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April 2, 2013
After many comments of “Where has your blog gone? I’ve noticed you haven’t posted in over a year.” And a lovely dispute with the other half of this adventure, we are back to posting with (hopefully) consistency. The tides change at AmByth, and they seem to change weekly. The undercurrent is a huge driving force internally (as in the day-to-day functions) for the 5 of us working here and implementing our man-forces, but sometimes I think they are trivial and have nothing to do with the interests of those not in the heart of the action. But alas, so many of you have voiced otherwise, and Thank You for this. And jsut for you: a little snippet of something to smile about; this letter was tucked into our “inbox” over Easter weekend–farming is a spiritual practice for us, as is making wine and sharing wine and hopefully this testifies to that. Connections that could be considered “lost”, are indeed not.
Good morning. My name is _______. I am not sure if I am contacting the correct person or not. About 5 years ago my wife and I were in Costa Rica celebrating our anniversary at Los Suenos. We were looking at property and were invited in to look at a couple’s new home they had just built. They shared a glass of wine from their winery with us. By any chance, was this you and your wife? I feel terrible for forgetting their name and the name of their wine. I recalled the wine being organic. I researched organic wineries on line and came across your website for, Ambyth Estate. The picture of you and your wife looks just like the nice couple I mentioned before. If you do not own a home in Costa Rica, and have no idea about what I am talking about, I sincerely apologize for wasting your time.
My wife and I are celebrating our 10 year anniversary and I thought it would be neat to find that wine that we had when we celebrated our 5 year anniversary. Like I said, if I have the wrong person, please forgive me, and thank you for your time.
P.S. You can always check in with us on Facebook or Twitter, we’re over there quite a bit…
May 7, 2012
 We had a Super Moon dinner party this past Saturday, Mary was excited to open a bottle she spied at the local wine shop, a 1998 Vouvray from Clos du Bourg ($52). But a greater surprise came in the selections our guests brought: a 2010 Chateau d’Epire, Savennieres, a 2007 Movia Sauvignon Blanc (with skin contact), an Albarino from Verdad in Santa Barbara (BD), and we threw in a 1993 Chave white Hermitage! We lament when we hear, “I’m not really a white wine drinker”, there are so many INCREDIBLE white wines from every country! We’ve become avid white drinkers, often concluding our evenings with a fantastic white wine. They have acidity and brightness, they are clean on the palate and the aromas are intense. The star of the night was the ’98 Vouvray (plus the ’93 Hermitage), but they were all fantastic wines! (If you have a chance to purchase wines made by Movia, do so! They are out of Slovenia and are making interesting and delicious wines…but they are hard to find.) A little underrated in this star-studded cast was the Verdad Albarino, but we enjoyed the remainder of it Sunday and it is a lovely wine. We’re excited about taking a trip soon to Santa Barbara to check out more of the wines of Verdad!
April 26, 2012
“An interesting thing happened at a dinner party the other day…”
Some four years ago we bought 2 bottles of Chateauneuf-du-pape Domaine Pierre Andre 2000, biodynmaic wine at $70 a bottle. We drank a bottle fairly soon after arrival, it was wonderful, everything you want out of a Rhone wine: great depth, complexity, fruit, delicious, the works. This week we had a dinner party and decided it was time to drink the second bottle. Too late. It wasn’t horrible, it wasn’t even bad, it just didn’t drink to the best of its potential. It was plain, simple, and lacking fruit. It didn’t exhibit those lovely fresh characteristics found with a fantastic Grenache. We’re coming to the conclusion that Grenache based wines are 2 to 8 year wines, this is their optimal drinking window. For us, who have had a 250 case cellar and would insist on only drinking wines that were 15 years or older, this is quite a revelation. Ageing wines a long time has a trade off: fruit. Some obvious exceptions, quality (this word is important in the equation) Cab, Rioja (Tempranillo) and Syrah. All wines with loads of tannins. But a wine that crosses all the boundaries? – Mourvedre – life is good.
January 23, 2012
 This January, Paso Robles, and much of California has suffered from one of the dryest winters on record. Normally, at this time of year, the grasses and wild flowers (otherwise known as weeds) would be enough feed for our 5 free-ranging cows. We were on target for winter rainfall at the end of November, but the surprisingly dry months subsequent dried up what should have been growing. While the days have been particulary beautiful, with incredible clarity and warm temperatures, we were hoping for more rain!
