Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Gone to the Dogs by Lindsay Dodson-Brown




Meet the Canines of Cass – our very special friends. If you have ever had the pleasure of visiting our winery, you may have noticed the large barn doors at the entrance to the tasting room. On the inside wall are tacked various pictures of curious looking dogs. “What’s the story?” many a customer will ask. We’re proud to share that these dogs were rescued right here at Cass. Most of these lucky canines (including one mother cat and her kittens) now reside comfortably in ‘forever homes’. The sad truth is many a stray dog has been found in the vicinity of the winery, owners perhaps falling on hard times hoping someone might take them in if found wandering countryside. We do what we possibly can to save them before they meet an unfortunate end. Our staff has helped find new homes for over 15 incredibly lucky dogs in the almost 7 years our doors have been open to the public.



Maybe you have met Buster Brown, the infectiously sweet Staffordshire terrier that Bryan Cass adopted after finding him running stray in our

vineyards 7 years ago, or maybe you have met Violet, a border collie mix I found running down the road in a panic after her companion had been hit by a passing truck. Violet now lives with Steve & Alice Cass and when you meet her, she makes her traumatic past disappear with a happy wag of her tail. We love when the dogs we have re-homed come by with their new owners for a visit. One of the most rewarding reunions was when a dog we saved played the star in his newly adopted owners vineyard wedding rehearsal here at the winery.


We really do pride ourselves on being a dog friendly winery. Well-behaved leashed dogs are always welcome on our covered patio. What’s better than enjoying a glass of wine with your four legged friend on our covered patio? Maybe working up an appetite and thirst by stretching your legs and taking your pup for a stroll through our sun soaked estate vineyards.




We have a new addition to the back of the barn door and to CASS. Meet Brix (aka Brixie). We rescued Brix from a Cal Poly student, owner of a Rhodesian Ridgeback who had given birth to 14 (yes 14!!!) puppies. Against all odds and at a mere 2.2 lbs, Brix survived a cold winter outdoors, rejected by her mother who repeatedly carried her far away to fend for herself, fighting her way back from a riverbed to her littermates to be bullied and carried off again. I was immediately hopelessly head over heels in love with this crusty pathetic malnourished yet remarkable tiny creature that more resembled a muskrat than a puppy. Even our vet was amazed at her resilience and warned us she might not make it. Fast-forward almost 2 full months later and she is a whopping 19 lb, healthy, active, loving and boisterous -- I mean REALLY boisterous -- puppy. Brixie would love to meet you and your four-legged friends on your next visit to the winery so come on by and say hi and maybe consider bringing your own lucky pup along.

Sunday, February 19, 2012

Chef Life by Jacob Lovejoy

People often are curious about chefs, it seems. Intruiged by them. Moreso than with other professions. I often get questions about how I became a chef, what drew me to food in the first place. I thought, as my first blog installment, I would go into a little bit of detail of how I grew up, what turned me onto the world of chopping, searing and grilling. The majority of my childhood was spent living in Clovis, Ca. Just north and east of Fresno, in the heart of the Central Valley. My parents bought a few acres right at the base of the Sierra Nevada foothills, far out of town. I can remember having to ride in the car for what seemed like forever, just to stock up on supplies at the grocery store. s in my family, and I am the 2nd born, the middle of 3 sons. Needless to say, voracious appetites abound as we grew older and bigger! Both of my parents had enjoyed degrees of 'country living' in their own childhoods, and I believe their intention was to recreate that same experience for us, in their own way. And what an experience it was! I'd like to recall some of my favorite memories for you.

We raised many types of animals over the years. We had a chicken coop where we had both egg-laying hens, and meat chickens. The eggs were collected everyday by me or my older brother, usually in the morning. We raised a great deal of the chickens from eggs themselves. We had an incubator in the garage which was tended to gently. I very much enjoyed the experience of watching the hatchlings emerge from their shells. We would care for them inside, weather dependent, until they were ready to join the rest of the chicken population. Keep in mind, as an 8 year old child, these babies were nothing short of our pets. We named them, nurtured them, played with them. I can vividly recall my younger brother and I sneaking into my parents' room and grabbing 2 pairs of my dad's long socks. We unrolled them all the way up our arms, retreived our favorite chickens, and proudly roosted them on our forearms, ala a falconeer. The meat-providing chickens didn't fare such an enjoyable fate, however. Slaughter day came swiftly for them, and as a family, processed the chickens together. Dad would do the 'dirty work' (I'll spare you the details), while brothers and I were tasked with dunking them in scalding water to losten the feathers, then pluck away! De-plucked birds were sent inside, where mom would gut and clean them. Not too sure what happened to them after that. Next thing I knew, they were tomorrow's chicken fricasee or nuggets, for all I knew. We also raised turkeys. While we didn't cultivate the eggs like we did with the chickens, you can bet that we had the best Thanksgiving bird on the block!



