2007 Harvest: Well… I’d love to give you some entertaining stories about this year’s harvest but at the time of this writing we’ve only brought in two tons of Petite Sirah. It comes from the Ranchita Canyon vineyard which was made famous by the David Bruce winery. This wine becomes a part of the Anderson Road and Zinfandel. It’s just starting to ferment now and smells wonderful. So on to the rest of the harvest article… well… ah… that’s it.

2005 Vintage: The 2005 harvest (and therefore the 2005 wines) marked the beginning of the “Next Generation” of Dark Star wines. A few years back some winemakers radically changed their philosophies on fermentation and barrel ageing. I’ve been knocking around this business long enough to know how eager winemakers are to buy into the “new, state-of-the-art”. We all strive to be different. In many cases with out a lot of thought or common sense. I call this the “dead frog” theory. This is, if you make the best wine you ever made and found a dead frog in the barrel, every year you would put a dead frog in the barrel. There isn’t enough room on these pages to list all the “new and improved” equipment that has been designed, touted, sold, used, and then discarded by winemakers. A short example is vine trellising. In the 70’s it was standard practice to cordon prune. In the late 80’s it was cane pruning. Millions of dollars were spent to retro fit vineyards to cane trellising. In the 90’s it was Double Geneva Curtains. More millions spent. Today? The most exotic (and expensive) grapes grown are cordon pruned! Rotary fermentors are another great example. In the early 90’s some of the most respected wineries in California believed rotary fermentors would soften tannins and precisely ferment your grapes automatically. At a cost of four times that of a regular tank they now all sit in the “bone yards” of wineries as gleaming examples of the industry’s rabid search for the next magic wand. So with all this knowledge in hand I took a long (two years) look at all the new and improved philosophies. Don’t forget the “dead frog”. Some of it was very voodoo stuff with absolutely no basis in reality. Some of it on the other hand was very interesting even if it couldn’t be scientifically explained. Bottom line? In ’05 I altered some of my fermentation protocols and barrel program and changed some of my vineyards. Believe it or not dry ice was a big part of it. I now introduce dry ice at the destemer to quickly cool the fruit down to about 45 degrees and then cold soak it in the tank for a few days before heating it up and starting fermentation. This has dramatically increased color and flavors. I’ve also been experimenting with Native Fermentations which allow the grapes to ferment with the natural yeast from the vineyard they were grown in.

Also, the 2006 vintage saw the birth of a new line of Rhone wines that will be released in 2008. The plan now is to release a Syrah and two Rhone blends. They are fabulous in the barrel, and I swear there are no dead frogs! 2007 will see some large open top, manual punch down fermentations. I’m really excited about the changes I’ve made and the results so far have exceeded my expectations!

The 50% Case Re-Order Discount. As a thank you for being wonderful club members ( 98% of you really are wonderful, the other 2% need work) we are going to offer the 50% cases re-order special from October 1st through January 1st. All the wines are included in this special this time. Again, it’s a very complicated formula that gets us to the point where we feel we can offer a special on a particular wine or not. If you’re interested, the formula goes like this. I’m either sick of moving all these cases around or I’m not. Right now with harvest and all, I’m sick of moving the cases out of my way! So, you can re-order 12 or more bottles and receive each wine at a 50% discount off the regular price. Of course it can be a mixed case. Very, Very important! It makes Susan’s life much easier if you order your wine on-line, otherwise she has to get out the decoder ring to decipher my notes. Please, please, please read the part about how you can log on to your account on our website.. To Log Into Your Account: You log in by clicking "Log In" under "Returning Customers" in the Wine Shop page (the page where you order wine at www.darkstarcellars.com). To log in you use the email address we have on file for you and the password is "darkstar". Once you are logged in you can change anything about your account you like, credit card number, shipping address, and so forth. We recommend you change your password so only you will know it. When you log in the system knows to give you your wine club discounts and you don't have to fill in any other information. You can review your order and simply "check out". IF YOU HAVE ANY PROBLEMS PLEASE CALL US, we’d love to take your order over the phone.

I consider myself in the fraternity of people who go through the roof when you see Christmas decorations in the stores in October. Having said that, and because we only get a chance to be intimate twice a year, (I can’t believe I’m about to write this but…) I would like to point out the obvious. At 50% off, Dark Star wines make a great holiday gift. Send us a list of where you want the wine to go and we’ll ship it there with a nice gift card. Only Susan is allowed to touch the gift cards, so you’re safe. Send four bottles to your favorite uncle, three bottles to your college roommate, who to this day has still not told the story about you on spring break, then send a bottle each to your five siblings, who to this day can’t remember your birthday even though one is a twin. There you have it. Seven names crossed of the list and you met the twelve bottle requirement for the discount. That’s Normie Math baby! Call or email Susan with your order. Again, sorry for the early holiday pimp.

