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…

Not long ago, four of us sat down to taste through various barrel lots of our 2008 Pinot Noirs. Such tastings are always a learning experience, and this was no exception. I must say that at the end of it, I thought my feelings about barrels are justified.

I used to buy Burgundian oak barrels from a variety of different coopers, made from different forests at different toast levels. Those sorts of combinations can multiply rapidly. Through the years, I’ve undergone a honing-in process in barrel selection. I’ve found that, depending on the individual wine, usually a particular barrel (one forest, one drying regime and one toast level) from each cooper works best.

I simply ask myself, which barrel enhances the wine best? If you try to use several different barrels to build a wine - this one enhances the entry, this one builds up the middle palate, that one fills in … More…

Well, obviously, 2008 was a strange vintage — not too hot, but with some frost, fire and smoke and drought thrown in.

In our Russian River Valley vineyard, where yields were a third of normal due to frost damage, the sugars in our Dijon (early ripening) Pinot Noir clones were at a sensitive stage when the heat hit over Labor Day weekend. The heat was compounded by single digit humidity. We decided to push through the hot weather and ignore the Brix (approximate percentage of sugar) readings. We felt we didn’t have quite the concentration of flavors we wanted and that the tannins and skins were still a little green. To compromise matters further, we had some variability in ripening because of the frost. We picked in the second week of September.

We made only a very small quantity of wine and we experienced a little difficulty getting a few fermentations to … More…

This week we tasted the 2008 vintage wines. Most of the usual suspects were present on our little tasting panel - Dr. Phil Freese and Zelma Long, Kenneth and I, plus John Harley, our newly appointed assistant winemaker.

At first glance, everyone commented that the wines have great color. Phil suggested that I summarize the vintage and comment on the difficulties. Well, we had a little of everything - from frost, heat and drought to fire and smoke.

When the heat came in early September, we were still at fairly low sugar levels and we rode it out. As soon as temperatures dropped, the fruit relaxed and sugars dipped as well. A month of hang time ensued, with very slow (almost imperceptible) ripening, certainly not the normal curve. Something a little different occurred. We let our fruit hang into October until it was pretty clear it wasn’t likely to progress much further … More…