Last year, the exact same week. But we got to see just 5% bloom 
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My wife and I on our family friendâs persimmon orchard.
Gleaning some persimmons from our friendâs orchard. He intentionally left us trees with fruits enough to fill a 40-footer truck.
My winemaking partners in our partnerâs vineyard. We grow different kinds of grapewine varietals.
Destemming the grapes at the winery.
I love my wine research work. We are required to drink on the job for the sake of research!
We win awards for our unique wines fermented from fruits and grapes, not infused, but real fermented fruits.
Meet Edgar Valdivia, a CRFG member, I made dragon fruit wine for him and it won Best Of California Award at the state fair.
Meet two of our three kids⌠Our youngest son is an excellent classical music composer and our daughter has just graduated college.
I love fishingâŚ
Iâm an electric car enthusiast. I get 1,210 mpg with my Volt, drove it for 48,000 miles in 1.5 years and only used 30 gallons of gas, with 24 gallons provided for free by the dealer, so only really bought 6 gallons of gas! I love the concept of the Voltec drivetrain, I donât have to plan any of my trips around charging stations, I have no range anxiety, and I attain 96.1% of my total mileage in electricity from the sun from our paid-off electric panels. My driving is free fuel most of the time.
I regularly donate blood and platelets, while working my main job as a software developer.
I also volunteer to help graduate students do some challenging grafting for their research towards thesis.
This is my favorite tree, when it has 130 different cultivars on it, with about 30 different types of prunus species and their hybrids, now it has 150. The shirt was given by my kids on Fatherâs day, and the legend portion is supposedly hiding below the belt, 
, not the multigrafted tree.
My wife and I are both outdoors folk, attending our oldest sonâs wedding in San Luis Obispo Botanic Garden
Weâre all happy to meet you too!
Drop by anytime for free tasting from whatever fresh fruits I have. I have fresh fruits all year round from my yard. And out of season fruits beautifully served inside a bottle, the fruit wine tasting, free for fellow members! Fruit wines youâve never tasted before, once in a lifetime you should try. And of course, some regular grape wine varietals too!
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We used to sell a line known as OUR DAILY WINESâŚWonder if it was the same line?
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You are a busy man, Joe! So many interests, I wish I had your energy. Thanks for sharing pics of you and your family. I wish we werenât 2000 miles away, Iâd sure take you up on your offer of exotic fruit wines!
You may have seen them already, but I posted some pics of my crew (wife and pets) further up thread. We took some new Easter pics recently, I ought to post those soon. Those posted pics are at least two years old.
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Thanks for pointing that out. Maybe I should have noted the mountains in the background and them wearing coats!
@Vincent_8B, sorry for the assumption!
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if only it is easy to ship wines. But whenever youâre in vacation and pass our way, drop me a line.
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Good kids, pretty wife, growing fruit, producing wine and catching striped bass is a perfect combination to me. I havenât produced wine yet but I do like to drink itđ Very nice pictures.
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This one is Our Daily Zin, so it might be different. I work indirectly with some wineries as I help people at some crush facilities fix their wines. They give me samples, I then experiment with it, and recommend the next steps of corrections before theyâre bottled. I have NDA so could not disclose which wineries or brands. We do have a startup brand of our own. It is still in its infancy, no name recognition yet.
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Very cool. We weâre in wine country in February. Iâve worked for 3 different wine/liquor distributors over nearly 30 years. Itâs. Truly a fantastic, ever changing, very challenging business. I have had my bad days but as a general rule Iâve really loved what I do. Sometimes certain change is hard for me but you learn to buck up or get out. Iâm less than 4 years from retirement and the better find a damn good reason to get rid of me. Or fight me until I retire. Iâve done a pretty darn good job though so Iâm sure Iâll make it. Iâm a sales manager after 14 years in sales as a salesman. Youâve probably heard of the company Iâm with. SGWS. I so enjoy coming to wine country. Mostly a bunch of rich farmers that have a real special passion for what they do. I wish you great success in your endeavors. Having UC Davis there should be an incredible asset!
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Iâm a consultant for making organic wines. I make very stable wines without using sulfites. I discovered a slightly different process of making wines that happen to use the natural antioxidants in the fruits as substitute for sulfites. I discovered it when I was making wines in the tropics and I was ony 12 years old. Am licensing part of my technology.
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Thatâs awesome. Just so happens my first glass of wine always turns my face red. Seems to be no harm but come to find out it is the sulfites causing it. Can you Label it sulfite free? I know it canât even be a trace in California for it to go on the label. Thatâs a REALLY big deal if soâŚ
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The new TTB rules no longer allow any one to say sulfite free as there are naturally occurring sulfites in all naturally made wines, coming from the sulfur containing amino acids in the fruits and also if mineral sulfur was used to dust the plants to protect them from fungal and bacterial infections.
They allow us to say âNo Added Sulfites but may contain naturally occurring sulfites.â
We are not required to put the statement âContains Sulfitesâ if our wine has less than 10 ppm of total SO2. All of our wines has 2-6 ppm of total sulfites and those who drink them told me that they didnât get any hangovers.
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âJoe Real
The Man
The Myth
The Legendâ
I tell ya⌠you remind me of my Dad so much.
I thought this afternoon of a T-shirt just because of yours, âIâm related to the most interesting man in the world.â
Youâre cool as hell man. All my friends call my Dad âCool Philâ
Cheers,
Dax
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My son in front of some amaranths a couple of years ago, holding an unidentified gourd. The seeds for this gourd were supposed to be from Sheepâs Nose gourds, aka Zucca melons, but these were not Zuccas.
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So beautiful yard, and very handsome boy. Castanea.
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Iâve always felt the French had pulled off a huge PR myth by convincing people the only gourmet fruit wine had to be made from grape varieties that happen to thrive in their region and fantasized about doing what your are doing. Maybe if I wasnât an ale drinker I would have gotten around to at least doing some experimentation. Here, the main fruit that gets as high brix as grapes are Euro plums- I canât see why you couldnât make a delicious, DRY wine out of them- Iâd like a plum-black current mixture, I think.
Very impressive photo album you assembled for us- thanks for introducing us to your life.
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if I saw that gourd in the wild, iâd assume it was a snake and immediately haul ass the other direction.
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A friend of mine makes fruit wines. He made a batch from wild plums. I think it is superb, dry , tart , hint of plum.
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Itâs Farmers Markets time here in the U.P. and we participate by playing music at a small (but really nice!) nearby Market located on Lake Michigan. They like to use this photo of us taken a few years ago in July to remind folks what the weather can be like. We only live 15 mi away but itâs often 10 deg colder in town than inland where we live. Two weeks ago it was barely warm enough to play (low 60âs) and this week it looks like weâll be sweating it out with the very unusual heat (in the 80âs). But we enjoy it and itâs a great group of people who sell and buy at the local farmers markets. Sue (and Steve)
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