ms x mb '19.
and grapes! i told you they've been wildly important to us recently. so important that we hopped on a plane monday way-morning. out to SFO. and got into a car. and grabbed a couple pastries from an unjustifiably famous bakery. and rode due north to sonoma. and ate at the old fremont diner. and snagged a bottle of concrete and skin fermented chardonnay and an albatross moment at scribe winery. and texted our new friends tim and martha at martha stoumen wines. and asked if they were ready for us to arrive. and they were! indeed, the grapes for our collaboration had been picked while we were up in the sky. and they were expected at the winery any moment now! so we hustled over. jumped out of our truck and onto the top of a de-stemmer. and go to work sorting and lining up grapes. after a few bins' worth, we jumped down and right into an untouched grape bin. to do the foot tread ourselves. embarrassing polly w my flintstone feet. and holy hell! it's way harder than you expect it to be. nuts! ... a pump-over. some tank work. lots of listening. wine bottles everywhere (but not as ubiquitous as the bags of ruffles). martha and tim, all earthy and helpful and excited and warm and brilliant. ... all of this. together. made our natural wine / beer blending dreams come true.
we're only just beginning to tell the story of our collaboration w martha. the pressed juice is en route in a reefer truck now. kicked off w a little lees from one of her white blends. ticking away. hopefully slowly. but definitely surely. in a poly tank. in that back of that truck. ... it arrives sunday morning. and i gotta go rent a forklift today. so i can't write all that much in my citizen how rant. but i guess the point is: stay tuned. we'll have a nouveau release. we'll let some portion mature. some will be on tap. some in bottles. some will be beer heavy. some will be wine heavy. some will be totally native, pet-nat even. some will be even more native (somehow).
it's gonna be a fun, wine-y winter.
bloom all over these stoumen negroamaros!!