Napa Valley Harvest Update - Merlot

A view from the Mountain

I'm taking a break from my normal style of blog posting...no lyrics or movie quotes, no photos, no silly jokes. In fact, most of this post will have not been written by me (blogging made easy!). A few weeks back I participated in the authoring of a press release from the Spring Mountain District Association. Much of it was relevant to the Napa Valley Vintners blog, so, I present to you, with no further ado...

ST. HELENA, Calif.-- Despite concerns expressed by others in the wine industry, high above the fog line on the sunny slopes of the Mayacamas Mountain range, Spring Mountain winegrowers are excited about the prospects for the 2010 vintage. In late, cool growing seasons like this one, many growers fear under ripe grapes which offer green flavors or rain damage. But on the slopes of Spring Mountain on the northwestern border of the Napa Valley, winemakers welcome and celebrate the differences between vintages.

Winemaker Andy Schweiger of Schweiger Vineyards pointed out several reasons for this:

“Mountain grapes have more color and character, with less tendency toward green
characters in all types of growing conditions. Even in a cool late year, we
expect dark color and bright berry aromas in our wines. Mountain grapes have
smaller berries with tougher skins that stand up better to rain. Water drainage
and air circulation is different on the hillsides, and with sunny mornings,
mountain vineyards dry out quickly from a harvest storm. In the mountains,
problems caused by rain are extremely rare.”

Spring Mountain wines are not the only ones that might prosper in a cool year. There are growing regions in California that are often a bit warm for the grape variety that grows there. Warm years are not always their best years. But in unusually cool years, wine quality moves inland away from the fog or rises above it.

Viticulturist Ron Rosenbrand of Spring Mountain Vineyard explained the role altitude plays in his mountain vineyards:

“Whether it is foggy or clear at night, inversion conditions make the mountains
significantly warmer allowing mountain vines to continue to “work” at night. In
the morning, mountain vineyards above the fog line wake up to early sunshine and
continue the work of photosynthesis. Combine that with our warm, shallow soils
and eastern exposure; a cool and late season can work in our favor.”

Beyond obvious weather conditions, a vintage in California is often categorized by the performance of one grape variety, Cabernet Sauvignon. This ignores that California has diverse plantings. Beyond weather and different growing conditions, a vintage is not about a single varietal. Because of its complex terrain, soils, and microclimates, a number of grape varieties excel in the Spring Mountain District.

“We grow Merlot which ripens earlier than Cabernet,” points out Sheldon Richards of Paloma Vineyard. “On the steep slopes and in the stressful soils of Spring Mountain, Merlot welcomes a year that is a bit cooler and wetter. If we get a storm, the strong breezes we get afterwards on the mountain dry things out quickly.”

Steve Pride of Pride Mountain Vineyards echoed the sentiments of many Spring Mountain winegrowers:

“Although the year got off to a late start, up here at 2100’ we have been
enjoying nearly ideal growing and ripening conditions all summer. We managed to
get the shoot growth stopped weeks before veraison and the balance between fruit
and canopy has never looked better. Although the late spring start means our
harvest will be late, we have extremely high hopes of 2010 being an outstanding
vintage.”

Talking with the winemakers on Spring Mountain, it’s hard not to sense their excitement and enthusiasm for the approaching harvest. They know that no matter what Mother Nature brings during the next two months, it will be recorded and savored in their wines. And judging from the past, they expect this year to deliver well-balanced, age-worthy wines.

Spring Mountain, officially established as an American Viticulture Area in 1993, was described 25 years ago by a prominent wine writer as “probably more responsible than any other Napa hillside for creating the mystique of mountain grapes.” The appellation lies above the town of St. Helena on the eastern slopes of the Mayacamas Mountains that separate Napa Valley from Sonoma Valley. Encompassed within its bounds are about 8,600 acres, of which only 1,000 are planted to vineyards. Currently the region has just over 30 vineyard / wineries.

Rain Dance

There's no better way to see an entire industry scramble than to mention a threat of rain while most of the valley's vines are still bearing fruit. Consult the National Weather Service, and we're getting a solid 5-8". Consult weather.com and we've just but a 40% chance of showers. I walked a block with a winemaker who purchases grapes from the Paradigm estate earlier today, and her exasperation seems appropriate to mention here. "I like to imagine all those meteorologists sitting around throwing darts at a board. 'Gonna rain? Sure. How much...well, just hit a number and we'll tell them that.' They have no idea how insane it makes our lives!"

