It's Time

It's 4 a.m. It’s time.

You wait all year and know it’s coming, but it always feels like it sneaks up on you. How can it be harvest already? What happened to summer? However, harvest time it is and at Cornerstone we are starting Crush 2011 right now at 4 a.m in the cold and dark of this September the 13th morning. That realization wakes you up and you start to notice a few leaves on the ground, the shorter and shorter days and a different type of coolness in the evening air. Fall is indeed arriving.

This is a very special harvest for us at Cornerstone Cellars as it is our twentieth anniversary vintage. We've come a long way in twenty years. These decade marks make you take stock of yourselves. As we look back there is one thing we know for sure; we're making the best wines we've ever made.

It’s been an unusual growing season, at least that’s the conventional wisdom. In fact, it’s a lot like last vintage, which means its been cool by recent Napa Valley standards. Is this the new “normal”? In my opinion a little cooler is not a bad thing. Cooler vintages give more balanced wines that are more transparent; wines that clearly show where they came from. Fruit bombs are not our goal.

The major problem so far with vintage 2011 in Napa is the cool, rainy weather in early June during flowering and set, which dramatically reduced the size of this year’s crop. Our Howell Mountain vineyards escaped this fate as the later flowering up on the mountain meant they missed the early June storms. Oddly our cabernet franc vineyards in St. Helena, Oakville and Carneros ended up with good fruit sets too as they also bloomed late.

So we head into mid-September around two weeks behind normal. That’s really not too bad: as long as the fall rains hold off long enough for everything to ripen. This, of course, is a very big “if”.

I often think there is an over-reaction to these slightly cooler years in Napa. Anyone who has spent time in some of the world’s most famous wine growing regions knows that Napa does not face the weather dangers those growers deal with on a regular basis. We will ripen our grapes. I truly believe that these “cooler” vintages make better wines in the Napa Valley. However, certain critics who define wine quality by girth disagree with me, preferring wines from hot vintages.

These cooler vintages excite me because of the opportunity they give us to make truly balanced, elegant wines designed to taste their best at the dinner table. The weather report forecasts mid-seventies and dry for the next week; perfect fall grape ripening weather. Just like last vintage I know we’re going to make wines that I love. I can’t wait.

It's 4 a.m. It’s time.

Cornerstone Cellars

Craig Camp

The People Who Pick

I was dreaming in Spanish, at least I was dreaming I was dreaming in Spanish. As I slowly woke and came back into reality it occured to me I could not be dreaming in Spanish for obvious reasons. Then the lyrical strains of the harmonious Spanish language again floated through my bedroom window. The vineyard outside my bedroom window was alive with pickers in the pre-dawn glow and their happy chatter filled the air. How anybody can be that happy before dawn and facing hours of backbreaking work always amazes me.

That was about ten days ago and those crews were the first wave, picking grapes bound for sparkling wine. However, now those first ripples are getting ready to turn into a tsunami of harvesting as the Napa Valley gets ready for the main event: the Cabernet Sauvignon harvest. There has been scattered activity around the valley as first the grapes for sparkling wine and then some of the white varieties were harvested. We picked the grapes for our Cornerstone Sauvignon Blanc early last week, in perfect conditions. This was our first harvest of Sauvignon Blanc from the Talcott Vineyard just outside of St. Helena (not too far from Taylor's Refresher), so I was out there at first light to watch the pick. It never ceases to stun me how hard the picking crews work. None of what we do could be possible without them. Every time I watch a harvest crew in action I realize that few of us could survive a half-hour, while these crews work at breakneck speed hour after hour until the mid-day sun forces the picking to a merciful end.

Tonight our new Sauvignon Blanc is slowly bubbling away in a cold stainless steel fermemter, while the pickers themselves sleep the sleep that only exhaustion can bring as they prepare to hit the vineyards tomorrow before the morning light illuminates the seemingly endless rows of vines waiting for them. Today we scheduled the pick of our Howell Mountain Cabernet Sauvignon for this coming Tuesday and our Oakville blocks will be right behind. It's going to be a busy two weeks for us, but it's nothing compared to the ultra-marathon our pickers have already embarked on.

Craig Camp - Cornerstone Cellars