Kenneth, Nabor and I walked our Donum and Ferguson Block vineyards today with Dr. Phil Freese, our viticultural consultant. It was cool and overcast until noon. Phil remarked that while it’s been a mild summer, there has been virtually no fog. Cool evenings have kept acid levels up.

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.

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