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 picking in the half dozen acres around my house in Carneros on September 5^th, and picked again on the 11^th and 19^th as the various clones ripened in sequence. Similarly, our harvest in the Russian River Valley began on September 15^th and extended over two weeks. We began taking fruit off of our Donum Ranch on September 29, and it was exciting to see the flavors suddenly peak in apparent response to a little heat over the weekend. Kenneth just had to call me from the winery to exclaim how delicious the fruit was as it came in. We brought in grapes from the Ferguson Block just last Monday, October 5^th.

Even perfection creates dilemmas. With such beautiful ripening weather stretching out ahead, it’s difficult to decide to pick. Why rush it? It’s much easier to pull the trigger in the face of an impending heat wave.

With such long hang time, the skins can ripen, the berries taste delicious and you can almost taste how soft the tannins will be – there’s no hint of coarseness. The Russian River Valley fruit was equally gorgeous this harvest, really pretty and very clean. The coolness of the summer reminds me of 2005, and the fruit set, shot berries and small clusters, plus the lack of heat extremes, is very similar to 2007. Maybe it’s something about odd-numbered vintages.

Kenneth said the lower yields, prettiness and sweet impression of the fruit also reminds him of 2007. He feels like a broken record, he said, when he tells how we could pick when we wanted, how we got great color, exceptional flavor concentration, intensity without high sugars, and easy fermentations with everything going dry.

He and John have had a very orderly harvest, giving them time to devote full attention to detail. They can decide to give a lot five days of cold soak, for example, and they have the luxury of not having to make rash decisions.

“This wine almost makes itself,” Kenneth announced. “It would be difficult to screw it up. It’s an awesome year.”

He said our Russian River Pinot reminds him of Oregonian Pinot Noirs at their best – mature but not overripe, balanced and classic, intense but not “in your face.”

The last few nights have been quite cold, and John remarked that while the harvest has been ideal, from the look of the vines lately, he wouldn’t want to have fruit hanging much longer. And there’s rain in the forecast for early next week. We just have a little old Wente selection of Chardonnay to bring in this weekend. It’s a relief to have this wonderful vintage safe in tank and barrel.

Sonoma is so serene and lovely now that I can hardly believe what a remarkable vintage we have just witnessed, one in which we experienced a little of everything – drought, frost, cold, heat, fire and smoke.

In the long period since our last post, the 2008 wines have been developing in the cellar. We were so lucky that we weren’t forced by the heat around Labor Day to pick and that we were able to wait until October. Although we had a crop level even lower than last year, all the wines have gone through fermentation nicely, with just a few behaving a little sluggishly.

The flavors are beautiful. We’ll taste and evaluate the wines more formally in January, but right now I’m certain that there’s not a dog in the whole winery. All are very solid, beautiful, expressive wines with good weight and perfume.

Since harvest, we’ve already had our second rain and we hope for more – the forecast now is for rain on Thanksgiving. The 2007 vintage was light in rain and crop, and 2008 was even lighter in both. But the few inches we have received have started the cover crops and turned the ground between the rows and in all of the pastures a verdant green. It’s pretty to see, especially the meadows with livestock happily grazing and growing fatter, but it’s also good for erosion control in the vineyards.

Now we can look back on a year of difficult decisions – the severity of the frosts, the cold spell in April holding back shoot growth. We couldn’t stimulate that growth; there are no heat lamps to turn on in the vineyard. The shoots never developed the strength to support much fruit. Even if they had several clusters, they often couldn’t carry more than one. Yet we could not change our principals. It’s not just the crop load per vine that’s important. We need to balance each shoot. We also need to open up the canopy to prevent rot. Because the fruit distribution was different, our cultural practices were more challenging.

When the weather did warm up in mid-May, we passed quickly through flowering (bloom and set) which affected fertility adversely. As a result, we saw more little shot berries and one-seeded (as opposed to two- or four-seeded) berries, which translated into smaller berry size and lighter clusters.

Simply put, we had to make different farming decisions to balance a light crop.

As we approached harvest time, we had ten days of heat in late August and early September. At that point, knowing we had a light crop, we had to ask ourselves how much we would allow the Brix numbers (roughly, percentage of sugar in the grapes) to drive our decision. We know that the heat creates higher numbers through dehydration of the heat rather than true ripening. So, do you pull the trigger and harvest? At what point do you gain nothing more by waiting?

