We're finally getting a fair amount of rain in Sonoma Valley. It was a long time coming this year and the seasonal average is lower than usual, but right now "cats and dogs" are coming down out there. Winter is always the cold and dormant time in wine country. Grapevines are asleep and people seem to sleep later than usual. The cover crops of between the rows of grapevines have reseeded and sprouted and now lay out like a beautiful green carpet. The vines are leafless and their barren canes seem to reach toward the sky in crazy and disorganized patterns. Almost time to prune the vines ... a perfect job the orderly (even though my wife would say "anal retentive") personality. Maybe that's why I like Wintertime so much. When you prune grapevines, you create "absolute order out of seeming chaos". I like that. There's too much vineyard now for me to prune by myself, but I used the attack the first vineyard solo in our earlier days of GlenLyon. One year I calculated that it took 160,000 snips with a pair of Felco #2's to do two acres of vines. Despite the severe case of carpal tunnel syndrome and losing the feeling in three of my fingers for a month, it was a lot of fun. Just me and Corky. (She did get a little tired of hearing me sing the same show tunes over and over, however.)

The good news about our spectacular 1998 GlenLyon Syrah was that it was "Gone in 60 Seconds". That's also the bad news. There's none left. The 1999 GlenLyon Syrah, however, is safely resting in bottle and our "Winemaker Exemplar", Chris Loxton, reports (with a smile) that's it's "every bloody bit as good as the '98". We agree. For those of you fortunate One Hundred Clan GlenLyon Members, you'll receive your release date announcement and order forms somewhere around the middle of May. Folks on the mailing list, shortly after that. Again, demand far outstrips supply, so act quickly.

The Syrah harvested in October, 2000 is just finishing it's final stages of "ML" (industry verbiage) and we'll "rack" (more verbiage) the new wine for the first time in a few weeks. Early quality prognosis is jammy, yummy, full of depth, dark red and delicious. (Speaking of "dark", Suzy's brother refers to the GlenLyon Syrah as "octopus wine" ... black as ink.)

Have a prosperous and healthy New Year!

Suzy and Squire Fridell