So scramble we will. Our Merlot is ready to harvest, and was a pick that, pre-storm warning, we'd earmarked for a Tuesday arrival. The rain will apparently besiege the valley Monday evening. Alright then, we say, we'll harvest Monday morning and be happy. But the other two producers who take our Merlot, and the one who takes some of our Cabernet, want their grapes now. Tomorrow. Yesterday. So early today we sit down with our vineyard manager, query him with the robustness and staying power of the picking crew he's assembled, and wonder how we can make this happen. Done, he says.

Within an hour, the winery was a cluttered mess of picking bins, frenzied winemakers, and energized pickers, all awash in the melodic timber of excited Spanish. The luxury of a methodical harvest has left us. What we're faced with is the art of intelligent compromise - what needs to come in, what could come in, and in what we have the confidence of allowing to ride out the storm.

A big rain is a legitimate concern - moisture on the fruit can exacerbate mold concerns, canopies that have already begun their gradual decline might not bounce back, and, above all else, the rain makes working outside just a trifle more challenging. Dusty dirt quickly becomes sticky mud, and your feet will never, ever forget the chill of a cold, wet October morning.

Our Merlot buyers will get their fruit this weekend. For both producers, this means processing in one weekend what they would normally process in one week (since we are, without a doubt, not the only grower they are harvesting this weekend). Crews will work overtime, double-time, whatever time is needed to carry the grapes from picking bin through to tank. This is the beauty of what we do. Harvest flirts with routine, it alludes to control, but at its essence we are all at the mercy of the sun, the clouds, the wind. I have yet to meet anyone truly dedicated to this industry who would have it any other way. We are an agricultural society, and as such we are all loyal disciples of the church of Mother Nature.

The upside here is that the wines we've made so far, and the fruit that we're picking this weekend, are stellar. Consolation prizes, perhaps, for the frenetic dance we've been forced into to prepare for the week's precipitation. The grapes left out hanging have strong canopies, and should tolerate the rain well. Forecasts for the days following the storm are clear, and truthfully, a little rain does nothing more than wash the dust off those late-ripening varieties.

When everything is picked, when tanks are dry and barrels are topped and buttoned up for a cozy winter's nap, this week's drama will be an interesting talking point in the grand story of the 2009 vintage. But for the moment, the adrenaline of knowing where we need to be and what it will take to get us there is enough to remind us that we are all but pawns in a much larger game.

Molly Lippitt
Paradigm Winery

Well it’s really fall and really harvest now; almost on the dot the weather broke from excessive heat to beautiful autumn Napa Valley weather and all the grapes say thank heaven! We brought in the little bit of Pinot Noir we make, come by the winery and I’ll explain, and we started on Merlot and one small tank of Cabernet, but none the less we’re really into harvest. We were hopeful that our yields would be a bit up from last year, a dismal 1 ton an acre, though there is incredible concentration and intensity, we were hoping for a robust 1 ½ tons an acre which would be close to normal. The drought still is in effect and Mother Nature is still a bit tight with her water.

We’re all done with whites except for a late harvest Sauv. Blanc we’re doing this year and the reds in the tanks look great. Aside from a little rain coming next week we’re looking very good and hope to be all in by Nov. 1. We should see a landslide of Cab starting by the end of next week, so hold on to your hats and I’ll let you know how it’s going. If you’re in the neighborhood, come on by and I let you sort some grapes.

Ciao for now,

Jac Cole
Spring Mountain Vineyard

Full Moon Musings

I love sleep, so perhaps the most challenging thing about harvest is the lack of it! But the challenges of a sleepless ten weeks are easily overcome by the magic of night harvest. In Napa Valley during harvest, it is like an underground club. You drive up the Trail to your harvest destination and you see all the lights at all the different wineries, and you think, ‘Oh, they’re picking that block today.’ You run into the same people at Model Bakery or Starbucks as soon as they open and give each other a knowing nod, or a ‘How’s harvest?’ One of the best treats is being able to drive through St Helena with no traffic.

But my favorite part about night harvest is the moon. And last night’s full harvest moon was exceptionally lovely, and on this cold crisp night, I could really sense the changing of the seasons and I know we have only a few more weeks to go.

Last week was our busiest week, and we harvested almost 30% of our total production in one week! Merryvale finished harvesting our Chardonnay on Friday, which concluded the harvest of all of our white grapes. After today, we have only one block of Merlot left to pick, having brought in Buena Vista selection Merlot from Hyde Vineyards this morning.

We still have a lot of our Cabernet left on the vines, and we look forward to a little warming later this week to get some more Cabernet into the winery as the week ends.

