Pray rain

It rained hard last night. The grapes vines welcomed the April rainstorm with open arms. We could use more rain. Early bud break in March, warmer than normal temperatures have pushed our grape vines off to a fast start.  Since bud break, we have escaped any freezing temperatures.  We are happy to report that our vines are doing well. April weather, foggy in morning, warm days and cool nights, has resulted in good vine growth.  However, frost can still be a threat into early May.  Meanwhile, the mild weather and occasional rain fall, such as the one last night, has ramped up powdery mildew pressures in the vineyards and put Michael on alert, being extra diligent to avoid any flare ups of the fungal disease.

Easter is here!

Flowers are blooming everywhere in our Valley of the Sun. The vines in the  vineyards have all leafed out and look stunning under the sun. Birds are singing their happy song. Thank God for His Blessings and for this beautiful weekend! Happy Easter to All!

Website Make-over

Check out our new website that has been under a much needed make-over, after 10 years when it was first launched!

Here is the URL: www.mahoganymountain.com

Paul hard at work!

Thanks much to Paul, our talented web designer, who did an excellent job in giving our new website a new look-and-feel with lots of user-friendly features.

Cheers

Surviving Harvest

We are seeing earlier harvests in Ramona Valley this year, perhaps, due to warmer temperatures and faster ripening. Wait a second. It’s always warm, or rather hot, in Ramona at this time of the year. So what gives? The Cabernet Sauvignon and Syrah grapes in our South vineyard continued to be the first in the valley ready for harvest a couple of weeks earlier than the rest of the valley around mid-August. The Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot in the West vineyard were ready for harvest a week later last Saturday. We are thrilled with the overall fruit quality this year. It’s going to be a good vintage.


We were doubled blessed last Saturday with lots of helpers and nice weather. The cloud-covered sun and cool breeze made the harvest nice and pleasant. We were so grateful to our volunteers, friends and relatives who came to help. The Hargett cousins (almost a dozen of them), colleagues and friends showed up once again to lend a hand. We also had helpers came from all over: San Diego, Poway, San Marcos, Lakeside, Ramona, San Diego Country Estates, Los Angeles, San Jose, Arizona and as far as Canada. Thank you all so very much for sacrificing your precious weekend to spend a few hours with us and our grapes vines.

Working together in the vineyard was definitely therapeutic to some of us who are more inclined to have a sedentary lifestyle and would rather relax on the weekends, rather than picking grapes in the vineyard. Being in the vineyard gave us all a sense of closeness to Mother Nature and made us realize what a precious gift God has given us. I felt a sense of unity and simple joy as the harvesters bantered while working together in the vineyard. Grapes are truly gifts that keep on giving over and over for thousands of years. We’ve heard over and over again from our volunteers, after their first harvest experience, that they had a better sense of appreciation for wines as they experienced first-hand how much work and TLC involved in growing grapes, harvesting and wine making. We heard from friends and relatives who love wines and fresh local grown foods that helping us pick grapes in the vineyard and watching the grapes crushed into wine must reassured them that there were still foods and drinks out there that were made, not in the labs, but from natural products with as little minimum human intervention as possible.

We went to bed that night with aches and pains, and a sense of accomplishment as we survived Mother Nature and two weekends of harvest with a few more harvests to go until mid-September. We are on the right track and can hardly wait until the end of the harvest season. Now, we know why they invented the Oktoberfest celebration in Germany!

Cheers!

2013 Harvest Season is here!

As harvest at our estate vineyards begins, we are facing the harsh life of grape growers and winemakers, despite all the glamorous pictures of wines and vineyards that proliferate everywhere you look.


As the grapes are ripening, the grape growers are at the mercy of Mother Nature and the wild kingdom which are coming every which way to take their share of one of the most treasured God’s gifts to mankind. This year, in addition to the usual suspects, squirrels, rabbits, birds, bees and deer, the coyotes have developed quite an appetite for ripe grapes. The animals and flying creatures increase their attack as the harvest time comes near, as if they know that soon all this wonderful sweet and delicious fruits will be gone.

