NSJ

When I was born my father took Zinfandel grapes from the year’s harvest and made wine in my honor. We opened the wine on my 21st birthday at a family dinner in Ann Arbor [1]. This was always special to me and I hoped to do the same for Niko — I just wasn’t sure how I would pull it off.

When Jotspot was acquired by Google I worked closely with Sam Schillace to help integrate Jot into the world of Google. Sam was the founder of Writely, an online word processor, which had been acquired six months earlier. In addition to being a huge help during the acquisition, Sam turned out to be an experienced wine maker. When I mentioned my desire to make a wine for Niko, he graciously offered his support. He was looking to make a Grenache from 2006 grapes and was willing to double the batch.

Obviously the first step in making wine is to find the right grapes. Using Sam’s expertise we picked a 2006 Eagle Point Grenache from Brehm Vineyards. The Eagle Point Vineyard is a small 82 acre vineyard in central Mendocino County above the Ukiah Valley reasonably at a high elevation for the area (1,800 feet).

Once we picked the grapes we had them shipped down to Richmond to the old Safeway distribution center, a sprawling shipping facility off of Highway 580. It was quite an experience picking them up. I checked in at the front desk and they gave me a badge that said “Driver” (?) and I was then sent to find “Danny” in the warehouse. Danny told me to back my “rig” up to docking bay six. I’m pretty sure Danny didn’t think the “rig” was an Acura MDX, which probably accounted for the look on his face when he opened the docking bay. We loaded what turned out to be a half ton of grapes into the back and I was on my way.

I picked up the grapes on Friday, but we weren’t going to start until Sunday. We were having unusually cold weather for the bay area so I hauled the grapes into the house to keep them warm. This made me think that perhaps a half a ton was too many grapes. This was something I was sure of by the time I hauled them all back out to the car to move them to Sam’s house.

Once we had the grapes, we had to start the primary fermentation. This involves putting the grapes in large plastic barrels and adding yeast. So we hauled the grapes out of the car and dumped them into two barrels. After two days the fermentation hadn’t started because of the cold, so Sam and I had to haul the buckets up the hill to his house (again with the hauling), where they have now successfully started fermentation. A couple times a day Sam or I do what is called “punch down.” This is really a fancy way to say “stir the grapes so the ones that floated to the top don’t get left out.”

Next step: pressing the grapes

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[1] Also in attendance was a beautiful girl who would later become my wife