NC:  I saw Anne’s last post about thinning an already light crop. I prefer to say that we are adjusting the crop, improving it. We are balancing each vine, one by one, according to the capacity of each shoot, whether it can accommodate one, two or zero clusters.

It’s important how you approach the vineyard. We have a commitment to quality. Adjusting is not a formula and not simple. You must adjust to the crop size and situation each year, and we have to maintain our focus – quality.

There are growers whose definition of a good vintage is three clusters per shoot. For our project, a good year is when the fruit we harvested tastes good and has all the components we want in balance. But it’s important to have that commitment, because otherwise you can come up with hundreds of excuses.

AMR: Yes, low yields don’t change the other reasons that we thin – for intensity, uniformity of ripeness and even for weak shoots. This year the cold weather affected the caliber of the shoots.

NC:  Well, we prepared our vines for this heat.

AMR:  Yes, we’ve just had a couple of days of near 100-degree heat. It reached 101 and 103 in the town of Sonoma. But how the grapes are affected depends upon where they are on the ripeness scale. If they are at 20 degrees Brix (roughly 20% sugar content) or less, heat is not a problem.

Earlier this week we were at 21 in our Russian River Valley vineyard, and I had slightly higher sugar readings in the few acres around my house. We’re not that far in our Carneros estate blocks.

We have a strategy for water and the leaf water pressure readings tell us we’re OK right now. I think the vineyards have been slowing down a bit. Perhaps they are more affected by virus this year?

NC:  I think we’ll be at 22 Brix and above within a week. It’s been a cool August up until now, and the flavors are already there.

AMR: The few days of heat we’ve had didn’t stress the vines. We averaged around 82 degrees F. through August. The warmer days were anomalies. For example, on the 12th it was 80, then 93 on the 13th, then back to 80 on the 14th. The weather has been pretty ideal, and with the cool temperatures, the humidity has stayed pretty high.

NC:  I’ve noticed that when we squeeze the grape samples, the berries are cool.

AMR:  This is an interesting time of year for flavors. As I walk the vineyards, I may think that we have a while to wait, and then in a day or two there will be a big transformation, and the flavors are there.

NC:  I notice that the potential is already there, but they are not quite ripe yet. It’s like a banana that’s a little under-ripe. It is still slightly green and won’t peel easily, but the flavor precursors are there. You can tell what it’s going to be. Then within two days, it’s perfect.

AMR:  We seem to get heat quite often in late August. Perhaps we’ll fall into the luxury of hang time. Everything is in good shape. We’d just like to slow down enough to get flavor development rather than sugar accumulation.

We’re always thinking things like if we shorten our canopy, can we artificially slow down ripening and get full flavors at lower sugar levels? We want the vine to senesce slowly so that we get a nice breakdown of the skins and don’t push through that too rapidly.

NC:  It’s nine months from pruning to harvest and I compare that process to pregnancy. The vines go from a tiny bud to a ripe crop. We want the vines to go into labor, but not until they are ready. We want a full term. We don’t want heat to induce them.

AMR:  At this point, we are prepared. We have done our work. Now we pay attention. If we have heat spells, we act accordingly. We’re ready. If it rains, we have opened up the canopies. It’s all manageable.

NC:  Yes, it’s like a final exam. I feel that I’m prepared for my test.

AMR:  And we don’t over-prepare or over-react. We do it in steps. And we have other tools to determine where we are in that process.

NC:  Even if it’s hot all of the Labor Day weekend, we’re ok.

AMR:  I love the harvest. I’m ready. I wish we were at 24 Brix and could pick now. The decisions are fun to make. It’s like solving a puzzle, managing the logistics. Even though all of our blocks are at a similar level of ripeness, we wouldn’t let the Martini selection hang. It’s thin-skinned, whereas our Roederer selection and 777 Dijon clone can stand more heat.

NC:  I’m starting to envision how we will move our tractors and bins.

AMR:  I think we’ll follow a familiar pattern. First should be the vineyard around my house. Then the early-ripening Dijon clones in our Russian River vineyard. Finally, the Carneros estate fruit on these heavier clay soils will be ready, usually by order of clones and selections.

I’m ready to start. But first, Nabor, have a wonderful three-day weekend.

NC:  Thanks. You, too.

Right now our Pinot Noir is sitting between 18 and 19 degrees Brix (roughly, 18 to 19% sugar), while Chardonnay trails a little behind at about 16. We typically harvest at around 24 or slightly higher.