In most cases, we waited and we gained. Our sugars never exceeded 24 to 25 degrees Brix and with the return of cooler weather, they went back down. Because flavors are not so measurable and quantifiable, they are more difficult to judge, but we know now that we made the correct decision.

We found absolutely no effect on the fruit or resultant wines from the fires that burned throughout California in late June and July. We have heard that some smoke taint occurred in some areas, but mercifully, it seems very limited.

I was talking with someone the other day about all of our operations, like shoot and crop thinning, to bring vines into balance and promote more uniform ripening – to narrow the range of flavor development so that we don’t get green and over-ripe fruit extremes. I found myself laying out the calculations, as follows.

Let’s assume you have 140 berries per cluster and 25 clusters per vine. That’s 3,500 berries per vine. And you need 500 vines to produce a ton of grapes. So one ton contains 1,175,000 berries. Let’s say you have a special two-acre block and you harvest five tons. That’s 8.75 million berries of low yield, intensely farmed, hand tended grapes. And we’re trying to get uniformity of flavor at the peak of ripeness among all these berries, which will eventually produce about 300 cases of wine. Amazing, isn’t it?

Right now, what I like about the 2008 wines is their great density. By analysis, it seems that our tannins are slightly lower than in some previous years, but they are very ripe, I think, from the long hang time. There is absolutely not a hint of greenness in the wines. There is excellent structure, good acidity and no huge sugars. Indeed, with most of these wines, we were waiting for sugars because we wanted the mouth feel.

In 2006, we had bigger, juicy berries and those wines are just getting fleshier in the bottle now. The 2007 vintage was lower yielding, but the wines seem just about perfect. And the small 2008 berries with their lower skin-to-pulp ratios seem to have great color and density. After a tumultuous year, it’s these kinds of realizations that keep us coming back for more.

Happy Thanksgiving!

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 time, lower sugars may mean relatively low alcohols in the wines.

The Russian River Valley fruit that we brought in the second week of September has been in the tanks for three weeks now. The Dijon 667 is simply gorgeous, what little there is of it.

For the second year in a row, we have experienced light yields and a very orderly harvest that has allowed us to devote a great deal of attention to detail. This year the issue of light crop is not cluster count but cluster weight. We’re down about 40% from “normal” yields.

There is talk of the economy everywhere. From our grape growing and winemaking perspective, despite the light crop, we had to stick with our philosophy, opening canopies and thinning crop to achieve the utmost quality. These practices are very hand labor intensive, and that translates as expensive, which raises our fruit costs and reduces our margins.

At the same time, the weak dollar drives up the cost of barrels. But the real question for our industry is the economy. What will happen to our friends in the restaurant business? At least we have excellent quality if not quantity, and it may be fortunate for our industry that two short vintages will not mean a glut of wine as we all face an uncertain future.

We’ll control what we can. All of our Pinot Noir is in and we’ll take advantage of more nice weather and pick our Chardonnay blocks sometime next week.

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 digit humidity, 7% at the lowest point, which remarkably produced relatively minor dehydration loss. The spring frosts had forced us to thin to promote evenness in crop development, and we had to thin again late in the season for botrytis (Botrytis cinerea, the so-called “noble rot,” but not very noble in Pinot Noir).  Kenneth said the juice he has in the tanks is fantastic, what little there is.

I had thought we would be harvesting in Carneros around September 12-18. The flavors are starting to come in nicely. We got through the hot spell without having to harvest, so now we are presented with the possibility of extended hang time. The purpose of our walk was to see if we should take advantage of that opportunity and whatever risk that entails, or if the fruit could be picked now.

Just to make matters more interesting, there is a slight chance of rain on Friday.
As we tasted, the consensus was that our fruit was almost ready, quite good but not great in terms of flavor development, just in need of a little more concentration. Sometimes the skins felt slightly crisp as we chewed the berries, and the flavors reminded us of an apple or pear just a few days from being fully ripe, no longer green but not quite at the peak of ripeness.

