Eighth Street Wineries Open House - Saturday, February 23rd
Three Sticks invites you to join us at the Eighth Street Wineries Open House on Saturday, February 23rd from 11am to 4pm. The bi-annual tasting is a collection of 10 boutique wineries serving food and wine pairings from their limited releases. Three Sticks is featuring the following wines from our 2013 Spring Releases, which will be offered to our Allocation Members on February 27th (CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE):
• 2010 Durell Vineyard Pinot Noir
• 2010 Silver Eagle Vineyard Pinot Noir
• 2009 Sonoma Valley Cabernet Sauvignon
• 2009 Sonoma Valley Cabernet Franc
ALLOCATION LIST DISCOUNTED TICKETS
Tickets are $40 advance, $45 at door, $10 designated driver. To receive your Allocation Member Discount Code for $10 off per ticket, check your recent Save-the-Date email letter or contact Hayden Schmidter at Hayden@ThreeSticksWines.com or by calling (707) 996-3328 x105.
To learn more, visit EighthStreetWineries.com.
The Three Sticks Team
Feb 19, 2013 at 12:00 PM
PermalinkThree Sticks Spring Releases Open Tuesday, February 26th
Three Sticks Wines is excited to share advance notice to our family, friends and fans regarding the opening of our 2013 Spring Releases, which will occur on Tuesday, February 26th. We will be sending a link via email to our Allocation Members so you can automatically log in to your 
allocation. Please make sure to add us to your address book to ensure the email is not blocked. You will also receive a printed order form in the mail -- note that it is not a second offer, but another ordering option.
The Three Sticks Spring Release will Include
• 2010 Durell Vineyard Pinot Noir
• 2010 Silver Eagle Vineyard Pinot Noir
• 2009 Sonoma Valley Cabernet Sauvignon
• 2009 Sonoma Valley Cabernet Franc
As a friendly reminder, wines are sold on a first-come, first-served basis, and many sell out before the end of the offering period. Please order early for best selection. Make sure to keep an eye out for our email on February 26th! If you have questions, please contact Hayden Schmidter at Hayden@ThreeSticksWines.com or by calling (707) 996-3328 x105.
We also invite you to come out to say hello and taste the wines at the Eighth Street Wineries Open House on Saturday, February 23rd from 11am to 4pm. CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE!
If you're new to Three Sticks, please CLICK HERE to request to join our allocation list.
The Three Sticks Team
Feb 19, 2013 at 12:00 PMThree Sticks Achieves "Certified California Sustainable Winegrowing" Status
At the close of 2012, Three Sticks Wines received Certified California Sustainable Winegrowing status from the California Sustainable Winegrowing Alliance (CSWA). CSWA is a San Francisco-based 501(c)3 nonprofit organization created by the Wine Institute and the California Association
of Winegrape Growers. The organization’s mission is to promote the benefits of sustainable winegrowing practices, enlist industry commitment, and assist in implementation of the Sustainable Winegrowing Program. It promotes vineyard and winery practices that are sensitive to the environment, responsive to the needs and interests of society-at-large, and economically feasible to implement and maintain.
“I’m very proud of our team for their due diligence in going through this important process, and honored that we’ve been recognized for their efforts by CSWA,” said proprietor Bill Price. “Achieving certification is a parallel track to everything we do here – it’ an ongoing process of pursuing excellence. While we have always focused on sustainable farming, the guidelines set forth by CSWA make us better winegrowers and citizens, 
which leads to improving the quality of life in our community and the quality of our wines.”
CSWA developed its third-party certification program to increase the sustainability of the California wine industry by promoting the adoption of sustainable practices and ensuring continual improvement. The goals of the certification program are to enhance transparency, encourage statewide participation and advance the entire California wine industry toward best practices in environmental stewardship, conservation of natural resources and socially equitable business practices. Certification is based on self-assessment on 227 best practices using the Code of Sustainable Winegrowing Practices Workbook, and then confirmed by a third-party audit.
To learn more about CSWA third-party certification program, visit http://www.sustainablewinegrowing.org.
Feb 12, 2013 at 10:00 AMBill Price Purchases Gap’s Crown, Plus More Excitement for 2013!
