PLOG: (Pinot Log ) 2008 / 2007 / 2006 / 2005
The PLOG is my ongoing journal of wine, life, and the wine life. (I say "ongoing," but beware that it is prone to large gaps of inactivity when fatherhood, bottling, or a new John Irving novel gets in the way.) If you would like to be notified of new postings, you can ask to be "Plogged" when you sign up for the mail list. If you are already on the mail list, simply e-mail me with the words "Plog Me" in the subject line, and I'll make sure you get included in new postings.
10.10.07 | Sleeping In
Ah, the sweetness of sleeping in.
Harvest is over for Green Truck: at least the crazy part of it. Put the last tank down to barrel about a week ago. This vintage truly was phenomenal (for Pinot Noir: more on the challenges facing other-varietal brethren in a moment). Just woke up from a one-week nap.
Four vineyards’ results are all tucked carefully into barrel in four cozy corners of the caves. The wines are remarkably soft and approachable already, compared to some years where the freshly-fermented wine will rip the enamel right off your teeth. Nord has its typical acidity, but a really beautiful rose-hip and cola aromatic already. Stanly has its typical earth and a mid-palate sweetness that is more pronounced than in previous years. Suscol is the glorious backbone of the ’07 vintage, I can already tell. A vineyard that typically succumbs to heat, or botrytis, or birds, Suscol just had one of those “one-in-five” years where the fruit hangs on till the perfect, glorious end.
And the new vineyard, GioV, came through with some incredibly whole-berry component. Given the lack of water in that vineyard as harvest approached, I feared it would fall apart in the fermenter due to desiccation. I was wrong. Goes to show how resilient thirty-year-old vines are.
We’ll see how they all fit together down the line, but for now, they are each showpieces.
My Aunt Colleen took this pic (she was out from Kansas for a couple days). Although it may seem an odd angle, she actually managed to get the whole bunch of slaves in this one shot.
Michael, in the foreground, is a sailor who is now considering a career switch. White Rock (where I crush) has him working the whole harvest. Behind him to the left is Ryan, White Rock’s assistant winemaker (and also a waiter one night a week at Don Giovanni—we all had two jobs when we started). Josh, hidden below the hopper behind the destemmer, is a former cult-wine salesperson from Bounty Hunter (top catalog business in the country) who wanted to try winemaking for a season. He also sings a mean Johnny Cash imitation (after years as a singer in a punk rock band, from what I understand). Oh, and we’re working on getting Josh a job in New Zealand for the southern hemisphere harvest; he’ll soon learn why mother nature only designed one harvest per year (I did it: it’s brutal).
Then there’s my kin. My wife is on the left. My head is poking up just behind the destemmer. Cousin Karen is behind me. And up at the top are Miriam and Trevor: friends and truckers who just came to help out.
That’s a typical set up for me on a crush day. I thought that picture put it all together nicely. I believe Jack Johnson was playing from my ipod for the whole event.
While me and my kin are now sleeping in, the rest of these folks are still working for the other winemakers who bring later-ripening varietals into White Rock. It’s been a very, very cool end to a cool season. It’s hard to know where the cab, merlot, and all are going to end up. I’ve heard some grumblings of worry about full-ripening not happening before the rains. We’ve also already had two days of intermittent showers. But, on the flip side, the coolness has allowed hang-time that just might see the Cab reach the glorious heights that Pinot had this year.
Well, I’m off to nap some more. Then, I’ve got to catch up on all the office-work that has piled up over the last four weeks. And next week: I’m off to catch some trout on the McCloud up near Shasta…
09.17.07 | No Rest
I was standing over the sorting table, feeding grapes to the destemmer, while my wife sorted out stems and leaves right across from me. We were discussing whether she had taken in her car yet for its 90,000 mile tune-up.
“So, this is how winemakers and their families find time to catch up during harvest?” remarks Nick, a friend who’d come to help with the crush and was sorting a few feet above us on the table.
It’s true it’s true.
I’m all picked. I know, I know…I haven’t even posted since I said things were ripe. It’s been that busy. It’s been so busy I sometimes feel I’ve lost an entire two weeks of my life. But, on the other hand, those two weeks are blurring into simply a glorious memory of a GREAT harvest.
Normally, during harvest, I stress over the problems with a vintage: botrytis, over-ripeness, under-ripeness, tank space…
This vintage I’m incredibly stressed that I might end up screwing up what is a perfect vintage. Seriously, the fruit looks that good.
