I used to buy Burgundian oak barrels from a variety of different coopers, made from different forests at different toast levels. Those sorts of combinations can multiply rapidly. Through the years, I’ve undergone a honing-in process in barrel selection. I’ve found that, depending on the individual wine, usually a particular barrel (one forest, one drying regime and one toast level) from each cooper works best.

I simply ask myself, which barrel enhances the wine best? If you try to use several different barrels to build a wine – this one enhances the entry, this one builds up the middle palate, that one fills in the finish – it can be too much, producing a wine that is technically correct but lacks personality.

From each cooper, whether the forest is Allier or Tronçais, or it’s two- or three-year air-dried oak, there is a particular barrel that either supports the fruit personality of the wine or lends some personality of its own to move the fruit subtly in a good direction. It’s not overly aggressive, but it just works. Then I can mix two different barrels to compound the results.

For example, from François Frères, I tend toward Allier wood to build the mid-palate. From Billon, I prefer a three-year air-dried Vosges medium toast barrel that subtly enhances minerality while showing sweet fruit. And those two barrels do work very well together.

For Chardonnay, I go very subtle because any white wine shows the wood so much more. I like the quality of oak, not toast, in Chardonnay. So I choose lighter toast coopers and tight-grained wood that slows aging and leaves the wine tight and compact.

Right now we’re working on blending the 2008 vintage wines. We’re starting to look at some new programs like a heritage selection blend. It’s preliminary, but right now this blend seems to be dominated by Old Martini and Calera selections. We’re just at the stage of picking the best barrels, and it’s really fun.

We’re even considering a small amount of stand-alone Martini in a combination of Billon and Sirugue cooperage. This would be a high acid, intense, red fruit dominant Pinot Noir.

Crop-wise, 2008 was a short vintage, but as I’ve mentioned previously, everything in barrel is very solid. There are no dogs in this vintage. The crop yields were almost a joke, in some cases 60% less than what we would have thought they should be. But the resulting excellent fruit intensity, nice structure and amazing color make it a very good vintage.

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.

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.”

Fires continued to burn around the state of California, and the polluted air combined with the heat wave made working outside seem like standing in front of a blow dryer.

Just north of Sonoma on the Fourth of July, a hillside grass fire started with a spark from a mower and threatened residences as well as Hanzell Winery. Thanks to the swift response of firefighters, fixed-wing aircraft dropping slurry and a helicopter dropping water, the fire was put out after burning only seven acres with no harm done to homes, winery or venerable vineyards.

Remarkably, with all this heat in a dry year, our vineyards are not showing stress. There’s hardly any sunburn on the fruit. There’s some virus showing up, but water pressure is ok. As cooler weather returned last week, the vines just cruised along.

This somewhat surprising lack of effects from extreme weather could be due to the light crop load this year created by the frost. I estimate that our yields will be at least 20% less than normal, and that will mean a short crop for the second year in a row.  Given the state of the economy, if we’re going to have short years, this would be the time.

Another positive factor for the vines is that the humidity did not get super low. It just dipped below the 30% range. When it gets really low, that just sucks moisture out of the vines.

One effect of the July heat was to push grapes into color  – especially the Calera and Martini Pinot Noir selections – about three weeks early. Our old Martini in the Ferguson Block showed up to 15% color, but then didn’t move any further along last week. We expect 50% veraison (when grapes soften and change color) in the first week of August.

I don’t think this will be a late year. The last three vintages have seen slow ripening with lots of hang time. The 2008 growing season reminds me more of 2003 and 2004 when we cruised right into harvest. But you never know for sure with the weather.

I’ve been paying particular attention to berry counts – berries per cluster, undersized berries and shot berries. I’ve noticed there are not a lot of wings hanging off the side of the main clusters. That’s a plus for quality, because the berries on the wings often ripen later. That can have a significant effect, because while the main cluster may contain from 100 to 120 berries, the wings carry 40 to 50.

My berry count is more anecdotal than scientific, but it gives me a feel for the vintage. The heat that pushed the vines through bloom rapidly produced some shot berries – non-fertilized grapes. There are also a considerable number of under-sized berries that were fertilized but did not size up fully. I estimate the total of smaller berries at about one-third. Again, that can be a plus in terms of preventing rot because the clusters are looser and air can circulate.

It’s cool now, but a week ago we had four days of 100-degree temperatures. That’s our third heat spike in what has been a fairly cool, windy and very dry season to date. We also had spikes in mid-May and early June, and this succession of heat events reminds me of the 2003 and 2004 vintages.

That said, the vineyards are showing nicely. We use two tools to monitor our water situation and evaluate the effectiveness of irrigations. The neutron probe tells us the levels of moisture stored in the soil. The pressure bomb, which we’ve had as an in-house tool since the 2002 vintage, gives us leaf water pressure, a snapshot of the water situation in the plant.

Of course, the data has to be interpreted. For example, these hot days have about a “two-bar” effect on our readings. Whereas the leaf water pressure might read 9 or 10 bars on a cooler day, a hot day will generate a pressure reading of 11 or 12, which would normally indicate considerable stress. So you have to consider the reading in context.

We did put on a little water given the natural increase in demand during hotter days. But the vines have cruised through beautifully. Shoot tips look good and canopies are holding up. Because of the frost and cool weather early in the season, we’ve had extra steps in manipulating the canopies, moving wires for slower shoot growth. At this point, we are positioning shoots and opening the canopies to light and air.

In terms of crop size, we are seeing less quantity but more open clusters, an indicator for high quality that means better color development in the berries. We’re seeing some shot berries in the Martini and Calera selections, more than in the Dijon clones. In general, the crop is looking very good.