Part of our sustainable approach to grape growing is to involve our crew year-round. By collecting berry samples in the vineyard, they gain a more complete understanding of the effects of the pruning they did eight months ago.  There’s also problem solving involved. Why is this block ahead of that one? Answering such questions brings greater understanding.

Although we don’t really pick by sugar content – we look at a variety of other factors with flavors foremost among them – we do use sugars as an indicator of how the growing season is progressing. Is something stalled? If so, why? Do we have too much crop?

Like teachers who assess their students’ performance periodically, we question why a given block may have fallen behind in development. We try to determine why, then intervene to correct the situation.

This time of year feels good. I was able to take last week off on vacation. We’re monitoring our water situation and watching ripening. We’ve thinned crop where necessary and our canopies are open to light and air circulation, so now we have time to attend to details like weeding and trellis repair.

We’ve seen a little Botrytis (a mold known as the “noble rot” in some varieties like Riesling, but not desirable in Pinot Noir) in the Russian River Valley this year, probably due to the foggy mornings, but with canopies opened and fairly warm temperatures, there should be no problem.

People are talking about a relatively small harvest this year, but it’s a little difficult to generalize about crop size. Where there was no frost damage this spring, the crop seems to be fine, a little below average. But the very cool spring and moderate summer had another effect. Shoot growth is not where it should be. We have made up length, but not shoot girth or caliber. So we have found it necessary to thin to one cluster per shoot because these weaker shoots cannot carry two clusters. And, of course, that thinning will lower yields.

Where frost damage did occur, we lost shoot positions. We have canes with blanks where clusters should exist. Normally we have between 15 to 18 clusters per vine. In some cases, we see attempts by vines to compensate by pushing out of the crown, but we need to keep that area open for air flow. We can’t abandon our quality practices just to boost yields.

So, ironically, we still have to thin even in a year of modest crop. It hurts to see fruit (and, symbolically, dollars) lying on the ground, but it’s a best practice for quality. Nabor tells me not to look at the ground, and just concentrate on the canopy. So I think we’ll have good quality but less quantity in 2008.

Our Dijon (early ripening) clones seem to have fairly good-sized berries. Some of the older, heirloom selections of Pinot Noir are showing more “hens and chicks” (large and small berries together in a cluster) than normal as a result of less than ideal conditions at bloom time. I’m seeing a lot of one-seeded, as opposed to four-seeded, berries, another indicator of less fertility at flowering.

From the seven-acre vineyard around my home, I had 21 tons of fruit in 2006, or about three tons per acre. Last year I had 17 tons. This year I may harvest as few as 12 tons, which would represent over a 40% reduction from 2006 levels.

It’s a hard economic reality, but you can’t betray your principals. It takes a long time to win over the gatekeepers of our industry – distributors, retailers, restaurateurs and the press – and, ultimately, our customers, and we must earn and keep their trust.

The beauty of our industry is that we all dance to Mother Nature’s tune and go through the vintage variations and challenges together. We know the growers who are committed to excellence, who pay attention to details and try to prepare for all eventualities.

In some ways, 2008 has been good to us. After an unusual and cold spring, we have had a very moderate growing season with a modest crop load.  For those growers who used all their water for frost protection, this is fortunate, because the cool weather and lower crop size has not stressed the vines. Although one can see the results of a dry year elsewhere in nature, the vines are doing well.

As growers, there is only so much we can influence. We have to pay attention, react appropriately and, finally, accept the fruit that we have to work with in the cellar. To paraphrase George Orwell in Animal Farm, “All vintages are equal. Some are more equal than others.”

KJ: In 2006, we started analyzing different grape and wine samples, sending them to the lab to run the values of different types of tannins, like catechins, found in seeds, and anthocyanins, or pigments.

First, we just wanted to establish baseline values – where we were. Our goal was to find out what our personal sweet spots are, in terms of what we consider to be great wine, and determine if there are corresponding tannin sweet spots. So we took a quantitative look at tannins.

AMR: We looked at both vineyard and winery practices to see if, first, we could manipulate the tannin numbers and second, if we liked the wines at higher tannin levels. So we had three different vineyard thinning trials in adjacent rows last year, as we have alluded in previous posts.

First, we had our standard farming practice, which we call “by eye” thinning. We thin fruit so that the canopy is open and in balance and every cluster has its space. Next, we also alternated one and two clusters per shoot – one-two-one-two – which we called “1-1/2.” Third, we thinned to one cluster per shoot.

In each case, we cut fruit back and we experienced different yields.

