Pinot Log: 2008 / 2007 / 2006 / 2005
11.09.05 | If you listen closely
I topped up the barrels today, and everything is sounding great. Yes, right now is one of the few times when you use your sense of hearing in the crafting of wine.
To determine when wine is done with primary fermentation and/or beginning malo-lactic fermentation, you can use a pill test, chemical analysis, spectrophotometers, paper chromatography ... or you can just put your ear to the barrel. John Kongsgaard taught me this trick. There's something about the shape and density of a barrel of wine; when you put your ear to the hole, you can clearly hear any bubbles that are forming and escaping inside.
It may look a little foolish—removing your hat and shoving your head into the opening between barrels—but the "pop pop pop" lets you know the yeast are still working, still kicking off CO2 as they convert the very last bits of fermentable sugars to alcohol. It is a slower, lower-pitched bubbling. And, it slowly but surely comes to a halt over the first few weeks or so that the wine is in barrel. Things then typically sit still for a couple of weeks. (Or, in the case of last year, they sat silent for almost three months!)
Eventually, however, a second round of bubbling starts. The nature of this effervescence is different; it sounds just like Rice Krispies when you first pour the milk. This is the CO2 being released by malo-lactic fermentation (M/L). Why these M/L bugs make a faster and higher-pitched racket, I don't know, but they do. It's handy; one can easily discern between the two processes, which—in a perfect world—occur consecutively, not simultaneously.
The march of the perfect vintage continues: the Nord Lot, which finished up primary about a week after it went down to barrel, is now "snap, crackle, and popping" away. M/L has begun. I look forward to M/L reducing the acid on this wine a little bit, but it tasted beautiful before it started (it's hard to taste anything during M/L, as the process throws off all sorts of odd aromas). The Stanly lot—which is dark, rich, but also tasting a little tart until M/L begins—is still sitting quietly. Once one lot starts M/L, however, the others tend to follow. I expect to hear "tiny bubbles" out of those barrels any day.
No longer is there the rush that there was during harvest. But until M/L is done and we can finally add some SO2 and "put the barrels to bed," there is still significant risk. I'm glad to know we're not too far away from that day.
As harvest has slowed down, I've gotten back to tending to sales. Did a nice round of New York last week, putting Green Truck on the list at some seriously hip spots around Manhattan. In particular, I would highly recommend "The Tasting Room" at 72 East First. I saw their groovy wine list firsthand, and hear they have awesome food (I didn't have the chance to dine while I was there). Zoe and Lure are two others that now carry "da Truck." While I was in the city, I also got in a brief tour of the United Nations with a high school friend of mine who now works there; nice to get a social studies lesson of such magnitude. And another friend managed to score tickets to Spamalot on Broadway. If you haven't heard about this (spamalot.com), check it out; particularly—but not exclusively—if you are a Monty Python fan. Two straight hours of belly laughing.
As for the home front, we've got a new houseguest, complements of Katrina. Molly Brown (yes, "unsinkable") survived the hurricane, but lost her people. I'll include a pic. The Marin Humane Society, where RJ used to work, called us, and now Molly Brown is soaking up the sun in our backyard until January while she recovers from an infection of heartworm. If her Louisiana people haven't claimed her by then—probably a long shot—she's then supposed to go back up for adoption in Marin. But considering that at that point she will have been at my feet for four months (as well as celebrating the holidays with us) ... well, we'll see who ends up adopting her. Annie the Wonder Mutt, along with all the cats, is enduring a bit of an adjustment period; apparently things are done a bit differently down in New Orleans, and Molly Brown and the rest of the menagerie are all still resolving the culture clash.
Finally, I got serious about marathon training. Worked up a schedule, and even have managed to stick to it. Only problem is, I just found out they won't let me take a stroller (and thus Owen) on the course for the Napa marathon. Bummer. Gonna have to rethink that one. 26 miles is too far to run by your lonesome. But training with Owen has been fun nonetheless.
Just a quick note to anyone who happens to still be reading this all the way to the end. November and December are a great time to come visit wine country, and a great time for me to show folks around. It's nice and quiet around here, except for the barrels, which you can listen to firsthand if you come visit.
10.04.05
I'm a firm believer that truly handcrafted wine means that you S.Y.O.T. (Shovel Your Own Tank). It is one of my favorite parts of winecrafting indeed. I've run the "free run" wine to barrel through a valve in the bottom of the fermentor, and the cap, which was floating on the top, now rests on the bottom of the tank. The cap is a big, hot, wet, sticky, CO2-filled layer-cake of skins, seeds, and "peanut butter" (dead yeast cells and fine sediment). Trapped in that cap is still some wine—some of it quite good—and it needs to get to the press. To do so, someone needs to climb in there and shovel it all out the manhole at the bottom.
It's an exercise in solitude. This tank, known as "The Rocket," is—as the name would imply—taller and skinnier than most. Thus the cap is also taller than most. It took me about a half hour to awkwardly dig from outside the manhole cover up to the top of the cap. A pathway cleared for both me and some fresh oxygen, I then climb from the bottom into the stainless tank three times my height, with a cap whose top is right at eye level. I've put a fan at the top, because the CO2 is palpable (and otherwise dangerous). I also dangle a light in there so I can see what I'm doing. It's stainless steel all above me, I can't hear a thing but my own breathing, it's hot as a sauna, and there I am surrounded by spent grape skins that just gave me that flavor I work so hard to put into bottle. For one brief moment, I am as close to my fermentation as I can get without killing myself by asphyxiation. Two hours later I've shoveled ten tons worth of skins.
Besides being a hell of a workout (my triceps and hamstrings are killing me), it is also fascinating and educational to dig through the cap. It naturally separates itself into layers and pockets—skins here, seeds over here, peanut butter at the bottom—and I can smell the different aspects of fermentation as I shovel each subdivision. If the cap stinks faintly of rotten eggs in places—as is sometimes the case, and happens to be the case here—I know the fermentation would have benefited from a little more oxygen and perhaps even a few more nutrients for the yeast. Good to note for next year's plan, but equally important for how I will handle this year's wine in barrel; the wine itself does not show any of these attributes, but I will make some simple adjustments to prevent any problems now that I know the potential is there.