It’s been a low yield year. Throughout the North Coast (Napa/Sonoma/Etc), Pinot is coming in at 30% of typical yields (Chardonnay more like 45% low; Merlot is—happily—possibly even lower). The landowners and growers who sell by the ton are lamenting the economics. We winemakers are just grinning with red teeth at how beautiful the fruit is.
We had a little heat spike there right when the vineyards were coming into ripening. But, the canopies were in such good shape that the fruit sailed right through with no problems. I picked two vineyards just after (night picks; see pic), one vineyard a few mornings later, and the final vineyard—the vineyard with the lack of water—actually came in last. It had a wee bit of botrytis, but nothing we couldn’t sort, and truly I’ve never seen such dark, whole berries fall into the fermenter before. Glorious. And, I think, if this cool weather holds up, the cab guys are going to have a great year as well.
After a strict regiment of punch downs and pumpovers, two tanks are ready to be drained, pressed, and barreled down today. A third will go down Wed, and the final tank just started fermenting, so I’ve got another week of twelve hour days. My hands are stained completely red already.
This past Saturday, I was dying to spend some time with our son, but the fermenters were calling. So, I stuffed him in the backpack, and he came along for all the work. He loved it. I couldn't be more proud.
09.03.07 | Ripe
I've gotten a number of e-mails in the last few days: “how do you know when the fruit is ripe?" It's a question I get all the time. It can be explained via sugars, acids, phenolics, etc: a grapevine is trying to make that fruit look attractive to birds, and thus colors up, sheds its acid, puts on sugar, and hardens up the seeds for their future journey. But as to when it is truly ready to pick? Most all the winemakers I know--myself included--use the "numbers" to just to confirm the impressions coming from their own senses.
To answer the question, I decided an analogy might be appropriate: Bananas.
You don’t have to get technical to explain when a banana is ripe. In fact, anyone can look across the grocery store and see how ripe bananas are. Yes, sometimes the fruit inside the banana can be more or less ripe than color might indicate, but true ripeness also gets revealed in how soft/firm the banana is, how easily it separates from the rest of the bananas, how easy it is to peel (ever have to pull out the knife to get a banana peel started?). I would suspect that if we all were so blessed as to be able to pick bananas off the tree, we’d also be able to tell from the health of the leaves and tree how ripe the bananas might be too (this is made even more easy with deciduous fruit where the leaves die and fall off).
And the bottom line? You know a ripe banana when you taste it.
Grapes are the same way. You just know when they are ripe, because…well, they are ripe. But to further the analogy: different people have different opinions of the perfect “ripeness” of a banana. My wife likes 'em green. My son likes em just before they get brown spots on the outside. Me, I like 'em mushy...
All I can tell you is that my grapes are ripe now, so we’re going to start picking.
08.30.07 | Cute Little Chicks
We’re almost there. I did some extensive vineyard review yesterday, and things are looking GREAT.
Those hens and chicks have come through with flying colors. I talked with Steve (my main vineyard mentor), and he was explaining his theory that the “chicks” were berries that, for some reason or other during bloom didn’t “set” a seed. So, the vine doesn’t focus on those berries, as they don’t help with reproduction whatsoever. But just wait, he said, and once the vine has ripened up the seed-full fruit, it’ll change gears and swell those chicks up and color them too. Sure enough; there were no seeds in those chicks, and sure enough, they colored up (and swelled to a respectable size). I took a pic that you can compare to the pic two weeks ago.
One other challenge we’re facing: we’ve run out of water in a couple of vineyards. We work from a reservoir, and I’ll include a picture of that reservoir from yesterday. If you look close, there’s a little boat on the right that will help you get a reference of just how low the water is. We put the last of—and a lot of—water on the vines right after verasion, and theoretically that’s all you want to put on anyway before harvest. But, with a heat spike, it can be necessary to put a little water on the vines to get them through.
In one of my vineyards, we have no (really, not a drop of) water available. Hopefully it won't become an issue. We'll just have to wait and see. Ah, mother nature...
Indeed, we are anticipating a little heat spike these next couple days, but I think the vines will hang in there well. The canopies look very healthy. I typically have a number of dying, yellow leaves on the vines by the time we reach this point of ripening, but the canopies are still green and vigorous. Sugars remain low as we get great physiological ripening. Looks like the vines have much more to give, while the flavors are already quite developed. And, there is very little botrytis to speak of (first year in many).
08.10.07 | Hens and Chicks
Ahoy!
There are those of you who are going to be bowled over that I am writing my PLOG once again. But, well, I had a moment here, between the turn-of-the-century house we’re restoring, my two year old demanding more cookies, and the finishing of the 2006 wine (which is—I’ll boast-- tasting phenomenal). Better intermittent reports than no reports at all.
