Notes From The Winemaker

More On Lighter Wine Bottles

2009-05-13T10:08:00.000-07:00

Lighter bottles -- it's becoming my mantra. I made the decision to stop bottling in extra-heavy glass a year ago. Others have been picking up on the topic, and now it seems the request for lighter products is being addressed by the glass manufacturers. This morning I saw this article from the May issue of Wines & Vines: "How Light Can You Get?" by Suzane Gannon.

The article highlights how some of the major wine bottle producers (Saint Gobain, Saverglass, Demptos and Owens-Illinois) have recently released lower-weight, lower-cost products into the US market. Owens has been the low-weight leader, for the last nine years producing a 750mL bottle weighing just 298 grams (not sold in the US) -- Saint Gobain has matched this with their newly-released "Revolution" bottle. Compare this to the 850 gram "prestige" bottle I have switched away from, or the ones I have switched to that weigh 485 and 535 grams.

I have to see some of these bottles in the flesh (as it were) before I consider using any of them -- they may be butt-ugly. But it is exciting that manufacturers are moving in this direction.

Time On My Hands

2009-05-06T13:35:00.000-07:00

I'm in Houston staying at my dad's place. Our quarterly partners' meeting is behind us and I have a big private tasting of our wines to do tonight -- should be fun. Got the wines and order forms ready to go, my little presentation prepped in my head, clothes ready and I'm even already checked in for my flights back to SFO tomorrow.

It's funny how I get before these big public events -- not anxious or nervous, but surly and depressed. It's like I'm gathering my energy for the show I'm going to put on. Meh.

So I'm ready early and I've had time on my hands. Time to Twitter, time to Facebook (is that a verb?), time to read other blogs, and time to write this. So it's time to summarize a few tidbits:

Tina Martin is working with us now to manage Westwood marketing. She's had plenty of experience (Cline, Flowers, Keller Estate, Hanzell) and has hit the ground running in spite of the economy. She is a real professional and I enjoy working with her.

Speaking of hitting the ground running -- after a lot of work Tina has managed to get Lisa Valentine (Canopy Wine Group -- when they get their website up) to rep Westwood here in Northern California. She and her people have had samples for less than 24 hours and we already have two new placements. Yea!

I met Guy Stout (MW) and local wine writer Dale Robertson over the last couple of days. When we get our wine distribution up and running here in Texas (again) it can't hurt that these guys might recognize the brand after this introduction.

On the agenda at the partners' meeting: discussion of final approval by the members to plant eight acres at the Annadel Estate. So resolved. Glad we didn't wait until next year, but I'm a bit under the gun to find the clones I'm looking for as dormant vines.

Speaking of the vineyard: we have had a couple of inches of rain recently and it has been mild, still and humid -- perfect weather for a case of spring Botrytis to affect the vines. We have stayed on top of of the spore load through our very timely seasonal and dormant spray program over the years, but I'm still anxious. That's farming. Jean-Marie is waiting for a break in the weather to make a spray.

The dry winter allowed us to move the power generator on site early this year. This meant that we had frost control available if necessary. We have had three frost incidents since pruning, but the dew points were high, and the temperatures only stayed below freezing for a couple of hours at most each time.

Though the events weren't severe, the vineyard guys turned on the new frost control for the first time -- we are using an extremely low-volume overhead spray system. It seemed to work: we observed ice formation on the vines (a good thing -- ice is an insulator). Seriously, we might have escaped damage without it. I think the guys turned it on just to have something to do.

OK -- showtime! Time to dress and load the car.

Stainless Steel Wine Packaging

2009-04-24T06:52:00.000-07:00

Yesterday a friend who is working on a new restaurant project wrote to ask what I thought of serving house wine out of a barrel. I've been to Italy and had some pretty tasty house wines that were served out of some sort of cask. Invariably these wines were simple, tasty, food-friendly and fresh. I enjoyed them, and have more than once wondered why most of the cheap house wines dispensed here in the US mostly, well, suck by comparison.

Part of the reason may be historical, and some is surely driven by what large producers think are the expectations of the "average" wine drinker. But the average palate is changing. And new wine packaging is gaining acceptance (I'm hardly the first person to post about this). And some of this new packaging could, I believe, finally make European-model house wine a reality.