Last month we looked at petiole (the stalk that joins a leaf to a stem) analyses. Each year at bloom time, we examine this part of the plant to determine nutritional status. This gives us a snapshot in time, and we also create a history so that we can compare readings year by year. The University of California at Davis has developed some good average values to help us interpret our data.

We look at the macro-nutrients – the NPK or nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium known to every home gardener. Nitrogen stimulates green growth, phosphorus affects fertility and fruitfulness, and potassium helps ripen fruit by affecting the transportation of carbohydrates. We also consider various micro-nutrients like iron, zinc, boron, manganese and magnesium, which also play key roles in the functions of the grapevine.

For the past few years, we’ve had slightly lower phosphorus values, but those have come up. We’re looking for any red flag so that we can correct the situation before veraison (when berries soften and turn color) to make nutrients available to the plant and enable it to perform properly. And right now, our vines seem to be doing just that.

Shatter can be the result of too much heat or wind or moisture during bloom that prevents the setting of fruit. Timing is everything, as different sites, clones or selections and varieties develop at different rates. We expected some shatter with the onset of heat last month around bloom time as all the pent-up energy stored in the vines during the cool weather was unleashed in a growth spurt. We see elongated rachises (grape cluster axes) as a result of that spurt.

A little shatter is good for quality because it opens up the cluster, allowing berries to size up and air to circulate, promoting even ripening and preventing rot. Now I’m waiting on berry counts for the different clones and selections, and then we can speculate on potential yields.

On Tuesday, I attended a seminar on viruses at the University of California at Davis. In the old days, conventional wisdom said that virus was spread by propagation and you either had it in dirty rootstock or got it from new plant material, in infected scion wood. Now we know that it can be spread by soft-bodied insects like the grape mealy bug, so we assume scale and white flies can carry it, too. We’re still uncertain as to whether phylloxera can spread it.

In the old days, it’s possible that heavier pesticide use and broader spectrum materials may have kept mealy bugs in check. It may be that newer rootstocks tend to express viruses more as well. Now we realize that viruses can jump rows and get into a clean vineyard from a neighboring vineyard, and there isn’t much you can do about it.

One way to approach it would be to obtain clean plant material together with your neighbor. Each grower will have to assess their situation and determine what is economical for them. Viruses delay ripening, lower yields and lessen color although they can also raise acidity and perhaps add flavor complexities.

The beauty of our industry is that it’s so democratic. We face challenges together and so we are forced to work together to meet them.

The flavors are there now, in most cases. The seeds and skins are mature. All the numbers are good except the sugars are low. The canopies are nearing the end of their cycle, so we will have to pick soon.

This has been a dry year, so there should be less chance of mildew or botrytis mold. Yet I have seen more mildew than last year. This puzzles me, and I’m sure the guys from the universities are puzzled, too.

I’m noticing symptoms of leaf roll virus (margins of the leaf blade roll downward; areas between major veins turn red) quite a bit. Maybe the dry and late year has produced more expression of virus. I wonder if those leaves are working properly. We did some minimal irrigating to make sure the vines weren’t stressed.

Virus can be spread by grape and vine mealy bugs – we think the flying males may spread it because we catch them in traps and track their movement. In the past, we have marked virused and non-virused vines and have made wine from both of them. The virused vines produced lower sugars but softer, more evolved textures. The virused fruit actually tastes great, but sugar is a concern.

Anne wants to set up trials in one block, marking the virus-free or slightly virused vines as well as those with medium and heavy virus. We can farm part of each group of vines normally and part of each with earlier or more extreme crop thinning, perhaps one cluster per shoot. Then we can track whether the expression will decrease or increase next year and overlay the weather factor.

Vines are like humans in that we all have viruses, but we can minimize their effect with proper care. We can adjust our farming practices so that the vines aren’t stressed and are able to function and accommodate the virus.

Despite the dry year, all the grapes have remained juicy in this mild weather and with the small amount of water we have applied. In the fruit we have already picked, we are seeing juice in the boxes and bins.

Our cluster counts are good, but yields are down by about a third. We have shot berries, although they are not shriveled as they were in 2003, and there are fewer berries in the clusters.

I want to pick, but a watched pot never boils. We assume responsibility for the character of the fruit, because we do have tools to prepare for and deal with surprises. Winemakers have tools, too, as simple as sorting. We deal with what a vintage presents to us, and we don’t use the vintage as an excuse.

Others have had to pick, but not us. Our sugars were at 21 to 22 degrees Brix (approximate percentage of sugar) when the heat came and now we’re at about 23. We saw a little bit of dehydration, but on the whole there weren’t huge shifts, the canopies are healthy and the fruit is beautiful. We walked our Russian River vineyard on Tuesday, and it looks wonderful, too. Our two Dijon Pinot Noir selections are holding nicely in the high 23 Brix range.

Nabor commented that when the fruit is at 21 to 22, it’s so healthy and intact that it can withstand heat, perhaps because the skins are still strong and resilient, whereas at a riper stage, the fruit is ready to break down and can’t take the heat.

The beauty of this Labor Day heat spell was that the humidity was not too low; it only dipped below 30% on one day. We had taken neutron probe (soil water content) and pressure bomb (leaf water status) readings and knew heat was forecast, so we gave the vines a small amount of water. We don’t apply water during the final week before harvest, but outside of that week, the overall health and function of the vine is paramount for ripening.

The Dijon clones typically seem a little higher in Brix in our Carneros vineyards as well, but we’re still in waiting mode. Rumors are that yields are coming in low, up to a third below normal. If the weather holds – and the next week to ten days is supposed to be perfect, in the low 80s – we should have gorgeous fruit. Waiting makes us a little nervous, so we just take another sample!

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.