A few hours later and the press pushes the final 160 gallons of wine from the cap. I put that wine back into a clean tank (sans protective gas, as our slightly-sulfur-smelling-cap has told me the wine will benefit from a little O2), let it settle for twenty-four hours to remove a few solids, then those two barrels of wine join the rest of their brethren back in the caves. Everything is sitting pretty in barrel now, complete with homemade fermentation locks (sand-filled Ziplocs covering the bungholes to let gas escape but no air in), and suddenly ... harvest is over.
Well, I'm not truly done. I've got about 16 months left to screw up this perfect vintage. But, the wine is now more on my schedule. I'll give it a few weeks to truly finish fermenting the last few morsels of sugar, then we'll encourage it to start malolactic fermentation, and then we'll monitor that. The wines won't truly be safe—and my mind more at ease—until we get some SO2 in there post ML, probably around Thanksgiving. But at least now I can go away for a weekend to a wedding in L.A. and not worry. Which is exactly what I'm going to do. Now where did I put those tux measurements?
And after that? Well, the wines are now "put to bed," and I'm going to put myself there too, at least for a few days.
09.26.05
It rained today. I was in the parking lot of Thai Siam, grabbing take-out on my way back from the winery, and suddenly the skies opened up for a fifteen-minute shower. It was enough precipitation to cause some serious problems for any Pinot Noir left out there on the vine, but luckily, I think 99% of it has been brought in over the last three weeks. The perfect-but-nail-biting season continues: people got in their fruit just in time. Green Truck is unaffected by rain now—everything is safe and sound, fermenting in tank—with the notable exception that I left a window down on the truck.
We'll see if Chardonnay suffers. A little botrytis doesn't necessarily hurt Chard. (Biggest issue is loss of color, which doesn't affect white wines—which have little color to begin with—as it does reds.) Merlot and Syrah clusters are loose enough that they'll most likely dry out quickly in the upcoming sunny days. As for Cab ... well, Cab is thick-skinned (both physically and spiritually). Kind of hard to mess it up. I'm sure to get some emails from my cab-making friends for that last sentence.
I had a few people write in asking about pumpovers and punchdowns. I managed to take a few quick pics of the process for you. The main goal is to get the skins—which are floating on the top due to the CO2 produced by fermentation—back down interacting with the liquid. The skins hold all the color and flavor, and we want them down there in the fermenting wine. Not to mention the fact that a bunch of skins floating above the wine is a little microbial discotheque just waiting to ruin your vintage. We're also trying to get the wine aerated, as yeast need oxygen to do their job, so when we pull the wine from the bottom for a pumpover, we swirl it around in a "sump," and when we pump it over, we do so through an "irrigator," to give it a little breath of air if it needs it.
So, either we push the cap down into the wine (punchdown) or pump the wine from the bottom up over and sprinkle it down onto the cap (pumpover—which is pictured). This not only keeps the fermentations healthy, but makes the wine infinitely better, and puts me very closely in touch with what is happening with the wine—the heat, the color, the smell, etc.—so adjustments can be made.
Here's the technical version: skip if you like. I've included a shot of the fermentation chart. I keep one of these for each fermentation. The line that starts out on top is the brix, or percentage sugar, measured by spinning a little hydrometer in a flask filled with juice/wine. As days progress, the line—and thus the percentage sugar—drops to zero, which results in 14% alcohol or wine. Each hash mark across that line represents a punchdown or pumpover. You'll see, during the meat of fermentation from 20 to 3 brix, we try and punchdown or pumpover the wine as much as four times per day. The line that starts on the bottom is temperature, measured on the scale on the right. I start out with a cold soak—to increase aromatics in the wine—by chilling the tank to 50 degrees. After three days, we turn off the chiller, and as the yeast becomes active, the heat increases. Color and flavor extraction are maximized with alcohol and heat, so the warmer the better, up to a point. If too hot (>100 degrees) the yeast will die. And, if we get too much extraction, the wines can be bitter, especially if the seeds are green. All this I measure with a thermometer and taste buds.
I took a picture of this particular fermentation chart because it is about as pretty as a fermentation chart gets. Nice, clean, slow-starting, hot middle, headed for dryness fermentation. Couldn't ask for anything more. I think I'll hang this on my wall.
I'm just a few long days from pulling the wine out of tank and putting it down to barrel. At that point the wine starts operating on my time frame, and I get to be home in the evenings.
Because all the other varietals are still hanging out there in this cool weather, very few others are harvesting and I've had the whole winery to myself. On one hand, it is darn nice. On the other hand, it is a little lonely, because normally there are people and grapes flying everywhere. Actually, I can't say I'm lonely. A few of the other winemakers in the valley, who are currently sitting on their hands waiting for ripeness, have taken to sitting around drinking beers watching me work. After I get my wine to barrel in a few days, it'll be my turn.
For a quick article I thought did a good job of summing up the vintage thus far click here .
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09.20.05
6:00 a.m.
Wake up, try to keep Annie the Wonder Mutt quiet, so as to not wake wife and baby. Stumble around room to find old clothes and boots, with dog following, and wake wife and baby.
6:10 a.m.
Some sort of caffeine. Wipe dew off windshield of truck (wipers don't work) and depart for winery.
6:30 a.m.
Fifteen minute pump-over or punch-down on tank two (holding Stanly Ranch fruit) and forty-five minute pump-over on the tank affectionately known as "the rocket" (holding Nord fruit). Taste both and grin.
8:00 a.m.
Break down equipment, clean and sanitize, resulting in water in boots. Talk to Christopher—the proprietor of the winery and caves—about rest of the day's plans. Brag about how great the Stanly Ranch is tasting. Complain about wet socks in boots.