PAGE THREE FAR STAR PHOTO CONTEST WINNERS: So many great photos! Man some of you people took this really seriously! All the photo’s can be viewed on the website. BY CATEGORY: Norm’s Favorite: Geoff Bowman, 8,000ft over Afghanistan, Two Magnums of 2005 Ricordati hand painted by Susan. Best Effort: Mark & Chasity Griffin, Bangkok, Cambodia, South Africa, A hand painted Magnum of 2005 Ricordati. [It should be noted that Chasity swears they don’t work for the CIA. Best Save: Greg Knowlton. He started with the lame Photoshop of him on the moon and finished at the Leaning Tower of Pizza. Bravo!, a hand painted magnum of 2005 Ricordati. [it should be noted that he was a winner in spite of the fact that he acknowledges a friendship with fellow member Marty Ferris. Best Team Effort: It was a tie between Mary & Nick Arnold, Barbara & Andy Lynn, Linda & David Nelson, Venice, Italy and Tad, Becky, Marcy & Tag, Istanbul Turkey, each team receives a hand painted magnum of 2005 Ricordati. Best Team Spirit: Larry Loeswick, Tokyo, a hand painted magnum of 2005 Ricordati. Larry wins because he truly understands the spirit in which I make my wine!

The World According To Norm: “If you’re not doing two things at once, you’re wasting time… If you’re doing three things at once, you’re probably screwing one of them up.”

And Lastly… I know I’m quite the arrogant prankster, but Susan and I are so grateful for all our wine club members. Seriously. Some of you have been with us for almost ten years now. It is through the support of you guys, new and old, that allows us to live the great life we do. I may act like I’m doing you a favor, but the fact is you are the key to our success. Thank you… and now back to being Normie…

We Have Rules Around Here!: Rule number one, Brian is not allowed to have a better day in his tasting room than we did! I know, “All parents want is for their children to be happy”. Who ever came up with that quote was clearly an under-achieving simpleton. Well… sure… I want my kids to be happy, just as long as they’re not doing better business than I am, in a building on MY property! True, it was only one day, but you know kids, give’m and inch, they’ll take a mile. Susan says I should be proud of what a great winemaker Brian has become. Blah, Blah, Blah.

My perfect daughter, Nicole, on the other hand has no interest in the wine business, therefore she will never have a better day in her tasting than I will. That’s it. I’ve decided. Nicole is now my favorite child. p.s. Susan says I have to tell you that you should try Brian’s wines, they’re wonderful… blah, blah, blah.

2006 Harvest: 2006 was a challenge. First you need a short lesson in viticulture (grape growing).

VIT 101:Grapevines like hot days (85-95 degrees) and cool nights (45-55 degrees). Between 80-95 degrees the vines know they should be growing and when it cools off at night they think Fall is coming so they slow down and consider going dormant. But before they can decide to go dormant, the Sun comes up and it starts all over again. Not necessarily a bright bunch these grapevines. This cycle goes on each day and night. The larger the swing in daytime and nighttime temperatures, the better. The hot days and cool nights or growing/resting cycle allows for acidity balance in the fruit. (Side Note: Paso Robles has the largest diurnal (day to night) temperature swing of any growing region in California). As the growing season comes to an end the days are cooler and the nights get cold causing the vines to slowly come to a stop and make up their mind to go dormant.

VIT 202: When the temperature gets over a 100 degrees the vines get nervous that they are going to burn up or a drought is on the way. When this happens they will pull the juice out of the berries to store in their roots for the “impending drought”. So over a hundred degrees you can actually lose ripeness. Class is dismissed. So, back to 2006. We had a very mild spring and summer with the exception of two weeks of blistering (115 degrees) heat in June. That two weeks of heat kind of freaked out the vines. Some of the leaves dropped and the vines thought about shutting down. This is a bad thing. The heat went away and turned into a very mild (80-84 degrees) summer. So, review your notes cause here comes the final exam. Question: The temperature went above 100 for two weeks and then stayed around 83 the rest of summer. Class, What happened? Answer: The grapevines FREAKED out. “Is it a drought or is Fall coming?!?” If you were a grapevine shrink, you cleaned up! The net result was the grapes took for ever to ripen. We harvested the last of it in late November. The acid was little out of balance (remember we need the big diurnal swing) but was easily adjusted in the winery. Other than that I loved the fruit. You all did well. For all of you who understood the curriculum give yourself an “A”. For those who didn’t, give yourself an “A” too, you don’t grow grapes for a living, you don’t need to know this crap.