Now, more than ever, the year’s work is on the line. The whole year of work to grow the grapes is coming to an end as a year of work to turn grapes into wine begins.

Last Saturday was a perfect example. Our day began at dawn, 5 o’clock to be exact, in the vineyard picking Cabernet Sauvignon and Syrah and ended at 11 at night in the winery fermenting the must. Well, we did take breaks for lunch and visit with Frank and Susie Belmont who stopped by offering a couple of foot-long Subway sandwiches – their timing was perfect - and another break for a planned dinner out to celebrate Anna’s birthday.

This is only the beginning of the harvest seasons. We will be at it until the end of the harvest season.

Cheers

Happy Good Friday! Here come the medals!

The good news came to our winery on Wednesday, March 27 when we received the most wonderful news about a wine competition that we had entered earlier this year in New York: we entered two wines and both have won medals.


Mahogany Mountain Vineyard and Winery 2009 Estate Mourvedre - Silver Medal

Mountain Vineyard and Winery 2008 Estate Cabernet Sauvignon - Bronze Medal

What we like about the Finger Lakes International Wine Competition is that the judging is double blind, where the judges do not see the brand of wine or where it came from, and judge it based on a standard. To have medals from this competition means that the quality of our wines measure up competitively and winningly against the world's greatest wines produced by well-known and well-established wine producers. The wines were judged by 70 of the world's top wine judges from 14 countries.

The Finger Lakes International Wine Competition is the world’s largest charitable wine competition judged 3,502 wines from 20 countries and 50 states of the United States last weekend in downtown Rochester, and results were released Wednesday. The 13th annual competition and its associated dinner and auction benefit Camp Good Days and Special Times, a nonprofit organization serving children and families dealing with cancer and other life-threatening challenges.

2012 Holiday Winemaker Dinner

Last Saturday, we kicked off the holiday season with a fantastic wine-food pairing holiday dinner at the Barona Steakhouse. Chef Duncan's delicious tasting menu was meticulously prepared and each dish was expertly paired with our 2009 Mahogany Mountain wines.  Once again, I was able to live out my fantasy of serving our wines and sharing a gourmet feast with our wine club, friends and family with everyone sitting around a very long table in a stately and exquisitely decorated private dining room, served by a team of professional wait staff, just like in the movies.  I felt blessed as I looked around the table seeing happy faces enjoying themselves as they tasted our wines and delicious food.

I loved the Seared Sea Scallop in Champagne sauce that was paired with our Pinot Gris. The crispness and floral aroma of our Pinot Gris brought out the sweetness of the scallop which was beautifully floated on top of the Champagne sauce.

The entire table hummed with happy sounds when everyone tasted the Smoked Short Rib Risotto with our 2009 Merlot. What a perfect pairing! Words simply cannot describe the sensational senses in my mouth when I took a sip of Merlot after taking a bite of the Short Rib Risotto.  I think Chef Duncan and staff outdid themselves again.

Our 2009 Cabernet Sauvignon was fantastically paired with the main course that I chose: Wood Grilled Filet Mignon and the Truffled Mashed Potato with a splash of Red Wine Sauce.  The medium-rare tender steak was cooked to perfection.  

I thought my dress would burst around the waist line when the dessert came out. The chocolate lava cake and caramel homemade ice cream were put together in a beautiful dish decorated with fresh raspberries, strawberry slices and blueberries. Of course, I had no will power to say no, especially, when the wait staff started passing out two of our dessert wines in beautiful port glasses.  Since everything looked so good, I decided to go for it.  What the heck! I thought I was in heaven after the first taste of the lava cake and ice cream, and a sip of our 2003 dessert wine.

Last but not least, Anna, Geoff's girlfriend, sent everyone home with a beautiful bouquet of homemade cake pops, that she and Geoff spent hours making. The cake pops were presented in our logo glass filled with gourmet chocolates.

After that heavenly dinner, I felt that life was still good and the fiscal cliff seemed to be less scary.