KJ: The trial was ideal in that all three pruning approaches yielded about the same overall volume (not the same yield per vine, but we had anticipated that) and all three wines were made identically.

With other blocks, we worked with different saigneé (“bleeding off” or removing a small amount of juice to concentrate the must) levels of 0%, 5% and 10% to compare the effect on tannin levels.

Everything came out textbook, as expected. Lower yields produced higher tannins. The higher the percentage of saigneé, the higher the tannins were as well.

AMR: In the tasting, there were between 25 and 30 lots divided into four flights and tasted completely blind. No one knew anything about the wines except that they were our 2007 Pinots.

In one flight consisting of six wine lots, the person setting up the tasting made sure that wines from our vineyard trials were all in that flight together – three out of the six wines. Those of us tasting had no idea which of the four flights they were in. We rated each wine on a ten-point scale, with ten as the highest score.

In general, the scores were very close. The three wines in the vineyard trial scored almost right on top of each other, within a point or two. But the least manipulated wine – the standard “by eye” thinning – was the favorite.

KJ: And the wine with no saigneé was also the favorite. It seemed to be lighter and prettier, whereas those which had been manipulated seemed bigger, but tight and brooding, holding onto their esters and perfume. The winemaking trials produced wider gaps in scoring; the wine made with the 667 Dijon Pinot Noir clone from Nugent Vineyards in the Russian River Valley scored 45 points without a saigneé, and 35 points with 10%.

AMR: It’s interesting to note that our 490 block, which always gives us a major component of our Donum Carneros Estate Pinot, naturally tends toward one cluster per shoot. Because it’s cordon-pruned (vine has long, permanent horizontal arms with multiple spurs), the buds are more shaded and not as fruitful. Because only the first two buds are left per spur after pruning, they develop early but receive less light and heat, so they tend to be more vegetative and less fruitful. In Burgundy, growers often rub off those first buds.

That’s why cane pruning is usually preferred in cool climate areas, because the pruning can be varied. You can adjust and choose the buds you want. Pinot Noir tends to push more than one shoot per bud. With cane-pruned vines, you get more growing points and can eliminate weaker shoots by suckering early in the season to put all the vine’s energy into the remaining shoots.

That said, we leave 490 on the cordon because it naturally produces smaller yields and intense fruit, so we don’t want to mess with it. Ironically, with yields in most blocks down last year, 490 was pretty normal, probably because it flowered better.

The point of all this is that 490 has some of the highest tannin levels of all our lots and it was one of the highest rated lots in the tasting.

KJ: So in this first blind tasting of 2007s, people usually liked the control wines, which were less manipulated.

AM: Yes, they were made in our usual way in the vineyard and seemed more integrated. I believe that what is beautiful about site, or terroir — it is done in the vineyard. Otherwise everyone could make a grand cru wine by manipulation in the cellar.

KJ: You can improve wines in the cellar with some expensive tools.

AMR: Yes, tools can enhance. But they can’t create. Grand cru wines are made in the vineyard and can’t be copied successfully in the lab. I know that we try to be democratic and give every block the chance to grow up and be president, but they are not all created equal. Some are consistently the best, better than their neighboring block that receives the same treatment.

KJ: Yes, but you have also brought the level of farming up on all the blocks and they are all better. Consider the reverse: you can abuse a grand cru site, whether through neglect or greed and over-cropping. All systems must be operating properly, in the vineyard and the winery, to realize the potential of any site, grand cru included.

AMR: That’s true. I know that the grand cru system has been heavily marketed and has some fluff or hype attached to it, but if you strip it all away, there’s still something to it. In general, the model holds true.

So, we know we can intensify tannins, but is some soul missing in the wines?

KJ: Something did seem a little hollow in the middle. But this is only tasting number one of our tannin trials. I was talking to a good friend and fellow winemaker about the necessity of keeping these lots separate through next August. Those higher tannin lots hold onto a lot. They are tight and compacted now, but we need to reserve final judgment until before bottling. In Burgundy, the village barrel samples often taste better and prettier than the grand crus early on.

AMR: You’re correct. It’s one tasting. And once again we refer to the grand cru model.

This morning we sampled what we’ve brought in to the winery so far. First we tasted the Dijon 115 Pinot Noir clone from Nugent Vineyard in the Russian River Valley, which we farm. This fruit was harvested last Thursday, September 13, and inoculated yesterday, so it’s like, as Kenneth said, “kid’s juice.” I noticed its nice weight and delicious fruit, and Kenneth thought it had purity and focus, great fruit with good length.