The 50% Case Re-Order Discount. As a thank you for being wonderful club members ( 98% of you really are wonderful, the other 2% need work) we are going to offer the 50% cases re-order special from April 1st through June 1st. For reasons beyond my control we can not include Anderson Road and Celebration in the special. It’s a very complicated formula that gets us to the point where we feel we can offer a special on a particular wine or not. If you’re interested, the formula goes like this. I’m either sick of moving all these cases around or I’m not. So, you can re-order 12 or more bottles and receive each wine at a 50% discount off the regular price. Of course it can be a mixed case. Very, Very important! It makes Susan’s life much easier if you order your wine on-line, otherwise she has to get out the decoder ring to decipher my notes. Please, please, please read the page about our new website.

Notice Anything Different?: I went back to natural corks. Ahh, I can literally hear you all racing to your computers to fire off a “What the hell Norm!” email. Let me explain. In 2000 when I switched to synthetic corks it was because the natural cork producers didn’t care much that 3-5% of their corks were ruining everybody’s wine. “The cost of doing business” they said. “B*** S***”, I said. They were more than comfortable with charging me $15,000 for corks that could ruin $8,000 of my wine. So I switched to synthetics. Then the most interesting thing happened. The screw cap (Stelvin closure for you Enophiles). Randall Graham of Bonny Doon fame actually held a mock funeral in New York for the natural cork. Randall is my idol by the way. New Zealand made it very public they were switching to the screw cap and $150/btl Plump Jack wine was placed in a screw cap. Now sit down cause you’re not going to believe this, but the natural cork producers suddenly found a way to reduce cork taint to less that 1%. 0.69 to be precise. Imagine that. Faced with being knocked back into the Stone Age or possible extinction the cork industry cleaned up their act. Fast forward to last year. I conducted a tasting of my library wines going back ten years and came to the conclusion that the wines with natural corks aged more to my liking than the synthetics. They seemed to have more bottle bouquet. Anyway, between the advancements in natural corks and the perception of my aged wines I have decided to return to natural corks. Regardless of which closure I use keep in mind that I intentionally make my wines to be drunk at an early age. 1-3 years. That’s why they’re so “yummy” (a technical term) when they’re released and don’t have to be laid down for 5-9 years.

Notice Anything Different?: The Sequel: Gold Foils. Ahh, Where’s the Blue? Normie, we miss our Star on the top! Well, the 2004 vintage is our tenth vintage. We wanted to honor this milestone in some way so we chose to make the bottles unique by placing gold foils on them. This will be the only year that gold foils will be used. A collector’s item if you will. Pretty cool, huh? The other reason is that our blue foils are made in Spain by blind Belgium nuns. Well, they’re made in Spain, and it’s an eight week lead time from ordering them to receiving them. Normie forgot to order the blue foils in time. I had enough left over from the last bottling to do the Ricordati but the rest had to be gold. The above paragraph is a good example of why Susan only trusts me as far as she can throw me.

Far Star Photo Contest… We’ve gotten some amazing photos so far. Check them out on the website.

The World According To Norm: “It’s either black or it’s white. Only the process is gray.

But Seriously Folks… I hate showing this side of me. I know I’m quite the arrogant prankster, but Susan and I are so grateful for all our wine club members. Seriously. Some of you have been with us for almost ten years now. It is through the support of you guys, new and old, that allows us to live the great life we do. I may act like I’m doing you a favor, but the fact is you are the key to our success. Thank you… and now back to being Normie…

The Star News October 2006

 Disclaimer: For those of you who are new to the club, these newsletters are pretty much the ramblings of a mad man, me. They’re not concise nor very coherent. As always if you find any spelling or grammatical errors, keep it to yourself... I don’t care. Well…I care… I just don’t want to hear about it. Disclaimer to the Disclaimer: I realize I always start with this disclaimer but we get new members all the time who just don’t realize who I am. They’ve briefly met me and think I’m this nice, self-effacing cool guy that makes wine. Newbies!

