The October, 2009 issue of Food & Wine Magazine gives the results of their 12th Annual American Wine Awards. A 33-member panel of sommeliers, critics, winemakers and retailers blind tasted wines in 20 different categories and awarded the Pride Mountain Vineyards 2006 Merlot ($56) as "the best American merlot at any price".

There is a new face at the top of Spring Mountain – kiwi Renée Dale, who joins the Pride wine team as this year’s international harvest enologist.

LPGA leader Cristie Kerr is also a leader in the fight against breast cancer. Every year she hosts her Birdies for Breast Cancer Charity Golf Classic to raise funds to help women with breast cancer, and most recently has created the Cristie Kerr Women’s Health Center on the campus of the Jersey City Medical Center. The Cristie Kerr Women’s Health Center will provide screening, education, recovery and support services for women with breast cancer. Services will be available for women with and without medical insurance.

Festival del Sole takes place every summer in the Napa Valley. The Festival features concerts by some of the world’s most celebrated musical artists, five-star cuisine, opulent venues, art exhibits, and wines from Napa’s top vintners, all blended in a unique celebration of the art of life.

If the final stage of a wine’s life cycle is the transfer from open bottle to waiting glass, then this is its penultimate stage...the bottling line. After going through harvest, crush, fermentation, cellaring, racking, and many, many blending trials, this is where winemaker Sally Johnson (shown), bottling manager Chris Bergen, and the rest of the Pride Mountain Vineyards crew put the final wines to bed, where they will rest for four to six months before being shared with you.

Our vines have just started to flower and, hallelujah, the weather is calm and clear! In the photo, you see a lower cluster that has just begun to bloom and an upper cluster that is just about to. Grapes self-pollinate. In the first hour after one of the flowers bursts open, microscopic pollen grains fall from the tips of the five white filaments onto the the would-be berry at the center where they hopefully attach to the stigma (the white circle with the green dot at the center if you zoom in on the photo). This sets in process a chain of events that culminates in a grape berry. If it is raining when the flower opens, the pollen can be washed away, or if it is too hot and windy, the pollen can dry up and blow away. When this occurs, only a fraction of the berries set and this has implications throughout the entire growing and ripening season.

Suzanne Pride Bryan and her husband Stuart Bryan arrive in Nantucket for the 13th Annual Nantucket Wine Festival.

For the past fifteen years we have wanted to give our wines a few more months of bottle age before releasing them to you. Our Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay and Reserve wines have historically been released with only a month of time in the bottle. So this year, we plan to use the slow economy to your advantage by delaying by a few months most of our offerings.

Hello everyone, Steve Pride here. I just wanted to share a few thoughts about our current release wines and current winemaking team.