A quick harvest update first. Hens and Chicks. That’s what we’ve got, Hens and Chicks. And, it presents a quagmire. I took some pics a few days back as I walked the vineyards. Verasion (green to red color change) is almost finished, but for some reason—not understood fully by anyone but mighty Mother-nature herself—we have more Hens and Chicks (tiny berries within a cluster of mostly larger berries) than usual. Likely something about the weather on one particular day during berry set when some berries got stunted.
Sometimes, these smaller berries color and ripen up nicely. And actually, they can make for exceedingly intense wine. Other times, these berries don’t color up, and they leave a green character. I’d typically drop the clusters on the ground, for fear of the green flavors, but there are so many this year; it’d be a financial bloodbath. So, we’re going to wait it out—perhaps do some more aggressive sorting at harvest time if need be (harder to see the tiny berries then, because they’ll no longer be so green, but we can find them nonetheless).
The weather is cooperating, though. We’ve had this relative cool spell the last few weeks. Keeps the bigger berries from ripening up too quickly, and the smaller berries are beginning to color up nicely. Harvest looks to start a bit later—mid September—this year. Should be great for color and intensity.
Besides that, it’s been a “strikingly average” (the words of a vineyard manager I know, and I couldn’t have said it better myself) year. It’s so nice, after the roller coaster rides the last three years. Here we sit with a normal spring, normal summer, normal (if not slightly low) crop load, and thus we can really take our farming skill and apply it to the vintage, because we’re not dealing with wackiness to start out with (with the exception of some Hens and Chicks). Glorious. If only the weather cooperates through the next month.
We didn’t have as much mold and botrytis pressure this year, so I left some more leaves on the vines, shading the fruit. Those leaves slow air flow a bit, but as I said, I’m not so worried about mold and botrytis. I believe that decision will serve the fruit well, as I suspect we’ll have some heat between now and mid-September, and the clusters really haven’t had to deal with heat this whole season. The extra shade will keep them healthy, and prevent an emergency dehydration pick.
On to the 2006. I just blended it up to a final format, and turned out glorious. It was a reticent wine post-ferment, and has continued to be in barrel. The structure has been there, so has the prettiness, but it had not stepped forward to claim its nature-given right to be a stand-alone wine until I rolled all the barrels up to tank, and in the process, gave them some air. Boy did the wine step forward. Had a sample that night with dinner, and I couldn’t believe how well it was showing. I think it is going to be one of my finer wines, albeit less showy out of the shoot. It has stamina and patience, this 2006—with the ability to step out of the Trucker’s cellars years from now and really make a statement. It is the most structured and graceful wine I’ve made, I believe. I can’t wait to release it next Spring.
Finally, I just spent a fantastic four days up on the Umpqua river in Oregon for the 28th annual Steamboat Pinot Noir conference. Sorry, all of you who are not Pinot winemakers—this is a winemaker event only. It’s the best conference in the business, as far as I am concerned. 40+ Pinot Noir winemakers and viticulturalists, sequestered in a cell-reception-free situation (and only one pay phone!) for four days. Over the length of the conference, we taste six flights of eight un-bottled wines blind as a group, discuss them, then reveal whose they are. The owner/winemaker then gets up and describes how he made it. We had winemakers from Oregon and California, of course, but also New Zealand. Some years we’ve had winemakers from as far as Switzerland (yup, they grow Pinot there too). It’s a brutal (sort of) schedule: up at 4am to flyfish for steelhead (the Umpqua is famous), 7:30am family style breakfast. Taste until 1. Lunch. Hike, nap or nap. More fishing. Drink crazy aromatic white wines for happy hour at 5. Then, some experimental wines in the library. Dinner then goes until the wee hours (you can imagine). Ahhh, work can be so tough.
More when harvest comes…
02.28.07 | Sneaking in here...
OK, I hate staring at the blank page as much as the next guy. Time to get something on paper here.
Just got done compiling all the orders for the 2005 Green Truck Pinot Noir. It is grin-inducing indeed to watch it all come in. I can't say I want to be behind a computer at a desk any longer than I have to, but I love to think of sharing this wine with all these folks.
I'm off to taste the 2006 tomorrow. I have to run some analysis on the wine (SO2 levels) and it's a great time to taste through each and evey barrel. The wines should be "calming down" about now, and tomorrow should be the first real glimpse of the true finished quality of the vintage (it still has a long ways to go, but the flavors should be forming now).
Gotta run. I've got about 500 orders to confirm...