I believe that the quality of most bulk boxed wine-like beverages produced in the US, um… "could be better" -- perhaps these wines have have more than a little grape concentrate incorporated both before fermentation and before bottling -- not really a recipe for quality. I believe many American consumers would welcome something unadorned, crisp, fresh, alive and with moderate alcohol, but the long distances wine has to be transported in the US seems to have selected for the evolution of cheaper, commodified, more processed wine-like beverages.

The improving quality of wine-in-a-box has been promoted ad nauseam -- I hope it's actually happening. I think it would be cool to have a bag-in-box of something relatively inexpensive, reliable and actually fun to drink at home. Some day I may even try one of the new offerings -- but only because I like the idea of "relatively inexpensive, reliable and actually fun to drink" -- NOT because the packaging is "greener."

Our colleague Tyler Colman wrote in the New York Times last year about wine-in-a-box, arguing for the desirability of this packaging based on its lighter weight. In this column he cites that 5.2 pounds of carbon dioxide is emitted in the transport of a bottle of wine from Napa to NYC (20% greater than the 4.4 pounds he cites in the recent National Geographic piece I just posted about -- I wish this guy would pick a figure and stick with it!) and notes that transporting the same volume of WIB emits "about half" that amount. OK -- 2.6 pounds of CO₂ per 750mL is still a lot. The fact is that liquids are heavy, and every commercial liquid sometimes has to be transported by truck. I think the focus on the ecological cost of transport alone is a canard, and if the upstream eco-costs of manufacture and the downstream eco-costs of disposal/recycling were properly accounted for, glass probably still looks pretty good compared to bag-in-box.

I'm no expert in Life Cycle Assessment, but I'm pretty sure that bag-in-box and similar alternatives: Tetra-packs, "juice boxes", etc. do have significant manufacturing costs and limited disposal/recycling options. This is definitely not the case for stainless steel packaging, which has nearly unlimited reusability. Recently some unusual new options for delivering wine in stainless are being offered.

I'm interested in the model being pursued by the Natural Process Alliance: make clean, fresh whites, pack them in re-usable stainless steel bottles (see below) and deliver them to customers located within so many miles of the production cellar -- like milk used to be delivered.

The NPA whites are made with minimal intervention. This means they are very much "alive" but have a more limited shelf-life -- also sort of like milk. I have not tasted them, but look forward to doing so. Friends have told me the Pinot Gris is tasty.

But for some, including my friend involved in the new restaurant project, the good old Cornelius keg may be the best answer for packaging and delivering Euro-style house wine.

These kegs are instantly recognizable to anyone who has ever slung soda in a bar or restaurant, and also to many homebrewers. There's millions of these kegs in circulation, and a mature infrastructure for their supply, cleaning, transport and use.

It's hardly like I am coming early to this party -- Eric Asimov drops some pretty well-known names in his Times column from 4/7/09, including Brewer-Clifton, Melville, Stephen Ross and Flowers. To be sure, I need to talk with some of the winemakers involved, and the restaurateurs who are serving from kegs as well -- I would be surprised to find that the systems are perfectly trouble-free, and want to know the caveats.

I also need to model the costs for wine produced specifically to go into kegs. Compared to our bottled wines destined for aging I envision different farming, yields, picking dates, winemaking inputs, and latency in fermenter, tank and barrel -- and minimal warehouse costs. There will be capital costs for kegs and equipment to clean and fill them. Keg storage, labor, marketing, order fulfillment and customer service costs will be different and have different timings than for cased/bottled product. Ultimately I want to know that I can supply a satisfying consumer experience at a reasonable price.

So yeah, I'm interested, on a number of levels: the challenge of growing and making the wine is stimulating, the potential to develop a revenue stream that is less cyclical and has lower COGS than that from bottled vintage wine is attractive from a business standpoint, and the very idea of a light fresh house red in reusable packaging appeals to my wordview. We'll see, OK?

National Geographic Slams CA Wine - Eco Unfriendly

2009-04-18T07:19:00.000-07:00

Yesterday's mail brought our May 2009 copy of National Geographic. I was surprised to see the Environment page devoted to a wine topic; surpised and a bit dismayed. It seems that our colleague Tyler Colman (Dr. Vino) has had an abstract of his study of the carbon footprint of wine transport published in NGM -- kudos!

However, the ominous title "The Toll of Wine" is accompanied by a large and very misleading graphic, with disproportionately HUGE arrows representing the carbon footprint of shipping wine from Napa to NYC, relative to wine from other parts of the globe.

