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Stuart Cellars was recently a featured winery in Touring and Tasting Magazine.
"As one of Temecula’s fine family wineries, Stuart Cellars opened its doors with one goal in mind: to produce high quality wine that they can proudly share with family and friends. To achieve this goal, the winery uses many of the time-honored traditions of the Old World, blended with California style. Throughout the process, Winemaker Marshall Stuart maintains a vigilant adherence to quality, which starts in the vineyard and culminates in the wine glass."
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Happy 2009 everyone! Wow, it is crazy how time flies! Wrapping up the holidays, which I hope were good to all, and jumping into the new year I look forward to the changes in 2009 that everybody is talking about. Here at the Stuart house, the biggest change is that we are staying home a bit more. Marshall and I both enjoy cooking, and cooking for our friends and family is what we love doing the most. On any given night,
while Bradley is busy doing his never-ending homework, I am usually whipping up something yummy in the kitchen. I can expect a friend or two or three to stop by for a quick hello and glass of wine. Sometimes
the evening takes a tum and before you know, it is a gathering of great friends that goes late into the night, with lots of laughter and good times. It seems that the unplanned moments are the ones that we remember the most. Not long ago, Marshall and I found ourselves in a pie baking competition between the two of us. That was fun. We were calling in our friends to come over for dessert and to judge our efforts! I took the prize with my mixed berry pie a la mode. The competition had to stop due to our growing midsections. Now I'm working on working it off by running around the vineyard. I want to wish everybody a healthy and prosperous 2009, and I look forward to good times at Stuart Cellars with the friends I already know, and the ones I have yet to meet. Cheers, Susan Stuart |
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Dear Marshall: Q: With winemaking, how much is chemistry and how much is art? A: I really think it’s a mixture of both. From the “art” perspective, some of the most important issues are tending to the vines, how much water the vines receive, how they are planted, the trellising and when the grapes are at their phenolic maturity, meaning they all have to be ready for the pick, including sugar and brix contents. The seeds should be dark roasted coffee color and when you put one between your teeth and bite down on it, the seed should shatter like china. The skin, once you pull the pulp out, can be split in half and held up to the sun to make sure it has dark purple hues. You then rub the skin together between your first finger and thumb and gently roll it back and forth to see how many times before it releases color. These are just a few steps that help lead me to my decisions, as well as years worth of trial and error. I also feel that putting a final blend of three or even five separate wines together 6 month before release and then allowing it to age together in a barrel is also an important step. This is all part of the art of winemaking; truly looking for the same profiles and all the flavors to be closely duplicated from one year to the next. From the “chemistry” perspective, we have a laboratory here at Stuart Cellars where we check for things such as residual sugar, total acid, pH levels, alcohol levels, as well as a host of other things. If any of the above levels are not representative of the flavor profiles I strive for in my wines, I can gently manipulate the wines with fining agents or acid adjustments. |
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The busy holiday season helped us to continually learn and fine tune the customer experience in our Tasting Room. We have been listening to our guests, and especially our wine club members, and want to make your visits to our winery as pleasant and enjoyable as possible. We continue to work on our new point of sale system, and have added a new check-out station on the back tasting bar. However, technology can be confusing and frustrating sometimes. Trying to get all of our new systems to "talk" with our new computer server and get everything streamlined has been a challenge, but we feel confident that we are down the home stretch. For those of you that have had to wait a little longer than normal when making a purchase, we appreciate your patience and promise that those days will soon be a thing of the past! At least you can rest assure that our wines are not experiencing any technical difficulties and continue to please your palate. But most importantly, the holiday season has made us think of friends that we have all made in the past. Besides all the new faces and great conversations, we all had a chance to visit with old friends and Cellar Dwellers that came in to make their holiday purchases. Reconnecting with them, sharing our respective life updates with one another, all while enjoying a glass of wine is what makes the best of memories. Again, if you have not been in our Tasting Room for some time, we would love to see you soon. We are confident that you will love all the changes we have made. |
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