You wait all year and know it’s coming, but it always feels like its sneaked up on you. How can it be harvest already? What happened to summer? However, harvest time it is and at Cornerstone we start picking our sauvignon blanc on Tuesday. That realization wakes you up and you start to notice a few leaves on the ground, the shorter and shorter days and a different type of coolness in the evening air. Fall is indeed arriving.

It’s been an unusual growing season, at least that’s the conventional wisdom. In fact, it’s almost like last vintage, which means its been cool by Napa Valley standards. Is this the new “normal”? In my opinion a little cooler is not a bad thing. Cooler vintages give more balanced wines that are more transparent. Wines that clearly show where they came from. The major problem so far with vintage 2011 in Napa is the cool, rainy weather during flowering and set, which dramatically reduced the size of this year’s crop. Our Howell Mountain vineyards escaped this fate as the later flowering up on the mountain meant they missed the early June storms. Oddly our cabernet franc vineyards in St. Helena, Oakville and Carneros ended up with good fruit sets too as they also bloomed late.

So we head into mid-September around two weeks behind normal. That’s really not too bad: as long as the fall rains hold off long enough for everything to ripen. This, of course, is a very big “if”.

I often think there is an over-reaction to these slightly cooler years in Napa. Anyone whose spent time in some of the world’s most famous wine growing regions knows that Napa does not face the weather dangers those growers deal with on a regular basis. We will ripen our grapes. We will make excellent wines. I truly believe that these “cooler” vintages make better wines in the Napa Valley. However, certain critics who define wine quality by girth disagree with me, preferring wines from hot vintages. That formula is simple:

High pH + High Alcohol + High Oak + High Price = High Points

These cooler vintages excite me because of the opportunity they give us to make truly balanced, elegant wines designed to taste their best with food. The formula above gives you wines that taste out well against other wines, but that don’t marry well with food. I don’t like them: I don’t like to drink them, I don’t like to make them and I don’t like to sell them.

It will approach 90 degrees this afternoon. Perfect grape ripening weather. Just like last vintage I know we’re going to make wines that I love. I can’t wait.

It’s time.

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I am not completely sure where this idea that one should never take the breathalyzer came from, although I suspect it is simply dated advice that is still being recirculated because in my view, under most circumstances, a person who is stopped by the police should take the breathalyzer if asked to do so. Here’s why:

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As a criminal defense lawyer, I have learned over the years that if I can get the prosecutor to laugh while speaking about my client, then I might get a favorable offer during plea negotiations.  I therefore share many jokes with the prosecutors. 

In speaking with the Scott County Attorney prior to plea negotiations on a DUI case in Georgetown, Kentucky, the prosecutor surprised me with the following true story.

It seems that a young man charged with a DUI in Scott County had argued with the prosecutor that he was not driving at the time the officer pulled him over and therefore the prosecutor should drop the charges because the officer had no grounds to arrest him. Instead, he stated that he was simply changing a flat tire.  The prosecutor replied, yes, but you were changing the wrong tire (the proseuctor did not drop the charges).

Post by Lexington DUI Attorney Stephen Isaacs, Isaacs Law Office.

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Biting into a perfectly ripe cherry represents one of life’s perfections of flavor and sensation. The firm skin parts under a modicum of pressure, and a gorgeous melody unfolds on the tongue &emdash; high notes of juicy acidity, rich baritones of velvety sweet red fruit, an earthy alto bitterness of skin, and a tangy tenor quality burst in the mouth in a way that makes it all too easy to overindulge. Cherry’s singular flavors, from the dark black to the bright bing and the sweet yellow rainier, are a familiar refrain in many wines, made from myriad red grape varieties. While cherry’s unmistakable essences emerge from many a glass, it is hard to deny that good red wines often evoke the fruit even in metaphor, their songs as lip-smackingly rich and sexy as that perfect orb of red, just plucked from the tree.

Il Poggione Brunello di Montalcino, Tuscany, Italy
Shafer Vineyards “Hillside Select” Cabernet Sauvignon, Napa
Domaine Rudolphe Demougeot Pommard, Cote de Beaune, Burgundy, France
Col Solare Red Blend, Columbia Valley, Washington
Artadi “Pagos Viejos” Rioja, Spain
Jim Barry “The Cover Drive” Cabernet Sauvignon, Clare Valley, Australia
Errazuriz “KAI” Don Maximiano Estate Carmenere Blend, Aconcagua Valley, Chile

This is part of an ongoing series of original images and prose called The Essence of Wine

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We normally hear of people trying to break out of jail.  However, last Friday, according to a news story by WFTV.com, 22 year old Joseph Carrara broke into a Volusia County Florida Detention Center area by ramming his pickup truck through the gate.  He then took a joy ride around the grounds and then left by ramming another section of the fence.

Alert deputies reported the break in after a corrections officer noticed the red pickup speeding away.

A deputy sheriff arrested the Carrara aproximately 15 miles away when Carrara nearly hit the deputy with his Toyota pickup.

Police charged Carrara with DUI, felony criminal mischief, and possession of a controlled substance. 

Post by Fayette County, Kentucky DUI Attorney Stephen Isaacs, Isaacs Law Office.

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