Prognostication and Prestidigitation. . .

Posted by Colleen | Harvest, Musings, Napa Valley, Vineyard, Wine News | Posted on July 18th, 2012

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…Or, All Signs Point to A Great Vintage in Napa Valley (with a little luck and a lot of work)

The following is a grapegrowing/winemaking update from our winemaker Richard Sowalsky:

Frequently, people will ask how a vintage year is shaping up. This question can be answered quite matter-of-factly, citing comparative statistics on weather, vine growth, fruit development and the like. However, I know full well that this is not what people want to hear. Indeed, what is really being queried is a prognostication of future wine quality based on what I have observed to date in the growing season. Essentially, this could be likened to asking a woman in her third trimester of pregnancy if her daughter will be a surgeon or an artist – the genetics and potential environment (nature and nurture) will set the stage for success, but other more fluid environmental factors will shape the outcome over time. Fortunately for me, grapevines are somewhat more predictable and, with experience, I am able to “guess-timate” a final wine quality outcome, assuming that natural conditions and other factors affecting the environment of the vine do not throw me (and the grapes) a curveball – something which is never guaranteed.

Let’s take the 2012 growing season in Napa Valley. The year so far has been characterized by low-normal rainfall, slightly above average temperatures (although fluctuating between warmer and cooler periods quite frequently) and abundant sunshine as compared to the past several years. This has resulted in balanced vine growth and very healthy leaf canopies, setting the stage for excellent fruit development. Small clusters bearing a moderate number of below-average sized berries further suggests a high potential for excellence. However, the growing season began late, and erratic weather during bloom resulted in poor set of grape flowers into berry fruit in some varieties, as well as a range in fruit “age” amongst clusters in other varieties.

In short, we’ve so far been quite lucky this season, but must take into account all of the quirks that we have encountered as well as any foreseeable circumstances we might experience between now and harvest in order to reap the best that our Estate vineyards have to offer. This requires a lot of intensive effort in the vineyard, all of which is timed to particular milestones in the growing season. For example, while green leaves are essential for conversion of sunlight into sugars that nourish vines and provide the building blocks for all of the taste, flavor, aroma, mouthfeel and color compounds which will ultimately end up in the wine glass, an abundance of leaves in the wrong location on the vine can shade fruit, diminishing quality through poor color in red wines, underripe flavors, bitter tannins, excessive tartness and increased disease incidence. Yuck! Yet, removal of too many of these excessive leaves at the incorrect time can lead to sunburned fruit (in a warmer year and with certain positioning of the vines within a block) and delayed ripening (in a cooler year). Double yuck! So, if we remove specific leaves at the correct time based on the individual characteristics of the vineyard block, then we properly hedge our bets against future environmental impacts (such as excessively cool, hot or wet weather later in the season) and my prediction of wine quality based on the overall year to date becomes more accurate.

The fruit on each shoot of the vine is “fed” by the leaves on its individual shoot. If there are too few leaves or too many grapes (it’s all relative), the grapes will never be perfect. And, until we learn how to stick new leaves onto a shoot, we’ll have to solve this dilemma by removing fruit. Yes, that profitable fruit that could become wine. On the ground. Gone for good. Bye-bye. Only, this fruit (and the remaining fruit, for that matter) would never have become very good wine (and certainly not excellent wine) if we did not cut some off as needed. But here’s the rub – if the clusters are removed too soon, the berries on the remaining clusters will have a tendency to swell up, making the finished wine less concentrated. And, if they’re removed too late, the remaining older leaves will have divvied up their resources already and not be of as much help as optimal to the clusters that remain. Again timing of this activity is key and, if performed perfectly, then the results from the growing season will be much more predictable based on the seasonal conditions, and wine quality predictions will be more precise.

Often, when the grape flower bloom and set is prolonged, there will be grapes of different maturities within a vine row, and even within the same cluster. This situation obviously makes it difficult to assess “perfect ripeness” which is so essential for finished wine quality. There are typically two times of year when this fruit maturity disparity can be corrected – immediately after set (when the berries of differing “ages” will be different sizes) and at veraison, the time during which berry softening and color change occur (and will occur sooner in the berries that set earlier in the season). As mentioned previously, if we decide to even out the crop by removing fruit showing delayed development after set, the remaining berries can swell up, diluting the future wine. More troubling, in warmer years some of the lagging younger fruit can “catch up,” meaning that there is a possibility of both losing money (through clusters cut off without need) and experiencing diminished wine quality. Instead, we don’t address this situation at this time, but rather wait until veraison to touch up the blocks and even out maturity by dropping clusters that are slow to soften and change color. And, because veraison can be fairly quick, this requires a lot of diligence in the vineyard with respect to timing. Another expensive finicky crop grooming that is critical to ensure I’ve got the perfect ingredients for my winemaking.