In our most recent blog, Winter at Durell Vineyard: A Time of Contrast and Renewal, we visited with Rob Harris, Director of Vineyard Operations, as the task of pruning was underway at Durell 
Vineyard. We now turn our attention to the winery and other big news that has unfolded over the past several months, including proprietor Bill Price’s purchase of Gap’s Crown Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir Vineyard (our first vintage will be in 2012)! Read the full Wine Spectator story by CLICKING HERE.
And now, the rest of the story, as we prepare to share some very exciting times at Three Sticks for 2013!
In the Winery: Racking, Bottling & Blending
The winter months in the winery are generally consumed with racking barrels from the previous vintage and bottling wines from the vintage prior to last. The racking process consists of carefully 
siphoning off wine from one barrel, to remove it from the lees, to a clean barrel. Lees are deposits of dead and/or residual yeast. As a small winery, bottling wine is done with mobile bottling lines that are built into the back of a semi-trailer truck. When the truck backs in, it’s all hands on deck to bottle, cork, cap, label and box. Whew!
This is also the time when we sequester the team for a series of meetings to select our Sonoma Valley Cabernet Sauvignon blend. The games have now begun for the 2010 vintage to find that “just right blend” sourced from multiple mountain vineyard blocks that include Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Malbec and Petite Verdot. Early in 2012, we visited with Winemaker Don Van Staaveren to learn his blending process, which we covered in the blogs Three Sticks Cabernet Sauvignon & the Art of Blending - Part I & 2.
Hospitality Rising
As many of you know, Three Sticks Wines acquired The Vallejo-Casteñada Adobe in 2012. Considered one of the oldest occupied residences in Sonoma, the quaint home is located just off 
the beautiful town square. We are relocating our administrative offices to the property this year, and will use the existing dining room and living room to host private tastings by appointment only for our allocation members (we will not be open for public tastings), as well as to provide a space for displaying items of local historical interest on both a permanent and rotating basis.
With our new home, we’ll have many more opportunities to share special moments with our friends and fans, which means we needed just the right person to manage these special occasions and to be your liaison to Three Sticks. With that, we’d like to introduce you to Hayden Schmidter (pictured here), who will handle all things hospitality and take the lead with allocations for our 2013 new releases. Hayden can be contacted at Hayden@ThreeSticksWines.com or by calling (707) 996-3328 x105.
To stay up-to-date, make sure to “Like” us on Facebook and “Follow” us on Twitter. See you in 2013!
The Three Sticks Team
Jan 30, 2013 at 12:00 PMWinter at Durell Vineyard: A Time of Contrast and Renewal
Wintertime at Durell Vineyard is a place of visual and physical contrast. Muted earth tones of pale Spanish moss cling in mass to the barren branches of deciduous oaks, all set against a backdrop of brilliant green grasses ripe from abundant winter rains. Geometric and dormant vine rows dissect both flat and undulating landscapes, roots held in check by frigid soils, while above ground busy crews prune canes in preparation for the coming bud break.
The sound track to this beautiful mosaic is also a work of contrast; the peacefulness of rural silence intermittently punctuated by the fleeting notes of songbirds, the barks of distant dogs, and the percussive snip of pruning sheers. Today, on this January morning, the sun is bright; the air is cool, yet warming.
We’re meeting with Rob Harris, Director of Vineyard Operations, to check on the status of Durell as the huge task of pruning begins. “Even though we’ve had a spell of fairly warm days, the nights have been near or below freezing,” explains Rob. “This keeps the soils cold and the 
roots dormant. This is what’s important to keep the vines in check. The earliest I’ve seen bud break here is mid-February. We like to see early- to mid-March to avoid frost issues in spring.”
The eastern vineyards of Durell are flat and rooted in rocky creek bottom soils, then rise to the west across sloping knolls and the steep hillsides of the Pacific Coastal Range. Rob says the lower vineyards can sometimes begin bud break three weeks earlier than the upper. With a crew of twelve to fifteen workers at a time pacing through vineyard blocks, we ask how he chooses where to prune and when, and does this affect the outcome of harvest.
“It’s a lot like life,” Rob shares, “there are no absolutes. When we prune, it does affect the timing of bud break – the earlier a cane is pruned the earlier it breaks bud. And we want to keep the upper and lower vineyard blocks somewhat close on timing, but not too close, otherwise all our fruit would come in at once at harvest, and that’s unmanageable.”
So this notion that winter is a time of dormancy in the vineyards is just not quite true – it is, but it isn’t. What the vineyard team does now extends all the way into the drama and passions of harvest. Below we share a series of photos with captions to illustrate some of the other tasks and farming decisions that are made in these short and sometimes stormy days of winter.
