harvested grapes.

After climbing atop a truck to get a few panoramic shots, and scrambling in the mud for a dramatic close-up, I let Steve know I’ve got what I need.

“I could keep going, but I’ll leave it to the crew,” he says. “I should have them pick this part of the row separately and see if my yield is better.”

I have to admire Steve’s workmanship after all these years. No wonder Borra wines are so darn good.

Needless to say, we’re excited beyond belief. Our Fusion was chosen as “One of America’s Finest Wines” – a winner of The 3rd WSJwine® Annual Dozen 2011 competition, which appears as a half-page announcement in today’s paper.

Over 800 wines were tasted blind last year by a panel of top judges, led by the world’s No. 1 wine writer, Hugh Johnson. Of those highly-regarded wines only the best 24 made the final cut, grouped as The WSJwine Annual Dozen 2011 and The Luxury Dozen, along with other respected names, such as Pine Ridge, St. Supéry and Trefethen of Napa, and Scott Harvey of Amador. WSJwine is a partnership between The Wall Street Journal and the world’s leading direct-to-home wine merchant.

Our 2008 Fusion is a Rhône-style blend of Petite Sirah, Syrah, Mourvèdre and Alicante Bouschet grapes mostly grown at our Gill Creek Ranch, north of Lockeford, and near the winery. “I’ve been farming those grapes for a long time, so it’s wonderful to finally get recognition on such a high level,” said Steve Borra.

Our winemaker, Markus Niggli agreed, “This is an amazing honor for us and Lodi! Don’t tell anyone, but we think our cooler vintage 2009 Fusion is even better, which is good because we have less than 20 cases of the 2008 left.”

DOUBLE-GOLD AT SF WINE COMPETITION!

And to put icing on the cake, we just found out today that our newly-released 2009 Fusion won a Double-Gold medal in the prestigious 2012 San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition in the “Rhône Other Varietals & Blends-up to $19.99”category.

This competition is considered the “Largest Competition of American Wines in the World,” with a record-setting 5,500 different wines submitted. To get a Double-Gold is a major accomplishment, because all five judges in the tasting panel need to be unanimous in awarding a wine a gold.

To celebrate our critically-acclaimed Fusion family, we’ll be literally rolling out the Fusion red carpet on Saturday, January 14 from 12 p.m. to 5 p.m. at our tasting room. We’re waiving our usual $5.00 tasting fee in honor of the occasion, and a special commemorative glass will be included with any wine purchase, so please make plans to join us!

Pages 4 and 5 of today's Wall Street Journal

Winemaker Markus Niggli: "These will make a killer 2011 Merlot!"

After a dearth of blogging, I finally caught up with our winemaker, Markus Niggli for a comparison of the last several vintages of Borra wines.

A COOLING TREND

Following a string of pretty toasty-warm vintages, Markus recalled, “2009 was the first year with a cooler growing season and higher acidity. The wines were more crisp with a freshness even in reds, with the ‘09 47.5° Red Wine as the best example.”

Warning: the following contains a gratuitous display of numbers, requiring a quick background in high school chemistry.

“pH” is a measure of how much acid is in a liquid – wine in our case. It’s a pretty goofy system, because it’s the opposite of what you’d expect: the higher the pH number goes, the less acid there is. Tap water is pH 7, while wines range from take-the-enamel-off-your-teeth, lemon-like pH 3.0, on up to very soft pH 4.0. Nice, balanced, food-friendly wines tend to be near the middle, pH 3.5.

“For the Red Wine, 2007 and 2008 were big and lush with pH near 4, but the 2009 is 3.52, which is a more classic acidity,” says Markus. “And the alcohols are coming down. 2011 will have alcohols around 13.5%, not 14.5% or 15%. There’s less sugar, but more balance. 2008 was a sugar race and acid was lagging behind.”

Translation: during the growing season, sugar replaces acid in a grape as it ripens and develops complex flavors. A lot of warmth for too long a period means the sugars accumulate quickly and the acid drops quickly, heading toward pH 4. It also means there isn’t as much time for flavors to reach their potential.

Our Lot 09 47.5° Red Wine is almost ready for pre-release to our La Dolce Vita Club Members.

The last few cool seasons have allowed the grapes to hold on to their acid while flavors bloom and sugars creep up in a more controlled fashion.

Per Markus, “The acid has more time to get softer and the cooler temperatures during the growing season holds the Brix from going through the roof while the grapes are hanging nicely, hopefully until mid-October or later.”

Winemakers get pretty excited over certain numbers that otherwise look plain boring. For example, Markus is wide-eyed ecstatic about Zinfandel this year: “Our 2011 Zin has 3.56 pH with 25.1° Brix! What else do you want?!? It’s right there! Our 2008 Zin pH was 3.9-4.0 with sugars over 27° Brix!”

Translation: 2011 will be a dynamite vintage.

Fresh 2011 Home Ranch Merlot grapes ready to be crushed.

INTENSE COLOR

These cool vintages for some reason give us the most intense color in our wines – that’s if you want to call pitch black color.

Markus bleeds off a few barrels of juice from almost all of his reds, not only to make these red wines a bit more intense, but also to have pink juice for making our popular dry-style Rosé.

But that intense color proved to be a challenge: “It’s hard to make a Rosé look like a Rosé this year, because after only a couple of hours of skin contact the juice that we bled off was so dark!”

THE RAIN ISSUE

“2009 was not a good year for Petite Sirah because of that huge October 13 rain. It’s the same this year, but two rains (October 5-6 and a surprise rain on October 10) in a short period speeded up rot. One rain, we can handle. A second, we cannot. All of a block of Syrah 877 in Gill Creek Ranch was lost to rot. The Rhône’s are thin-skinned. You try to grab a berry from the bunch and all you have is skin. The pulp just disintegrates right out,” says Markus with a look of forlorn disgust.

Every barrel must be checked for off odors - an indication that something is going wrong.

Rain, wind and otherwise oddball weather during berry set in May made us all brace for a smaller crop due to “misses,” where grapes never form, or due to “hens and chicks,” where small green grapes never grow and ripen. It also led to “shatter” where a light brushing of a cluster with your sleeve will cause random grapes to plop to the ground.

Back to Markus, “Crop size is moderate to light this year, but it varies with the winegrape variety. Zin is 50% down. Merlot had a 25% decrease over last year, which was overall 25% shy. We could have sold out our whole field of Zin, but we didn’t have enough for all our contracts. Prices and demand will go up for next year.

“Our Viognier block at Gill Creek Ranch gave us 47 tons and it should have been 100 tons, but the quality is insane at 4 tons per acre! I’m very happy with the Viognier this year. I’m also very happy with our Zin, Merlot and Field Blend, and the whites are really good. On the other hand, the Petite Sirah and Syrah may be just OK.”

The bottom line is that cooler vintages in Lodi are helping us make more intense, complex wines, but there won’t be nearly as much to go around. So stock up on your favorites!

This German varietal Kerner, made with grapes from Mokelumne Glen Vineyard, will go into one of next year's white bottlings.