Happy Holidays! Joy, Peace and Love to All!

Cheers

The Mahogany Mountain Winery Family

Appellation SoCal: MAHOGANY MOUNTAIN VINEYARD AND WINERY

Appellation SoCal: MAHOGANY MOUNTAIN VINEYARD AND WINERY

Hot restaurant trends for 2012

I’ve recently read that the hottest restaurant menu trends for 2012 is creating food from locally grown produce, locally sourced meat and seafood and serving locally produced wine and beer.

As a firm believer in eating local produce and drinking local wine and beer, the new trends make perfect sense to me. Eating local produce and fruit appeals to me as I always want to know where the ingredients come from and how they are raised or produced. These days we have a greater chance of ingesting unwanted chemicals in the food we eat, we must be vigilant in finding out ingredients in our food and drinks and knowing where they come from.



Growing a garden is a great way to eat fresh vegetables. Last summer, we had a bumper crop of tomatoes and jalapeno peppers. We made fresh salsa every day which tasted so good with multi-grain tortilla chips and a glass of our own wine. We ate fresh salsa all summer long with just about everything. We also canned tomatoes which tasted so sweet and were much more flavorful in soups and stews than store bought canned tomatoes.



As a winemaker and a local winery owner, I am happy to tell you that the new 2012 restaurant menu trends could not have come at a better time for San Diego County wineries which are making their marks in the world by crafting high-quality wines from locally grown grapes. In Ramona alone, we have a dozen or so bonded wineries which offer wine tasting to the public. Twenty years ago, no one would ever imagine Ramona as a wine region. Today, we have people come from all over the country and overseas to Ramona for wine tasting.



As we close out 2011, I’d like to raise a glass to wine lovers and to my fellow winemakers wishing everyone another good year with lots of good wine, good food and good luck!

Cheers!

Have a Joyful Holiday Season!

We wish you a Joyful Holiday Season and a Happy New Year!

For our family, our holiday season starts with Thanksgiving, then Christmas and New Year. The holidays remind us of the important things in life: Family and Friends. We are so blessed to have the love and support from our families, cousins and friends throughout the year.

The following describes best our wishes for you for the holiday season:
“May you be blessed with warmth in your home, love in your heart, peace in your soul and joy in your life.” -- Irish proverb

Cheers!

Holiday Winemaker's Dinner!

It's time again for our Holiday Winemaker's Dinner! We'll do it one more time at the Barona Oaks Steakhouse. If you love our wines, you’ll enjoy the exquisite wine-food pairing that Chef Duncan prepares for our dinner. If you haven’t tasted our wines, this would be a beautiful way to try our wines paired with a world-class gourmet dinner.  This year, the dinner will be paired with some of our new wines that have not been released to the general public!

Send us an email if you are interested as seating is limited.  Cheers!

Hoodang 2011

Santa Ysabel Casino presents HOODANG 2011 - a craft beer, local wines and Julian Hard Cider music festival featuring Louis XIV, Sprung Monkey, Safety Orange, Midnight Rivals, Vokab Kompany, Mr. Tube & the Flying Objects, Devastators, Slpwlkrs & The Stoney B Blues Band.


Mahogany Mountain Vineyard and Winery and four other Ramona Valley wineries (Chuparosa Vineyards & Winery, Edwards Cellars, Pamo Valley Winery, Hellanback Ranch Winery),  and over 30 San Diego craft brewers will participate.

Each $30 ticket gets you 10 tastes and entrance to the music festival.

A portion of the proceeds will go to help reforest Cuyamaca State Park which was devastated by wild fires, with each ticket purchased a tree will be planted.

Stop by the wine tasting area and say Hi to our volunteers for the event: Geoffrey, Laurie, Dave and Susie.  They will be there from the opening time until 2:30 pm.

Saturday, Oct 15 11:00a to 10:00p

at Santa Ysabel Casino, Santa Ysabel, CA

Cheers!