National Geographic's site does not have a link to the article, and I'm not going to risk the ire of their legal department by reproducing the graphic (by NG staff artist Mariel Furlong) here. But Tyler Colman has it in his blog and I encourage the reader to pull it up to see what I'm talking about. Below I show a graphic of the same data, free of hyperbole:
The top graph shows the carbon footprint data for a bottle of wine transported between the indicated origins and destinations. The relatively large footprint for moving a bottle of wine from Napa to NYC assumes routing via truck, presumably warehouse-to-warehouse via the shortest route. The relatively smaller footprints for moving wine from overseas destinations reflect the greater efficiency of sea transport. Again, I assume these footprints are calculated dock-to-dock: nowehere in Tyler Colman's postings or in his original paper is it explicated that "last mile" carbon is included in these summations. I am going to guess that "last mile" carbon consumption has been left out of the calculus -- if so, between these routes the differences are artificially larger than they would be if the costs of getting the wine to the final destination are included.

I'm interested in the indicated difference between the carbon costs of shipping Napa wine to NYC and French wine to LA -- it makes no sense that the former should be greater than the latter. Tyler Colman has responded to questions about this discrepancy from commenters on his blog by noting that he and his co-author "used a port in Texas … (so) there were fewer miles driven." No explanation was given of the reasoning behind picking a port closer to LA, rather than the East Coast ports where most Bordeaux is actually landed. The data presented in Table 1 of Colman's original paper are distinctly at odds with the figures presented in the NGM article -- the transport footprint presented for France to San Francisco is 22% greater than that for Napa to NYC; the Australia to NYC footprint presented there is 52% greater.

The bottom graph adds some much-needed context to the picture: I have included the proportional carbon footprint -- a whopping 22.9 pounds of CO₂ -- for trucking a bundle of just 25 National Geographic magazines from NYC to Napa. Yes, I have included this as a slam against NGM for publishing a misleading graphic, depicting some questionable numbers, on paper, in a magazine with international distribution. I won't go so far as to call out NGM as a sanctimonious, hypocritical, greenwashed old-media irrelevancy for doing so. I won't.

At least my agenda is explicit. I object to the portrayal of California wine as somehow less eco-friendly than wine produced elsewhere, simply according to the criterion of the cost of transport to consumers in NYC -- especially if the numbers are suspect. I am left to wonder what Tyler Colman's explicit agenda is.

I'm not looking for a fight. I am deeply committed to reducing my personal and business carbon footprints. I take into consideration who is making stuff, how it's made, and where it comes from in all my purchasing decisions. I posted a year ago about moving to lighter packaging for our products. Like others in the wine business, we are actively encouraging our direct-sales customers to choose alternatives to air shipping. I don't sell a lot of wine on the East Coast yet, but as more rail options for small shipments become available, we will use them. I am personally disinclined to ship by sea, as I believe the ecological costs of ocean transport are greater than the oversimplified considerations of carbon cost alone.

Nevertheless, I'm reading RED, WHITE AND “GREEN”: THE COST OF CARBON IN THE GLOBAL WINE TRADE by Tyler Colman and Pablo Päster very closely, both as a practitioner trained in a "hard" science and as a concerned citizen. I find the authors' model for calculating carbon emissions unsubstantiated, and many of their assumptions and assertions ranging from "questionable" to "susceptible to outright refutation." There is also an implicit but unsubtle negative bias expressed toward high-end wine from California. In my opinion this paper lacks enough scientific rigor to have any merit with respect to moving public policy, much less public opinion.

Red Vermouth

2009-04-12T17:28:00.000-07:00

No, I will not be making sweet red vermouth at Westwood. But I have been thinking a lot about red vermouth lately. You see, I aspire to cultivate an understanding of classic cocktails. I like 'em. Some folks say "it takes a lot of beer to make a little wine" and this is undeniably true, but my favorite beer is the one I had five minutes ago. Ask me about my favorite cocktail and you will get a definitive answer.

This came up recently because a friend on Facebook asked me one of those "five favorite things" questions (note I'm not big on these 5Q things BTW) – "what are your favorite five beers?" Seriously, I couldn't answer.