Although, as I write this, the weekend storm brought about 2 inches of rain. Still, this is not enough to make up for the lost rainfall. The vines and olives will be okay, primarily due to 2 past wet winters. Still, it is discouraging to look out at the hills, and see brown where there should be green. Along with our 5 cows eating what little they can find, and fertiziling our soils, we have 2 young lambs on the property grazing with the cows.
 A good factor of a dry January: we’ve been able to get in to the vineyards to begin the pruning. Vines go dormant in the winter, all the leaves fall to the ground (making the rolling hills of vines around us so beautiful, full of fall colors). The vines reach into the soil to get the nutrients and strength for the summer to come. We believe winter is the most active time for a vine, and that the health of a vine will be seen in the summer when the natural growth occurs. We prune on descending moon days, and on fruit and flower days according to the lunar calendar by Maria Thun. It typically takes 30 solid work days to prune over 7,000 vines.
 And boy! Can you see the growth in the olive trees! I love this photo, of Bede running down the road with El Cid hot on his heels! In December, we harvested 1,500 pounds of olives, yielding a little over 100 litres of extra-virgin estate olive oil. Not alot of oil! But this was typical for olive trees this year, many of our friends with trees didn’t have a single olive, so we are thankful the little amount of oil we did harvest! Next in the vineyard? Building cold frames for the garden, ordering more bees and to continue pruning (as well as spraying the BD sprays and trapping the pesky gophers).
August 3, 2011
 It’s funny how small the world is after all. Jac hails from Wales (a.k.a. Cymru) and is spending 4 weeks with us this month of August. He found out about us from a fellow Welsh friend in Southern California. His family has planted a vineyard in West Wales, Aberaeron. The land was purchased in 2005 and 10 acres of vineyards were planted in 2008. An additional 25 acres has been purchased with plans to develop. At the moment, they have Rondo, Solaris, Orion and Regent–these are all hybrid varietals resistant to diseases that are common in the U.K., such as botrytis. Jac will be completing his final year at college this Fall–he is attending Brighton
May 16, 2011
 Phillip pulled a sample amount of our 2010 Viognier and 2010 Marsanne from the barrels to test for “cold stabilization”. And the best way to do this? Fill empty wine bottles and pop them in the refrigerator to observe the wine over a four day period. We are looking to see if the wine remains clear. If the bottle clouds up, then the wine is not stabilized. It needs more time in the barrel, or it needs to be put outside in freezing temperatures to continue stabilizing. If the wine is not cold stabilized, then the proteins can coagulate and appear as a haze in the bottle.
What does all of this mean? A wine that appears to be hazy or cloudy is more offensive in visibility than in taste. It really isn’t that much fun to drink a cloudy wine. But let’s not get this confused with sediment, tartrate crystals, or with white wine “browning”–these are characteristics that are interesting. We check all of our white and rose wines to check for lovely, clear wine.
There is always an advantage to seeing these bottles in the fridge…we get to drink them! And something you may see on the tasting bar later this year: 100% Marsanne with zero added sulfites. It tastes delicious, this hilltop property produces some pretty darn good whites (yes, we’re both drinking a glass now, waiting for the rain to come but thoroughly enjoying it).
November 30, 2010
 A lovely picture of StoneCross Vineyard looking northeast, down into Mark’s Vineyard. You can see the beautiful rolling hills east of Templeton and then further east is Creston, in the distant background.
Photo sent by a club member, double-click on photo to enlarge it.
October 31, 2010
 When it rains it pours! Well, sort of. We just heard word that our 2008 “Maiestas” (Syrah blend) is listed in Saveur Magazine as one of the “44 California Reds to Drink Now”. This is pretty exciting news to us, as Saveur is an excellent food/drink/ & the-culture-of-both magazine (and incidentally, the only such magazine we subscribe to). And we feel honored to be in the company of many of the other wines listed. Phillip will also be featured in “Touring & Tasting” as a Paso Robles Renegade. Slowly, slowly our name is getting out there! We are thankful of course, but Phillip says, “All this and a couple of dollars will get you a cup of coffee…but it’s always nice to be mentioned.”