Phil agreed that he tasted a lot that was close but not quite there yet. With foggy mornings and a chance of rain on Friday in the forecast, he was concerned about the high number of small “shot” berries. He cautioned that the small berries tend to be farther ahead in development, and although they are lighter in weight, there are more of them this year. With their smaller size and thinner skins, he was concerned that moisture could cause them to split.

Kenneth agreed that if we see that happening, we’ll pull the trigger. Phil quipped that it would be a good time for the grapes to see the inside of a tank.

I marveled that the clusters were cool and firm to the touch, that they didn’t show much evidence of dehydration. In the wake of the heat wave, the berries filled in again and, amazingly, much of the shriveling has disappeared.

Despite what Phil calls a “diverse population” of grapes on the vines – large, small and a few shriveled from dehydration, which tend to contribute an unwanted jammy character – he said we are sitting on an incredible vintage. With small berries and small yields, we should have great concentration and good acidities.

Kenneth and I joked a lot. He wants to wait a week and I want to pick now. It’s the classic grower/winemaker stand-off and we enjoy the faux fighting with one another as we actually work toward a consensus. We all agree that if we had to pick now, the grapes are in good shape, ready. But with the promise of additional hang time to shift those flavors into high gear, we all feel that’s something we’d like to take advantage of.

We agree that the Roederer and Calera selections could use more hang time, so that if we do begin to trickle fruit into the winery, we could start with the Chalone and Hanzell selections.

Then, in a change of roles, Kenneth admitted that he’s getting antsy and he’s trying to keep his cellar people occupied, while Nabor said we’re not ready and we need a bit more intensity in the fruit.

It’s been an emotional year for Nabor dealing with the effects of two frosts. He admitted being nervous, but he realizes we may have a real opportunity here. We could play it safe and just get the fruit in the winery, but having come to this point, the promise of hang time is enchanting. It could make a good vintage a great one in terms of quality.

We discussed a couple of blocks with “golf balls,” grapes that are dimpled. It seems logical to pick those first. We asked Phil what the fruit looks like in Burgundy when it’s picked, because it’s so much more likely to be beaten up by rain there. Phil said they get to their destination by a different path, achieving more flavors at lesser sugars. I commented that the breakdown of skins occurs earlier there, and he concurred. He said that if you squeeze a berry in Burgundy and rub it between your fingers, it will stain your fingertips completely red. That’s not the case here.

As we continued to taste berries in different blocks, we kept saying we want to give the vines more time. I advocated for four days and Kenneth said let’s check them in a week or so. Then we began fantasizing about taking four days off and flying to Burgundy. Just fly to Paris, drive to Burgundy, walk through a number of vineyards, then turn around and come right home. We were kidding, or were we? Kenneth got out his laptop and began to check airfares. Burgundy is like Oz for us because we always need to take care of our business at the same time of year back here in “Kansas.”

Phil summed up our concerns about waiting: “Is this a gift or a trap?” We concluded that the risks are manageable and the wait is worth it. Phil pointed out that in a year when a number of people were forced to pick by the heat, we have an opportunity to differentiate our wines by waiting. Kenneth said that his instinct is to wait, despite the thumb twiddling in the cellar.

Kenneth and I agreed that we would walk the vineyards together again, probably on Thursday. We recalled how the 2004 vintage was very much the opposite – how we decided to pick before the heat then. Now we have the reverse circumstance. This reinforces our conviction that we can’t farm by calendar or recipe. We need to be completely flexible and in touch with the peculiarities of the vintage. And, as we said in the last post, we always need to be prepared.

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.

We find their experience, expertise and the perspectives they bring very stimulating. Part of their role is to challenge us to continue to think creatively. One pitfall we try to guard against is falling into the same old ruts in our thinking and planning. Good enough is simply not good enough in the pursuit of the ultimate.

As we began our conversation, Phil commented on the smoke-filled skies from the many California wildfires during the past two months and the question of smoke affecting this year’s grape crop, a topic of some concern in our industry of late.  People have speculated that photosynthesis may have been impeded, or that grapes, and thus wines made from them, may be “smoke tainted.”

Phil doubts that smoke will be an issue. In the first instance, he doesn’t feel that smoke and particulate matter are sunshine issues, that they shield vines from photosynthetic radiation. He points out that vines function differently under cloudy skies as opposed to in the shade (much as humans can be sunburned on a cloudy day, but not in full shade), and the smoky conditions are comparable to cloud cover.

