Amethyst Wines News

Website and Wine Club Launch

Mon, 22 Oct 2007 10:30:00 -0600

Mon, 22 Oct 2007

Greetings,

We are excited to announce the launch of our Amethyst Wines website and Wine Club. The website will list our currently available wines and bring you the latest Amethyst news. In addition as this website is enabled for full and secure e-commerce it allows you easy access to buy Amethyst directly from our winery. For our direct web customers we offer a 10 % discount and free shipping on orders of a case or more.

We are also introducing a wine club. Members of our wine club will be entitled to 20% discounts on all purchases, have access to some very limited library wines, and will receive a shipment of 4 Amethyst wines 3 times a year. For all the details see our wine club page.

As a special introductory gift for all our direct customers we are offering free shipping on 6 bottles or more until Dec. 1st. (usually only offered on 12 bottles or more). And if you put in the promo code “napa610” you will get 25% off your order instead of the usual discounts but only if we receive your order by Dec 1st.

So become an Amethystian, sign up for our mailing list or become a wine club member and enjoy Amethyst wines all year round.

We look forward to hearing from you and sharing our hand crafted wines with you.

Thanks from all of us at Amethyst Wines.

2007 Harvest Notes

Fri, 19 Oct 2007 22:38:00 -0600

Fri, 19 Oct 2007

2007 Harvest notes
Brooks Family Vineyard

Well it started out as an early year with bud break and bloom (flowering) almost 2 weeks ahead of normal. The winter before had been dry and for the first time in years we failed to fill our irrigation pond. Fortunately most of the summer was moderate, probably the coolest season in the last 5 years, so water demands were reduced and we projected an early harvest, around the first of October. While Bernie and I were off at Burning Man, we had our only ";Burning Vine”; week with some really hot temperatures. On our return we harvested the Pinotage block (you can taste this when you visit) that we make for the family. It was at 28Brix with some intense flavors. We put the water to the Cabernet Sauvignon vines and the weather cooperated as Napa cooled off significantly. Late September was almost cold and things slowed down quite a bit. For a variety of reasons the Cabernet began to show some stress and so we dropped a little crop.
This year we picked the vineyard in three separate passes. First we harvested the terraces on Oct. 4th and the small block in front of the house (clone 6 Cabernet Sauvignon). Then we did a second pass on Friday the 5th of the terraces. On Sunday the 7th we picked the ";flats"; in back of the house including the Cabernet Franc. Total harvest was 3.7 Tons or 1.5 tons per acre, much lighter than 2005 and 2006.

The fruit was crushed into five separate T bins and cold soaked for 1-3 days and we inoculated the fruit on October 6th. The free run from the terraces and flats have been kept separate and the press wine has been consolidated. Looks like Brooks Family Vineyard will produce about 240 cases for 2007. The small fermentation lots and the smooth primary fermentation along with small cluster and berries have us all hoping for a great vintage.

WFB

2006 Vintage Report

Thu, 01 Mar 2007 18:09:00 -0600

Thu, 01 Mar 2007

Cabernet Sauvignon-The 2006 harvest was normal at about 2.8 tons per acre ; and occured on October 20th. ; Of course walking the vineyard and tasting the fruit is a key factor in the harvest decision but there is some great technology out there for looking at the wine ";molecule by molecule "; and the results we got back from those tests indicate the highest levels of Color and Tanin we've ; ever seen-so far so good. ; The wine is barreled down in a mixture of new and 1 year old french oak.

Nebiollo- The 2006 harvest occurred in early November , that's nebbiolo for you you've got to be patient. The wine has fabulous structure and it looks to be a good year.