Hey, Rob, thanks for the tour!
The cut canes from pruning are dropped between the vines rows to be mulched to add natural nutrients back into the vineyard soils
Cleaning raptor boxes, erosion control, creek restoration, and fixing irrigation lines and fencing, are just some of the projects that occupy winter at Durell Vineyard
Cover crops such as annual legumes, e.g. fava beans, and crimson clover are utilized to enhance biological diversity, improve soil fertility and structure
Managing vast sections of open space at Durell supports natural habitat and biodiversity
Be the first to comment on this postHarvest 2012 Q&A with Our Three Sticks Winemaking Team
If you’ve been following the Three Sticks blog this past year and read our September feature, "Harvest 2012 & Never Looking Mother Nature Directly in the Eye," you might remember the reticence of our vineyard team to make any declarations on the quality of the 2012 vintage. The most we were able to extract was, “We have no complaints,” delivered with a restrained smile from our Viticuluralist and Assistant Vineyard Manager, Jackie Mancuso. At the time, it looked as though harvest would begin full swing within the next couple of weeks, and picking would wrap up fairly quickly.
And then, Mother Nature did her thing: the weather cooled and the fruit hung for nearly a month longer. Luckily, the weather held beautifully and the extended hangtime gave us what may be one of California’s finest vintages in decades.
We recently visited with Winemaker Don Van Staaveren, as well as our newest members to the winemaking team, Enologist Jenny Schultz and Production Enologist Todd Arnold (and Shaka, winery dog) for a little Q&A on harvest and their personal experiences.
Three Sticks: Don, we’ve been talking to other winemakers and vineyard managers, and we’re hearing consistent raves about the quality of the 2012 fruit, with yields generally up about 30 percent over the past couple of years.
Don: Harvest was very compressed. The early ripening fruit hung longer, and the late maturing fruit caught up. Everything came in during a very tight two-week window -- last year was six weeks. The quality is absolutely there; we’ve seen healthy fermentations, as well as excellent acidity and pH. As far as yields, Durell Vineyard is very self-limiting, which is why the estate delivers us exceptional Chardonnay and Pinot Noir fruit year after year. We’re up over 2011, but less came in than our projections. Durell does what Durell does, and that’s what makes it such a special site.
Three Sticks: Over the past few years, Three Sticks has selectively expanded our portfolio to source fruit from other top vineyards along the coastal AVAs of California. How did harvest look in these vineyards and what should we expect to see from these small-lot bottlings?
Don: For our Sonoma Valley Cabernet Sauvignon, which is actually mountain fruit, we’ve seen excellent grapes from the Bismark and Bald Mountain Vineyards. [Don grins] I’m especially 
impressed with the stellar Cabernet Sauvignon we sourced from the Moon Mountain District, which will be new to the 2012 blend. For Pinot Noir, we’ve got THE JAMES Sta. Rita Hills and Silver Eagle Ridge from the Sonoma Coast. 2010 was the first year we sourced Silver Eagle Ridge Pinot Noir – the first release will be in 2013. All looks top notch. For whites, we again have a tiny amount of Pinot Blanc from the Carneros, and another new source, Chardonnay from the One Sky Vineyard on Sonoma Mountain.
Three Sticks: Todd, you’re pretty new to the team here, but you’ve been working in winery cellars since 2006, learning on the job and expanding your experience. What was new for you this year, and what was your take-away from 2012?
Todd: The biggest thing for me this harvest was lab work with Don and Jenny. Basically, Don had Jenny and I switch it up, where she spent most of her time on the floor handling production and me in the lab. It’s a great example of how Three Sticks strives to build our team’s knowledge base and continually pursue excellence. It was great. On the harvest side, like Don said, the high acids and steady pH in all the wines is nothing like I’ve seen. We almost didn’t need our sorting table this year.
Three Sticks: Jenny, you’re our newest member of the winemaking team. After getting your MS in Viticulture and Enology at U.C. Davis, and then working harvests in New Zealand, South Africa, and California, what’s been your overall experience here, and what was it like getting out of the lab and onto the floor?