To get smoke into the fruit, he said that fires would have to burn for some time right next to a post-veraison (after grapes soften and turn color) red wine grape vineyard. (There would be no problem with white grapes because generally the juice is quickly removed from the skins in winemaking.)

Smoke dissolves in the waxy cuticle on the skin of the grape berry, and most of it is not water soluble in juice. As alcohol levels rise in the fermenter, however, the combination of alcohol and heat can suddenly produce a smoked sausage aroma in the winery from smoke-affected fruit.

Phil has witnessed such results from smoke in South Africa, Australia and California. He reminded us of the 1981 harvest in east Napa when several Cabernet Sauvignon vineyards, a couple of Zinfandel vineyards and a Merlot vineyard were subjected to fires in close proximity and yielded tainted wines.

The Australians have the most experience with fires, he said. They have farmed essentially under drought conditions for a decade or more, with late season fires occurring in 2003 as well as during the past three vintages, 2006-08.

Because the smoke we encountered occurred at high levels and also mostly before the onset of veraison, he feels it’s a non-issue.

Speaking of veraison, we received an interesting comment on our last post from Amel Salvatierra, who asked what effect on development and final character the heat spike had on berries that were pushed to change color.

I can’t list the exact effects, but I know that those berries will be a little riper. We’re only talking a few percent of berries here – the extreme right (ripe!) side of the bell curve, if you will. We always get excited when we see that first color because it means we’re moving to another stage.

We strive for uniformity in our crop – the huge center section of that bell curve – and we thin to avoid the other, greener extreme. But in actuality you can always find a range of several degrees Brix within the harvest from a given vineyard, block, row or even vine. The final Brix may be a precise reading, but it’s an average.

Anyway, those early berries may be a little riper, but overall they constitute a small component and don’t have much effect on the resultant wine.

A week ago I walked our Nugent (Russian River Valley), Donum and Ferguson Block vineyards. It had been four weeks since the July heat spike when we saw that first color in the grapes. Then cool weather returned and the vines stalled. Around July 28th, everything moved again very swiftly. Within three days, we had 50% veraison or better in most of our blocks. And now we have full color. It all happened within a week to ten days.

So now I’m estimating that harvest will occur the second week of September. How do we calculate that? Well, the classic interval in our industry between bloom and harvest is considered to be 100 days.

But in our cool climate vineyards, normally (whatever that is) our harvest occurs 112 to 115 days from the date that we have 50% bloom. Another check after the fact is to count back from harvest 35 days, which should put you at 50% veraison. Again, in our cool climate, that interval is more like 45 days. And for the last three vintages, we have experienced long hang times that extended that period to as much as 55 days.

This process of prediction involves rules of thumb and not absolutes, and is tempered by experience and intuition. Since we had 50% veraison at the end of July, right now I’m predicting that we should start harvest 45 days later, the second week of September. Does that sound like smoke and mirrors? Well, that’s the fun of it. We’ll plan for it, then wait and see.

That beer sparked a discussion of wine styles. My friend had recently tasted a 1987 Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon from a prominent producer. The wine had aged quite nicely. Upon opening, it displayed considerable green pepper and green olive aromas as well as a slight herbal character in the flavors, but he said those components gradually diminished to mere hints as the wine revealed more currant and cassis. The label showed the alcohol at 12.5% (a popular level for its era), and while he recalled 1987 as a big, warm vintage, he found nothing in the wine to dispute that figure. The wine was very pleasant but subtle, he said, with no big “wow” factor.

My friend has been an avid wine consumer for three decades, so he recognized those “green’ aromas and flavors as appropriate for Cabernet Sauvignon. Yet he was surprised to encounter them. We have shifted our paradigm in California, away from pyrazine, that “green” compound in red grapes.

If we consider the range from obscenely green to slightly vegetal to perfectly ripe to over-the-top, as an industry we’d rather be over-the-top than green (not to be confused with environmentally conscious). In 1987, I suspect the focus was on who was getting the ripest fruit. Now that everyone strives for and most achieve ripeness, if not over-ripeness, I consider the best producers those who can attain a perfectly balanced ripeness.

