Rucksack Cellars

Always trying to learn as much as we can so that we can pass it on to you!

Something that we believe is really important for our customers at Rucksack Cellars, is when you come to our tasting room and experience our wine flight, if you have any questions about the wines, we want to be sure that we can answer them to the best of our abilities.

Douglas, our Rucksack tasting room manager, has been apprenticing with Paul in the cellar for just over three years and he brings this knowledge to the Rucksack tasting room. He prides himself in being able to explain to the customers, not only what tasting notes they might experience or good pairings with which the wines might work, but also what went in to the creation of each wine. You can see him in the collage above working with a number of our wines, in the top left and bottom right he is working with either the Syrah or Mourvedre, crushing and destemming as those varieties were picked earlier that day. On the bottom left, he is pumping over some Cabernet Franc and in the top right he is draining the remaining Zinfandel juice off it’s skins, so that the skins can be removed and pressed. All very common sights and tasks in the cellar during harvest season.

Also…being a farmer himself, Douglas just finds all this information really cool. He’s a bit nerdy and we love that about him.

All of this goes into our perpetual goal of making your tasting room experience as fun, educational and comprehensive as possible, maybe you learned a little something in this blog post as well. It is all about making sure that you…our customers…have a wonderful Rucksack experience!

Never let it be said that the threat of a little rain keeps away Cornhole players.

On Sunday October 1, we broke in our two new cornhole board sets with our inaugural Cornhole Tournament…Rucksack Style. Despite the dark clouds passing over, not a drop fell, the temperatures were perfect and fun was definitely had by all!

We had the perfect number of teams and participants for this fun event, and we certainly learned how to improve on it for next time. Teams played in a round robin style, taking breaks between games to sip on our wines and enjoy our Panini and Sweet Potato Fry pairings. What made it such a wonderful afternoon was the tournament being large enough to satisfy those competitive juices and small enough for everyone to chat, laugh and get to know each other. It was also small enough for all the teams to walk away with some home-made prizes…how awesome is that?!?!

Thank you to all the participants and if you missed out but want to play next time, stay tuned because we will definitely be doing this event again.

“Wait…was that Rucksack we just flew past on Camino Road, I have always wanted to stop there, but I never knew where it was.”

I literally had an industry customer from another winery, just down the road, say that exact phrase to me. Not to mention, I have heard similar statements from customers since I began managing here in May of this year. We definitely needed to take some action to encourage people to actually stop instead of saying, “well, maybe next time.” So…in the last few weeks, we have been making some changes here at Rucksack to the entry of our tasting area, and it seems to be working!

In addition to some new, more colorful signs that now line the road in front of our tasting area, we have added some flowers, moved our official Apple Hill Growers sign to closer to our actual entrance and a brand new beautiful gate. Curb appeal and easier to find! We want to make sure that you can see and find us as easily as possible.

The Rucksack wines that have always been of the highest quality are now building a reputation that is growing more and more every week and we want to absolutely look the part, and be as welcoming to our customers (our friends) as we can.

Come in and pick up the last few bottles (or cases) of a few varieties of which we are running low.

As exciting as it is to be harvesting the next vintages, and it really is, I tried the Chenin Blanc and Riesling today and they are showing the initial signs of being really special. It can also be exciting (and a little sad) when you start selling out of varieties that you released earlier this year. It is exciting because when you sell out of something, you know that people really enjoyed the wines that were created. It can be sad, because you know soon, that wine will be gone and no wine created in the future will ever be EXACTLY the same. That is just a fact of the wine business.

So if any of the following wines are some of YOUR favorites…please come in and get them before they are gone. Remember, all of our wines here at Rucksack are $24 per bottle. 5% off for 6-11 bottles (10% for club members) and 15% off for 12 or more bottles (20% for club members).

Wines we are running low on:

2020 Pinot Noir (less than a case remaining)

2017 Cache (less than a case remaining)

2020 GSM (6 cases)

2022 Barbera Rose (less than a case remaining)

In the image above, you see our approved proof for our two new cornhole board sets. We also have new bean bag sets to go with them in our traditional Rucksack colors of Forest Green and Maroon. I can sense your excitement growing, don’t you want to be the first to break them in? Well…here’s your chance!

Our first EVER Cornhole Tournament…Rucksack Style! is right around the corner! Sunday, October 1 from 1pm to 4pm we will have all three…yes three…of our cornhole boards here at Rucksack for our round robin style tournament. What does that mean? Well let me tell you. We hope to have six teams (if there’s more, we will make it work) playing, after roughly 15 minutes the teams will rotate and play again. Based on the honor system, a tally mark will be placed next to the winning teams name on our chalkboard scoreboard after each round. Of course, time will be taken between rounds so that wine glasses and lunch boxes can be consumed (more on this in a bit). This format will continue until around 3:30, when the tally marks will be totaled and and prizes awarded.

How do I sign up for this amazing event? I can tell you that too! First off…find that friend, family member, date, co-worker or neighbor and form your team of two. Then, simply go to http://www.rucksackcellars.com (you’re already here), then click on the “STORE” tab across the banner at the top of the page followed by the “EVENTS AND MERCHANDISE” tab. Your registration fee or $45 ($40 for Club Member) covers your tournament entry, 2 box lunches and 2 glasses of wine (remember I mentioned those earlier?). How awesome a deal is that?

