Since 2000, Anne Moller-Racke has led the “ultimate Pinot Noir” project at The Donum Estate, which has produced very limited quantities of Donum Estate Grown Pinot Noir from each vintage beginning with 2001.As wine grower for Donum’s sister brand, Robert Stemmler Winery, Anne also manages Ferguson Block in Carneros and Nugent Vineyards in the Russian River Valley. From each of these vineyards, Robert Stemmler produces an estate-grown, vineyard-designated Pinot Noir.

Nabor Camarena came to Donum/Stemmler as vineyard manager in 2001, and Kenneth Juhasz joined in 2002 and was appointed winemaker for both labels in 2005.

MISSION STATEMENT

We recently launched UltimatePinot, and here are a few things we’d like anyone reading our blog to know.

We are not regular bloggers. While we enjoy this medium, we may not always be able to respond promptly to your questions and comments. Particularly at some times of the year, grape growing and winemaking are very time consuming, and we each have children and other commitments which can prevent us from checking in very often. Please bear with us.

Why start a blog, then? Because we spend every working day trying to grow and make exceptional Pinot Noir, and we think that our frank discussions about what that entails may be of interest. Our jobs are part art and part science, involving data analysis and extrapolation, experience and intuition. Each year we attempt to solve a problem with many variables. And we want to share that process with you.

We began writing in August 2006. Our goal was to try our hands at blogging and create a backlog — a small archive of a few dozen posts. Our archive went on-line with the launch of our blog, so we had no comments on those posts. We invite your comments on that archival material as well as on more current posts.

What did we learn? We were a little timid at first until we learned to relax and just present snapshots of our situations. Now we approach each posting as part of an ongoing conversation – in fact, some postings are actual conversations that we wrote down. We’d appreciate your feedback on that format.

Our one absolute: beware of absolutes! Please. So many of our decisions and practices are site specific, pertaining just to one vineyard, or only to an individual block, row or vine. Those decisions are also vintage dependent. Every year is the same in one sense — it’s unique! Even the vineyard, which is a year older with every vintage, presents a moving target.To prescribe one-size-fits-all farming practices is to totally deny that the best viticulture must be tailor-made to the site. Is irrigation good or bad? It depends on the site. The same goes for winemaking. We deal with each wine on an individual basis.

So thanks for joining us at UltimatePinot. Please let us know how to make it better.