My friend asked me how many producers do that consistently, and I had to say maybe half a dozen produce the style that I prefer. He persisted, wondering if they were smaller producers, and most of them are. Then he wanted to know if my wines were among those I chose.

Good question. A winemaker’s style is a combination of variables coming together to produce a recognizable signature. Most of the time, you know that’s your wine, even if sometimes you’re not exactly sure why or how. For me, experiencing my own wine is like being unable to see the forest because you’re so familiar with each of the trees.

Even if I’ve just nailed the wine, it’s not as easy to love as someone else’s wine. There’s a joy of discovery in finding a wine somebody else nailed. How did she do that? Speculating on the reasons for another winemaker’s success is the best part. Learning – solving the puzzle – is fun. I suppose thinking about my own wine is like looking at a crossword puzzle that I’ve already filled in.

My friend tasted my beer and agreed with me. He said it was “too” smooth, slightly cloying. He loves Pinot Noirs – he’s had the iron fist in the velvet glove experience – so he asked about texture.

I told him I think texture is all about farming and then not abusing the fruit in the cellar. It’s a function of a mature vineyard in balance with a proper canopy and crop load that produces depth of fruit. You bring it in at the proper moment and you treat it gently. It’s amazing how much you can and should beat Cabernet Sauvignon to death and how fragile Pinot Noir is.

Extended contact with the lees is huge. I’m sensitive to texture when making the wine. I taste it frequently, and if it’s getting a little rough around the edges, I pull back, ease off on the extraction. If it’s not enough, I move forward.

As he pushed my beer back to me, my friend asked if I thought high-end Pinot producers sometimes had residual sugar in their wines. I think there’s probably a little r.s. in quite a few. I don’t consider that cheating. I’m a big believer in the juice, and if the wine didn’t finish quite dry, who cares as long as it isn’t problematic. If it’s not cloying, is it good? Does the end result give the most pleasure?

As new consumers and new winemakers, we often get hung up on picking out a flaw. Someone once pointed out that a great vintage of Haut Brion had some Brettanomyces, volatile acidity and residual sugar. Yet the sum of the parts was extraordinary.

I know with my own wines, I have stopped looking at numbers. I do look at them when the fruit comes in for any possible adjustments, but after that I taste the wine. I really don’t care what the final numbers are. It all comes down to that moment of anticipation when you raise the glass to your lips. Is it in the glass? And, yes, it does take at least some good beer to make good wine.

As early ripening clones, the Dijons all are particularly suited for questionable cool-climate areas where other selections might not ripen sufficiently – around Freestone in western Sonoma County, for example. Fruit-forward wines are easier to accomplish with the Dijon Pinot Noir clones.

It’s interesting that we often lump them together in casual conversation, because they really seem to need each other. They do not seem to function as successfully as some stand-alone selections like Martini. So we tend to blend them in winemaking.

Talking to growers in Burgundy, Kenneth was told that they often blend them from the start. Growers there will order a mixture of Dijon clones and essentially plant a field blend. It’s also true that our own selections, like Martini and Swan, actually are not really stand-alones, but rather are de facto field blends because genetic sports or mutations continually occur in the vineyard and, thus, in the budwood selection process.

So, while we tend to keep our Dijon clones separate in blocks, harvest bins and even fermentation tanks, in practice they are used to complement one another.

What are some of their characteristics? Kenneth and I agree – in general, and all things being equal – that 777 is up front in fruit, more structured and tannic and it tends toward the black fruits end of the flavor spectrum. While 115 shows perfume, has good length and tends toward red fruits, 667 is in the middle. It has a good mid-palate, but also pretty good entry and length.

Of course, fruit profiles can shift depending on site and vintage.

Our new Donum Russian River Valley Pinot Noir, from the Nugent Vineyard (which we planted and farm), is predominately 667 blended with some 115. I also grow some 115 on the seven-acre Blue Farm Vineyard around my house in northwestern Carneros, near the Sangiacomo family’s home ranch a few miles south of the Sonoma plaza. It’s warmer there and not as windy as at The Donum Estate. My home site produces a bigger, more tannic wine with 115 than does Donum.

I also think that the presence of more fog and less wind at the Russian River site brings out the lushness in 667. In 2007, Kenneth and I agree that at both Nugent and Blue Farm, the 115 clone moved more toward blueberry aromas and flavors.