8:30 a.m.
Return home to play peek-a-boo with eight-month-old son before he goes down for a morning nap. Experience extreme jealousy that he gets a morning nap. Eat Cheerios with wife.
9:00 a.m.
Work on most complex problem of the day (today it is how to best fit and arrange barrels into my corner of the caves for all the future topping, racking, etc). Load up Palm Pilot with all the calls to be made for the day. Check email. (45 unread, 10 offering me Viagra at incredibly reduced prices)
10:30 a.m.
Pick up three cases from warehouse, drop them off at Bouchon restaurant, up valley. Make 300 phone calls while driving even though I know I shouldn't. Stop by Home Depot and pick up two huge bags of sand.
11:45 a.m.
Run four miles. Quick shower. Help nanny fix wheel on stroller.
1:00 p.m.
Check emails, open mail, pay bills.
2:00 p.m.
Back to winery, grab Subway turkey sandwich and three chocolate chip cookies along the way. Pump-over. Taste. Grin. Nobody around to brag to. Clean up, water in boots.
3:00 p.m.
The other Kent arrives to help, out of the goodness of his heart and a desire to learn. Together forklift all barrels out of the back of the caves, arrange according to map I drew earlier in morning (now smudged), pressure wash, rinse, return to caves.
6:30 p.m.
Make 10 phone calls during pump-overs. Taste, grin, decide we'll press the Stanly tank tomorrow. Call Cousin Bob to see if he can help.
7:30 p.m.
Buy the other Kent a cheeseburger and an Alaskan Amber at Red Rock as payment for his day's services. His only complaint on the day is water in his sneakers.
8:30 p.m.
Pick up Ziploc bags to put sand in (to cover bung holes on barrels, so gas can escape but no oxygen gets in), decide it is too late to do that task tonight, call cousin Bob to see if he'll help with that earlier in the morning. Make note to budget yet another cheeseburger into crush budget for Bob.
9:30 p.m.
Return home, stumble upstairs, drop clothes and boots in room, shower. Check in on son (who's sleeping with his butt in the air). Join wife in bed. Find out she has jury duty tomorrow.
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09.12.05
If you light it, they will pick.
We're in. And it was one very long day. I tried to sit down and bang out an update after we got done, but after barely avoiding an exhausted, face-first fall into my keyboard, I decided to put it off until now.
Picking under the lights was a kick in the pants. A tractor with a giant light tree keeps pace with the pickers, illuminating a twenty-yard-radius area. Surreal. As we pulled up to the vineyard, stars overhead, we could see the moving light off in the vineyard finishing up a pick for Saintsbury. They were just swinging around to Green Truck's rows.
A night pick is a more coordinated effort than a day pick. There are the obvious lighting and logistical issues, but the primary problem is that the pickers get paid by the ton, and understandably the faster pickers want to move on ahead at their faster pace. But, we've got to keep all the pickers within the light, otherwise they'll be unable to see—and therefore avoid—clusters that might be substandard or not fully ripe (and the vineyard owner worries that they might miss clusters altogether). The foremen crack the whip pretty hard on those who don't keep pace.
It was warmer than expected, although in no way warm. The thermometer on my jacket read 51 degrees when we first got out there. By the time I broke out the hot chocolate, and the morning started to glow, at 6 a.m., everyone's hands were ice cubes from handling the fruit. But receiving cool fruit is a big part of why you pick at night.
Another Kent and I broke off at 7 a.m., headed down to the Nord Vineyard, and sorted as that fruit came in off the vine there. As we started, the sun came straight out—no fog—and you could see the grins on the Nords' faces. Again, this cool weather is great for pinot, but the Nords also farm other varietals, particularly late-ripening varietals like cabernet, and those vineyards still need some serious ripening days before the season is out.
Pick done, we ate our breakfast of Pringles, M&Ms, and bananas on the way up to the winery, and the first beer was cracked just as we off-loaded the fruit from the truck. We'd done such a good sort in the vineyard that crushing was straightforward. We got through all the fruit in about two hours, accompanied by a crush mix that Bob had worked up from iTunes. Bin after bin is dumped on the chute. We do one last look-over while we shovel it down into the destemmer. Finally, the slightly crushed fruit falls into a hopper and gets gently pumped to tank. Both vineyards' fruit is now sitting pretty, melded together, in a giant tank we call "the rocket" for obvious visual reasons.
We then went and munched on some of the best cheeseburgers in the world at this little shack called Andie's, just next to the car wash near downtown Napa. It is a harvest tradition, followed by passing out on our respective couches at home.
It's a great sigh of relief to have all the Green Truck fruit in. One of the nice things about making only one wine is the luxury of focus. I do not have to pace myself for varietals ahead. So far I'm extremely pleased with the potential for this vintage, although we're a long way off from having stellar wine. Now starts the regiment of hovering over the fermentations, heating or cooling the must as necessary, and pumping over the juice/wine to extract from the skins in the cap, sometimes as often as five times a day. Eventually we have to make the decision of when to pull the wine off the skins. Possibly there is less worry at this part of the process, but for sure there is even more work. There will be ten to fourteen days of this before we get down to barrel and I can start operating, once again, on my schedule, not the grapes'.
Like most winemakers, I can't avoid second-guessing myself as to how I could have made the wine even better. Could we have thinned more leaves earlier in the season? Should I have crushed the fruit more aggressively to release tannin in what is otherwise going to be a more elegant-style year for wine? Should I have waited another week to pick? Were the vines really done giving up flavor to the fruit? I find myself checking the weather forecast carefully, regardless of the fact that it truly does not affect the quality of my wine anymore. The threat of rain has abated; did that have unhealthy influence on my decision of when to pick?
Winecrafting is always a balance between risk and reward, between logistics and desire, between philosophy and reality. With this vintage, we've now crossed the Rubicon. Once it comes in off the vine, the wine's potential is as good as it is ever going to get. From this point on, I'm just trying to preserve its beauty.