Years ago, when I was working towards a doctorate at UC Davis, I frequented a bar called Mansion Cellars. The owner had stolen a march on Spike's in San Luis Obispo, by promoting turnover in his bottle beer case by doing an "Around The World In 80 Beers" contest for regulars. I was one of the few who went around the world five times. A couple of things you discover after trying 380 different beers: one is IDIC, the other is its rhetorical opposite – "beer is beer." I could tell you five beers I don't like a helluva lot easier than five I like. Same thing with wines – so sue me.

Cocktails are another matter. They matter. They have seriously different profiles. Just like I don't care for most Zinfandels (sorry! friends who make it!) there are a bunch of cocktails I won't drink. But I absolutely can tell you my five favorites – and I am particular about how I want these made:

Negroni: measure each vodka (is vodka), Campari and red vermouth, shaken, served up in a bucket with a twist of orange zest.

Sazerac: muddled sugar (or simple) in a chilled bucket, rinse with absinthe (pref, St. George), 3-4 rocks, several dashes Peychaud's bitters, a measure of Michter's rye whiskey, stir, serve with twist of orange or lemon zest.

Manhattan: for me, again, Michter's rye (though Maker's Mark bourbon is also nice), red vermouth, Angostura bitters, shaken, in a bucket, and garnished with a maraschino cherry – make it special with a light rinse of Gran Marnier in the glass and a spash of maraschino liqueur in the shaker.

Martini: so many ways! for me always stirred, and served with a couple of olives (no other garnish appreciated), sometimes ultra dry, sometimes with a splash of dry vermouth, and sometimes "dirty."

Margarita: my preference is always blanco (never reposado or anejo), never blended, never salt, always a double with a single measure of sweet & sour. Touch up with Gran Marnier or Cointreau.

Yeah, I know – picky. The bartender hates me.

So back to red vermouth: at least two of my favorites above need this wine to be complete. And the character of the cocktail is deeply dependent on the quality of the vermouth. I've found that there are some brands of red vermouth that should never be used in a cocktail – IMO they are barely suitable for cooking.

I'm looking for the "best" red vermouth: yeah it all starts out as a neutral white wine with 14% sugar, and fortified to 18% alcohol, colored with caramel, and infused with some huge number of herbs and spices. So, what's the bomb?

What vermouth does all the stuff that a guy needs who is in pursuit of bitter complexity? I been working with Cinzano, but it's boring. I'm not into Lillet or Cynar. So what's the good stuff - Punt e Mes? Vya? I'm going to try both. Bartenders and hedonists – what other brands should I be looking for?

2009 Is A Drought Year

2009-04-08T07:16:00.000-07:00

It rained yesterday, bringing my recorded rainfall total to just over 20 inches for the season. This is about 2/3 of average, and I don't expect that we will get too much more this growing season. Part of me hopes we don't, as late-season rainfall makes farming our grapes that much messier.

I remember back in the day that hearing "drought year" was a good thing for the wine afficionado. Do people still feel this way? I don't, not so much.

Our wines in 2009 may be marginally better than they might have been if we had recieved normal or above-average rainfall. I expect that with less water in the deep soil profile we will have to spend less time on canopy management this year. That will free up that much more manpower to allow me to fine-tune crop loads, berry sizes and leaf cover.

Don't Antagonize The "Talent"

2009-04-07T06:38:00.000-07:00

My friends in the entertainment industry tell me they do their best to avoid ticking off the performers, because they realize that without the talent they have nothing to sell. It would be so refreshing if everybody in our industry took on a similar outlook. Sadly, it is not to be.

I've been internalizing my reaction to an unpleasant experience earlier this week with a wine buyer. This is not particularly common; most of the time these interactions are cordial, respectful, polite, and even friendly. Even when there is no interest in our wines.

But sometimes people are having a bad day. Or maybe they are just constantly puffed up with an unearned sense of entitlement and self-importance. I've posted before on the ugly side of the the gatekeeper mentality. Some guys just don't get that we are in this together, we need each other, and we should respect each other for what we do.

It is a fact that there is a lot of wine chasing a limited amount of shelf space. The vast majority of this wine is, um… OK to drink. The vast majority of the places that sell wine are, um… somehwat committed to doing it. I truly feel bad for the folks in marginal venues who have to taste through so much dreck, and at the same time have to answer to a tight bottom line.

But c'mon folks, please remember that I'm the guy taking earth, air, fire and water and turning them into (sometimes sublime) salable product. Not just anybody can do that well. Treat me nice and I will treat you nice. We need each other.