All three Dijon clones are very good ones. They present no special farming problems. As always, the overriding factor is an understanding of what works in the unique combination of climate and soil on a particular site. And finally, there are those delightful vintage variations.

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 but fresh with great softening in the skins. I’m not sure of what’s happening south of us, but everything I’ve tasted this year from the North Coast – Carneros, Russian River Valley, Sonoma Coast and Mendocino – is stunning.

This is the kind of hang time I like. In the past I have heard about hang time in 95-degree weather and that makes me really uncomfortable. This year we’re coasting along at 75 degrees. Unless the fruit just screams to be picked, there’s no reason to rush. Sometimes you do walk into the vineyard and there’s great intensity of flavors, ripe skins and seeds, perfect acidity and softening berries and it all tells you – pick it! We’ve seen some of that and should see a lot more soon.

The small amount of rain we received had no effect. The fruit is still sound and will be ok out there until next week. A little more rain could even help break down skins and give us better extraction in the cellar.

My take on the 2007 vintage at this point is that it’s terribly promising and should give us pretty rich wines with nice acids. I usually make that judgment in the vineyard and then wait until after malolactic fermentation (bacterial conversion of appley malic acid to buttery lactic acid) to re-evaluate the character of the wines. Fermentations are all standard and going well, but wines are difficult to judge at this stage. Right now we are bulletproof. The vintage is finished in terms of quality and it is excellent. This is an enviable position to be in.

Even with clouds overhead today and temperatures barely in the 70s, Phil commented that enough sunlight gets through for photosynthesis (vines won’t grow in full shade). He said photosynthesis will “max out” in the high 70s and low 80s. Even the morning breeze aids the process of ripening by circulating fresh carbon dioxide among the leaves. Phil recalled being in the Nahe Valley in Germany one year for the last 30 days before harvest; even when three out of the four weeks were cloudy or rainy, the vines ripened the fruit.

Phil tasted our Donum selection and called it the “stealth clone,” noting that its flavors are ahead of the sugar levels. He thinks the flavors say we’ll harvest next week, but we may wait until the following week.

I heard Kenneth walking down a row tasting berries and muttering to himself, happily, “Plum, plum and more plum.” He checked the weather forecast on his cell phone and said we’re in for a steady string of low- to mid-80s days. “We just have to be careful and ride this wave,” he commented, relishing the thought of extended hang time.

We looked at NDVI (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index) satellite photos of our vineyards to view vigor expressed in color differences. There was a little less blue and green and more yellow this year, indicative of drier soils. Nabor said we could skip the first ten rows of one block for a few days and harvest the rest, in effect separating out flavor differences. He has confirmed on the ground what we see from above. He and Phil talked about marking a diagonal line with flags in the vineyard to focus the crew on the uniformly high vigor areas first. It’s a luxury to fine-tune this way, but we have the time to do it this year.

We drove from Donum over to the Ferguson Block and looked at some trials we’re running with one set of rows thinned normally, a second set that alternates one and two clusters per shoot, and a third set of rows with only one cluster per shoot.

The last time we all tasted here the fruit from one-cluster-per-shoot vines was ahead of the pack and tasted very nice. But now we agree that fruit from those same rows has thicker skins and no burst of flavor, whereas the “normally” pruned rows have caught up.

We will pick all of them the same day and then look at fruit composition, not only sugar, pH and total acidity, but also tannins and anthocyanins (phenolic compounds that contribute astringency and color). We can also look at yields, pruning rates and their ratios, and, finally, we’ll compare the resultant wines. Phil thinks it’s all a question of balance, for it’s as possible to be under-cropped as over-cropped.

We walked into a 6’x12’ block planted in 1974 and noted the old Martini selection of Pinot Noir here has smaller berries and thinner skins than Martini planted at Donum. Phil noticed a fairly high percentage of small shot berries here, but he also noticed they have held up well and aren’t dehydrated. The vine has been getting the water it needs and, indeed, we don’t see any yellow leaves.

Nabor and Kenneth joke about a long lunch because we just have to wait and pick at the peak. We all agree that we’re lucky – the water, canopies, sugars, flavors and weather forecast are all lined up. Phil reminds us that farming is hoping for the best while preparing for the worst.