Wine is an amazing, living beverage, and thus there’s no way for me to be able to definitively answer the question of the ultimate quality of a perfectly-aged wine based on how grapes have developed at the mid-point in any given growing season. However, through judicious application of viticultural prestidigitation (grounded in science, much like magic), I can think forward from a given point in time of the growing season to attempt to predict final wine quality, barring extraordinary seasonal circumstances. Since we’re doing everything right in a beautiful growing season to date, I will go out on a limb to predict phenomenal wines from 2012!

A Visual Vineyard Update

Posted by Colleen | Harvest, Napa Valley, Vineyard | Posted on July 6th, 2012

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Being that it’s Friday, I figured today’s a good day to get up from my desk and enjoy my surroundings on a beautiful 82-degree day. So I took a field trip to all of our up valley vineyards to see how things were shaping up. Take a peek at our 2012 vintage! (If you really want to feel like you’re in the vineyard, click the image to enlarge.)

Why 2011 Will Not Be 2010

Posted by Colleen | Harvest, Napa Valley, Wine News | Posted on August 23rd, 2011

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A Case of Fertilisationis Interruptus

The similarities between 2010 and 2011 are remarkable. As the remainder of the US has sweltered through record heat, coastal northern California has had another year of below average temperatures and above average rainfall. Indeed, the cumulative degree days (an approximate measure of the total time during the growing season that grapevines are sufficiently warm such that they can be metabolically active) and seasonal rainfall totals between 2011 and its predecessor are nearly identical, and yet I can say with complete confidence that the vintage characteristics will be completely different.

How can that be so, you might inquire? There are a number of differences, some profound and some subtle, that will ultimately differentiate the winegrape characteristics between the two vintages. Perhaps the most important single factor influencing grape quality in 2011 will be the number of berries in a given grape cluster, which is greatly reduced from 2010. The reason for this relative lack of grape berries is that, in 2011, the flowering of the grapes was rather prolonged, a bit delayed even beyond its late timing in 2010, and, for better or worse, intersected by a bout of cold, wet weather. In some instances (especially in our Tenma Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon and Dunaweal Vineyard Petit Verdot blocks in Calistoga), this resulted in a complete loss of unopened and unfertilized grape flowers from the cluster (a process known as shatter or coulure). In some Chardonnay and Pinot Noir blocks at Mitsuko’s Vineyard in Carneros, poor quality of fertilization resulted in shot berries (millerandage), a sort of crazy quilt of berries of various sizes throughout the clusters.

Shatter and shot berries provide a distinct natural advantage in 2011 that was not present in 2010, namely there will be less fruit to ripen overall in a cooler year. The more prodigious crop levels in 2010 forced us to cut a lot of grapes off of the vines early on as the reality of a cooler season set in. This year, we needed to follow this expensive practice (paying employees to cut potential profits to the ground) in only a limited number of blocks (one example paradoxically being our Graveyard Hill Cabernet Sauvignon, which bloomed at a different time than the Cab at Tenma Vineyard and did not shatter appreciably). However, lest you think that this luck of nature will permit us to coast to an easy harvest absent of hard work in the vineyard, it should be noted that the long bloom time period has translated into an attenuated veraison (the time in the growing season when the grapes soften, change color and begin to accumulate sugar), requiring us to be more liberal in pruning off clusters (or even parts of clusters) that lag significantly behind the main crop in maturity.

2011 is beginning to show other differences from 2010 as well. As one example, the cumulative degree days are beginning to increase significantly ahead of last year at this time, and the average peak daytime temperatures and average daily sunlight are greater as well. The millerandage in the Burgundian varieties typically indicates years of excellence in the Old World, and are annual characteristics of our favorite Chardonnay field selection, Old Wente (a heritage block of which is used as the base of our Hommage Chardonnay); thus, expectations are especially high for these varieties especially, perhaps even surpassing the excellence we achieved in 2010. However, as anyone even glancingly familiar with winegrowing is aware, the season can never truly be predicted until the fruit is “in the barn,” as the example of the 1999 vintage (the coldest vintage on record…until it wasn’t) makes clear. We can only do everything in our power using our state-of-the-art knowledge to set ourselves up for success, and continue in the complex dance with Mother Nature until the 2011 show is over.