The Joy of Farming Wine Grapes by Cass Winemaker and Vineyard Manager Lood Kotze

Once again another cycle of grape growing has begun in the vineyard. We are currently in early bud break, a time I truly enjoy as it is probably one of the most beautiful periods in the vineyard. It has been a very dry winter, which is never a good thing in agriculture where you depend on good water for a successful crop, however the late rain has been a wonderful gift, and I believe, even with this year’s rain well below average, the timing of the March / April rains will be very effective, as it is right there, when and where it is needed, in the root zone when growing starts.

A very dangerous and potentially devastating occurrence during this time of the growing season is off course late winter frost, and the one growing challenge grape growers in this area will complain about most. There are few more discouraging sights to a grape grower then seeing the new shoots burnt and dried up from cold chill, often times from a single frost event.

I added a photo from April 9 this year. We had five days where it got around 28F, for five nights. It was a bit of a reminder of last years devastating frost, exactly a year ago, although not nearly as destructive. The positive side, was that very few of the varieties were in bud break since this year seems to be two to three weeks later then last year, at least for us.

Currently my parents are visiting from overseas, spending time with us and their grandsons. My dad, working in agriculture for well over 40 years, could not resist accompanying me at 3:30am to the vineyard during this mentioned freeze event. He told me a story I just had to share.

“A seasoned grape grower was walking down town one day and recognized a grape grower friend of his, selling hammers off his truck’s tailgate. After the normal greetings, his friend explained he had sold his vineyard recently, and he started this new business selling tools. The grape grower could not help but notice the low price which the hammers were selling for. Concerned he asked his friend: you are selling these hammers for $8 a piece, what do you get them for? His friend replied: I pay wholesale price of $12 a hammer. The grape grower commented: but you can’t make money like that! On which his entrepreneur friend replied: It might be, but I am still doing a lot better then when I was selling grapes.”

Anyway, it made me laugh. Frost or no frost, I’ll celebrate the new season with a glass of wine.

Paderewski

If you've been to our winery you may have noticed, a Polish Flag, or recently, an 7 ft. tall statue of Paderewski, and most recently, 2 Steinway concert grands in addition to Alice's Yamaha grand piano...

Probably not standard fare at tasting rooms around the Central Coast...here is the story.
Paderewski was a concert pianist who performed internationally from 1885 until his death in 1942. By 1910 he was a major celebrity, and he began to speak out in favor of freedom and democracy in many forums because his native country, Poland, was occupied by Germany, Austria, and Russia.

Just before WW1 broke out, he was on a concert tour of the US and in California suffering from a bit of arthriis in his hands, when he learned of the healing powers of the Paso Robles hot springs and came for a visit. While here, he practiced at the Paso Robles Resort and toured the countryside. He ended up buying some 3,000 acres of land and over time planted Zinfandel grapes and later made Zinfandel wine at the old York Mountain Winery. One of his wines was later rated one of the top 10 wines in the world by the LA Times. Many give him credit for giving Paso Robles the reputation for making high quality Zinfandel wines.

During the war he donated much of his fortune to the relief of refugees from the war and played in countless fundraising concerts to also raise money for relief. He continued to tour and speak out for freedom, he was on Time Magazine cover twice and knew every president in his era on a first name basis. He was a good friend of Andrew Carnegie and performed the first ever sold out concert at Carnegie Hall. I personally suspect he had some influence in Paso Robles getting the funding for our own Carnegie Library.

Following the war he used his celebrity to meet with decision makers among the Allies to encourage them to create an independent Poland.

Politicians within Poland asked him to serve as the county's first Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, which he did, and subsequently signed the Versaille Treaty on behalf of Poland. (All while being a Zin grower in Paso!)

He died in 1942 in the US and was buried in Arlington Cemetary, quite a testament to his status.