Don’t miss out on this event! What a great way to get outside for a little bit, have some fun and meet some more people around this fantastic community. We are hoping that it will be a ton of fun and become a regular here at Rucksack.

Can you feel it? The days are a a little shorter, the temperatures are a little lower and as you look around…some of the leaves are beginning to change color. September is here and fall is right around the corner. What does this mean for us in the winery, tasting rooms and vineyards…HARVEST!!!

In the winery, we are preparing for the influx of fruit that will be picked, hopefully starting this week, depending on when Paul determines our first varieties are ready. We are preparing barrels, making space for the new juices, cleaning tanks and making sure that our press, crusher/destemmer, pumps and lines are all ready to go.

In the tasting rooms, it is Apple Hill season so we are excited for the crowds and all the energy and attention that comes to El Dorado County and the Sierra Foothills during this gorgeous time of year. With harvest being here, we can begin to dream about all the wonderful new vintages that we will have bottled and available, some as early as next year.

In the vineyards, we are keeping a close eye on brix levels and doing sample tests of certain varieties. We have all of our amazing crews on the ready and we are beginning to gameplan where we are going to need our harvest bins first.

All the preparation for harvest may be slow, methodical and calculated. However, that is just to make sure that we are as prepared as possible, because once harvest begins…it is a marathon sprinted until the end.

So…what is YOUR favorite wine? This question makes perfect sense, but at least for me it is really hard to answer.  I WILL tell you what my all time favorite wine is, eventually, but you’re going to have to bear with me for a bit while I first talk about why this is such a tough question for me to answer.

First, let us examine where you experience this bottle may have an effect on how you indeed experience it.  For example, drinking a Bordeaux in Bordeaux overlooking a 500 year old Chateau with a river winding through the backdrop at sunset is going to influence how the wine tastes when you compare that same Bordeaux on your couch watching Friends re-runs with a view of your neighbors bathroom. Trust me, I have done both and it definitely has an effect.

Most wines are meant to be enjoyed with food. Sometimes my wife and I look back on our experience with a certain wine and we wonder if the wine was really that great or if the meal as a whole; food, wine, service, night out without the kids, made the experience exceptional. Likewise, we may want to give a wine a second shot because the food that we paired it with, maybe wasn’t the best decision. So did you really just have an amazing wine or did you have an amazing dining experience?

How can I possibly be expected to choose one favorite when the choices of varietal are so abundant?  In addition, there is where those varieties come from. Then, on top of all the wine making regions, the varieties taste varies from country to country and region to region.  Confused yet…for example, a Cabernet is going to taste different whether it comes from France, Napa or up here in El Dorado County (of course ours is the best!)  That’s why terroir is so important in wine making (I’m sure you have heard Paul mention that word a few times).

And yet…after all that, as promised, here is my favorite wine. When I was going to school in Italy, not for wine, I was invited to a dinner on a vineyard with a few of my school friends. The host was serving two wines, an unfiltered white and an unfiltered red. Part of the way through the meal, I looked down to the locals end of the long table and I saw that they were blending the white and the red at the table, in their glasses. I nearly fell out of my chair…it was unbelievably good. So there…that was my favorite wine…EVER! I have no idea what the varieties were, I just know that I had an incredible blend of white and red unfiltered wines in 1998 Tuscany.

Hopefully this helps explain, for me at least, why it is so difficult to choose just one favorite wine. Cheers and keep exploring all those different wines out there.

Wait…what IS that? And should I be scared?

No…absolutely not! It is something we all look forward to and something to be thrilled about. It means our vines are healthy and doing what they need to in order to finish their jobs for the year.

To be very specific, Veraison is the process where grapes on the vine turn from green (yes…all grapes start out as green) to purple. It is when berries begin to transition from berry growth to berry ripening.

But what exactly does this mean for us in the winery, out in the vineyards and in the tasting room? Well…let me tell you you! It means that it is time for us to get really excited, start drinking our red bulls our preparing for some long, hard, but incredibly fun and rewarding days in the winery. It means that harvest is approaching and we need to start paying attention the the Brix levels of each variety so that we can start planning on when we might want to pick. It means that we can cut down on spraying in the vineyard because once veraison begins, the grapes protect themselves and molds and mildews stop growing. It means that we need to wash all the harvest machinery in the winery and get the tanks ready so that when the vines say “pick me,” we are totally ready to go.

In the tasting room, Veraison means that we can start dreaming about the new 2023 vintages that we will be able to taste and talk about in the coming months. We can also watch the beautiful hues of green to dark purple as the grapes continue to ripen on the vines. Paul Bush, Paul Nurry and Tim Wright become scarce in the tasting rooms because they are spending all their time in the winery. Douglas will be in the winery too, but only when Paul needs him, so you will still be able to find him over at Rucksack.

Come visit and check Veraison out for yourself. It is a beautiful and exciting time of year out here.