Since this is a brand new vineyard (3’rd year vines) I’ll be spending a significant amount of time discussing and observing viticultural techniques with the owner.  The soil is sand and granite with excellent drainage.  With close attention to quality and low yields, this may very well end up being one of the top sites for high elevation Spanish varietals in the state.

As many of you know, my vineyard site’s well ran dry a few years ago.  We didn’t know at the time how that would affect the vineyard or if there would still even be a vineyard. There has been a learning curve in ways to handle the water issue. We built cistern to collect runoff and rain water. We upgraded to fanjet drip emitters to reduce water waste and where once we got 3-4 total yield per acre which we now grow in the 2 ton range. Ultimately we may change over to sub-surface drip irrigation to conserve even more water. I can say now that the vineyard is, if not actually thriving, it is at least healthy.

This year, in part due to the uncharacteristically cool weather, the yield will be cut back (a process called cluster thinning) by roughly half– partly to accelerate ripening and to assure that I’ll still get the quality that I’m hoping to attain.  We are looking at it from the point of view of long term vineyard sustainability.

Right now the clusters are still uniformly green.  That means that veraison has not yet begun.  The term refers to two processes in the final stages of grape development.  First, at least in red wines, the green berries get their color (turning red) and second, the berries (both red and white) soften.  After veraison the grapes rapidly increase in sweetness. Generally one can figure that harvest will occur about 6-7 weeks after the color change.  One of the cool things this year is that we can now electronically monitor soil water density right at root depth (called the rootzone) at approximately 30-36 inches.  This is exciting because it allows us to precisely quantify the amount of irrigation necessary to stress the vine to improve flavor development and concentration in the berries while making sure that the vine has enough water to remain healthy.  Until these were installed we could only make educated guesses.  Sometimes with less than desirable results…

 
Stew “That vine looks kinda spindly”
Dave “Maybe we should’ve put more water on it”
Stew “Oops”

 
Anyway, not that bad really but you get the point.

Hiya folks, its time to find the tylenol, TUMS, and valium- aka, winemakers’ best friends during harvest. Crush ’09 started yesterday kinda urgently– Ya see, last Friday I went out to our see how our tempranillo vineyard was doing with an eye to choosing a harvest date. The fruit was at about 24-25 brix and already displaying lots of darker berry characteristics and
about a week off from harvest. Unfortunately there was only a few days to get it off the vine since there was a big storm coming in that was projected to drop several inches of rain. So in order to deal with the rain my grower and I decided to harvest roughly half the Tempranillo fruit yesterday. We are going to let the soil dry for a week or so then take the rest with, hopefully a tad more sugar. The couple tons that have come in will be cold soaked for 3-4 days then I’ll start pulling samples to get “the numbers” i.e. pH, TA, and actual brix. With any luck, by the time fermentation is done, my barrel order will have arrived.

On an entirely unrelated note, while pouring last week at the Monterey wine festival, the folks next to me were serving samples of a gorgeous sangiovese. Rich fruit, huge spice and just plain yummy… undoubtedly the finest example of the grape I’ve tried from California. The wine is made by the legendary Chuck Ortman and his son. Check out Ortman Family Vineyards 2007 Sangiovese at roughly $25 its well worth the price of admission.