Pruning Complete At The Estate

2009-04-03T11:39:00.000-07:00

I just got back from the vineyard, where the crew had finised pruning. The shot above is a close-up of the head region of the young Pinot Noir clone 943 vines. You can see that the buds are pushing a little bit.

This year we pruned the vineyard a month earlier than last year. I have less fear of frost than I did in 2008. Also, we were seeing about as much push at the tops of the canes as we did at the end of April last year. It was simply time to get it done.

This pic shows one of the Pinot 943 vines. We are pruning to two canes and two renewal spurs (double-Guyot pruning). All the vines in the eastern lower 2/3rds of the vineyard will be trained this way, on 6' x 4' spacing. I am hoping that this training and the tight spacing will give us better options for crop level and exposure control, at the expense of a somewhat more unruly canopy compared to the cordon-trained vines.

The established western half of the vineyard is trained to double cordon. I have posted before (in fact, every year I think) about how most of the pruners just don't get what a 2-bud spur is (see pics in the post linked above). So when I was out yesterday it was no surprise to see a bunch of 3- and 4-bud spurs spread throughout the older vines. Fortunately I didn't have to call Jean-Marie on it – the assistant foreman and another guy were already moving through to trim the long spurs. It is non-trivial to prune correctly to double-Guyot as we will be in the new blocks, but at least we won't have this second round of corrective work to do every year.

And speaking of new blocks:
…here's a shot of the eight acres we are hoping to plant this year. The ground is all ready to go. We just need to get the surveyor out to mark the corners. Then the crew will come in with the planting chains and the plastic knives to mark the vine locations. Next we will bring in the guy with the special tractor implement to vibrate the end-posts into the ground, and the guys will then pound the pencil rods (for the vines) and the T-bars (for the trellis). Next, we string out the fruit wire, tension it to the end posts and clip it to the pencil rods and T-bars. After the fruit wire is in place we can run the drip tubing and place the emitters. Finally, only after we have water ready to go, we can put some vines in the ground – with milk cartons around them to keep the rabbits from nibbling the new growth. I look at the picture above and I can already see the completed project in my mind's eye. One fervently hopes…

Sonoma Film Fest Weekend

2009-04-02T00:12:00.000-07:00

The Sonoma International Film Festival has once again rolled into town for the weekend. It looks to be a bit low-key compared to previous years. I don't see any exotic cars around the Plaza this time, for example.

Our friend Chris Sawyer is the Consulting Sommelier. But as usual, I'm not doing anything to support the Festival. Why?

Well, because it is a bit of a pointless exercise for us. The Festival attendees are here to watch films and rub elbows with glitterati and each other. They like to do this with a glass of wine in their hand, but it has never seemed to matter which wine it is.

Yesterday I was chatting with a server who works in the local hospitality industry. He had worked a reception for a large party of Festival Patrons the night before, and was unsparing in his criticism of some of them. "They seem to think that badge around their neck entitles them to everything – for free. And they don't tip."

I think the Film Festivals are cool. If I had the time, I would love to attend. From my perspective it is great of Sonoma to lend its bucolic charm to the event, and overall I think the town is happy that the Festivals grace us with their presence. But so far as our business is concerned, I feel like the benefit is asymmetrical.

So here's the deal. As soon as someone associated with one of the film gigs gets Westwood a product placement in a picture that is distributed outside of the Festival circuit, I will supply LOTS of free wine. Wth a smile on my face.

To Tweet? Or NOT To Tweet?

2009-03-25T06:03:00.000-07:00

Recently several otherwise rational people in the wine industry, people I respect, have asked me "Are you on twitter?" I am inclined to reply as Steven Colbert did when Meredith Viera asked him on the Today Show: "Do you twitter, do you tweet?" Well, in truth, like Steven Colbert "I have twatted." Oh my gosh.

But. Seriously. You. Have. Got. To. Be. Kidding.

First, note what times I post to this blog: usually before 7am or after 8pm. In between I have my hands full – frequently full of crackberry sending texts and emails and taking phone calls. I don't think it makes me a Luddite to draw the line at adding more to the bitstream-in/out pile.

Second, why? What's in it for me? Tweeting will not make my life richer or my business more profitable. I try to organize my day around high quality, information dense communication with as few people as possible. Deliberately engaging in chatty noise with more people is my personal idea of hell.

Third, be honest with yourself – you KNOW that if your Congressional representatives are doing it a) it's a waste of time and b) as a phenomenon it has jumped the shark.

