L3 Is In The 21st Century…

I can’t decide if I’m green or lazy. As you see, we’ve decided to make our newsletter electronic. Now, without question, not printing this newsletter is saving some trees and cutting down on hydrocarbons because I’m not driving for an hour round trip to pick it up at the printers. I feel good about that. But I’d be disingenuous if I didn’t tell you that it’s a lot easier on me to do it electronically and it’s cheaper. See, this ecology makes sense. Saving trees, the planet, and my money! The newsletters will also be posted on the website in case you lose yours.

We also have a Facebook page (facebook.com/level3wines) you really should check it out. There’s lots of stuff from Harvest.

A new feature to the website is that you can write reviews about the wines. Navigate to each wine page and next to its description is a tab for reviews. I like to hear what you guys think about the wine.

You Are In A Very Elite Club…

The wine club membership is currently closed to any new members. Because you are successful, smart, assertive, and good looking, you joined the wine club before all the memberships were taken! You are the Founding Members of Level 3! Only 266 other people in the entire world can say they are in the same club as you. Good Job!

We are currently accepting names for the waiting list. So when you’re rubbing it in your friend’s face that you’re “in” and they’re “out” tell them they can sign up on the waiting list on our website. Be careful who you tell though, some of you have “friends” that would cut your brake lines just to move up on the list!

You Can Pick Up Your Wine If You Want…

Thanks to Brian and his lovely wife, Christina, you have the option of picking up your wine at their tasting room. You need to let us know so we can set it up then you can stop by their place and pick it up. They are located at 2915 Limestone Way, Paso Robles, CA 93446.  They are open Fri-Sun 11:00-5.

The Truth…

The truth is… I think these 2014 wines are the best wines I’ve ever produced. The goal with Level 3 was to go in a different direction. I wanted to make very small batch wines from vineyards I’ve never, or rarely, used in the past. We now have the luxury of not considering the economic impact of our winemaking decisions. This has allowed me to call in some favors and purchase grapes from some very exclusive vineyards and to put more money into the French economy through barrel purchases.

So Seriously…

Is our grandson the cutest kid you’ve ever seen?!? I promise I’ll never tell your grandkids you said it, but look at this kid!

Time Heals All Wounds… or, Possibly My Memory Isn’t As Good As It Was…

So it’s been fifteen years or so since I planted a vineyard. The new Level 3 vineyard was going to be a “walk in the park” I said. “Piece of cake… It’s just five acres”.  So we get it all planted by August of last year... 4,500 vines... piece of cake.

Well, I kind of forgot that the land had been a cattle pasture for the last two hundred years. See, the cows got along fine with the gophers and the squirrels and they loved eating the weeds. Well now that the cows are gone the squirrels and the gophers think they own the place! It’s been quiet the “Hammer and Tong” scenario over the last year with the little critters. I suspect that there is some kind of signed accord or perhaps some labor union agreement between the two. There are strict rules, squirrels destroy above ground, gophers below.

To date their combined efforts have destroyed 432 vines! Forget the thousands of dollars I’ve spent in manpower and equipment to put these little bastards in their place, now it’s gotten personal. Lets just say that Bill Murray and I have compared notes! They probably wouldn’t admit it but the tide has definitely turned in my favor. 

Good News, Bad News…

Well, actually the majority of it is bad news. Not bad news like the IRS is knocking at your door. More like your goofball cousin Jimmy is coming to stay for two weeks.

On September 20^th, sometime in the middle of the night, at the place where we store our wine, the second pallet, in a stack of four, broke causing one hundred and nineteen cases of beautiful Level 3 wine to come crashing to the ground and be destroyed! As you can see in the photo, it was ugly. There actually was a silver lining. I didn’t have to clean it up, the warehouse guys did.

Back to the bad news, what this means is we only have enough wine to do one shipment of the 2014 vintage. So the fall shipment (this one) will be the only shipment until next October, which will be the 2015 vintage. Just so you know, it takes 44 cases of each wine to make a complete shipment, so we only have enough wine to make up 30 complete shipments for the spring. I thought it would be a good idea to put the 30 shipments up for auction and let the 30 highest bidders get the wine. Susan thought that was a really, really bad idea. Always the voice of reason!

So what we’re going to do with the remaining wine is make it available for purchase on the website. There will be about 55 cases of Driven, 5 cases of Milestone, and 8 cases of C&C. The remaining wine will only be available to the wine club until February 1^st. That will give you time to try the wines and decide if you want to reorder anything. In February we will make whatever wine remains available to the general public.

And to throw salt in the wound, because we aren’t able to do a spring shipment we can’t do a Spring Pick-Up Party either!  

Don’t panic, it’s just wax…

So as you’ve probably noticed, we waxed the tops of our wines. Yes it is sexier, screams “high end”, and impresses all your friends, but the real reason we waxed the tops is because I screwed up and didn’t order the foils from Spain early enough to have them for the bottling. There, I said it. It’s a really long story about how the diameter of the neck on these new bottles requires a custom made foil and it’s a six week lead time and the foils are made in Spain… blah, blah, blah. Now a lot of us old timers cringe when we see wax because it’s such a pain in the ass to get the wax off so you can pull the cork out. Not any more. This really cool company in Southern California came up with this new wax. You just pull the cork right through the wax! Act like the wax isn’t even there. Very cool stuff.

So that’s it for now...Hope you enjoy the wine.