Welcome to parrotsandpeacocks.com
Our Story
One day in early August 2021, Lisbeth said to Anders: "Enough with this messy dustbowl of a hillside. Let's plant vines and citrus trees." This came after we had discussed - for years - what to do with the overgrown, weed infested eroded slope. We did have some wild rosemary which had survived on little water and thrived during the hot summers, and those bushes, apart from the weeds, were really the only plants holding the hillside together.
When we bought our house in the Santa Monica Mountains - on a lot just shy of an acre - we had the house itself to contend with. It was not in a good shape and needed a lot of renovations. So we largely left the steep slope to itself, but it remained a constant source of discussion. We evaluated a lot of ideas, even turning the slope into a huge playground with a 100 foot zip line or building a new driveway up to our house, but left the matter unsettled for a few years while we chewed it over.
Getting the hillside under control
The hillside is steep - probably 45 degrees - so even walking on it proved difficult, especially after we decided to pull up (by hand) all the 4-, 5-, and 6-foot weeds that were seemingly everywhere. We had spent the rainy, cooler months of March and April 2020 and 2021 to clean up our slope, but this just meant that we now had a huge pile of sand. There really was no good soil, and it was barely possible to walk (more like skate) on it.
So we needed to install retaining walls and walkways. We built these by hand, using treated wood, and put in stairs as well. This became a pretty ambitious family project and many spare hours (and days) went to build out the basic network of walkways and stairs, dig holes, install irrigation and plant the vines.
Planting the vines
We decided early on that we would have mostly white grapes. Chardonnay is the grape of choice for many wine growing regions in California, as it generally requires lots of sun and withstands the hot summer heat better than other white grapes that are common in France and Germany.
We also planted a few rows of Merlot, Syrah and Cabernet Sauvignon just to try our hands with the reds as well.
Getting ready for harvest
Against all odds (and rational advice) we decided to harvest our first batch the year after planting. In mid-August of 2022, we got the required harvesting tools - buckets for picking, a presser, and carboys for fermenting, racking and aging. This was now decidedly a family affair and the kids were very invested in the process (particularly in picking and testing the grapes for flavor!)
Harvest day
You decide when to harvest based on several factors, of which sugar level (Brix), acidity and pH are among the most important. We usually start keeping track of sugar once the grapes begin to taste sweet. We then use a refractometer to do a quick test for sugar level. In 2022 the grapes were ready to harvest in mid-August, but in 2023 they took 5-6 weeks longer to mature, given the unusually cool spring we had that year. We ended up harvesting our whites and reds at the end of September and beginning of October that year!
Stomping
Of course by far the funnest part of harvesting is .... stomping! We do it the traditional way: Clean your feet and up you go; jump in the barrel and start stomping around.
We also need to "de-stem" - the process of moving the little grapestems that come loose once you're done smashing them into mush. The de-stemming is pretty tedious, but necessary, unless you wish for your wine to carry some particularly bitter prrinciples and acidic tones (which we don't).
Time is of the essence the first few hours after picking the grapes. You'll need to move fast -- keep the grapes out of the sun and preferably in a cooler space, then stomp them throughly, de-stem, and add sulfite to paralyze the wild yeast.
Pressing the whites
White grapes should not spend too much time on the skins. After stomping they should be thoroughly de-stemmed, and then you'll need to add some sulfur to stump the growth of the natural yeast on the skins. Otherwise you'll get all kinds of strange (interesting?) strains rummaging through the stomped mush.
You then leave the white mush for a day or so, cover it to keep fruit flies away, and then it's time to press the whites from the skins.
After pressing, you add the proper yeast that will kick off the primary fermentation. The next few days you'll have bubbles - lots of them - while the yeast does its work and converts sugar to alcohol.
We've found the primary useually goes fairly fast - just a few days. Then you transfer to carboys and let the secondary fermentation do its thing. You'll need to fill the carboys to shoulder level only, since you're still going to have lots of bubbling. At this stage you need to be super careful about air -- so put on an airlock and fill it with a sulfite solution to keep oxygen away,
Fermentation
Reds are made a bit differently than whites. For our Chardonnays we press the grapes the day after we've picked them - they only get about 24 hours or less on the skins. This is done to preserve the fresh and fruity tastes that we like in our whites.
Reds are allowed to sit in the skins during the primary fermentation, which usually takes a few days. This way you develop the deep flavors and scarlet, ruby-red colors and tannins that create big, bold reds. You then press the reds off the skins after the primary fermentation.
Once you're done with the primary and secondary fermentation you'll have a must that is now deplete of all sugars, with a good alcohol level, and looks a lot like organic unfiltered apple cider. Now it's time for new wine - for it technically now is what the French call 'vin nouveau' - to rest and mature. You fill fresh carboys all the way up to the neck to keep air out, put on an airlock with sulfite solution to be extra careful, and put the carboys away in a cool, dry place. And then you wait! Once every 2-3 months you rack the wine off the dead lees and otherwise leave the wine alone to grow and mature.
Waiting .... and Racking!
You'll be racking your wine - that is, transferring it to fresh carboys in order to remove the dead yeast (lees) that settle at the bottom of the carboys - once every 2 or 3 months. Every time you rack, you have to be careful with air, and try to minimize splashing and exposing the wine to oxygen which will turn it into vinegar real fast. If you're careful and do things the right way, you'll see the wine start to clear during this process. It won't be perfectly clear yet, but it will look a lot better with every racking. And of course you'll want to taste!
The wine will be very raw at the first racking, but at the second racking we've found that you can start noticing distinct flavors. The wine itself will be less chalky and will start to develop a nice bouquet. This is really a small taste of what is to come...!
Bottling
We wait at least a year before bottling the whites, and longer for the reds. Wine needs to develop and mature, and that takes time. Every time you rack the wine it gets clearer until you're ready to bottle. We've found that even after bottling our wine develops.
Our first vintage Chardonnays - picked the year 2022 - was ready for bottling in the fall of 2023. At that time it had developed a golden hue - a deeper tone than most commercial Chardonnays you can buy in the stores - and very distinct flavors of green apples and ripe peaches.
Wine keeps developing after bottling. When we bottled our whites in 2023 they were good - very fruity, with nice legs and good alcohol content - but even after a few weeks, when we tasted one of the bottles, the flavor had cleared up and matured even more. Gone were any remaining yeasty hints and faint, odd taste nuances, and what we had now was a balanced, highly pleasant, fruity and perky wine that is just perfect for a sunny day in the Santa Monica Mountains :-)
Labeling .... and Drinking!
We're Parrots & Peacocks because, well, we live in the Santa Monica Mountains, and we have parrots and peacocks roaming these beautiful hills. Almost every day we have flocks of iridescent green parrots gliding over our house and sometimes they take shelter in a nearby palm or pepper tree where they will noisily squawk the day away.
The Old Place, the Western-style restaurant that dates back more than 50 years and was originally a post office and a small market more than a hundred years ago, has peacocks - many of them. They hang out in the pepper trees, roam around the restaurant grounds and mix effortlessly with locals and tourists, bicyclists and race car enthusiasts who come here every weekend to enjoy the majestic beauty of these hills.
So that's why we're Parrots and Peacocks. The grapes are all grown here locally, on the tough and rocky soils of the Santa Monica Mountains, blessed with near-endless sunshine and a few cool mornings where the fog drifts in from Malibu to cool things down and remind us all that the Pacific Ocean is only a few miles away on the other side of the ridge.
Our little canyon here is the perfect place to grow grapes - and we look forward to keep building our little winery here!