Finally, how do you thank five people who got up at 4 a.m. to go out in the cold morning and help sort? Well, I guess you mention them in the Plog. Veteran and trusty crush slaves Cousin Bob and Cousin Karen were there once again, our friends Don and Jo—and their dog Sadie—made the trek from Lodi, and we even had a second Kent, who was formerly a Green-Truck-selling waiter at the Wine Garden restaurant, who got up pre-Starbucks early to come help. It was good crew, paid only in pinot and cheeseburgers.
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09.09.05
Suddenly, in the middle of harvest, Napa feels like the Scottish highlands: wind, fog, highs in the mid-seventies, and it seems we're on the cusp of rain every morning for the past three days. There's a big 'ol low pressure system sitting up near Canada, and it's already pumping the winter storm cycles down here, though we have yet—knock on wood—to actually get a storm.
It's near-perfect for bringing in pinot; that is ... unless it ruins the harvest.
One of my vineyards just went unharvestable indeed. Suscol, which always has botrytis pressure, has succumbed. I went out there and walked it, and the botrytis looked bad. So, I went out with the vineyard manager and picked clean a few vines to really get an idea of just how bad: 20-30% of the clusters are infected, with 10% of the clusters being a total loss. With this weather, the vineyard needs at least another week to ripen, so by that point, there would be no point. It's heartbreaking after all the work we've put into it, but sometimes you've just got to walk away.
Suscol is a spectacular site, with phenomenal potential. But as I've said before, great wines are made when you are also on the verge of making undrinkable wines. That vineyard just got pushed over the edge. Next year Suscol could be—and probably will be—my most spectacular wine, as is more typical. That's how it goes.
The great news is that the grower who owns both Stanly and Suscol has graciously offered me a little Stanly fruit to make up for the loss of Suscol. Although we work together on fruit quality, in the end it is the grower's responsibility to deliver "sound" fruit. So, I didn't have to take the Suscol fruit. But, the grower didn't have to find me other fruit either. To get in the Stanly fruit in time, however, we're going to have to pick early: under the lights . Typically we would pick at night in order to keep the fruit cool. But in this case, we're just trying to get it picked, as the vineyard is ready, and everyone wants their fruit from it. 4 a.m. tomorrow we start. I've got two cousins, three friends, one dog, six cups of coffee, and one green truck ready to go. I can't wait to be moving through the vineyard with a light tree on the tractor overhead. Depending on how Nord looks today, we might even go pick that tomorrow as well. But it is botrytis-free, and might need—and could hold up for—another week easily. We'll see.
With the Suscol issue resolved, I now have the end of picking in clear sight, we look to be rain-free for at least my immediate future, and I'm getting very, very excited about this vintage. The Stanly fruit we have in tank tastes great. It's just completed a three-day cold soak (chilled to 50 degrees to let the juice extract color and flavor without fermenting). I turned the chiller off last night, and the yeast should start boogying in the next few days.
Since I don't have any pics of harvest to share on this update, I thought I'd throw one up here of Owen and Annie, who are just now learning to get along. As you can see, Owen is not so light for the jogging stroller anymore. Between that and harvest, training for the marathon is getting rather bogged down (but I ain't givin' up).
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09.06.05
Cousin Bob, Cousin Karen and I went out and brought in Stanly Ranch yesterday (Labor Day). We met the picking crew at 6 a.m., waited for the light to improve for 
about fifteen minutes, and then we sorted as they picked. Took only about two hours altogether, as it came in even lighter than projected: under two tons to the acre.
The fruit also came in even prettier than expected. There was a small amount of Botrytis, which I had anticipated being even worse, but we managed to sort it out with little difficulty. Most of the clusters were beautifully sound. Although the stems were the expected greenness, the seeds seemed to have browned up over the weekend, since my last inspection. Any "green" in the fermentor leads to bitter tones in the wine. "Brown" on the other hand, gives some nice tannin to match up to the fruit. The stems get removed before fermentation anyway, so they are not nearly as much of an issue. (Although, if the stems do indeed brown significantly—a bonus that sometimes can happen—I'll throw a few forkfuls back into the fermentation.) Seeds, on the other hand, end up in the fermentation whether you want them to or not. Moreover, their bitterness is extracted even more when the fermentation gets more alcoholic, potentially forcing a press of the wine earlier than desired.
After the bins were full, we stopped off at McDonald's for an Egg McMuffin—the green truck can barely make the turn through the drive-through—and then proceeded to the winery for a wonderfully smooth crush of the fruit. This is the third year that Cousin Bob and Cousin Karen have helped out, and they are now seasoned professionals. Moreover, this early in the season, everyone near the crush pad is eager to help, both because they have not yet been worn down by the endless nights of the thick of harvest and they want to see what the fruit is looking like this year. We'd sorted carefully in the vineyard—picking out all leaves, petioles, picking knives, twist ties from the bird-netting, rocks, moldy fruit, etc.—so the fruit went quickly down the sorting table, through the destemmer, and is now resting comfortably 
in the fermentor at a cool 50 degrees. It'll "cold soak" for three or four days, then we'll warm it up and get the fermentation rolling.
I just looked at the weather. Cool and perfect for the next seven days, but then—wait a minute—next Monday or Tuesday: 50% chance of rain. Of course this wacky growing season isn't going to let us finish up without at least a little stress. I'm headed out to the vineyards today to check our status. I think we're going to be ripened up nicely by Saturday, and I've tentatively scheduled crews to pick the remaining Pinot then. Even if things don't get completely ripe, we'll probably pull it over the weekend. As I think I've said too many times now, the vineyards won't hold up through the rain.
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09.02.05
I love harvest.
