Pork and Pinot

Every other year, we host a fundraiser for our kids' school called "Pork and Pinot." The school is a Spanish Immersion school here in Napa, and the proceeds from the event go to supporting arts education at the school. At the event, which was this past Saturday, we cooked a whole pig (this year, the wonderful folks from Oenotri volunteered to cook the pig), we make lots of yummy sides, served strawberry shortcake for dessert (thanks to ABC Bakery) and, of course, had LOTS of great wines.

Thanks to Tyler and Sam for cooking the pig

The funny thing is that we don't even make a Pinot, but several parents at the school are winemakers and are willing to donate....we just love the pairing of pork with Pinot (and it has a catchy name). A local country and western band donates and everyone has a great time dancing!

the band Passin' Through (thanks for the donation!)

the final product

a fun time was had by all!

Grafting our Grapes

When we bought our property five years ago, it was planted with Merlot grapes. After the first harvest, we made a small amount of wine from the Merlot and sold the rest of the grapes to another winery. The quality of the wine from that first year wasn’t very good. We thought that our soil wasn’t a good match for Merlot, and that we would eventually have to graft all of the vines over to another variety.

grafting

Typically when grapes are planted, the bottom half of the grape vine, called the rootstock is planted first. Then the top of the vine, or the budwood, is grafted on. Grafting is an age-old practice that allows you to plant rootstock that is resistant to pests and diseases and/or grows better in drier conditions. However rootstock produces grapes that don’t make good quality wine, so it’s necessary to graft the variety of grape that you want for your wine onto the top.  The variety that is grafted onto the top of the rootstock (the budwood) doesn’t take on any of the flavors of the rootstock.


The first spring after we bought our property, we grafted a small section of the vineyard with the variety Ribolla gialla (an ancient variety brought to California from Fruili, Italy) onto our home vineyard. Ribolla gialla is one of the varieties in our White Wine blend. In 2008 we made a 100% Ribolla gialla from that small planting and it was part of our first Wine Club shipment.

this tiny piece of a stick will turn into a grape vine

Since then we have grafted more of the Ribolla into our vineyard as well as Refosco  (another variety brought to California from Fruili, Italy), Cabernet franc, and Petit verdot. We made small amounts of wine from these limited graftings, and they turned out so well that we decided to graft some more. We also grafted another variety typically grown in Fruili, Italy called Schioppettino. So more, fun, unusual wine to come from our vineyard!

the results from last year's grafting

And this week was the week of grafting. Because it’s a highly trained skill, we hire professional grafters who travel around the world following the grafting season. It’s a pretty amazing process.

Our Spring 2012 Wine Release and Some Great Press

bottling

We are very excited to announce the release of our 2011 MATTHIASSON Napa Valley White Wine and our latest Wine Club shipment.

The 2011 White Wine, a blend of Sauvignon blanc, Ribolla gialla, Semillon, and Tocai fruilano, is our most complex vintage to date. It's almost Reisling-like at first, and thanks to the extremely long and cool growing season there is tremendous natural acidity tempered with a lot of flesh and ripeness. Flavors include white peach, kafir lime, lychee nut, grapefruit, and pineapple, along with stones, oyster shells, and freshly baled straw.

You can order your 2011 White Wine by clicking here

*orders of 12 or more bottles ship for free

We have recently received a lot of great press about our wines, and the wines are selling fast. The blog Vinography, considered by many to be the top wine blog in the country, recently posted a detailed story of who we are and how we came to be, and gave great reviews of our wines! In the article, blogger Alder Yarrow states “If Napa is going to evolve and change as a wine region…. it will do so in the hands of people like Steve Matthiasson. His two flagship wines are so unlike anything else being made in Napa Valley at the moment that they are enough to stop any seasoned Napa wine lover in their tracks. Not just that, though. They are also phenomenally good.”

Matthiasson wine in a keg (for restaurants)

You can also buy our wines by joining our Wine Club where you will get access to our tiny production "passion wines." The May Wine Club shipment will include our newly released 2011 White Wine, the 2007 MATTHIASSON Red Wine, the 2009 Sonoma Coast Chardonnay, described in the blog Vinography as "a nerve-tingling wine that nearly knocked me out of my chair," and the 2011 MATTHIASSON Rosé.

 Join our Wine Club now by clicking here

Wine Club Member benefits:

• Allocation of our flagship, Matthiasson Red and Matthiasson White wines
• Discounts of a maximum of 20% on all our wines for every order you place
• Access to our “Passion Wines” (unique, tiny production lots)
• Access to Matthiasson home-made goodies from our organic fruit orchard (such as jams, jellies, olive oil, home-made vinegar, etc…)
• Invitations to Matthiasson exclusive events

As always, we thank you for your support!

Steve, Jill and the boys