How can flavors just go away? It’s difficult to evaluate because it’s so objective – high acids can hide flavors. At 20 or 21 Brix, it’s not critical; we know the flavors will develop again.

Early in the year, we pull off shoots to get a more uniform canopy so we have to manipulate less later in the season. In doing so, we lose yields that we can’t make up. Then this year, we had a tight set that was hard to understand.

Big seeds make big berries. Instead of weighing a normal 1.0 gram, the berries averaged from 1.2 to 1.3 grams. Our cluster counts were not high, so we were glad to get large berries and big clusters. But those quickly closing clusters set us up for botrytis.

The previous year we had big berries, loose clusters and large yields. So we expected the vines to produce lower crops this year. They did, but for different reasons, like botrytis.

The 11-day heat spike in July was pretty brutal, and it came as we were opening canopies. We don’t over-expose our fruit. We remove laterals on the north side of the vine to get filtered light, but this season we got more sunburn than I’ve seen in recent years.

Neither do we over-crop. In our Russian River vineyard, we thinned fruit dramatically – over a third of the crop, which seemed to be about right.

And we waited. There was no human stress from overwork this harvest, but some psychological stress from the stop-and-go aspects. It’s unusual to pick in October, and we went into the second and third weeks, pushing beyond our notion of normalcy and out of our comfort zones.

We got true physiological ripeness ahead of sugar development. Our seeds were really brown – and with a lot of big seeds, we worried about the risk of green tannins. We got lignification (green tissue turning to brown “wood”) of the canes. Flavor development, which had started so early, was just delayed. Then, all of a sudden, it was there again.

Sometimes plant stress and overly long hang-time will make the grapes deficient is some nutrients and produce stuck fermentations. But Kenneth says all the fermentations have finished fine.

Getting good fruit to the winery required flexibility and dedication this year. We had several passes in the vineyard to clean out botrytis, and we set up sorting tables in the field and again at the winery to lay out the fruit and carefully complete the process.

Now that it’s all over, it was a very interesting vintage! Could we have avoided botrytis? Could we have done anything at bloom to artificially produce shatter and prevent the big, tight clusters that were vulnerable? I don’t think so.

We never really know what nature will give us in terms of set next year – it could be totally different and, as sometimes happens with growers, we can outsmart ourselves. Our best bet is to spend money on proven, moderate and judicious practices, then deal with each unique vintage as it unfolds.

We found Botrytis cinerea, the so-called “noble rot,” in some of our Dijon 667 Pinot Noir blocks. In Pinot, botrytis is far from noble. This just reminds you that, in farming, if it’s not one thing, it’s another. It caught us a bit by surprise, ironically, because with the wet spring, we had anticipated possible problems and taken appropriate measures, opening canopies and applying some material (Pristine) before the bunches closed.

Despite our sophisticated tools, nothing substitutes for what Phil calls “ground truth,” walking through the vineyard and closely observing. We saw some lost basal leaves and some fruit bleached pink. Kenneth was already concerned that color might be an issue because berry size is so large this year. We’re all focused on tannin analysis this year, and color is important because it involves a group of phenolics called complex anthocyanins.

Overall, our canopies look well-maintained. In these higher density plantings, we allow less fruiting buds per vine. We always thin early to one shoot per bud and watch cane size to determine how many clusters we want per shoot for uniformity. Pinot Noir is known to be a delicate variety, and it’s needier at all levels. Pinot requires more leaf surface area per gram of fruit to ripen than almost any other variety – about 25 square centimeters per gram, nearly double the needs of Chardonnay. We need sun exposure to ripen tannins, but all of us agree that super-exposure of the fruit to sunlight is not good. Moderation is the key. Each leaf and cluster should get some light – but it must be filtered light.

Today the sun is shining, but after several days in the mid- to high 90s, temperatures have dropped 20 degrees. We’ll be monitoring this vineyard very closely.

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 foliage is healthy and the vines are still working hard, building sugars by metabolizing and not from dehydration. The 11-day heat wave, when the mercury hit 110 over the weekend of July 22-23, gave way to beautiful ripening weather with moderately warm days and cool nights.

This vintage is comfortable for us so far. With moderate temperatures, the vines don’t need as much water for transpiration and ripening is occurring in an orderly manner. This gives us time to walk the vineyards and pay close attention as we prepare for harvest. There’s not the sense of panic of some years.

Right now sugars are at 19 to 21.4 degrees Brix in Carneros. I think we can harvest by week after next without a heat spike, but I also believe the vines could withstand some heat, and it might even give them a little push. This could be a stellar vintage.