I went over to Domaine Carneros yesterday to pick up some new oak barrels that had been dropped off there for me by the cooperage. (Hey, I got a truck, so why pay delivery charges?) When I arrived, I couldn't quit grinning at the sight. Keep in mind that Domaine Carneros is a sparkling wine house, so they get rolling nearly a
month before the true still-wine harvest kicks in (they are picking for high-acids, not high sugars), but there it was: fifty white bins filled with just-picked Chardonnay grapes, two forklifts transporting, weighing, and dumping into the press, and everyone—and everything—was covered in grape juice and skins. It was three in the afternoon, and exhausted pickers, who had been working through the night, were just coming out of the vineyard to head home for a few hours sleep. They were singing in Spanish. The interns monitoring the scales and dragging hoses had probably been there since 5 a.m., and were probably going to be there until midnight, but they too had huge smiles on their faces.
Green Truck harvest is a bit smaller scale than that—nine bins, three days, two tanks, two cousins, one dog—but the energy is the same no matter where you go in the valley.
The nail-biting growing season we've had looks like it will finish real, real pretty—at least in Green Truck's neck of the woods. Unfortunately, the worst-case scenario came true in some of the more western/coastal vineyards: Coldness and wetness during spring bloom left tiny, scraggly clusters with rot and uneconomically low yields. Some vineyards out there are down 70% from a normal year. But over here in Napa, if we avoid high heat—which would shrivel grapes that have never become accustomed to the heat this year—and stay away from rain—which would give us instant gray rot in the vineyard due to the spores being there from the wet spring—things are looking glorious. This holds true at least for Pinot Noir; my cab friends seem a little worried about the ability for their varietal to ripen, but there is still much of their growing season to go. It goes without saying that I keep a close eye on the weather, and it looks to be cooperating nicely for the Pinot portion of the harvest: high of 84 over the next seven days, not a drop of rain in sight.
I'm knocking on wood right now.
I did a serious walk through each vineyard with Annie the Wonder Mutt today. I measure and follow closely the sugar production of the vineyard, analyzed by refractometer and represented in degrees "brix," or percentage of sugar. Like most winemakers I start zeroing on picking when sugar is around 25 brix, which yields a 14% alcohol wine. But the most important clues, to me anyway, are visual and tactile: how soft are the clusters of the fruit, how easily do the berries come off the vine, how brown are the seeds and stems, how quickly do the skins give up color to the juice when crushed in a ziploc bag, and how much life does the vine still have to give to the fruit? Then there's the obvious indicator of all indicators: How does the fruit taste?
Two of my vineyards—Nord and Suscol—are still at least a week off. They are both at 23 brix, and the fruit is still firm and the seed green. Nord is looking beautiful, and the only worry about Suscol is that there's a bit of botrytis, or gray rot, in a few clusters. Botrytis, otherwise known as "noble rot," is what gives the famous dessert wines of Sauternes and Tokaj their glory. But in Pinot production, botrytis is not desirable. I'll have to keep a close eye on that. If we were to get rain, the vineyard would probably be a total loss this year. But with the dry weather we've got coming, I think we'll be just fine with a little extra sorting as the fruit comes in off the vine. I suspect we'll pick those two vineyards in the next 7-10 days.
Stanly Ranch, however, has snuck up on us. We had one minor heat increase over the last weekend, and Stanly jumped from 23 brix to 25 brix in two days. Upon walking it today, the fruit just feels ripe. The seeds and stems are still a little green, which I attribute to the wetness of spring. But there are ways of dealing with that at the fermentor, and all other indicators point to ripe fruit with great flavors and color. We're going to pick Stanly at 6 a.m. on Monday.
Labor Day will be aptly named this year.
It'll be full-tilt boogie for another three weeks until the last tank is shoveled and pressed. I'll do my best to keep the plog updated.
Biodynamics 07.05.05
My friend, Peter, who is the viticulture-focused son of a Napa and Lake County vineyard-owning family, invited me along on a fascinating little tour of Napa last week. Peter is considering incorporating some biodynamic aspects into his family's own farming practices, and he knew I was equally curious about the whole concept. So after a hearty breakfast at Gordon's in Yountville (a wicked prosciutto omelette), Peter and I met up with the tour guide Peter had hired for the day: Phillippe, "Bio-dynamic consultant."
Philippe is a true Frenchman. An affable man with a substantial build and a substantial accent, at one point during our drive around Napa, he swerved to miss a female tourist who was crossing the road. After cussing to himself in French, he uttered, "she was too beautiful to hit." Gotta love it.
For the novices out there, I found this nice encapsulation on the web: "Based on a series of lectures given by Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner in 1924, Biodynamics is a method of agriculture which seeks to actively work with the health-giving forces of nature."
Philippe described the difference between traditional, organic, and biodynamic to me. "Traditional farming is farming the plant you can see. Organic is farming the plant you can see and the roots below. Biodynamics is farming not just the plant and its roots, but also the soil, as well as the sky above." Throughout the day, the talk was constantly of the life-force of the sun, the "breathing" of the earth, and the "life" of the soil.
The controversial side of biodynamics is the practices that are compared—understandably, in my opinion—to witchcraft. There is the burying of a cow's horn filled with manure, done at midnight during the proper part of the lunar cycle, to be dug up a year later and the milligrams of resulting compost to be spread over a vast vineyard to bring the moon's life force to the vineyard. There are many such "preparations" used in biodynamics, many of which are used in the most minuscule of quantities: three grams steeped in two gallons of water to make a "tea," that tea then incorporated into a much larger gallonage of water to be spread over an acre.
Being scientific in nature, and a skeptic of religion in general, I have a hard time swallowing much of biodynamics. However, the list of those who use biodynamics is certainly eye opening: Peter Michael, Grgich, Rudd, Phelps, Grace Family, Viader, Beaux Freres, Archery Summit, Cayuse ... and those are just Philippe's clients. Other biodynamic consultants are just as busy.
The preparations, however, are only a small part of the overall approach. If I learned anything today, it was not to get bogged down in the concepts of those preparations, thus missing the overall message of biodynamics. I'm a firm believer in this part of the concept: We humans are part of a much larger system of the earth, moon, stars, planets, sun, wind, seasons, animals, plants, other humans, etc. To ignore that greater system when farming is to not only fail to realize the full potential in your vineyard, but also to possibly cause damage to that overall system.