Then we sampled another lot picked the following day. The juice showed typical first-day fermentation aromas of hay as well as fruit tones and seemed deeper, darker and more expansive to me. Kenneth described it as open and opulent.

Next we tasted some lots from Carneros, off of seven acres of vines planted around my house that we call Blue Farm. The first lot was harvested two weeks ago, on September 4, and has almost fermented dry – our first wine of 2007! We remarked that this was a bigger, more complex wine than from previous vintages. Kenneth noted that this Dijon 115 clone had thicker skins than usual and was totally ripe.

Kenneth said it came in at 24.7 degrees Brix (approximate percentage of sugar). There was very little dehydration so, as he said, those are “real numbers,” and the best we’ve ever had there. The wine is beautiful. I think we have great balance this year and we didn’t have to thin or trim very much. Kenneth thinks the drier soils may have played a role; I agree that may have evened things up.

We moved on to a tank holding a Swan selection from Blue Farm, and we thought this was wonderful, very heady and aromatic and full in the mouth.
Next was a Dijon 777 from Blue Farm, which had lagged behind in sugar a bit this year. It was more closed and brooding, but the tannins that characterize this clone really danced on the tongue.

A taste of Dijon 667 from our Donum vineyards showed intense fruit – I found cranberry and Kenneth said raspberry and both of us found a hint of something else, faintly herbal. I really like the 667 clone because it offers interesting combinations of aromas and flavors.

We moved on to taste fruit from Ferguson Block, from a moderately high density planting of Dijon 667 (4A07 block) in which we did thinning trials described in our September 7 post. We harvested on September 11 and our control lot was thinned normally. We found lovely fruit flavors with good concentration.

Next we tried the juice from vines that had been thinned to one-cluster-per-shoot. Our lab results showed this lot was 30% higher than the control in tannins. We found it to be further behind in fermentation and thus higher in sugar and sweeter, but we also found more fruit and a real spicy, black pepper component that persisted on the palate.

The lot that was alternately thinned one and two clusters per shoot (which we call “one-two”) was way behind in fermentation and so sweet that the tannins were masked. It will be interesting to track these lots.

Tomorrow we pick at Nugent Vineyards, Dijon 667 which tastes just wonderful on the vine. This has the makings of an ideal vintage. If it continues in this direction, it could be a benchmark year for demonstrating the potential of all our blocks. That would give us a clear target to aim for. As Kenneth remarked, “It’s all there in the juice.” The juice and nascent wines are wonderfully rich, fruity and concentrated with no apparent hollows or holes.

We parted ways after discussing an interesting cool weather system that is moving into this area from the north and could produce rain twice – possibly Wednesday night and maybe again late Friday. Our canopies are open and the vines are in good shape, so we won’t worry. It never helps to worry, anyway.

The rain actually refreshed the vines, and we didn’t see any big drops in sugars. Sugar levels have just risen by very small increments this year due to the long, cool season. We had a wet spring, but we didn’t see much early botrytis. The shoots were clean, growth was good, and bloom and set was wonderful. With ample water in the ground and a good set, we saw more and bigger seeds than normal, which made the berries bigger. Our cluster count wasn’t high, but cluster weight was. Normally they weigh 100 to 110 grams, but we saw clusters as big as 200 grams at Nugent Vineyard, although with some dehydration they got a little lighter.

Often when you have big berries, you have big spaces between them, but not so this year. We had big, tight clusters. And that’s important.

A friend of mine recommended a “harvest tart” that she learned to make in Florence. You put wine grapes, no sugar, on a thin crust and just bake it. The seeds become totally dry and create a pleasant crunchiness. You top it with whipped cream and it’s delicious. I tried it with my daughter, Hannah, this year. We plucked each and every berry from the cluster – something we don’t do when sampling. Hannah even counted the berries, an average of 140 per cluster.

What we found was that the second, inside layer of berries was very tight, and some berries had been squeezed until they popped, creating a potential site for infection. That’s the key to botrytis this year. We were caught a little off guard because the big, tight clusters had rot inside that worked its way out.

What could we have done? We can’t open up clusters like we do the canopy. We didn’t irrigate and pump up the berries. So we are left with thinning and careful sorting as and after we pick. That’s how we’ll get the quality we seek.

The wines in the cellar reassure us. We had outstanding flavors early on, then they diminished and then, suddenly, the light goes back on. It’s like stop and go traffic, frustrating, without a smooth energy and flow to the vintage. But looking on the bright side, we’ve been able to concentrate on each block and we haven’t had to rush or panic or give any load preferential treatment logistically.