Fourth, didn't your mother ever ask you: "Well if all your friends jumped off the cliff, would you do it too?" Didn't this sink in?

That said, if Twitter actually ends up being something more than the Hula Hoop™ of 2009 I will inform you of my capitulation in 140 characters or less.

Wine's "Mammoth" Water Footprint?

2009-03-24T05:48:00.000-07:00

I have been simmering a couple of weeks over the headline "Wine's Mammoth Water Footprint: 120 Liters To Make One Glass?" (Lewis Perdue's Wine Industry Insight March 6th, 2009). In the context of the current ongoing drought here in California, I suggest that characterization of water use by the wine industy as "mammoth" is well, um... unhelpful. The engaged reader should ask: is the characterization even accurate? "Mammoth" by what standard? Compared to what?

Or was this just a sensationalist headline – a bit of journalistic bombast? Valid question I think, since the article cited in the WII piece ("Thirsty Work," Economist.com Feb. 25th, 2009) used no such value-laden qualifiers, only going so far as to state "Consumers… might be surprised to learn…" Enquiring minds want to know.

I give Mr. Perdue credit that in his article, under the sub-head "Site Short On Substantiation" he asks "Do any readers have an idea if this is accurate?" and gets some answers.

From my own experience: the Permit Resources Management Divisions in both Napa and Sonoma Counties use a figure of 16 gal water per case as a baseline winery production water footprint. A number of years ago a friend who was water manager for Fetzer figured through simple conservation measures they had reduced this to under 8 gallons/case. A recent article in Wine Business Monthly ("Water Use In The Winery" by Paul Franson, Dec. 15th, 2008) cited that Fetzer has further reduced their water footprint to 5 gal/case, while more agressively conservative producers are using as little as 3.6 gal/case. SO, for wine production the range of water use is something like 0.2-2.0 liters per glass. Where do the other 118 liters per glass come from?

Um… growing the grapes. Again, from my own experience at our Estate vineyard: since the vines went into production in 2005 we have applied no water for frost control and approximately 60,000 gallons of irrigation per acre annually. Our average yield has been just under 3 tons/acre, and very conservatively our press yield is something like 165 gallons of new wine per ton of grapes crushed. So our water use during the growing season is about 120 gallons per gallon of new wine, or 15 liters per glass. Hmmm… at Westwood we are using something less than 17 liters of water to make a glass of wine, not 120 liters. Where's the discrepancy?

This 120 liter figure cited in the WII and Economist articles comes from data compiled by MacArthur "genius grant" recipient Dr. Peter H. Gleick and his staff at the Pacific Institute, their work also diseminated through the Water Footprint Network. Digging into some of the online information Gleick and co-workers have compiled, I found the following general statement:

These kinds of data are fraught with problems and uncertainties, and users should be extremely careful about using them for other than the most simple comparisons. When we can, we like to use ranges to try to bracket many of the uncertainties, but other sources rarely mention uncertainties or provide ranges of estimates. For example, the Water Footprint reports that 15,500 kg of water are required to produce beef, but work from the Pacific Institute reports a range of 15,000 to over 70,000 depending on diet, climate, the amount of product from each cow, and other variables. Similarly, the Water Footprint reports single estimates for the production of a range of vegetable and feed crops, but actual water requirements will vary dramatically with climate, soils, irrigation methods, and crop genetics.
Equally, if not more complicated, is evaluating the water required to produce manufactured items. For example, the water required to produce a liter of a soft drink may be as low as 2 to 4 liters per liter of product. But vast quantities of water are also consumed to produce the feedstocks, such as sugar or corn syrup, used in the same product. There are no consistent rules for where to draw the "supply chain" boundaries in such estimates, making it critical that users understand the assumptions that go into these values. This table, for example, lists 125 liters of water to make a kilogram of sheet paper, but it seems likely that this is the value for producing paper alone, and excludes the water required to grow the tree itself. Similarly, fewer than ten liters of water are required to process milk, but as many as 1,000 liters may be required if the water to produce the cow itself is included [all emphasis mine - JMK].

Wow – now that's a caveat, one entirely missing from the downstream discussions. And one that can more than cover the range of 17 to 120 liters of water per glass of wine.

