After a decade spent developing it, I’m frequently asked to define the Donum Pinot Noir style. First, we strive to obtain purity of expression of both site and clone or selection. We want a wine defined by its fruit, not by what is done to it in the cellar.

People have called our wines “elegant.” At first, I almost took offense, assuming that was a polite way of saying they lacked intensity. But I realized that people really meant “balanced,” a wine with an even interplay of fruit, tannin, acid and oak, a seamless wine in which all the holes are filled, but not overfilled.

Many of our descriptors sound like yin and yang: intense but graceful, power with delicacy, concentrated yet balanced. Always we look for prettiness. We don’t want a wine that is tiring, heavy, overripe, over-extracted or clumsy. That’s not the nature of Pinot Noir, not even of … More…

On Wednesday, I had the pleasure of tasting some of our 2009 Pinot Noirs from tank and barrel with Kenneth Juhasz and John Harley. Tasting that fresh juice and new wine allowed us to experience the vintage directly and provided an unhurried moment to reflect on it together.

This year began with a relatively cool, dry spring and moderate weather that continued through the summer. It occurred to us that the last hot vintage we have had was 2004. While we feared the advent of high heat in late August and early September this year, we merely had a few blips of very warm weather. A quick period of flowering about a week to ten days later than normal in May gave us small berry size along with some shatter (small, seedless “shot” berries resulting from incomplete pollination) which, months later, produces smaller yields but greater intensity in the fruit.

We started … More…

Over the weekend of May 16-17 this year, we experienced a brief but significant heat spike. Our vines had begun flowering the previous week (less than five percent), and temperatures had ranged from the 70s to the low 80s throughout the week.

As the mercury approached high 90s F., the vines had moved into full bloom. Grapevines are rather vulnerable during this period and require moderate conditions for complete pollination. Extremes of cool, hot, dry or wet weather can interrupt the process.

A good synonym for a vintage is “weather pattern.” Each growing season is a collection of fog and heat and wind and rain events. As wine grape growers, we can’t control the weather, but we do try to react to it in an appropriate manner to obtain the end product we want.

This year, as in 2007, the heat and subsequent rapid and incomplete flowering gave us little shot berries and … More…

It’s been quite a while since I last posted here. I apologize for what has been an inadvertent hiatus. Family and business matters have taken me to geographical and emotional extremes – to Nepal for a wedding and Germany for a memorial service, and to several U.S. cities for wine tastings and meetings. I had some memorable times, but it’s good to be back home.

On the subject of both happy and sad occasions, Nabor Camarena, our vineyard manager for the past eight years, left this spring as he reported in our last post. Rather than just announce his leaving, we invited Nabor to comment on his new opportunities and reflect on his experiences here, and he graciously complied. Typical of Nabor, he did not depart before finding his extremely able replacement, Lauro Servin. We … More…

A few months ago, I made a difficult decision – to leave The Donum Estate and work as vineyard manager for Larkmead Vineyards in the upper Napa Valley. Anne has invited me to discuss my reasons for this decision and report on my new job.

I did not make my decision to get a better job, but to make a change. After farming for over a quarter of a century in Carneros, I have accomplished my mission here. I always had a dream to farm in Napa Valley as well. Now preparation and opportunity have come together, and I can learn the differences between Carneros and Napa.

The vineyards are located a few miles south of Calistoga in a narrow portion of the valley between Highway 29 and the … More…