On the bright side, we did get good flavors in many blocks, and we got the majority of our harvest in before the rain. It’s the fruit in blocks that we usually pick at the end anyway that is still out there. We brought in what needed picking, like some Martini selection Pinot Noir that is thin-skinned and might have fallen apart after enduring the rain.

The occurrence of botrytis this year has necessitated a lot of thinning. Actually, we have a three-step process. First, we drop affected fruit in the vineyard. Then we sort as we pick. Finally, we sort again on tables, pulling out any affected clusters. So, with this added effort and expense, the fruit we get at the winemaking end is clean. Fortunately, we had an abundant vintage, so we aren’t getting shorted badly on quantity.

At my end, fermentations are proceeding nicely, although that cool first week of October affected them. Ambient temperatures were so cool that we had to warm the tanks to get them going. Native yeast fermentations, for whatever reason, have been more difficult. Anne suggests it could be due to botrytis.

This has been a bizarre year for fruit maturity. You may walk a block and ask, “Where are the flavors?” And one day they are there, but maybe not in the next block. This is especially annoying because earlier in the vintage, the flavors were really evident at lower sugars, and we said, “Wow!” We had very high hopes, then flavors diminished, and it’s been a long wait for sugars. As late as we have gone, we will still be picking Pinot Noir next week.

The fruit is not at all tired, however. The Roederer Pinot Noir clone from block 490 that goes into Donum is par for the course with its thick, ripe skin.
Everything is completely ripe, seeds as well, and we could leave that in the tank as long as we wish. It’s just odd to have some wine already in barrel, some still juice and some fruit still hanging out there for another week.

The flavors are very good. You really notice them. Because the flavors are there while the sugars are lower, the grapes taste acidic, but they will quickly come into balance. The canopies are very healthy and balanced this year.

This was a tricky year because it looked like the cluster count was low so yields would be low. Some growers were tempted to leave doubles for yield rather than thin back to one cluster per shoot. But the berries got big and some vines are overloaded.

Berry size and numbers vary from cluster to cluster, but there may be 30% more berries this year. There’s good fertility, lots of seeds. And the clusters closed very quickly this year. It didn’t take several weeks. The large seeds and large berries quickly sized up.

Following a wet spring that did provide good conditions at bloom, an excellent set has given us big, full clusters with no shot berries. Grapevines are self-pollinating, but many factors affect fruit set, ranging from the vine’s health and vigor to the way we’ve pruned it, and weather has a direct bearing on crop size. During the period of bloom and set, it’s often too wet, too dry, too hot or too windy. This year seems to have been ideal.

We’re used to seeing clusters weighing 110 or 120 grams and these are over 200. Right now the crop is sitting between 18 and 20 degrees Brix. We had seven tons of grapes hanging, and we have just cut back to 3-1/2 tons per acre. We had a cluster count of 28 to 30 going into veraison (when the berries soften and change color), and we’ve reduced it to less than 20. Those clusters should weigh about 170 grams each at harvest, and that should put us at the high end of what experience tells us is an ideal range for balance and concentration in the fruit – from four to six pounds per vine, depending on the vintage.

It was dramatic to see that much fruit dropped on the ground. One of our winery clients asked how we could get our grower to do that. It’s simple. We pay by the acre and not for tonnage, so we can drop what we deem necessary to ensure full ripening and fruit intensity.

Not that thinning fruit isn’t scary. That’s a lot of money on the ground, especially with Pinot Noir such a hot commodity right now. Frankly, dropping a bountiful, valuable crop runs against the grain of farmers like Joe and me. The key is to always keep the wine you want to make in mind.

If we produced a $10 or $20 bottle of Pinot Noir, dropping that fruit would be sheer economic folly. Not everyone is trying to make world-class wines and there are some very good values out there. But we are committed to producing a $40-plus bottle of exceptional Pinot Noir, so we have to stay on plan.
With ample water in the ground from the rains and this excellent set, we are seeing larger berry size because we have bigger seeds – so the ratio may be much the same, but we should have more tannins. We need to reduce our crop to get those seeds to ripen properly as well as to prevent the clusters from crowding. Thinning lets in more light and air to enhance pigmentation and prevent rot. We don’t have control over the crop sizing up, but we can thin appropriately to deliver optimum quality.

The beauty of our operation is working with the same vineyards year after year so we can begin to understand the dynamics of the sites. With consistent good farming and winemaking practices, we can tweak the vineyards to make better wine. And that’s really fun!