Susan G. Komen for the Cure fundraiser at Ramona Beauty Supply and Salon

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. On Friday September 23 evening, we joined 4 other wineries in Ramona to pour wines at the local Ramona Beauty Supply and Salon’s 4th annual breast cancer fundraiser. The support from the local folks for this event was overwhelming. The place was packed with women and men of all ages. I am so glad it turned out well for Vikki Dancan, Chelsie Gammill, Dani Norman and Teresa Craig Hanvey. This event was bittersweet for me as I lost a dear friend, Sandy Manley, who passed away in 2006 after a brave fight against breast cancer. She was an inspiration for her faith in God and love for her family. She was one of those good and kind-hearted people that I was fortunate enough to come across. I still miss her and wish that she were still with us. The memory of our friendship comforts me when life gets tough as I know she still watches over all of us and her gentle spirit guides us in our daily activities.





Here is the link to the article about the fundraiser:

http://www.ramonasentinel.com/2011/09/page/2/


Support the Susan G. Komen for the Cure!

Cheers

“Saving the World, One Adjustment at a Time.”

We are supporting Geoffrey, one of our winemakers, who is embarking on an incredible Mission-Chiropractic Trip to the Dominican Republic!! There will be thousands of patients who need their love and miracle hands. They are serving in several cities around the Puerta Plata and Santiago area.

To raise money for their trip, they are selling “Chiropractic Superhero” bracelet. If you want to support Geoffrey and his fellow chiromissionnaries, please make a donation. If you don’t want the bracelets, but still want to donate, please feel free to do so. Please send a check made out to “Geoffrey Hargett” to the following address:

Geoffrey Hargett

P.O. Box 1513

Ramona, CA 92065

For each donation, we’ll enter your name in a raffle for a wine basket donated from Mahogany Mountain Vineyard & Winery. The raffle will take place on December 17. You don’t need to be present to win.

Pick me, Crush me, Make me Wine!

Starting in August, we spent all of our spared time working in the vineyards. There were lots to do, from putting up the bird scare tapes, checking the grapes, testing the Brix (sugar) level, to thinning the grapes and adjusting watering levels. Since we do from A-Z as far as grape growing and winemaking at Mahogany Mountain Vineyard, this is our busiest time of the year as many tasks must be coordinated and done in a very short time.  I was able to apply my project/program management techniques!

We have a bumper crop this year. We don't know how we could have pulled it off without help from our families, neighbors, relatives and the Ramona Valley Vineyards Association's members.  One of our cousins, Hanni, who is originally from Europe, told us the story about how the whole village in an Italian town where her late husband's family lived would help out one another at harvest time, even when they hated one another and didn't speak to one another under normal circumstances, due to some old grudges.  They all would help each family harvest and had a meal together afterward, then went  home until the next harvest season!

Check out a new article on ramona.patch.com at the link listed below:

http://ramona.patch.com/articles/crush-time

(if the link does not work for you for some reasons, go to ramona.patch.com and look for the article, "Crush Time" written by Vincent Rossi)

Cheers!

Harvest Season is here!

We're going to harvest again this coming weekend:

- Saturday, September 10 at 4:15 pm

If you want to come and join us our harvest (this is your last chance for this season!), please RSVP asap via email to info@mahoganymountain.com.  We'll keep you posted with more details that you need to know. 

This would be your last chance to help with the 2011 harvest at Mahogany Mountain Vineyard as we've been harvesting the last two weeks!  So far we've harvested Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah, Mourvedre and Zinfandel. We are so grateful for the help and support from our family, cousins, friends and volunteers from RVVA.  Thank God for their help to quickly harvest the grapes as soon as they reached our desired Brix level and taste test!  Otherwise, they would have been exposed to the rain which came on Monday 9/5 right after we crushed the Mourvedre! We hope the sun will come out soon.

It's time to harvest again!!!

Thanks to our friends, family and RVVA members, we had a great harvest last weekend.  The Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon came in beautiful, had lots of flavor and tasted so good. It has been a good harvest season so far.

