Wow. Some of my first posts last year were about Veraison…and here we are again. Well, sorta, cause as noted, we’re running later this year. At any rate, some pix:
A little color at last...
It’s nice to see some color, finally. This color came in last Tuesday-Wednesday during our three day ‘heat wave’. Heat wave roughly defined as ‘temperature over 90′. We’ve got another one today-looks like the temperature might actually get to 93 or so! Whew.
At any rate, all of these cool temperatures mean that harvest will start later this year than last year-probably in mid October. Which day it will be will probably depend a lot more on the rain forecast in October and how quickly all the wineries can move fruit in. But it’s two or so months away-anything can happen. Like a heat wave in September? That’d be nice…
One thing we/I do when we’re going to run late like this is to thin the crop down. Less crop should mean the grapes that are left will get riper quicker-something we’ll need this year, I think.
Be careful of your fingers!
Hi everyone! Welcome back!
Start of the 2010 Harvest.
So, no, the post title isn’t about my lack of blogging-although it could be.
No, it’s been a cool spring & summer-in case you haven’t noticed. Given the large amount of rain, you probably have. We like to say here in Oregon that summer doesn’t start until after July 4th…but it’s been a bit too close to the truth this year.
Growth continues...despite the cold & rain.
So what does all this cool weather mean? Well, right now about ten days later than ‘normal’ for the year. Or, put another way, possibly ten days later at harvest…or to put it yet another way, mid-October.
Now, nothing wrong with mid-October. The 2008 vintage was very similar-a late spring, later harvest…and wonderful wines! But, we also got lucky with a nice dry harvest.
We’ll see how summer goes this year-while it’s fun to contemplate harvest right now, we’ve got many nice hot days to go….
Sorry for the delay in posting! Although all the fruit is in, there is no rest quite yet…we need to get the wine through primary fermentation.
Barrel-in on a rainy day...
This last weekend the first of the Pinot Noir fermentors were ready to go into the barrels. We ended up with 12 +2 barrels total-quite a bit more than last year and there is more to come. Gulp! (The +2 are half barrels, FYI…). Most of the juice is free run, but the two halfs are press fractions. I’m very interested to see how those press fractions come along-there is quite a bit of concern that these grapes ripened fast and that the seeds and tannins are leaning towards a harsher, greener side. We’ll see if the press fraction does develop like that or not…I kinda hope that they develop into something interesting for a blend…
These wines will not start ML in the barrels and continue on their way towards the bottle (& you!). It’ll take a few months at least, giving us a little time to relax. Well, except we still need to get the rest in the barrel!
Grapes & yeast hard at work
Well, we’ve got all the Pinot Noir for 2009 in the fermentors. The numbers-sugar & acidity, look excellent. The color looks great. Now we’ll wait to see what flavors show up-will they be big bold wines like 2006? Many people think so, but as always, we’ll have to see. Pinot has a way of surprising you-and I’m sure in a few years we’ll be refering to a harvest as ‘just like 2009′.
That’s in the future for now. Currently, the wines is cruising through primary(sugar to alcohol) fermentation or still in cold soak (so, technically, not yet a wine!). Over the next few weeks we’ll press the wine as it finishes primary fermentation and get it into barrels and start the secondary (aka Malo-Lactic) fermentation.
Middle of the 4th inning, the tarp is off the field and the teams are warming up. What am I talking about? Just a poor baseball analogy for this year’s harvest. We’ve been waiting a bit here for the weather to clear-and it has-and we are now ready to get back into the swing of this harvest.
What is still out there? We still have our Pinot Gris lot to bring in as well as four Pinot Noir lots. It’s almost all Pommard-the oldest clones and blocks we have. I’m kinda excited to see what we’ll get. If there was ever a year for these older vines to shine, this would be it: plenty of hang time, plenty of vigor still left in the vines and crop levels that they should be able to handle. I look forward to getting them to a fermentor.
Speaking of fermentors, the first four lots of Pinot Noir have all started their fermentations. For those of you wine geeks out there, here are some of the key stats:
Lot Brix pH
115 24.9 3.61
114 23.7 3.72
667 23.4 3.66
777 23.5 3.67
These are great numbers-but wine is more than numbers, it’s flavor and color-and those also are looking good! The caps that have formed on the fermentors are nice and black and the color of the juice is coming along nicely. You never really know what you’ll get for a wine’s flavor and color until many months down the road-but so far I’m very happy with these!
Nothing like picking a little Malbec on a nice Sunday, right? We’re waiting for more Pinot (Gris or Noir) to ripen. Dad happens to have a few other varietals planted in small experimental quantities. This includes a single row of Malbec. It’s in the hottest part of the vineyard, but Oregon might not be warm enough. But hey, it’s always fun to try new things.
Dad starts in on the Malbec
One row of these young grapes doesn’t produce a lot of fruit:
That's all the one row had...
We ended up getting only about 7 gallons of must, but it’s nice & red and should make some interesting wine. There was one other important lesson:
- Remember to not wear white downstream of the destemmer…
Truck travails and a long day, but it was time to get the grapes in the fermentors…
Grape bins ready to destem
The first up was some 114. We had about 2.8 tons to destem into two fermentors. The first grapes of 2009 were on the way:
Here they come!
After the long day we ended up with 1.25 tons of 115, 2.8 tons of 114, 1 ton of 667 and .75 tons of 777. The fruit looks great! After destemming, we got them in plastic bin fermentors, added some SO2 and then cooled the grapes down with some dry ice. The must will cold soak for a least 3 or 4 days maybe a little longer. The goal is to let the color, flavor and tannins in the grapes be absorbed into the must. All that is what will make the wine red in color and wonderful in flavor down the road.
A little dry ice makes for cool grapes...
…so the truck showed up, off we went to McMinville and everything went great, right?
Not so much.
So the truck was 3 & half hours late. So I got to wait for 3 hours. It was a pleasant place to wait…
don't see any trucks out there....
…but really, if was awful. I waited. Walked around. Checked out other parts of the vineyard. Looked down the road. Walked around some more. Ate a donut. Looked for the truck again. Called the winery to let them know I would be late. Looked for the truck.
And, finally, the truck showed up-late, but it showed. No, I won’t go into the why it was late. No, I won’t go into the trip down when the grapes almost fell off the truck or when there was a wrong turn….
At any rate, the grapes finally got to the winery. I was very late, but fortunately I brought gifts: cupcakes from Cupcake Jones (
www.cupcakejones.net). Awesome Pearl District tastiness makes up for being late…sorta..
Finally, time to get the grapes going towards wine!
Early morning sun at the vineyard
Ahhh, time to start bringing in the fruit.
The day started off well, I got out of Portland reasonably early and made it to the vineyard not long after the picking had begun in the 10 acres west where today’s grapes were coming from.
Everything was going great! It was a beautiful day and the fruit was coming in nicely! By about 11am, all the fruit had been picked.
All that was left was for the truck to show up….
Pinot Noir 115 ready to pick
More Pinot!
Had to run to the vineyard last evening to do some more samples. As expected, the sugars have taken off with the burst of heat. Good news is the color and flavors have seemed to develop as well-at least for the first blocks to be picked.
I expect we’ll our harvest will be started by the weekend!
A lovely sunset