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…

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…

We picked our Swan Pinot Noir selection on Wednesday, and we completed harvesting all of the Pinot Noir on The Donum Estate on Friday. It seemed like good timing because cloud cover moved in followed by a few showers on Saturday morning.

It’s been an odd, fascinating vintage. We have lovely, fully ripe flavors without a hint of greenness, but we still don’t have high Brix numbers (roughly, percentage of sugar content in grape juice) despite considerable hang time. We speculated that perhaps the early September heat somehow damaged the rachises (main stem or framework of the grape cluster) so that they couldn’t conduct carbohydrates efficiently, thus stalling sugar accumulation. But when we cut into them, they were still functioning.

From September 7th until now, we have enjoyed moderate weather with maximum temperatures in the mid-70s to low-80s and the average temperature in the cool high-50s. So even with all this hang … More…

On Monday, I walked our estate vineyards in Carneros with Dr. Phil Freese, our esteemed viticultural consultant, as well as with Kenneth and Nabor. Having successfully weathered the first week of this month and its five days of high 90- to low 100-degree temperatures, we decided to take stock of The Donum Estate.

Last week we brought our (early-ripening) Dijon clones in from Nugent Vineyard in the Russian River Valley and also harvested Dijon fruit from the small vineyard around my house located due south of the city of Sonoma.

Yields at both vineyards were very low -  about one-third of normal. Yes, that’s correct, we are off over 60% in tonnage this year. In the Russian River, we had heat with single … More…

We can let the fruit hang as long as we want. The window to pick is a week or more long. It’s almost silly – we can do whatever we want without fear. With great flavors and everything truly ripe, I’m taking advantage. I’m being a little more extractive in my winemaking, given the great condition of the crop, but I’m mindful of balance.

There’s no rush at the winery to get lots out of tanks. There’s plenty of time to do the work, so we’re crossing t’s and dotting i’s. For normally high alcohol producers, this year will be considerably lower. Our alcohols aren’t normally that high so they won’t be down very dramatically. Acids are not high, but certainly not low. Nothing tastes over-ripe. It’s all concentrated … More…