We'll harvest again this coming weekend! Hope you can join us.


Saturday, Sept. 3, at 4:00 pm in the afternoon

Monday, Sept. 5, at 7 am in the morning. If you are an early riser and would want to get here earlier than 7 am, it would be fine with us. . We'll try to be there between 5:30 - 6 am.

Important:

Please RSVP via email to info@mahoganymountain.com and let us know which day you’d plan to participate and how many people in your party so we can have a good headcount for refreshment.
Thanks so much in advance for your help. See ya soon!

It's Harvest Time!

Thanks to the sunshine and hot weather in Ramona, our grapes are ripening rapidly, a lot faster than we have planned. Our annual grape harvest parties last year were really fun with lots of help. We hope you can join us this year.

We expect to have some grapes ready for harvest starting this weekend! Sorry for the short notice. If you can help this weekend, it would be great. We’d be harvesting Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon.

This weekend, we'll harvest grapes on both days, Saturday, August 27 and Sunday 28 morning at 7 am (we’ll probably start at 6 am, but you can come between 6-7 am). We’ll have a champagne brunch afterward. ;-).

If you can make it this weekend, please RSVP via email to info@mahoganymountain.com so we can send you more details.

Cheers!

Mahogany Mountain Vineyard and Winery featured in Vision Magazine

Starting the vineyard in 1997, Kim and Michael aspired to create an all-natural, great tasting “organic” wine. Beginning their journey as amateur wine makers, they joined the San Diego Amateur Winemaker Society and studied under a gentleman winemaker ... read more

The Plot Thickens and Creating Alcohol in wine

We participated in a fundraiser event for the Intermountain Volunteer Fire and Rescue Department Auxiliary yesterday evening at the new and beautiful Ramona Public Library.

Robin, Mahogany Mountain Winemaker and Batwoman

The theme of the evening was “The Plot Thickens, a Night of Mystery at the Library”. Many folks showed up in beautiful costumes. Some of the costumes were fantastic like the beautiful Batwoman and Robin who were gracious enough to pose for pictures. I also loved the costumes from the Sherlock Holmes worn by a lovely couple.  There were two lovely young ladies dressed in Princesses costumes who stopped by and chatted with us about our winery. I would have loved to take a picture of Scarlett O’Hara (Gone with the Wind), in a beautiful dress with big hoop and beautiful straw hat.

As part of the fundraiser, six wineries in Ramona, including Mahogany Mountain Vineyard & Winery, Pamo Valley Winery, Chuparosa Vineyards, Woof’n Rose Winery, Kohill Winery, Edwards Vineyard & Cellars and Pyramid Vineyard & Winery, offered wine tastings and donated wines to the fundraiser volunteers for selling by the glass to raise funds for the event. Several party goers commented to us that they were astonished by the high quality of Ramona wines that were being offered for tasting. People from other towns told us that they did not realize there were so many wineries in Ramona. This gave us, winemakers and winegrowers, a chance to chat with the public about grape growing, handcrafted wines and wine making process. Some people were surprised to learn from me that in wine production, yeast converted the natural sugar in grapes to carbon dioxide and alcohol. They had thought that alcohol was an extra ingredient that was added to wines! Phew, I was glad to set the records straight on that. I told them that the amount of alcohol in a wine would usually depend on how much sugar is in the grapes when they were harvested. I further explained that the quality of the wines would depend on the grape grower’s and winemaker’s art (or skill) in finding the ideal time to harvest grapes – depending on the grape variety, region or terroir, winemaking style and a host of other factors.

It was truly a fun evening for a good cause! I was told that all proceeds from this event would be used solely for the daily operating expenses for the Intermountain Volunteer Fire and Rescue Department. With the fire season approaching, it felt good to be able to contribute to a worthwhile cause that would benefit the fire fighting force in the backcountry as the last two big county-wide firestorms had taught us that fires started from the remote areas could spread to the urban areas.

Carpe Diem! As Scarlett said, “After all... tomorrow is another day!”