Jenny: Learning to drive a forklift was a highlight. My time on the winery floor also gave me a greater perspective on how 
the science of chemistry directly relates to the art and flat-out hard work that it takes to make great wine. I think the best example is that Three Sticks harvests its grapes in 40lb bins, unlike most wineries that use one-ton bins. People think we’re crazy. They have a nickname for our bins – I won’t share here. Yes, it takes much longer to harvest and then process from 40lb bins, but the pay off comes in the quality of gently handling the fruit. Instead of feeling frustrated by the extra hours, I actually experienced a sense of pride like I’ve never felt before anywhere else.
Three Sticks: Don, any final thoughts?
Don: Right now, everything is looking very good for 2012. We’ve got a bit more fruit and some new sources in tank and barrels -- and cement eggs -- so this will help with tight allocations for our growing number of friends and fans. In the end, as is always the case, a vintage will take time to truly reveal itself – and this is just one of the many reasons we love the challenge of making great wine.
CLICK HERE to join our Allocation List.
We also encourage you to reach out to our new Hospitality Director Hayden Schmidter with any questions concerning allocations and future releases at Hayden@ThreeSticksWines.com.
Our New Home: The Historic Vallejo-Casteñada Adobe
One of the most important touchstones of Three Sticks Wines is our ongoing quest for excellence in everything we pursue, embrace and create. This includes the people who make up our team, how we farm our vineyards, how we make our wines. We are certainly a winery with the commitment and resources to pursue excellence, however, like any burgeoning enterprise we must prioritize and take balanced steps to ensure our sustainability and to never sacrifice quality.
In our early years, this meant gathering our team, refining our vineyard practices and plantings, and focusing on state-of-the-art, handcrafted winemaking. With these leading priorities in place, we have now moved forward in securing our home for hospitality in the historic town of Sonoma, California. Of course, it came to no one’s surprise here at Three Sticks that proprietors Bill and Eva Price combined this search with a greater vision – to find a home that reflected our aesthetic and the experience of enjoying our wines, while also making an important contribution to the community.
So, it is with great excitement that we share the news that Three Sticks Wines has acquired The Vallejo-Casteñada Adobe, located just off the town square, and considered one of the oldest occupied residences in Sonoma. We will relocate our administrative offices to the property in early 2013, and use the existing dining room and living room to host private tastings by appointment only for our allocation members (we will not be open for public tastings), as well as to provide a space for displaying items of local historical interest on both a permanent and rotating basis.
We hope you will take a few moments of your valuable time to CLICK HERE and read the historical overview of The Vallejo-Casteñada Adobe written by former owner and resident, Robert C. Demler, Jr. If you are like us, you will find the prospect of being inside the Adobe -- to share wines with friends and personally experience the building’s deep historical connection to early European California -- both humbling and inspirational. We look forward to the day when we raise a glass together to celebrate goals achieved, and a small slice of our past preserved. Cheers!
The Three Sticks Team
Posted Sketch by Jon Dodge
Holiday Gift Giving & Upcoming Events
At Three Sticks, we have a list of exciting and delicious upcoming events, as well as some special offerings in the works for the holidays to help make shopping easy. We look foward to celebrating harvest and the holidays together! Read on...
Thursday, November 1st: Dallas/Fort Worth Dinner Event at Del Frisco's Double Eagle Steakhouse. Dinner currently sold out. However, if interested in attending, CLICK HERE to contact Michelle to see if there is any flexibility.
Thursday, November 8th: Three Sticks Release Party for our VIP allocation members. You know who you are! For inquiries, CLICK HERE to contact Michelle.
…Stay tuned for Dinner at San Ysidro Ranch in Santa Barbara - Early 2013.
Friday, April 5th SAVE THE DATE: Celebrate San Francisco Giant's Opening Day with Three Sticks at Paragon Restaurant in SF.
Holiday 2012 - Give the Gift of Three Sticks this Holiday Season! We have put together an incredible offering of our wines to make your holiday shopping easy. More to follow soon! For inquiries, CLICK HERE to contact Michelle.
Winter 2013 - 2010 Pinots and 2009 Bordeauxs. We have two incredible vineyard designated pinots - Durell Vineyard and Silver Eagle Vineyard from the Green Valley/Russian River Valley that will be released in early 2013 along with our righteous 2009 Sonoma Valley Cabernet and 2009 Cabernet Franc. Don't miss these small-lot releases -- CLICK HERE to join our Allocation List.
As always, thank you for enjoying our wines with us. It makes our work incredibly gratifying!
