This harvest has been the quickest in my recent memory.  We have had grapes coming in left and right.  Processing white and red grapes at the same time has been a rare event here, but is something we’ve done this season most every day we have processed grapes.  Usually white grapes come in before red grapes, but this year due to the relatively mild weather we have had, I guess, everything has come in at once.  In most vineyards, the crop seems to be a little lighter than last year.  It is looking like we may actually be done with bringing in grapes by the end of the last week in September, which is a record for us.  I’ve been looking at past years and we aren’t normally done until the end of October.
I am making much more white wine than ever before this year, and am contemplating starting a Riesling program as well.  So, for you white wine lovers, we will have more variety available than ever from 2009, including 3 vineyard designated Chardonnays.

It has been a hectic start to harvest.  We’ve had a few little heat waves followed by cool days and nights.  So far, we have brought in Chula Vina Chardonnay & some Tondre Grapefield Pinot Noir.  Today, the remaining Tondre Pinot is coming in, in addition to a little Tondre Chardonnay, which is new for us.  I will be back soon with photos and more updates.

I’ve been  a pig at the trough lately.  Well, maybe just figuratively speaking.  Doug and I have been racking and blending the 2008 wines — we will these bottle tomorrow.  This is a photo of the lees coming out of the barrel into a collection trough after the barrel has been racked, or emptied, of clean wine.  This time of year combined with this process of racking, collecting lees, cleaning barrels, and blending wine is a physically demanding time and also makes me kind of philosophical and, I guess, a little sentimental.  I can’t believe I said that, because I am generally not sentimental — I don’t fondly remember past events, or wistfully remember days gone by — I’m usually firmly rooted in the present or looking forward to the future.  My family is sometimes frustrated with me over this because I don’t remember birthdays (not even my own) or anniversaries unless they are written in stone in my calendar, nor do I generally care about their perceived importance.  Cold but true, and it is something I’m working to change.  Even so, wine has a way of dislodging this part of my character, and I don’t mean this happens when I drink it.  Do you know that our noses are immensely more sensitive to aromas than our tongues are to flavors?  In everyday life for me aromas are vastly important, so this time of year is a heady, sensory experience that seems to have the power to unravel me a little.  Smelling wine in the barrel — sumptuous, myriad aromas of young wine in a new oak barrel, blending it in a tank, wafting through the cellar with the steam from washing a barrel — all of these things make me remember what the wine and all of us have been through in the past year.  It is the last opportunity for me to take my impression of this vintage before it gets sealed into bottles, and then it is a time to anticipate yet another harvest.  Forget January 1st; Labor Day is usually when I sing Auld Lang Syne in my own private way with a mix of melancholy and forthright commitment.

So, with that, I’m starting up my blog with renewed focus this year.  It looks like harvest will start a little earlier than usual, and we may bring in our first load of Chardonnay as early as the beginning of next week.   Stay tuned, piggies!

Click here to read his obituary in the Press Democrat.

Don was one of those charming wine industry characters who truly inspired me. I first met him many years ago when I actually interviewed for a job at Bernardus and he left quite an impression on me — it was a day I will never forget. He had already worked there for quite awhile and was the major force behind establishing Bernardus’ reputation and wine style. I ended up spending 5 hours at the winery that day talking mostly with him. It was one of those very hot Cachagua afternoons, and in spite of that we spent a good amount of time walking and talking outside in the vineyard. I found that he was one of those people who had so many interests that it was hard to really keep up with him. At one moment, we were discussing his absolute demands on the fastidiousness of the cellar — the barrels in his view shouldn’t ever have a stain or a mark because, he said, they were very expensive and valuable and should be maintained properly. (He was probably more fastidious than any winemaker I have ever known before or since.) Then, he shared with me all of his hands-on research on ridding the vineyard of gophers (many of them included incendiary methods employing gasoline or propane). After that we discussed his interests in ballet and his myriad philosophies about how classical music influenced the wines, his philosophies on the universe, on why we humans existed…..I just couldn’t keep up. He was brilliant, and had a huge, enthusiastic, arms-open embrace of the world and at the same time incredible attention to detail. I’m sure his spirit will be missed by many.

We have been hosting visitors here at the winery lately.  It is just that time of the year as people are curious about how the wines from the previous year turned out, and it is also a slower time for distributors and restaurant people, so they will usually come and visit as well.  This time of year people like to ask me if I’m relaxing.  It is certainly slower than harvest time, but relaxing is not exactly how I’d describe it.  Let me give you a little run down on what I do this time of year:

1.  At the begining of January, I finalize the budgets for the winery, tasting room, marketing/sales, and grape purchases.

2.  I finalize all of my sales and revenue projections for the year.  I also finalize our very particular sales goals and what we want to achieve at this time of year and start implementing those.

3.  When I can, I’m wrapping up the odds and ends left loose post harvest — making sure all barrels are topped, the cellar is clean, etc.

4.  Production planning — setting bottling dates, considering packaging options for the 2008 vintage, ordering barrels, talking with growers about grape projections in 2009, going out to vineyards to discuss pruning options and techniques, ordering my bottling supplies, etc.

5.  Sauvignon Blanc — we bottle Sauvignon Blanc in March, so I plan for that, order labels, make sure the alcohol is measured correctly, check the residual sugar, etc.

What I always find difficult about the winter time is not the cold or the short days, but the sudden transition from the intense, physically-demanding workload of harvest to the sitting-on-my-butt-doing-computer-work-all-day routine.  I am not criticizing those who do this kind of work all the time — actually I applaud them because we need them and they are willing to do it — but for me and my personality, finding a balance betwixt the two is the difficult and sometimes frustrating part.