Freedom: We must never forget what it means.
July 3rd, 2008 by Ana Keller
I have to say that my mind keeps coming back to the moving images of Ingrid Betancourt as she embraced her mother, and then as she embraced her children. I have given up on watching the news: it seems that we rarely see news that inspire us. Last night as I kept seeing the stories of all the hostages, and how they begged the world not to forget those still in captivity all I could think of was how we take our freedom for granted. As we celebrate the 4th of July it becomes even more important to remember this. May you all enjoy a day of freedom, and may we all continue praying so that we can all be free.
The case for half bottles.
June 18th, 2008 by Ana Keller
My father who loves to drink wine is also very cautious about exactly how much wine he has on a week night. Therefore he loves half bottles, he always complains that there are not enough in restuarant wine lists, and that sadly many of the wines by the glass are never the top end wines. As I read James Laube´s Blog about what people wanted from a winery. I came across over and over about people wanting great wines in half bottles, and one even wanted 500ml, I actually had to check it was not my dad blogging!
So, it seems clear to me that you all want half bottles of great wines, the question now: do you want half bottles of whites and reds? Please tell me! We want to make the wines that will work into your lives.
Lost in Translation
June 11th, 2008 by Ana Keller
We are really exited that our Japan Distributor, Hotei Wines has landed a great palcement for us! Our 2005 Pinot Noir has now been added to the wine list at the New York Grill Restaurant in The Park Hyatt in Tokyo. You may remember the bar from the scenes of Bill Murray in Lost in Translation. This movie won best original screen play at the Oscars that year. Sofia Coppola was nominated for best director, she did not win, but she was the first American woman to ever be nominated.
Travelling in Miami.
June 3rd, 2008 by Ana Keller
I am having a fantastic trip in Miami. I just had a wonderful day with our sales rep Nichole Choi, she had me set up with great accounts. I am happy to say that very soon you will be able to find out wines at The Conrad Hotel, The Setai Hotel, Emeril´s and the Brikkell Key Brasserie, all great accounts! I got great feedback from our wines and I found out Miami wants Rosé! So maybe just maybe, we will produce a little more of that great wine.
I met with Susan Pierres a wonderful freelance writer on monday and I had dinner at 110 North, and that was a very very nice treat!
Well I do trust that tomorrow will continue to be a great day!
Corks, screwcaps, glass stoppers and fine wine
May 28th, 2008 by Ana Keller
Every year as we approach bottling we always have the corks, screwcaps, and recently we added the glass stoppers into the conversation. I always feel that synthetic corks look horrible, they are always short and I feel it sends a message of: hey we want to avoid corked wine, but we dont care about how we go about it!
Personally, Michael, our winemaker (who still has to write on our blog) and yours truly, work at doing our best to avoid corked wines. We use 2 different suppliers, Michael goes to through the exercise of smelling corks and corks soaked in a mixture of vodka and alchohol (a 12% solution of vodka, extracts components of the corks at the same rate a wine would but without the aromas of wine). So if you ever get a corked bottle, save the cork , shoot us an email and we can figure out what producer provided us with that cork, we will add that to our stats!
Anyway, we recently have felt that we want to use some glass stoppers for some of our wines, like the Pinot Gris. I think the glass stopper is elegant, and best of all it has the pop factor (whe you take it out : it pops!). mmm, however I am not quite sure we want that for all our wines. I wonder what you all think?
take care, and enjoy your day. Ana
Technorati.com, claiming our blog!
May 28th, 2008 by Ana Keller
<a href=”http://technorati.com/claim/hmqjbhg29” rel=”me”>Technorati Profile</a>
What is the purpose of blogging?
May 6th, 2008 by Ana Keller
I haven´t written in a journal for many years. Today my seven year old son started his first journal; he could not decide what he was meant to say about his whole day! He can´t write very fast yet, so he had to find what was the most meaningful things he wanted to remember. As McNeill, our winemaker and I discussed the blog, we decided that the purpose for our blog was to have the ability to talk directly to the people who care enough to log on to our site, click on blog and find out what we have to say on a daily basis. What is causing us grief, pain and excitement on a daily basis?
As a family owned and run winery, each decision is taken with a lot of care, and that normally means, that if you want to convince the head honcho about something (that would be my dad, founder of the winery, and currently also my mentor in running a business) you have to have a very valid point and reason. To find the ultimate implication of our actions is something that we have to figure out before we make any move, and in the wine business this means sometimes, that any action you take today, will appear on the market, maybe 18 months from now or maybe even later. I always say that you are selling your past, working on your present vintage and preparing for your future harvest, so you have three budgets to control, three areas that always need some kind of attention.
