Halloween pics from Freemark Abbey!

Horror in the vineyards, dark clouds championing a horrendous rain, followed by days of humidity…and Riesling grapes succumbing to that creepy, sporulating, gray, parasitic mold called botrytis cinerea, the “noble rot” or “Edelfaule” of German fame. Oh no…scary mummies in the vineyard (insert scream!). But wait, you may recall an earlier blog of mine totally predicting this situation. (Sigh of relief)

Freemark Abbey makes a dessert wine from this stuff… called Edelwein Gold (noble wine). I know, it’s hard to imagine. When the rain hit a couple of weeks ago, the White Riesling was at 21.5 degrees brix (percent sugar), and ready if we were to make a dry style Riesling. But thank goodness for the rain. (this is one time I can say that) With the ensuing humidity, the individual grapes started to turn purple…then to shrivel....then to mummify and start to grow hair. Hair? Yes, think back when you were in biology class and looked at bread mold in the microscope. It is an advanced colony of mold that is growing palm tree like structures called sporangiophores, it is part of the sporulating process. Okay, enough about biology, how do we get wine out of this mess?

As you can see in the pictures, these vines were picked with micro shears, and the …fruit?...was dumped directly to the press. It takes a very patient, long pressing to get the juice out of these mummies. For us this year, the juice concentrated from 21.5 to 36 degrees brix…wow, what a sticky mess, and the yield was 60% of what we would expect for a dry Riesling style. The Edelwein Gold will be bottled in February or March. With this preamble to the process, what does the growth of botrytis do for the wine?

You may know what a lovely dry White Riesling tastes like. It typically is very fruity with spicy floral notes that resemble it’s cousin Muscat, with that hint of flint, or sometimes leechee nut with a bit of citrus. With the advance of botrytis cinerea, much of the Riesling flavors are concentrated in the remaining juice, and new flavors are created. After a long cold fermentation, with no barrel aging, the wine is bottled with flavors of apricot, peach, dried apricots, honey, honey suckle, I could go on but needless to say….it is an amazing transformation, with a long flavorful natural sweetness. I liken it to making a silk purse out of a sow’s ear…

I hope I didn’t SCARE you away from trying our delicious Edelwein Gold, the 2008 is waiting for you.

Wow…what a rain storm!

We knew that we had a chance of rain for Tuesday, so we started to wrap up the picking of Chardonnay last week. We had been holding out for that last little bit of flavor development and on Saturday, finished the Chardonnay pick at Wood Ranch in Rutherford. On Monday we brought in Syrah from the Mt. Veeder district and finished the Merlot from Atlas Peak as well as Howell Mtn districts. We have a little bit of Petit Verdot left on Wood Ranch as well as the Cabernet Sauvignon. I’m not worried about the Cabernet Sauvignon because it has loose clusters and thick skin, which helps protect it from bunch rot. However, the Petit Verdot has a tight cluster, and I think we should pick it as soon as we can get in there. We have a little Mt. Veeder Zinfandel, which should probably come in as well. So what am I not worried about and hope that it succumbs to bunch rot…..WHITE RIESLING!

Freemark Abbey makes a late harvest Riesling called Edelwein (noble wine) Gold. Imagine you are the winemaker. You are diligently walking the White Riesling vineyard, taking samples and appraising the degree of ripeness. You have been observing the vineyard for weeks, watching the green hard berries turn to yellowish green, softening to the touch and developing the ever so pleasant spicy, fruity Riesling flavors. The degree of sugar is around 21.5 degrees brix ready to pick and then, we get a dousing rain storm, leaving everything soaked, including the soil. This scenario happened yesterday. We had a relatively warm rain that is going to be followed by a few days of warming weather, creating the perfect conditions for the parasitic mold botrytis cinerea to grow on the berries. This is the “Noble Rot” or Edelfaule of German fame. After a week of warm weather, following the rain, we will probably observe that the greenish golden berries are turning purple and slightly brownish purple. While this can be a disaster with most wine grapes, often called “bunch rot”, we know that we can make our famed dessert wine “Edelwein Gold”. With a dose of patience, we will let the grapes stay out there longer.

I’ll be walking this vineyard diligently over the next few weeks, to see if the botrytis grows.

Stay tuned…

Forty Years of making Cabernet Bosché!

Yes, this is the fortieth harvest of the Bosché Vineyard for Freemark Abbey Winery. Let’s see, if math serves me correctly, that would put the first harvest at 1970. This year’s harvest started with the Bosché Merlot on September 10^th, the Cabernet Sauvignon started rolling in September 19^th and continued off and on through October 3^rd. The vineyard is only 23 acres, however, we have it divided up into various small acre blocks to help us pin point (cherry pick) the ripening period. Differences in soil, coupled with vine age, clone, rootstock and crop size, all contribute to the rate of ripening. The Bosché vineyard is on an alluvial fan, sometimes referred to as the Rutherford Bench, that has a very deep gravelly soil. Lighter, gravelly soils will typically ripen earlier. Hence, Bosché is one of our earlier vineyards.

Not far from the Bosché Vineyard is our Sycamore Vineyard. Sycamore is typically a week later than Bosché. The soil is a clay loam, less gravelly as Bosché, yet produces very small berries and very deep rich wines. In the picture, I’m tasting and inspecting the fruit from the early morning pick at Sycamore Vineyards

Cherry Picking the Ripe Fruit

The 2009 growing season has been ideal for our vineyards. The weather has been moderate to cool for the large part, with average crop size. While the majority of our harvest is a few weeks away, it is time for cherry picking! Imagine yourself looking at a cherry tree, some of the cherries are nice red and ripe, while others still have an edge of green and need more time to ripen...so you pick the red juicy cherries and enjoy the bright flavors. With experience and patience, that is exactly what our job is in the vineyards today.

We are in the vineyards every morning looking for the ripe fruit, and of course, our experience tells us what vineyards and varieties ripen early. We started harvest modestly last Friday with 5 tons of Sauvignon blanc, an early variety, from the St. Helena district. With the heat of the last weekend, a couple more cherries turned red, ripe and juicy....Wednesday we picked 18 tons of Viognier from the Carpy-Conolly Ranch in Rutherford...and this morning saw 10 tons of Sauvignon blanc from Yountmill Vineyard in Yountville. All the fruit is looking great, clean with much promise for flavorful wines and great numbers to boot. With all of the ripe fruit picked for now, I think we have cleared the weekend....which makes for a lot of happy faces with the crew.