This vintage is pretty amazing. We’ve had no pressures like rot. The canopies are open and healthy. Shoot sizes are in balance. The crop level is slightly low and there is a nice display of fruit.

We have had ideal weather, with temperatures from the high 70s to low 90s, mild nights and adequate humidity (low humidity can hurt us more than heat). All the shoots are lignified (turned brown and woody), the seeds are starting to ripen, and the year has progressed very nicely so far.

This has been a dry growing season, and the soils have dried up quickly. In block 190 at Donum, for example, we dry farmed and didn’t irrigate last year until the end of harvest. After three years of cover crops using up water there, the … More…

KJ: I didn’t see the quality coming with the 2006 vintage. It was a really late vintage, almost a month, and everything went slowly. I think the July heat may have lowered the nutrient content in the must (unfermented or fermenting crushed grapes). The malolactic fermentations (conversion of stronger malic acid, found in apples, to weaker lactic acid, found in milk) went slowly as well. It was like a typical Pinot Noir vintage in Burgundy, where everything takes time to come around.

Now the wines have really rounded out and bulked up in barrel. The fruit is more to the red end of the spectrum than to the black.

AMR: The lateness of the year also may have prevented the vines from storing as many nutrients before dormancy. I’m noticing more yellowing on the leaf margins this spring than normal. We just plowed in a nice cover crop and some green … More…

This vintage is different – not weird, just different. The big heat wave in July made a change. A few leaves got cooked, yes, but the heat made all the vines mature in a fairly short time. Before the heat, we thought we were late, but then we caught up and the weather has been ideal.

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 … More…

Our flavors are beautiful this year, and for once flavors are ahead of sugars. That would not be true of a heavier crop left unthinned, where lower sugars are usually accompanied by lower flavor levels.

Because we are trying to produce small amounts of exceptional Pinot Noir, we thin down to one shoot per bud to ensure uniformity. But growers who want larger yields may hedge their bets and not do that. Also, some may say that they thin at veraison (when grapes soften and change color), but they only remove a few green clusters and second crop. Crop level is not our concern – we are likely to drop crop anyway – but we are very concerned with ripeness.

This year the vine ripeness is there by all indicators. The seeds are turning a nice brown, and lignification (green tissue maturing into brown or woody tissue) is occurring. The … More…