I love to fly fish, and it's no secret that the lunar cycle seriously affects the migration and feeding habits of fish. Some say it is as simple as fish wanting to move when they are least susceptible to being preyed upon: i.e. when there is no moon to illuminate them as they swim upstream. Some say there is a larger force at work there. Regardless, to ignore the lunar cycle is to not catch many fish.
To me this is the "spiritual" aspect of farming: realizing we are part of a larger system, working within that entire system to produce better fruit, and striving to be a good citizen of that system. Being a skeptic, I have a hard time taking it any further into the concepts of "life force." That's not to take anything away from those who do take it that step further. However, I quote my friend Peter: "I just feel everything thrives under care." Biodynamics requires 30%-40% more investment—financially if not emotionally—in the vineyards over traditional farming methods. I'm not convinced that 30% more attention to a vineyard won't always yield fantastic results.
Philippe commented that "taking a plow to the weeds rather than using chemicals gets you more in tune to what is going on in the vineyard. You see the earth as it turns, you understand if there is water underneath." I couldn't agree with him more. In winecrafting, punching down the cap of fermenting Pinot Noir is best done by hand, not because of the "spiritual" nature of using one's hand, but because if you use a stainless steel punchdown device, you don't get to feel how warm and uniform the fermentation is: a key component of a healthy fermentation.
Do vineyards require strict adherence to biodynamics to achieve great things? I'm not so sure. Is such a high level of care critical to making great wine that is a healthy part of a larger system? Absolutely. But in the end, I think I'll stick with more research-based approaches to farming.
I toured Green Truck's vineyards today as well. None of my vineyards are biodynamic vineyards, but they do fall under the "sustainable" moniker, meaning we apply chemicals as sparingly as possible in order to keep up the overall health of the soil. It was nice to look at those vineyards through a new eye. And, I must say that I took a broader view of the vineyard now that I've walked around Napa with Philippe.
We have certainly gotten past the wetness and coolness of this past spring. The heat is upon us, and the vines are now struggling for water. Set was not as disastrous as it could have been, although it was light and quite variable. The Nord vineyard has healthy canopies and large berries on regular-sized clusters. Stanly Ranch has huge canopies and "hens and chicks," where the berry size is incredibly uneven, as are the cluster sizes. Suscol has—despite the wet weather—small canopies, but its set was incredibly solid, leading to small clusters of densely packed "flavor grenades." Having done all we could to manage the crazy spring we've had, it is great to now have that potential disaster behind us, but the true impact on the vintage is unknown. Verasion (when the berries change color, I'll include a picture) is just starting, which means that harvest is approaching in 45-60 days.
Peter, Philippe, and I talked today about the fact that there are going to be both great and horrible wines made in 2005. Navigating that line is going to be extremely tricky. I think Green Truck is as well positioned as anyone.
I'm off to Steamboat, Oregon, next week for the annual Steamboat Pinot Noir conference at the Steamboat Inn on the Umpqua River, which also happens to be a trophy steelhead fishing stream. Can't wait.
It's raining ... again.
Everyone keeps asking me, "is this a bad thing for the grapes?" Well, it depends. The brutal and honest truth is that there is no way that this is a good thing for the vintage. I guess we might look on the bright side, which is that we're replenishing horribly depleted groundwater reservoirs, and that will provide irrigation water into future years. But besides that, I'm getting all depressed when I think about the possibilities.
At a minimum, the canopies are out of whack from having access to all the ground moisture. After the wet weather and cold soils stunted growth for the first month, we suddenly had three hot days last week, and I've never seen the shoots grow so quickly. I frankly don't have enough horticulture knowledge to gauge the full extent of how this might impact flavor, but for sure it isn't the slow, steady growth for which Napa Valley is known.
This cool and wet weather is similar to the pattern of some of the less-than-stellar vintages we've had in past years in Napa (1998 in particular). But, on the flip side, we learned a lot from those vintages, and I think we can react well. Those that adjusted their farming appropriately made damn good wines in 1998; some wines turned out even stellar. There is a potential bright side for those who handle things properly.
It's the rain right now that is the most worrisome: We're right in the middle of bloom. When grapes are trying to pollinate, they want warm sunny weather with a slight breeze. Rain, or extremely heavy wind, can prevent the birds and the bees from getting along.
I went out and took some pictures of bloom in various stages at my different vineyards, to give you an idea of how delicate things are out there right now. You'll see in the pictures (I hope) where the tiny little caps have fallen off of the individual berries, and the little flowers have formed. Intuitively they just don't look like they can handle much inclement weather at this stage.
Particularly with Merlot, which is prone to "shatter" (berries not fertilizing), this kind of timing can be a complete disaster. There have been years when I've seen a loss of nearly the entire crop of Merlot in some vineyards.
With Pinot, shatter is not a clear-cut negative. The architecture of Pinot Noir clusters is often times too tight, i.e. too many berries packed into too small of a space. It can be nice to get them to loosen up, thanks to a little shatter from Mother Nature. But shatter caused by cold wet rains means that those little caps and the little flower pieces—after they've done their job or not done their job, as the case may be—are wet when they get trapped in the clusters. There they sit for the rest of the growing season, organic matter with just enough water and no airflow that mildew and particularly botrytis are just waiting to set in.
We've reacted to all this, quickly and decisively. For one thing, we spray. Yes, we spray much more heavily and more often than any of us would like in an attempt to keep the potential for botrytis to a minimum while this wet weather is around. Hopefully that will keep things in check for the rest of the growing season. Most of what is sprayed is elemental sulfur, a relatively "natural" substance. Moreover, there are many studies that these applications have no long-term residue or impact on the fruit itself. But intuitively, I think all would agree that it feels best to spray as little as possible.