My folks didn't restrict themselves to poultry though. Oh no. We raised quite a few cows and sheep, as well. All of them had names: C.C., Pearl, Cujo, Olivia, Marge, Renee, Brownie, Ewey. Most, if not all, were raised from calves or lambs. And ALL of them... delicious!!! I can vividly remember bottle feeding the calves. The bottle being the size of my torso, fake udder and all. A 200-300 lb calf has significantly more strength than a 70 lb 10 year old. Bottle-feeding was more about seeing if I could stay on my feet from the shaking, rather than feeding the calf. Mom always took us kids to town when the butcher would arrive with his flatbed truck with winched crane, a 30-30, and a bowie knife. We would return several hours later to the sight of a missing pet, and a pile of cow stomach contents in the pasture. Which we would promptly "Oo" and "Ah" over, as we poked sticks at it. A week or two later, mom and dad would return with with the 2 sides of beef. Hours and hours and hours were spent cutting, trimming, packaging, labeling, grinding, freezing, etc.

Maybe it's just me as I get older, but it seems like children in our younger generations don't have quite the exposure to farm life as they do now. And the experience of raising an animal all the way thru to eating seems almost incorrigable to some people. This saddens me some, but at the same time, gives me a deep appreciation of food, and to the labor of love that my parents exhibited to us.

I think this is a good place to stop for now. In my next installment, I'd like to talk a little bit more about these memories, but also the memories of our gardens and fruit trees. Thank you for stopping by and helping me relive my trip down memory lane... :)

Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Wine and Coffee by Bryan Cass



The more I think about it the more I realize that wine and coffee have a lot in common. Flavors of wine and coffee are described in similar ways - fruity, dark, smooth etc. They have both also been around for thousands and thousands of years. Humans first inventions may have just gone fire, wheel, bow and arrow, wine, coffee. Well, maybe not, but it was probably pretty close to something like that! The major type of coffee consumed is Arabica making up something like 90% of the world's coffee production, the minor type is Robusta, making up around 10%. With wine, the European grapevine Vitis Vinifera makes up about the same percentage of wine production and the American grapevine Vitis Labrusca, makes up a tiny percentage just like Robusta coffee. Coffee plants can live up to around 60 years, grapevines have an extremely long fruit bearing life as well. Premium coffee is handpicked as are many premium wines. They both also need to be harvested within a small window of time to achieve optimum ripeness levels. The roasting process can be compared to the fermentation process as both are very time and temperature dependent and can be manipulated by the roaster or winemaker to modify the flavor of the final product. Blending is also very important in winemaking and in coffee. Some of the world's best coffees are sourced from different regions and blended until the ideal flavor is found, as is with some of the world's best wines. The people who enjoy both these beverages are usually the people that consume them the most and are also both prone to be described as coffee snobs or wine snobs by the general public. Sure, people really into beer get labeled this sometimes as well but not nearly as often as coffee or wine people. I can see a similar tone when people like to say "I don't drink Merlot" or "I only drink my coffee black". There are also enough different coffees and wines in the world that you could probably drink a different one every day for the rest of your life if you really wanted to. Not to mention the fact that one brand of coffee may taste different year in, year out, depending on the weather conditions in which the coffee was grown in, same goes for vines. I recently read an article stating that Starbucks is going to start selling wine at a few select stores starting soon, it seems they are catching on as well. I just need to make sure I don't start swirling my coffee or blowing on my wine.

Friday, February 3, 2012

The Resilient Gopher by Steve Cass

Besides adverse weather, the biggest pest in the vineyard is the gopher. Anyone with a garden probably has wrestled with the best way to avoid the damage they can do tCheck Spellingo anything with a tasty root system. One day you have a healthy young tree, the next day it is dead. you wiggle the tree and it falls over, completely chewed off inches below the surface. there are poisons that can be effective but you never see the dead body, so you are not sure if it worked for a while. There are many creative and explosive techniques, some can be dangerous to the user.


Since we became a SIP Certified vineyard we are now trapping our gophers. Last year we trapped 460 of the little critters. The most common trap is called a Macabee, it grabs them with two steel prongs in the chest cavity, killing them right away. We started trapping again yesterday, our usual routine is to set our 40 traps and come back the next day to check them...yesterday we trapped 10 within minutes of setting the traps..the little critters are very active right now.

I have been doing a lot of digging around the winery to set up irrigation and raised gardens. Virtually every time I sink my shovel or backhoe into the ground I discover a warren of tunnels, nests, schools, and gopher shopping malls underground. I was watering a transplanted bush and the ground opened up and emptied the pool of water that had accumulated around the bush...I continued to water for 10-15 minutes thinking I would drown the little guy. Within 15 minutes, when my back was turned, the little guy had packed the gaping hole with mud from the inside. I repeated the drowning technique, and again he back filled the hole with mud.

I admire his DNA, and am donating the bush to his family welfare. It's next to the woodshed, behind Ted's Taco Bar .