Senses

I took one chemistry class in my entire life. It was in 10th grade and I got a C. Needless to say, I didn’t fall in love with wine because I liked chemistry. While we do lean on lab tests to reveal potential alcohol and acid on white grapes before harvest, we hardly ever “run numbers” on our reds before we pick. This is when we rely 100% on our senses and gut feeling. Our picking decisions are decided in the vineyard, not in the lab.

While it’s important for me to understand and tolerate chemistry to a certain degree, my love for wine and viticulture started for non-scientific reasons like being in tune with nature’s rhythms, farming, hiking, leisurely meals with friends and family, slow living, travel, art, philosophy, etc. This way of living, together with my desire to discover the potential of our hillside is what will keep me in.

 Deciding when to pick the fruit is one of the single most important winemaking decisions. Too soon and the wine will be shrill, green and vegetal. Too late and it’s flabby, rotten, and/or over ripe. Mother Nature has many ways of telling us when the fruit is ready. You feel how much resistance there is when you tug a single grape from its pedicel. You taste for the quality of the acids in the whites, and for the suppleness of the skin tannins in the reds. Finally, are the seeds brown and lignified, or are they still green? Do they taste bitter, or are they getting a little nutty?

 On Friday August 28th, we picked Chardonnay. While the fruit was in excellent condition, we simply didn’t have much of it. This parcel of Chardonnay was the first to have green shoots emerge in April, and the frost on April 21st took out about 60% of the fruit that morning. Fortunately, the vast majority of the vineyard suffered minor losses. In fact, our yields for this year should surpass last year’s. I’m anxious to find out.

 This week’s forecast is not ideal for winegrowing - it’s going to be very hot. We’re going from a warm and wet August back to the mid summer heat and humidity that I thought was behind us. With the temperatures being in the 90’s all week, I’m starting to worry about potential alcohol outpacing the ripeness of the tannins. At the end of the day, this race to the finish line could potentially throw the wine off balance if we’re not careful.

The current ripening conditions will make it more difficult to achieve the restraint and freshness I seek in our wines. Picking decisions may end up being even more critical this year, especially since we are dogmatic with how minimally we intervene in the cellar. I’ll continue to walk the vineyard everyday, chewing on grape skins incessantly, and monitoring the progression of the skins tannins.

When it comes time to making the final picking decisions, the door to the lab will remain closed.

-Adam