We have already pressed some reds, and harvest parties are already on the schedule. We look forward to bringing in the rest of our Cabernet, and are optimistic about the quality we are seeing in the cellar so far. Cheers! Remi Cohen

Harvest continues at Merryvale

Harvest is moving at full speed in Napa now. Due to hot weather all week, we have accelerated picking Chardonnay, Merlot, and Cabernet. By the end of next week, we anticipate finishing our Chardonnay harvest. This week, we have really begun to harvest the Bordeaux varieties, particularly Merlot and early Cabernet blocks.

Fortunately, the heat was not as intense as originally forecasted, and the highs are only sustained for a short part of the afternoon. Forecasts are for a return to seasonable or below average temperatures beginning early next week. That will likely slow down the ripening in the remaining Cabernet blocks.

This morning we harvested small portions of two blocks of Cabernet from the Schlatter Family Estate in St. Helena. Attached is a pic of a few lug bins in the back of the truck.

Remi Cohen
Merryvale Vineyards

The Nighttime…Is The Right Time….

…For picking Chardonnay!

OK, I know it doesn’t rhyme and isn’t as much fun as what the blues standard refers to, but it sure makes good wine. Night harvesting the chardonnay ensures that we receive cool and plump fruit. The cool temperature is important for minimizing extraction of any bitter flavors, helps the settling process, and means that we use less energy chilling the juice. The more humid night air allows the grapes to recover from any dehydration the previous day, and the firm berries transport better than hot mushy ones – they don’t breakdown as much in the bins, which gets back to the extraction point above.

The other important and too often overlooked aspect of night harvesting is that the conditions are much better for the people doing the harvesting. I know that if I had to run up and down the rows 50 times in long sleeves and pants while carrying a 40 pound box of grapes on my head, I’d much rather do it in the cool morning air rather than the mid-day heat.

Now, I’ve been talking an awful lot about Chardonnay in these last few posts and I don’t want you to get the wrong impression, so you’ll be happy to know that in the last week we brought in the first Cabernet Sauvignon from here on the Estate. We’ve got three little tanks full of some of the blackest Cabernet I’ve ever gotten my hands into. Tremendous color and plenty of great ripe berry flavor to go with it. The first full crop of our Takahashi Ranch Merlot – a blending component for our Napa Valley Cabernet – also came in this week, and it also is showing fantastic color along with some of the best flavor that we’ve seen from Merlot here at CM. If these first few tanks are any indication, this will be a fantastic vintage.

This week we will continue bringing in Cabernet from our Estate vineyards as well as from our Napa Cab growers, and we should be finishing up the Chardonnay within the next 10 days. The first of the Estate Zinfandel is on deck today, so come on by and have a look!

Until next week – Cheers and may you “be with the one you love.”

Scroll down for our intern Daniel's latest post.

Cameron Parry - Winemaker

Chateau Montelena Winery

Harvest Simple Joy

By: Daniel Orrison

9/22/09

Legs, back, arms, mind… tired. Hands, shirts, shoes, socks… stained. Harvest is officially in full swing. Grapes are coming at a faster pace than ever expected while the room for storage is quickly running thin. But away from specifics and onto experience…

I meet a man on my day off (first in 7 days), who took one look at my hands and asked first, ‘how’s harvest going?’ and second, ‘dead yet?’. I laughed at the later part of the question and replied with a modest but accurate… ‘almost’. He then went on to tell a story from his first harvest (he has now worked over 20), and it went something like this: He was young, out of college, ready to take the wine world by storm (sound familiar?), and his boss at the time said “son… this line of work is not pretty, you won’t be tasting wine all day, meeting women or having fun. You will be working, on call, always. Every part of you will hurt at one point and you will wish you were dead, this I promise, especially here.”

Quite a first conversation with your boss if you ask me… Cameron’s first words were much more welcoming.

The boss then said: “Because son, I’ve seen kids like you come and go, and here’s how it’s going to work. After the first week you will think you are tired. After the second, exhausted. And by the third… dead.” I can now honestly say this is a very accurate description of the harvest lifestyle. Days run together, the workload seems impossible, and the word tired takes on new meaning.