Farmers: I’ve touched on this before. Farmers are an odd bunch. If you ask them they’ll tell you they have a great life. Taking land from dirt to fruit is very fulfilling. Working with your hands in the great expanses of the outdoors is uplifting. To take dirt and create a delightful beverage is very satisfying. But… get them in a room with just other farmers and they turn into a bunch of sniveling hens! “It’s been too cold!”, “It’s been too hot!”, “We haven’t had enough rain!”, “We’ve had too much rain!”, they’re never happy. Well here’s this years snivel: Where’s all the heat? To date we’ve only harvested about 20% of our fruit. The days are averaging eighty-three degrees and the nights are in the mid forties. The long range forecast is dry and cool weather. At this rate you all will be waiting for Santa to come down your chimney and I’ll be standing in some field sampling sugars. Ugh! F.Y.I., for the record the latest press load to date is December 4th. Want to start a pool for this year? This

Shipment… The 2002 Ricordati has really bottle aged nicely. The tannins have softened allowing the fruit to come forward. Ricordati remains our most popular wine. After this shipment there will only be about seventy-five cases left. Consider yourself warned! 2003 Cab, Merlot, Zin, and Anderson Road have really developed nicely. As I mentioned in the last communiqué 2003 was the beginning of a series of fermentation experiments. In ’03 I started playing with my fermentation program and got some very exciting results. You’ll notice they are extremely dark and concentrated. Honestly, I feel these wines are my best to date. The advancements in how I ferment are leading to some very exciting wines. 2004 and 2005 brought more experimentation and more exciting results. I have a few more plans for 2006! I know you guys get a lot of newsletters from wineries (I’m on a few mailing lists myself) and there’s always a lot of P.R. but I’m telling you the truth, if you like my wines now, just wait! This shipment is just a sneak preview.

Good News, Bad News… The good news is we are starting a new annual contest, “Far Star”. Prizes to be determined later. Far Star is a contest to see how far someone can take Dark Star around the world. Send us pictures from your vacation or business trip with some Dark Star logo (bottle, label, tee shirt, or hat) in a foreign location. We’ll have a special page on our website for the photos. The photos that are inappropriate for the website will be stored in a safe, password protected location on my computer. The idea came from our friend Steve Edgar who sent us a photo of him in a Dark Star tee shirt in Slovakia. Don’t let that scare you, his photo doesn’t count. So here are the rules: The photo has to have two things in it. Some Dark Star logo and some background that will substantiate your claim of where the photo was taken. Example: you could be in a Dark Star hat in front of a road sign that says “Milan – 456km”. Before the October shipment we will choose the winners (yes there will be multiple winners) and include them in the newsletter. So that’s the good news, what’s the bad news? You guys are going to be in the pictures. Have you seen some of you?

Aging My Wines… It has come to my attention that some of you feel the need to age my wines for varying periods of time. We all have differing palates, but just so you know, I feel my wines are best within the first twenty-four months of release. I feel that’s when everything has integrated and balanced and the wine is what I want it to be. I work very hard to reduce the tannins in my wines so that they don’t need to be aged by the consumer. I prefer wines that are big with fruit and light on tannins and since I am King, that’s the way I make the wines.

Yes, The Holidays… At the risk of being viewed as a big corporate retailer I do need to bring up a very, very scary thought. The holidays are coming. I know, I know, “give us a break Benson, it’s only October!” Well, this is one of the few times a year I come off the mountain and speak to the commoners so I need to get this out now. Do you want to stress out trying to decide what gift to get for what person? Or do you want to spend five pleasant minutes on the phone with Susan who will then send out some great wine and a nice card? In the past we have handled gifts for business clients, employees, out of town friends and family. With your discounts you could send that special person (or pain in the ass) a bottle of wine for around twenty dollars. That’s it, I’m headed back up the mountain, just needed to get that out there.

But Seriously Folks… I hate showing this side of me. I know I’m quite the arrogant prankster, but Susan and I are so grateful for all our wine club members. Seriously. Some of you have been with us for almost ten years now. It is through the support of you guys, new and old, that allows us to live the great life we do. I may act like I’m doing you a favor, but the fact is you are the key to our success. Thank you… and now back to being Normie…

The 50% Case Re-Order Discount. It would be appropriate here to call me and say “God Bless You, Norm”. So, you can re-order 12 or more bottles and receive each wine at a 50% discount off the regular price. Of course it can be a mixed case. I’m sure this is sounding like a broken record but the specials aren’t always going to happen. Look at October 2005. It’s a very complicated formula that gets us to the point where we feel we can offer a special. If you’re interested, the formula goes like this. I’m either sick of moving all these cases around or I’m not. The special will run until January 1st. Very, Very important! It makes Susan’s life much easier if you order your wine on-line, otherwise she has to get out the decoder ring to decipher my notes.

The World According To Norm: “In the kingdom of the blind… a one eyed man is king”

For those of you with a short memory, or no memory at all, like me... Don’t forget, our favorite way to receive orders is through the website. As a Club Member you only have to order the wine, fill in your name, a phone number, and the shipping state. No credit card information. It’s way less painful then trying to talk to me… trust me. If not for me then do it for Susan, she needs all the help she can get dealing with me.