**Picture by Jeffrey Weissler @ http://www.consciouswine.com/ (check this website out!)
July 2, 2010
 It’s a lovely time in the vineyard, so much is happening (hence, irregular blog entries…sorry!). Mostly we’re in a holding pattern with 99% fruit set (the turning of flowers-to-fruit) completed. This is a delicate time for us, as June has been one heck of a windy month, we had a small rain shower last week, and we have to be careful not to manhandle the vines too much as the flowers hang in this delicate balance before the fruit emerges. All of the above can create “shatter”, or in layman’s terms, a loss of fruit. Instead of hanging around doing nothing, we’re observing the vines daily and providing aid in the form of gentle homeopathic Biodynamic floral sprays. It’s pretty miraculous to see actual beneficial changes from 3 applications of a horn manure (BD 500)/barrel compost (BC) spray in the proportions of 2 ozs/acre.
 As much concern is given to watching for the dreaded Powdery Mildew, a simple way to handle this disastrous potential problem is to spray sulfur (or similar sprays) on a regular 7 to 10 day schedule. We prefer NOT to do this, instead we will treat individual plants as necessary. Part of our strategy is walking through the vineyards, vine-by-vine, every other day inspecting plants-constantly checking and constantly following up. We’re hoping to to come up with patterns, reasons – dare I say – solutions. This year we weeded StoneCross vineyard, a week to 10 days later we found a super mild outbreak of Powdery Mildew in the Grenache Blanc (which is in StoneCross). Because of this, we decided not to weed Mark’s Vineyard. Also, some of the wild flowers we planted in Mark’s Vineyard have taken beautifully – and we hate to pull them out (our hypothesis: weeds and wild flowers will actually attract the powdery mildew to themselves, instead of our vines). Fingers crossed…  The 2009′s in the winery are mostly taking longer than usual to finish malolactic fermentation, which is delaying the blending of the reds. Talking to other winemakers who lean more on the natural side of wine making, this appears to be an overall 2009 phenomena, certainly not problematical, but it weighs on the mind–just another thing in our heads that we’ve got to take care of. However, next week we’ll be bottling the remaining 2008 Rhone blends (yes! more of them besides the 3 already released).
 The Paella 101 class was a great success! We made 3 different paellas: a traditional Espanola paella with chorizos and salchichons, a seafood paella, and an estate paella (foods & meat from AmByth). We set up 3 cooking stations and everyone got to lend a hand and mix whilst enjoying wine and good conversations. For more great pictures, check them out here.
June 17, 2010
 This Saturday we’re having a Paella 101 class–anyone interested in learning how to make an authentic paella, from the sofrito to the socarrat, should come over for the afternoon! Phillip will be demonstrating cooking techniques for 3 different paellas: a seafood mixture, a chorizo/jamon/salchichon mix, and lastly-but-most-interesting is a paella made with the foods of AmByth (rabbit, onions, garlic, carrots, tomatoes, chilies, fennel, herbs–you’re right–we’re using purchased rice and saffron, maybe we’ll grow these next year!).
We’ll be serving AmByth wines (especially our newly released Rosado and Tempranillo, plus some other great Biodynamic Riojas).
If you’re interested, email here.
Saturday, June 19th, 11-2
Cost: $25 ClubMembers/$35 Regular
Reservations Required
Photo above was taken 2 weeks ago in Spain, we didn’t have a traditional burner, so we used the bar-b-que instead!
 We’re thrilled to have an intern for the summer! Sara arrived this week from New Hampshire and she’s living with us for 3 months to learn more about Biodynamic farming and gardening. She’s jumped right in and has already stirred a tea for 20 minutes, sprayed above-said fermented horsetail tea, driven the 6 wheeler (affectionately known as “The Bug” while Phillip sprayed the steep vineyards), pulled weeds, played with Bede, been to Templeton’s Music in the Park. We’re thrilled to welcome her into our lives and excited to have her with us.
Sara graduated from the University of New Hampshire in May with a dual major in Marketing & Ecogastronomy (you’ll have to ask her more about this awesome degree–it sounds really cool). She was also fortunate enough to study at the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Italy for a semester (my dream university–founded by Slow Food International/Carlo Petrini in 2004). We’ve given her a specific task for her 3 months here: to identify all of our weeds that grow in the vineyards and give them their due credit. They may be classified as “weeds”, but they still have their individual properties (calcium-bearing, full nitrogen, etc) and benefits/detriments, and they have a reason for growing. We’d like to understand them better and their significance. She’s also looking forward to getting her hands and feet dirty in the vineyards, especially during this year’s harvest when she’ll footstomp for the first time!
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