However, I feel the old man’s boss forgot a few parts of this story. He forgot to say how much fun you will have along the way (the laughs and memories), how rewarding it is to look back on everything you accomplish each day, how special it is to be a part of a tradition much larger than yourself, and how educational the experience is for anyone who loves wine. Sure, at points we’re tired, but in my eye that’s what makes it so great! The understanding that everyone is tried, everyone’s hands hurt, everyone could use a day off… but still, day after day, year after year, people all over the world wake up to celebrate the ups and downs of harvest. For instance, he didn’t mention that at 10pm, while cleaning presses in the pouring rain, listening to your cellar master, Gilberto, sing ‘life is beautiful’ you will laugh harder than you ever have. He left out how wonderful a feeling it is to put your feet up on a couch after working an 18-hour harvest day (something you can only understand after doing). Or how calming the feeling that surrounds a winery at midnight can be. The small joys, the subtle moments, and the silent “thank you” wine constantly offers its maker that reminds us of how worthwhile what we are doing is. This area, he most certainly forgot to mention. Because harvest, simply and unexplained, is about truth, hard work, discipline and tradition. These words are not to be thrown around, but respected. And while some days may be hard, tough and stressful the final product is worth every scrape… this, exactly, is what makes it so great. It’s not easy and because of this its rewards are not plain -- but amazing, incredible, and transcending (think 1973 Montelena Chardonnay). Or, in my eyes, what makes the industry move round. What excites us each morning to wake up and work hard.

Tasting on my day off. Life is good. Respect the small stuff.

God bless from Napa.

Cheers,

Daniel

Quintessa Harvests First Red Grapes

Thursday, September 17th marked the start of the red grape harvest at Quintessa with about four tons of Silverdale South Merlot.

A multi-national crew, including our picking and crush crews, many of whom have been with us since we started harvesting in 1994 and crushing at the winery in 2002, assembled to kick off the 2009 harvest. With the experience of our team, including Crush Forman Hugo Hernandez, who has been at Quintessa since the Huneeus family purchased the property in 1989, and Assistant Winemaker/Cellarmaster Benjamin Ochoa, the first few tons came in without a hitch.

The eastern half of the Silverdale South block, just in front of Quintessa along the Silverado Trail, is typically one of the first blocks harvested each year. Saturday, we will move to the interior of the property and pick Lake Terrace Merlot. Our usual 10-14 days between the start of Merlot harvest and Cabernet Sauvignon harvest will be more compressed this year because of the late start and the next few days of high temperatures we're expecting. We'll start Cabernet Sauvignon harvest begin by the end of next week.

At around 9 a.m., we stopped to take a moment to recognize the ritual of the Napa Valley Harvest. Father Brenkle from the St. Helena Catholic Church blessed the grapes and we raised a toast with the entire Quintessa family. As they say, it takes a village...

To get a picture of what harvest around here is really like, take a look at our Harvest Film on www.quintessa.com for a look at picking, crushing, winemaking that features the people and passion behind every harvest season at the winery. Or better yet, come for a visit and see it up close and live. Off we go!

Charles Thomas, Winemaker

Harvest Continues at Merryvale

Even with this week's high temperatures, harvest continues steadily, but not frantically, at Merryvale and Starmont. By tomorrow, we will have finished harvesting Sauvignon Blanc, and on Thursday we completed harvesting our Pinot noir, all from the Stanly Ranch in Carneros. We started harvesting Chardonnay, and Chardonnay will be the main focus for the next two weeks. Today we harvested some Hyde Chardonnay from an enticing block of mixed clones that exhibit exotic floral flavors.

We have begun harvesting some Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon from earlier ripening sites, but we anticipate continuing to harvest Cabernet throughout the rest of this month and into October. Attached is a picture of us harvesting one of our earliest Cabernet lots from this morning at our Estate in the foothills overlooking St. Helena.

We are really excited about the early flavor development, and are finding developed and concentrated flavors, the disappearance of green flavors, resolved tannins, and brown seeds at lower Brix than recent years.

Cheers!
Remi

Blackbird Vineyards | Ma(i)sonry Napa Valley

As we conclude the last day of August 2009, the harvest moon is almost upon us, signalling the "beginning of the end" of summer and the slow creep of fall. This transition period is the most invigorating for Napa Valley vintners as the fruits of a year's labor come to fruition.

If the current weather patterns hold true, Blackbird Vineyards will harvest its Bordeaux grape varietals (Merlot, Cabernet Franc and Cabernet Sauvignon) in early October. Most of the winery's grape sources, including its estate vineyard in the Oak Knoll District of Napa Valley are located in the southern end of the Napa Valley, allowing for more moderate daytime temperatures. This will (hopefully) lead to greater balance in the fruit at harvest time with sugars, acids and physiological development all coming together. Mother nature will have the last comment here though...

Next posting, we will discuss the emerging wine program for Ma(i)sonry Napa Valley.

More to come...

Paul L. Leary

President

Blackbird Vineyards | Ma(i)sonry Napa Valley