Secondly, we're doing a lot of canopy management. The vines have been growing like bushes, and we've gotten in there to pull off all the unwanted shoots, leaving only "count" shoots, two per position, roughly 14 positions per plant. The idea is that we remove the shoots that aren't helping with ripening and get more sun and airflow through the canopy itself, which helps dry things out. Opening up the canopy also allows the spray to penetrate and be much more effective.
I took some additional pictures of some vines before shoot thinning, and after shoot thinning, to give an idea of just what it is that we're going for. As you can imagine, it is extremely labor-intensive work. Between mowing, spraying, shoot thinning, and generally trying to keep the roads in place with all this mud, the vineyard crews are working around the clock. This is where it is nice to be a small project, with a few rows in each vineyard carefully marked just for Green Truck. I think my vineyards are as prepared for this weather as any vineyards could be.
I just re-read the above, and it sounds way more doom and gloom than it should. But, I'll leave it be, as it is probably a good example of just how up and down a vintage can be. Just a month ago I was signing the praises of an early bud break, with the risk of frost being my main worry. Now even though we've been frost free, we're still flirting with disaster. If it is not one thing, it's another. In the end, it'll probably all work out beautifully. At least we're Northern California, and chances are the rest of the growing season will be beautiful. Burgundy and Oregon deal with all these early-season issues, as well as another whole set of late-season issues, pretty much every year.
The rain is also putting a serious crimp in Owen's and my marathon training. Neither of us particularly enjoy striding in the rain. Plus, now at 15 weeks old, the little guy has suddenly plumped up like a ball park frank, and he's getting heavier to lug around. The wind turns the jogging stroller into a parachute as well. But, we're not giving up our quest. We've logged a hundred and fifty miles on the stroller already. In fact, we need to find a good 10K to aim for in the next few months. 
On a serious "plus" side, the cellar is tasting very nice. In particular, the 2004 Suscol Ridge vineyard lot is dark and beautiful out of the barrel. I'm tempted to bottle it up right now to try and capture the brooding flavors and aromas. The lot of Nord vineyard, although pretty, is tasting really tight, and has retained acidity beyond my expectations. I am going to do some blending trials later this month. It's possible that the two of these lots blended together will be a whole far greater than its parts: the power and color of the Suscol, with the prettiness and backbone of the Nord. We may have to hold back a bit of the Nord this year, however, to keep acidity in check. Next year I'll aim to tame down the Nord a bit in the fermentor.
And on the very serious "plus" side, the 2003 has been extremely well-received. One of my favorite things is when someone orders their first three-pack of wine, in this case the just-released 2003, and calls back a week later to beg for a case more. I've been busy filling secondary orders, which is a great feeling. I've also been tasting this new release with quite a few restaurants in the last few weeks; I couldn't be more proud of how it turned out. Sometimes I'm simply amazed at my own handiwork. (I hope that doesn't sound narcissistic.)
Finally, I've got just enough wine to open up a couple of markets this year. It looks like I'm going to ship some wine to a New Jersey wholesaler, as well as a Georgia wholesaler, both of whom have been bugging me for over a year to try and get a small allocation of "da Truck." Guess this little project had to grow up and out of California at some point ...
Where did the winter go? How can bud break be upon us? When will I ever sleep again?
I'm up at the Wine Garden restaurant in Yountville last week where I'd been asked to do a winemaker dinner for thirty-five of its patrons. The Wine Garden is one of those new restaurants in Napa that actually offers something different. The menu is certainly fantastic, but I'll leave that for some foodie elsewhere to describe. It's the owners that I love: the Nord family. They are the same family that owns and farms the Nord Vineyard—the site that provides the fruit that is the backbone of my Pinot Noir—so I know the Nords and their land well. In fact, the family owns and farms fine vineyards all over Napa, and the whole deal of their restaurant is that it features wines from wineries that use Nord fruit. It's a true grape-to-glass experience, a brilliant and spiritual concept. Anyway, Julie Nord, the owner of the restaurant and a woman who obviously knows a lot about vineyards, turns to me during the appetizer hour and says, "they had bud break in Carneros today." This statement is accompanied by a low, partly-nervous-partly-joyous laugh. As for me, a heart rate increase, a quick but small inhale, a tiny bead of sweat on my forehead.
Certainly there had been signs of spring. Street closure warnings for the upcoming Napa Valley Marathon—run in March every year—had started popping up. The five-pound tax preparation package and questionnaire from the accountant had arrived on my doorstep. (If I have to fill all this out, what is left for them to do?) More telling: The Japanese maple in our backyard—named "Wookee" after our first cat, whose ashes enrich the soil beneath it—had brilliant red shoots emerging.
But I'd been out to the two Green Truck vineyards just ten days earlier, and at that time the vines had shown no obvious signs of life, save perhaps an unusually exuberant cover crop between the rows, fueled by a wet January and sunny skies in late February.
More than that, I'd just sulfured the barrels of '04 Pinot Noir the week before. I consider sulfuring the wines the final act of harvest; it means primary as well as malolactic fermentations have finished, and it's time to protect and preserve the wines with a judicious addition of SO2. Up until that point, there's still a healthy chance you can screw it all up. Up until that point, you can do nothing but get up and go check on the barrels, one by one, with glass and barrel thief in hand, praying to Bacchus that the "good bugs" will finish their work before the "bad bugs" figure out that the neighborhood doesn't yet have its doors locked.
Then one morning you put an ear to the barrel, and it no longer sounds like Rice Krispies. You hold it up to the light and see that it is starting to clear up because the activity in the wine has ceased. You taste it: It has mellowed considerably and there is no CO2 on the palate. You take a sample to the Vinquiry lab for confirmation of what your senses already tell you: The wines are finished with ML; you can put them to bed. It's time for a rest. (Perhaps even a vacation?) Actually, work continues for me on the sales side of things, in particular the spring mailer, but as far as winemaking goes, it's time to take a breather. At least, until bud break ...