The Three Sticks Team
Harvest 2012 & Never Looking Mother Nature Directly in the Eye
In Wine Country, harvest is a time of great excitement, anticipation, and frankly, blood, sweat, and tears. The recipe of ingredients in this emotional elixir changes with each vintage, dictated by what Mother Nature has delivered upon the vineyard managers and the winemakers. With some vintages, additional components are added, such as gut wrenching anxiety and outright fear of total loss.
Yes, growing and making wine is, at its very heart, farming.
For those of us who simply consume this beautiful juice — which many cultures consider a gift from the gods — harvest inspires visits to wine country to take in the sights, sounds and smells of fruit laden vineyards, crush pads bustling with winemaking teams, and the alluring scent of fresh pressed grapes and dense, oak barrels. For the overtly serious wine drinker, we seek out the most informed folks on the ground to prognosticate on the quality of the vintage at hand.
So, considering all of the above, we peeled away from our daily desk chores and headed out to Durell Vineyard to see how everything was shaping up for Harvest 2012. The drive through Sonoma Valley in most cases is reward enough, but when you know that you have an invitation to pass through the main gate at Durell, where so many great winemakers have clearance, the drive takes on new meaning — like a backstage pass.
We meet Viticulturalist and Assistant Vineyard Manager Jackie Mancuso in the tractor barn, jump onto a ranch grade ATV, roll out through the lower streambed vineyards, and up into the foothills overlooking the valley. We ask how the vintage is looking so far. “We’ve picked for our sparkling wine client, with the grapes coming in at about 20 brix,” Jackie says in a very even-handed tone. “Everything for still wines will be ripe in the coming days and weeks, depending on where they’re located on the estate.”
As we listen to Jackie share her insight, we snap some photos of the panoramic views of the steep and sweeping vineyard scape and ripening Pinot Noir bunches. We note that she didn’t really answer the question.
“You know,” we pose, “the weather this spring and summer has really been beautiful. We’ve been hearing a bit of chatter that things look grea…good…so far.”
Jackie breaks eye contact and looks out over the Sonoma Valley. She appears to be restraining a smile, “we have no complaints.”
Yes, growing and making wine is, at its very heart, farming. And with this comes a bit of superstition and knowledge to never second-guess Mother Nature. We believe we have our unspoken answer to the potential of the 2012 vintage, but out of deference and respect to the people who will work nearly 24/7 over the next couple of months to bring in the grapes, we must hold onto our opinions and speak delicately around the subject.
Click here to join our allocation list.
Summer Event Schedule & Future Musings
Saturday, August 4th: Eighth Street Wineries Open House! Tickets are available online: www.eighthstreetwineries.com. Click here to read our complete blog feature...and make sure to check your Three Sticks offer letter for your discount code!
Friday, August 31st: Three Sticks Winemaker Luncheon in the Field at Durell Vineyard. This event is part of the Sonoma Wine Country Weekend and currently SOLD OUT! If you are dying to see Durell and enjoy incredible eats prepared by Sondra Bernstein and her team, please email Michelle at midell@classicwinesllc.com as we’ve increased the luncheon for our allocation members only: 707-996-3328 ext. 105 Tickets are $85 through SWCW.
Saturday, September 1st: Taste of Sonoma at Sonoma Wine Country Weekend - We are excited to be a part of the upcoming Sonoma Wine Country Weekend! This event brings together over 180 world class wineries with more than 70 chefs for a three day event that celebrates the best of Sonoma County. As a valued customer, and through our partnership with Sonoma Wine Country Weekend, we have a limited number of Taste of Sonoma and Sonoma Valley Harvest Wine Auction tickets available to you at our participating winery price. To take advantage, enter promo code: WINECLUB at the time of purchase. First come, first serve! Thank you for your support and we look forward to seeing you this Labor Day Weekend.
Sunday, September 2nd: Sonoma Valley Harvest Wine Auction – We are hosting a table! If you are planning to attend please call Michelle and she will see if we have room at the Three Sticks table for you to join us… Tickets are $500 through SWCW.
Thursday, September 13th: Three Sticks Release Party is being RESCHEDULED! More details following soon!
Winter - 2010 Pinots. We have three incredible pinots from 2010: Durell Vineyard, Silver Eagle Vineyard from the Green Valley/Russian River Valley and a second release of the extremely popular JAMES from the Sta. Rita Hills AVA.
As always thank you for enjoying our wines with us. It makes our work incredibly gratifying!
The Three Sticks Team
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