Jump forward to 1993, when an elementary school principal , Virginia Peterson, started a Festival in his honor. She organized a series of concerts and Polish themed events on her own from 1993 until 1999, when her health began to fail her. Soon there after, the festival was suspended, and then the earthquake damaged Flamson concert hall, and plans for a renewal of the Festival drifted way. (Incidentally, the school where she worked was named after her)

Jump forward to 2002, when the Polish Music Center at the Thornton School of Music at USC launched a Paderewsi a lecture and concert series, because they too, had a link to Paderewski, since they had given him an honorary diploma in 1922.

Jump forward again to 2006 ...Jonathan Plowright, a British Concert pianist is engaged for a concert at USC. As a specialist in classical piano pieces he was quite familiar with Paderewski's compositions. He asked the Director of the Polish Music Center, Marek Zebrowski, to see if anyone in Paso Robles would host him for a concert in an effort to restart the Festival here. Marek heard from one of our wine club members that Alice (my wife) is Polish and plays piano, and our winery sometimes has music events. He called me and proposed this concert.

So, on 2 week notice we threw together the concert, we borrowed a 1945-era Steinway from the school district and invited wine club members and about 20 community leaders for the concert. The concert was a stunning success and we decided to form a non-profit and re-start the Festival.

Todays Festival is similar to the original one in that we have many Polish themed events and concerts. What we have added new is a Youth Piano Competition for kids 10-18, and a Cultural Exchange with equally talented young performers from Poland. In even years we send a select number of our competion winners to Poland for a series of concerts, master classes, and cultural experiences. In the odd years they, come here and we host them in similar fashion. Our agreement with our Polish counterparts is the that sending country pays ofr airfare, and the host county takes care of all expenses in the host county. This year we have 3 guests arriving and are working to set up several performances for them. One will be at our winery.

This cultural exchange has given us the opportunity to get great media exposure thru TV Polonia (Polish national Television) and great support from various agencies of the regional and federal Polish Government bodies. We expect our first tour bus of Polish visitors this month. Hopefully, many more to follow

This years Festival events run November 8th thru the 11th. Mark your calendar for the unveiling ceremony of the statue of Paderewski to be installed in Paso Robles city park this fall. The ceremony is planned for November 10th.

Rollin' with the Punches

I am a planner and enjoy organizing every detail. But there comes a point, where no matter what you have done in preparation, when the unexpected can take everything out of your control. On February 11, 2012, I coordinated our Cass Winery Valentine’s Dinner.

Our barrel room was set for 60 people to enjoy a multi-course dinner paired with Cass wine. Each table was set with a beautiful champagne linen and floating candles in a vase with ruby red beads at the bottom. To add a personal touch, each guest’s name tag was tied to an individual red rose to be taken home as a gift from Cass.

As guests arrived they were serenaded by Michael Swan singing love songs and playing his acoustic guitar. They also received a glass of our sparkling champagne with raspberries which complemented our Kumamoto Oyster shooters perfectly!

Guests were enjoying the ambiance and at 6:30 it hit…We were just about to sit for dinner when a large “pop” sounded and all the lights went out. My first thought… the kitchen and musician blew a fuse. Steve Cass, Ted Plemons and I went to investigate… and we decided the power is not coming back on. Well, the show must go on! Ted & Steve hopped on the bar and entertained the guests, we brought out candles and scattered them throughout the tasting room, Alice hopped on the piano, and from there the party really started! But oh, the kitchen…this is why we hire the best! Cooking by candlelight (as seen in the image below)…you can’t get too much more romantic than that! Each course came out just as planned. Valentine's at Cass…went from a nice elegant evening to an unforgettable story to share. People laughing, drinking wine, singing…it doesn’t get much better than that.

The power did not come back until 6am the next morning. We later found a car hit a transformer and all the surrounding homes and businesses were out of power as well.

Sometimes the unexpected happens, but it is all in how you handle the situation that matters. Smile, make sure everyone is safe, provide some extra experience (special wine, candle lit dinner), be creative and have some amazing guests! As long as you can be quick on your toes, you can transform any hickup in an event to a more memorable experience. At Cass we love the punches that get thrown at us..just another memory to be shared and experienced with others!

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.

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... :)

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.

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 to 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 .