February, 2005

Greetings from Bialla Vineyards

Napa is alive again and the workers are back in the field. Everybody is scurrying around and a "buzz" is definitely in the air. We pruned on Thursday and the cycle of making the best fruit starts over again..

Last year was an extraordinary year with much early rain, then heat, then more rainfall. This will be one of those miracle years which comes along every twenty years or so according to the experts.

We picked our harvest at 26.8 brix with a solid fog enshrouding the vineyard. This kept the fruit cool and ideal for crushing. I was there at 5 am till I cut my finger at which point I decided I must be managerial talent after all.

Our must turned almost black in three days. In short a wine makers dream come true.

The season was not without mishap. Mike Seitz, who was our Vineyard manager, had an accident with a fork lift in another vineyard at 2:20 am which cost him his life. He leaves behind a wife and a son less than a year old. Christy is giant of a women and is carrying on his Brookdale brand and winery operation but not his vineyard management business. If you see Brookdale wine buy it or go to the website www.brookdalewine.com - you can buy it on line and you'll taste something spectacular.

Our harvest was done by Oscar Rentario who came to the rescue. Wine Spectator featured him and his father as the Godfather of Vineyard management in Napa. Oscar's cousin, Hector Lopes, who worked for Caymus for over 16 years went out on his own and is now in charge of our vineyard. We are extremely lucky to have Hector as our new manager and we have already implemented some new procedures to the Bialla vineyard.

Our wine after harvest went in to the finest French 100% oak barrels money can buy. CFO Ben Bialla is such an easy guy to work with. A set of Pokeman cards and I get my $800 barrels. Around the X-Mas holidays Craig McLean and I tasted the wine after a few months in the barrel and I have to say it competes with childbirth in terms of pride. We have an absolute winner in the making.

In the mean time we started building a cave, again with the help of our CFO Ben Bialla who was so generous. Rather than send you images of a dark hole under construction see the site of our builder at www.bacchuscaves.com. Bacchus is world renowned and has an incredible crew and reputation. We hope to send you pictures of the dining room, private bottle storage, barrel storage, tanks, etc. in the very near future. Thank you Ben.

So we hope you can be patient till 2005. Now that our whole system is underway it will just repeat itself each year. Hopefully we will be able to share something very special with you. Be assured what little we do sell will be the finest wine made by the finest talent I could assemble and you were there from the very beginning.

Vito Bialla
Bialla Vineyards