Currently we just finished polishing our new label which will come out for our 2007 Chardonnay and Pinot Noirs, wines that won´t be in the market for at least 12 more months, so I guess you are all going to have to be patient and wait to see if we did the right thing, its a small change, but we hope that you will understand that what we are trying to convey in it. When we made our first, I worked a lot on text, but then decided, that we still needed to figure exactly what I needed to say to you. Now 10 years later we have something very meaningful to say about our family, our land, our terroir and our very special and unique location. Many people have read it, and its almost ready for print: the questions is now, should I put it on the blog?
Spring is underrated in a winery!
April 30th, 2008 by Ana Keller
People always associate harvest (fall) as the “busy” season for wineries. Well, after this week, I can say, that just ain´t true. We are tasting through all our wines, finalizing our blends for the 2007 La Cruz Chardonnay and La Cruz Pinot Noir. This means going through many, many barrels and preparing different blends! Then, we have all the preparations for the 2008 vintage just around the corner, and finally, the weather is getting gorgeous and we are starting to have plenty of events and guests at Keller. I have to say we are very fortunate, we had a cold spell a few weeks ago, thankfully we were spared and our vines did not suffer, yaaay to the Petaluma Gap: The strong winds and the slopes where we are located do not let the cold air stagnate and cause freeze damage.
Coquilles St. Jacques with jamón serrano and hazelnut crust and orange sauce, on a bed of arugula
April 11th, 2008 by Ana Keller
Dear Friends, On our last club shipment, we asked our family chef, Jennifer, to create a recipe to pair with our 2006 Oro de Plata Chardonnay. I have to say, she went all the way for creative, but please try the recipe, it is fantastic !
Time:
30 minutes
Servings:
Makes 4 servings.
Ingredients:
1 1/2 lb. fresh large sea scallops 3 teaspoons of lemon or lime zest¼ cup of olive oil1 1/2 sticks salted butter, room temperature
6 tablespoons chopped hazelnuts
1 1/2 tablespoons champagne o white wine vinegar
1 1/2 tablespoons chopped fresh thyme
2 teaspoons crushed black peppercorns
1/2 garlic clove, minced
4 ounces thinly sliced jamon Serrano, chopped
1 green onion, chopped4 cups of fresh orange juice2 tablespoons orange marmalade3 tablespoons of minced fresh ginger4 tablespoons of sugarSalt and pepper 4 cups of arugula (also known as roquette)
Preparation
Marinate scallops in olive oil with lemon zest and ½ tablespoon of thyme (the lemon zest must be made from the yellow part only, because the white part would make it bitter). Orange sauce: Put in a cooking pot the orange juice, the marmalade, the ginger, the sugar in low temperature, until it reduces to one cup.Make hazelnut-jamon Serrano crust : Place butter in large bowl. Mix in hazelnuts, vinegar, rest of the thyme, crushed pepper, garlic, and salt. Mix in jamon Serrano and green onions. Place the mixture( should look like a chocolate chip cookie dough, if necessary add more hazelnuts ), in between 2 sheets of aluminum foil, and flatten with rolling pan, put in freezer until it hardens, and cut with a circle shaped cookie cutter that has the same radius as the scallop, and cut as many pieces as you have scallops, and put back in the freezer. They will look as cut out cookies.
Cook scallops:
Wash, drain scallops and pat dry between paper towels. Heat 1 1/2 tablespoons of remaining butter in a 12-inch nonstick skillet over high heat until foam subsides. While butter is heating, season half of scallops with salt and pepper. Sauté scallops until sealed, turning once. Place them in a plate you can put in the oven, with the cut out hazelnut shaped cookie above each sea scallop, and put into the oven on Broil, so the sea scallops finish cooking and the crust turns golden, and crispy. Around 10 minutes.
Serve:
Place the rinsed and dried arugula on plate, drizzle over it the warm orange sauce , and finally place the scallops above it.
Coquilles St. Jacques with jamón serrano and hazelnut crust and orange sauce, on a bed of arugula
Our Rosé is out!
April 3rd, 2008 by Ana Keller
Well, I just came back from a 2 week holiday with the kids and 19 more! My husband´s longtime friends organized a well choreographed trip taking us from Bordeaux, to the famed caves of Lascaux, then to Toulouse, spending good Friday in Colliure, where we say the processions, then crossing France, spending Easter in the Pyrenees and ending with our kids doing a scavenger hunt through the Louvre in Paris. It was a wonderful experience, and I must say I loved the wines in the Languedoc-Rousillon area. It made me very happy to get back and settle into our life, and think that with our 2007 Rosé I just might capture a sense of our holidays. Our Rosé is made from our Syrah grapes. A few hours after the fruit was de-stemmed and crushed, it was pressed, drained off the lightly colored juice into older barrels where it was fermented to dryness. Beautiful medium salmon-rose in color. There are great fresh fruit aromas of ripe strawberries, cherries, and apricot which make me want to cook!
