Christmas - only on vacation do I start thinking about writing about working

Neat.  I have a blog.  Nice font, looks easy to use.

I make wine.  Well, actually there are a whole bunch of people that I work with that make wine.  I get the title, which means I get to sit at a desk rather than drag hoses and do the fun stuff.  It's time to use the desk to actually talk about it.

Even so, I have done my fair share of dirty jobs: shoveling out fermentation tanks with pomace (fun), digging out drains (not fun), dropping barrels while driving a forklift (embarrassing, especially when  you have to get help to pick them up again), mixing sulfur dioxide solution (poisonous).

December is blending time.  Specifically, blending the 2007 red wines, some of the nicest wines I've worked with.  I know it seems odd to start talking about a wine that has been in process for some 14 months already (well, 17 years for my favorite of all the wines if you count the planting decision), but we have to start somewhere.  Over the next 12 months I plan to talk about all sorts of vintages of wines, because they all fall within the calendar of winemaking at some point.  

• 2009 is around the corner - the vines may be dormant, but the number of potential clusters per shoot has already been set by the weather in spring 2008.  
• The 2008 wines are all in barrel of tank, finishing up malolactic fermentation, and continuing the process of elevage, my favorite word in French, which describes the raising, or breeding of the wines in the cellar up until bottling.  
• The 2007 wines are almost there - the whites have been bottled for some time, and the fullest bodied Cabernets are in preparation for bottling in June 2009.  
• The 2006 wines are resting after bottling (the Cabernets) or being consumed (the Pinot Noir), or are long gone (the pink wine).  
• The biggest of the 2005's are still available (the Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot), or just about to be released (the Reserve Cabernet).  
• 2004 wines are all but done, with the lone Reserve Cabernet still out there, still youthful and intense.  
• 2003 and further back are safely in the wine library, waiting for the random interlude of a vertical tasting to see how things are, and to answer the constant questions "how does the such-and-such vintage of so-and-so taste?  Naturally, I force myself to taste these wines and answer the questions, well, somebody has to do it.  
• As for the future, beyond the 2009 vintage there are the new plantings coming on line in 2010, currently existing as rootstock, and the development work to be done in 2009 and 2010, which will bear fruit in, oh, perhaps another five years.
  

It takes 10 years to get to know a vineyard.  Five is good, it will show you the extremes, but 10 shows all the little quirks of personality, and with that knowledge, you can start to make an impact on the next ten years.

I was talking about 2007 blends right?