Winery
April 1, 2004, we pass final inspection with the County of Sonoma and we are officially open as the Saint Helena Road Winery. We had 10 exciting months of construction activity and now we have a very sweet little production facility with a barrel room molded into our hillside.
This facility contains many new “state of the art” features. The building itself is an “Arc Membrane” system, which is like a giant Lego system, using recycled, Styrofoam blocks that snap together. There is a built-in recycled PVC structure within these blocks that receives and snaps into place steel rebar for structural support. Once these blocks are fitted together and supported with rebar, cement is filled into the cavities of these blocks and presto, overnight you have a concrete building with the blocks becoming R53 insulation.
We removed 1500 cubic yards of dirt from our hillside location and built the foundation for this building. Once the structure was complete, we replaced all dirt removed and returned our mountain slope to its’ original incline with our new building 50% underground. This underground facility creates a “cave like” domain for our barrels to be housed.
Inside, we opted to use the newly designed Oxoline Barrel Racking System. This system places all barrels in a steel rack structure with wheels at each barrels lower side to allow rotation of each barrel separately. You place your barrels into this rack when new, and they are never removed until you are finished with your wine. The barrels are washed in the rack, stirred by rotation, thus eliminating the need for constant fork lift manipulation. In addition to tremendous manpower relief, this racking system eliminates the need for many wide isles for fork lift maneuvering and allows you to build a considerably smaller facility.
We installed a “Humi-fan” Humidification system by Ed Guinee and Associates into our facility to automatically keep humidity computer controlled. This system moves moist air by oscillating fan throughout our facility and helps minimize evaporation in our barrels. This system defines “state of the art”. In addition we have installed a “night air cooling system” that automatically shifts air conditioning to outside air when the temperatures drop below inside settings. This minimizes our power usage when outside temperatures cooperate. Our Barrel Room and Storage/Fermentation tanks are heated and cooled by a recirculating glycol system, a food grade material that allows us to adjust our temperatures to the requirements of custom wine making.
In 2004, we processed with our new production equipment in use for the first time. We are thrilled with the Delta E2 De-stemmer/crusher that now greets our grapes! The Delta E2 gently and carefully handled our crop and deposited the grapes into the crusher without a “jack” in sight! (“Jacks” are pieces of grape stem) We were completely thrilled with the smooth operation of this machine and combined with the custom equipment provided by Carlsen & Associates of Healdsburg, Ca. our tidy production line of receiving hopper, the Delta E2, the screw sump and Waukesha 130 Pump, ran 2 tons of grapes in about half an hour.
The purity of the wine must is impressive, not a single leaf, due to the hand picked nature of our harvest using small baskets to transport the fruit. Our grapes are fermented in our Fermentation/Storage tanks now installed on our crush pad. All pure, free run wine is transferred into our 100% French Oak barrels. We then run the must from the tanks, through the wine press and back into a tank, to settle the sediment in this pressed wine.
A day settling and this pressed wine is ready to be sent to the barrel room into 59 gallon French Oak Bordeaux Barrels, where it will spend its time aging until it is determined if this pressed wine will meet the quality requirements of our free run.
All wine is stored in a temperature controlled environment.
VINTAGE 2003
Our 2003 Roy J. Maier Cabernet Sauvignon, 500 cases, was bottled on June 12, 2005! The blend, 80% Cabernet Sauvignon, 10% Merlot, 5% Malbec, 4% Cabernet Franc and 1% Petite Verdot has an alcohol of 14.0% and was entirely Estate produced here by Saint Helena Road Vineyards and Winery . This elegant wine has an excellent bouquet, flavors that say “mountain fruit”, silky tannins and a finish that lasts and lasts.
The grapes of this vintage were the very best clusters that our maturing vines could produce. In order for our vines to receive the most energy from their root systems, we removed all clusters from our smaller, less developed vines. The faster developing and larger vines were allowed to keep only their most perfect clusters, leaving only 2 to 4 per vine. This fruit “dropping” allows all usable energy intended for this dropped fruit to be absorbed by the trunk and cordons of each vine, and accelerates the developmental process for future harvests. By minimizing the fruit allowed to remain on the larger vines, these saved clusters are ripened by this same concentrated energy that feeds the vine’s structure.
The result of this “minimal fruit production” elevates our grapes in their developmental process, providing our 2003 vintage with exceptional and highly concentrated fruit flavors. These grapes were the best selection we could provide for our initial wine release.
This 2003 vintage was fermented in ½ ton grape bins, with all “punch downs” done by hand. While this vintage was being processed, we were constructing our new winery facilities detailed above.
We know our grandfather, great-grandfather, would be proud of our effort.