Barrels and Forklifts

The number one things I fear at the winery (besides ruining an entire vintage of wine) is the forklift.  Just thinking about climbing onto that that thing gives me nightmares.  Yes true, I know all I really need to do is take a class and practice, but its not really the operation that gives me anxiety, it is all the damage I could cause.  This fear was sort of realized during an episode of The Office when the warehouse crew wins the lottery and quits leaving the sales staff in charge of loading up the trucks.  Dwight, being the handy man he is climbs right onto a forklift and promptly ran it right into a wall. 

     You have to leave these things to the professionals and I am a total klutz.  Four broken arms, two broken toes and a few fingers have proven that without a doubt.  Never mind I achieved all of those from activities that most would consider safe. It is almost written in stone that I will cause damage to myself or something expensive.

   Wait... I think I've gone off subject, no one cares about my broken bones.  This was supposed to be about topping barrels, obviously I'm slightly off track.  Generally barrels need to be topped off about once a month.  Wine evaporates through the wood and so we must "top off" the wine so there isn't too much oxygen in contact with the wine, and today I was called up to help.  Usually the assistant winemaker, Jeff, handles everything, but my wine maker Joel is determined to get me more involved (he is obviously unaware of my past medical history).

     Thankfully I will not be the one manning the fork lift, mostly because our winery isn't the most forklift friendly place.  About ten years ago we finished renovating the two car garage into the present day winery.  The 2 arch shaped doors open in the middle (see picture... did you look? Okay back to the story).  The forklift barely clears the center of the doors, a huge opportunity to cause some real property damage. Moving the stacked barrels in and out of the winery is an art form, an art form that Jeff has nearly perfected... nearly. (We have only had to repair the damage a few times.)



Pulling Samples



  All morning Jeff unstacked and moved the barrels out onto the crush pad, as he added sulphur to a few barrels I pulled samples from others, don't I look like I'm having fun!  After pulling samples we tasted through the wines and then it was time to top them off.  We had one partial barrel, so I siphoned from that (my least favorite thing to do) into a bucket. I then dragged the bucket along with me filled a pitcher and from there into the barrels. It might sound really fun, but I assure you after about ten barrels it isn't all that exciting anymore. I do however love that I am exposed to wine making in this position.  It is actually my favorite thing about working here.  It is such a great learning experience to taste the wines through every stage if the process.  Joel Aiken, the wine maker, always makes sure to include me, even if it isn't the most glamorous job.

Cheers!
Rebecca, Chase Cellars.

No More Monkeying Around in the Cellar for Me at Peju Province Winery

Today, I write to you from my brightly lit desk in the very tame upstairs offices. Actually, ironically, I just heard a cacophony of high-pitched hollers from the other end of the offices. Sounds like a big sale came in, woo-hoo! The holidays are an exciting time for Patti, Jess & Christina who take care of phone sales. Anyway, it is the first Friday in two months that I've had to iron before clothing myself presentably, and that I've come to work to spend the day wielding the almighty mouse and keyboard. Slightly different strengths required than those for wielding the heavy hoses and 20-gallon buckets of juice in the cellar. I am in the office today because finally the seasonal work requiring so many extra hands has come to an end. There is still much going on for the full time cellar workers, but they've got that under control. We drained our very last tank yesterday to press and barrel down today- Cabernet Sauvignon from one of the later-ripening blocks on our Persephone Vineyard. Almost all of the leaves have fallen off the vines, which are now dormant and will remain so until spring when the weather warms, rousing the vines out of their winter stillness to begin again to do what they are meant to- to photosynthesize, to pull nutrients out of the ground to create leaves and eventually to flower and to bear fruit.

'Dormancy', as defined by Wikipedia, is "a period in an organism's life cycle when growth, development, and (in animals) physical activity are temporarily stopped. This minimizes metabolic activity and therefore helps an organism to conserve energy." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dormancy) My organism can relate to that.

Dormant Vines on Peju's Rutherford Estate

Next week Winemaker Sara, Assistant Winemaker Joe, and Production Planner Sheri will begin tasting through the 2011 whites to see how the now two-and-a-half-month-old wine is tasting, and to start thinking about how they'll want to blend it in a month or two. Blending involves systematic tasting through barrel-aged versus tank-aged lots, lots in French versus American and new versus neutral oak, and then blending varietals with any combination of these variations. Love how winemaking involves doing science with your taste buds.

Most of the work that's going on in the cellar these days is to take care of the older vintages of reds that were laying low in their barrels while Harvest's new crop, like a needy newborn sibling, took all of the attention. Mostly, it's the topping I mentioned in a a recent blog post that the crew is busy with now. On a monthly rotation, the crew will bring all of the hundreds of barrels in our Estate cellar out to the crush pad to make sure the headspace in each barrel is at a minimum, lest the wine breathe too much oxygen and lose its youthful vigor.