That's the cruel trick of this past winter and spring. For reasons not yet clear to me, ML on the '04 took unusually long. Whereas typically I put my Pinot to bed as early as December—or on some rare occasions as late as mid-January—I had never had to wait until mid-February. My spirit simply expected its usual two-month rest before bud break. But just because malolactic took so long, the calendar didn't quit turning. Then the weather went and turned warm.
So, I climb in the truck after the dinner at the Wine Garden—which went great, by the way—and consider driving straight to the vineyard. But it is dark, and there's nothing to be learned that can't wait until morning. Besides, I'm wearing my only pair of nice shoes, which I'm sure to ruin if I go wandering the rows.
Next to my driveway, however, live eight little vines planted for just this sort of occasion. They are a rough indicator of what is going on with the season. I grab a flashlight from the truck and zoom in on the cordons and renewal spurs. Sure enough—and I don't know how I missed it before—there it is: cotton. Not cotton in the actual sense of the word, but cotton as a description of buds that have swollen to the point that they look like little cotton balls. One more warm day and bud break will be upon the little side-yard vineyard. The two Green Truck vineyards are surely just as far along.
I climb into bed next to my wife and take a deep breath. "They had bud break in Carneros today," I say. A pause. She lets out a long, telling "hmmmmm" which sounds remarkably similar to Julie Nord's laugh earlier that evening.
Bud break means your schedule is now controlled more by the weather than by you. Bud break also means it is time to start worrying.
There's this theme that repeats itself in wine: The greatest wines are made near the outer fringes of viticulture and winemaking parameters, where the greatest risks also exist. Early bud break gives us the potential for an extremely long growing season, which means potentially blockbuster wines for this vintage. However, those tender young shoots are now out there in early March, when Jack Frost is more likely to take a little wine-tasting trip to Napa.
Bud break is certainly not all about worrying, however, because it is also a magical time. Bud break is the one moment when the vintage is still "perfect." Some maladies are certain to occur during the growing season and chip away at the flawlessness. But at that moment, the little buds and the future fruit have not yet been affected by frost, by too much or too little rain, by sunburn, by excessive wind, by botrytis, by birds, or by some drunk plowing his car into the rows (aka "tourist blight"). In my head, I always have an idea of how I'm going to grow and craft better wine each year, and bud break means "let's get to it."
Vintners, growers, spouses, and kids all know what bud break signifies. This time of year, you'll hear that laugh or "hmmmm" at breakfast tables and in bedrooms all over Napa.
So the games have begun, but I have to say it was still bugging me that I hadn't seen it coming. Usually I'm the one telling everyone else that I've seen the first signs of bud break. How'd I miss the indicators this year? I believe I have a valid excuse: NISI (Newborn-Induced Severe Insomnia).
I recall a few of our friends who were parents telling us that when our child was born we "wouldn't get much sleep." I didn't realize "wouldn't get much" meant fewer than three hours a night for the first three weeks, and never more than three hours in a row for what is eight weeks and counting. Certainly I love the parenthood thing; it is awesome in the true sense of that word. But, the lack of sleep is also one of the most brutal forms of hazing I've ever experienced.
One simple but consequential result is that I haven't gone out on my daily run. Thing is: if I have a window of opportunity for running, it's an opportunity to do my taxes, to clean the dog hair from the couch, to finally write that thank-you note for the Diaper Genie from my former kindergarten teacher, to bathe my son who has formula drying in the folds of his neck, to have a multi-syllabic conversation with my wife ... heck, to sleep. So my daily running ritual simply gets postponed. I realize now, however, that my run took me through many different vineyards throughout southern Napa, some of which were earlier bloomers than Green Truck, and it was during these runs that I would get the first signs of bud break.
So I've come up with a solution: I went on eBay last week and bought a stroller-jogger. Since the Napa Marathon is one of the rites of spring and is almost exactly a year away, giving me just enough time to train, wouldn't it be poetic if I could help Owen finish his first marathon (via stroller) at age one? There, I've put it in writing, the gauntlet has been thrown down: Owen and I are going to train for the '06 Napa Marathon. In fact, we've already logged 26 miles on the jogger (not all on one run, mind you). Who knew that keeping better tabs on the vineyards could make your newborn so happy and your hamstrings so sore?
Between baby and bud break (and now marathon training), my hands are full. But, there's still one undertaking this time of year requiring my serious attention: the annual release letter. Touching base with all the truckers has always been one of my favorite parts, but it is not an exercise free from apprehension. I am pretty confident in this '03 release, as it is the best Pinot Noir I've ever made (and I'm not just saying that). But, putting the wine out there for the world to see and critique, after 18 months of crafting and coddling in the safety of my cellar ... well, I'll admit a little stage fright when that curtain goes up.
Yes, spring, both climatically and spiritually, is definitely here.
Introduction
I handcraft tiny batches of Pinot Noir in the Napa Valley under my label Green Truck Cellars. Every spring, I touch base with the Green Truck mailing list—the "truckers," they're called—with a letter accompanying the latest release. Every year, along with the orders, I also get a few requests to touch base more often and in more detail.
About a year ago I commented to my wife that all my dreams were coming true. Between her, the son we were about to have, and making a living crafting my own Pinot Noir—well, at least trying to make a living at it—what once seemed quixotic had suddenly become reality. But my statement to my wife was only three-fourths true: I also dream of someday writing a work of at least minor significance.
Thus begins the PLOG (the Pinot Log), musings on my wine, my life, and the winemaking life. At a minimum, it will provide some truckers with more detail. From a practicality standpoint, it'll give me a reference for the progress of the vintage. In my dreams ... well, I won't pretend that this writing will be consequential, but surely it is a step in the right direction.
If you would like to be notified, via an email with a simple link, when there are new postings to the PLOG (typically monthly, but more often during harvest), please email keepontruckin@greentruckcellars.com with the words "PLOG ME" in the subject line. Conversely, if you are sick my drivel, "UNPLOG ME" works as well
