Needed: Crystal Ball

I don't know whether to be happy or sad.

They're gone. The toasty vanilla 2004 Chardonnay- Poof! The peachy 2006 Viognier- disappeared! The berry-bomb 2005 Zinfandel- all guzzled down!

As much as I loved these wines it's time to end the mourning and begin looking toward the future. The 2007 Viognier is getting rave pre-release reviews and I hope to have it bottled in January. We'll also bottle the 2006 Zinfandel early next year. But it will be another year before we have another toasty chardonnay.

As a new winery, you wish you had a crystal ball to see how much of a particular wine you will sell. Ideally, we would have enough to get us through to the next vintage. But, alas, we had a lot of thirsty customers this year and they drank us dry before we could make more.

I'm told this is a good thing. For it's better to sell out than to have too much inventory (wine doesn't last forever). But as the tasting room stays open for a couple of years, we'll be more able to see the sales trends to better match our production.

But in the meantime, I'll keep looking for crystal balls on eBay.