Naked Vines Soak Up Some Winter Sun

And as the vineyard rests for winter, the sales team springs to action for the most wonderful time of year for us humans! It is certainly true that some of the best gifts in life are free. But wine is always a great gift too. Cheers!

Brittany Starr for Peju Province Winery

View from Peju, December 6, 2011

Barreling into Harvest at Miner Family

Man, even empty, these barrels are HEAVY! They weigh in at about 100lbs each, and they’re a definite sign of things to come: aside from seeing those yellow bins standing at the ready outside Mumm, or anticipating the first grape samples to land in the lab, nothing tells us that harvest is around the corner quite like a loading dock full of our new barrels.

Miner will receive about 580 new barrels this year. Seem like a lot? Well, when we’re unloading the truck and getting them situated, it seems like a lot to us, too! But each year, our new barrels constitute just under 50% of all the barrels we’ll use.

Barrels are important – really important. Barrels offer an exchange of oxygen, time for the wine to come together, evolve, decide what it’s going to be. There’s a texture component to barrel aging as well as countless flavor components.
How do we choose barrels? There are so many ways, but it basically comes down to experience, trials, and good note-taking. Many wineries conduct barrel trials every year – testing out a couple of barrels from a new cooper or new styles from familiar coopers, and tasting/analyzing them periodically to see if they might want to incorporate these barrels into future harvests.

All barrels are not created equal! One barrel might taste delicious with our Garys’ Vineyard Pinot Noir, but may not cut the mustard for our Stagecoach Cabernet Sauvignon. How do we know? Again, experience and tasting - and of course, personal preference. Winemakers know what they can expect from a brand new Gillet barrel, for example, and from there they can determine if it’ll be a good match for their grapes. A good winemaker never ceases to search for new ways to make better wine. Every year offers another opportunity to tweak your technique using information learned from previous years. The longer you work with a specific lot of grapes, the better you know what those grapes need and – more importantly – what they don’t need. This is how we’ll determine, among many things, how much new oak to use on a wine.

So next time you pick up a glass, think beyond the butter, the “wood”. Think of the mouthfeel or texture of the wine, the possible presence of vanilla, pepper, spice – these can all come from the right oak used on the right wine.

We’ll get back to heaving these puppies onto racks and stowing them safely away in our cave. It IS the end of August, after all – we’re rolling right into harvest!

~Dianne Norton, Enologist, Miner Family

Summer Growth at Round Pond

Last week we reached véraison in our vineyards, which can be one of the most beautiful times of year to look at the clusters on the vines. Véraison is the time of year when the tiny green berries begin to turn color and start to fill up with juice. It is from this point that they officially start to ripen. For the vineyard crew, this is an important time to make sure the grapevines are properly pruned so the fruit is well exposed to sunlight and air. Our vineyard manager Chris Pedemonte says one of the important things to look for when you are walking through the vineyard rows is "speckling". This is when the sunlight breaks through the leaves and hits the ground. It can be a great indication of how the vines are growing and if the grapes are getting too much, or not enough sun exposure. If you see patches that are too shaded on the ground, you know the fruit needs more light. This is also important for things like air movement which can prevent things like mildew, mold, and certain pests.

While we are happy to see that we have reached veraison in most of our vineyard blocks, it has been a challenging year so far for the grapes as a whole. We have had a fairly cool summer out here in Napa, and temperature highs of 75-80 degrees have left the grapes a couple weeks behind in their ripening stages. What this means for us right now is a later harvest than normal, most likely not starting until after Labor Day. We are hoping (begging) for a late Summer heat wave to kick in any time now, and bring us up to speed. So while the rest of the country is experiencing record high temperatures, that is definitely not the case here!
As for a quick update on what's going on in the winery, the cellar crew is hard at work getting the barrel chai ready for the 2010 vintage.

They need to make space for the new wine that will come in, so this year you will see our barrels stacked 4 high instead of 2 high. It's quite a balancing act to see in action, and the crew has to be very careful that everything is level and in line, otherwise it could all topple over with one foul move! In the process of moving all these barrels, the 2009 vintage wine is being racked. This is the process of moving the wine from barrel to tank, cleaning out the barrels and removing any dead yeast sediment that has formed, then refilling the barrels with the wine for further aging. It can be a lengthy job, but it's sure easier moving empty barrels around rather than full ones!
Stay tuned as we get closer to harvest... one of the most exciting times of the year in wine country!