From another article ("Water Use In The Vineyard: The West" in the same issue of WBM cited above) I find that our rate of water use at the Estate is at the low end of the reported range – consistent with the cool climate and abundant ground water present at our site. From the high end of the data presented by Mark Greenspan in the article I calculate vineyard water usage of 110 liters per glass – within striking distance of Gleick's 120 liters. OK.

But it is important to look at all the data Dr. Gleick's group presents. Grapes are among the least thirsty crops, comparable to other tree fruits but way less thirsty than water hogs such as cotton, rice and corn. And all these crops use way, way less water than livestock.

None of this even touches what I consider to be the more important factors in the water use discussion: the environmental costs. Runoff, pollution, erosion, costs of wastewater treatment, deferred costs of environmental degradation and mitigation. By all of these measures, grape growing – as most of us practice it here in the North Coast – has an extraordinarily small footprint.

Thanks Chris Sawyer

2009-03-20T10:22:00.000-07:00

Last night I showed off the Westwood wines as a "celebrity bartender" with Eddie at Carneros Bistro at The Lodge in Sonoma. We were invited by sommelier Chris Sawyer – google the guy – he gets around.

Sometimes these events could go better – where's the love, people? – but happy to say the gig at Carneros Bistro last night was the anything but business as usual. I wish they all went this well! The venue was laid-back and well prepared, the staff were helpful and friendly, and the event was well-attended – both by hotel and restaurant guests, as well as many of Chris's devoted local fans.

The wines were well-received and we met some great people – I've already had follow-up sales today and a Wine Club signup (always a nice way to kick off the work day). Perhaps the best thing about the event was getting to know Chris Sawyer better. I just met the guy for the first time a couple of weeks ago, but I feel like I have found a fellow traveller.

Beware The Ides

2009-03-15T11:27:00.001-07:00

It may be the Ides of March today – Caesar, and others, beware – but yesterday was the much less ominous pi day (3.14) and I celebrated with the kids at exactly 4:33:05. We couldn't get more precise. That's right, we're a bunch of nerds chez Kelly.

I'm working the Tasting Salon solo today. My Salon manager, Eddie, is feeling wary of the Ides – he's seriously under the weather. And speaking of weather…

…we're getting an unexpected bit of it today. My trusty NOAA forecast has been a bit off the mark over the last couple of days. The local clammy winds of yesterday were not forecast, and last night the prediction of "a slight chance of light precipitation" became a 100% chance. Today's weather is sure to dampen the enthusiasm of potential visitors.

I'm waiting around to deliver some cases of Westwood's 2007 4-Part Rosé for transport to the cityhouse restaurant, opening tomorrow at the Parc55 Hotel on Union Square. Which means "look for a couple of announcements soon about new marketing and representation at Westwood." More to come soon.

Pinot - Finesse and Scores Mutually Exclusive

2009-03-11T13:11:00.000-07:00

Today my designer, David Wishart of freshbait, sent me link to yesterday's "The Pour" column by Eric Asimov in the NY Times, with the question: "Where do you stand on this?"

Where do I stand on the question of "should Pinot be about finesse and balance, or about overripe and syrupy?" My very abbreviated reply was this comment on Eric's blog. Duh.

Following a few links around the topic, I came across a fun post in Josh Hermsmeyer's outstanding Pinotblogger from yesterday, which has a great video by Tina Caputo and Daedalus Howell. I've embedded the video below the fullpost link. Watch it if you have 26 minutes – it's fun, and on the money.

This video expresses perfectly my objections to chasing after scores. Personally I don't drink high-scoring wines, unless it's out of politeness when someone offers one to me. I don't find "cocktail" wines enjoyable – I'd rather have a real cocktail, thank you, preferably a 1:1:1 vodka Negroni, or a Michter's, absinthe and Peychaud's Sazerac. And whatever, I can't afford most of the high-scorers anyway.

But look, I believe that some of the most influential wine rankers have become victims of their own success. They have created a special market for these overripe, manipulated monsters: the "investment-grade" wines. The rankers can't back out now – some people have real money tied up in these high-scoring prizes.

But this conjures an image in my head of cellars around the world filled with these "zombie" wines: trade them, prop up their value – but never, ever open them.

Careful What You Wish For...

2009-02-16T06:11:00.000-08:00

As I woke up this morning to the sound of rain on the skylight it dawned on me that it has been raining steadily here for over 30 hours. No doubt we do need a lot of rain here – rainfall totals this season are well below 50% of normal. I am thankful that we are catching up. But do we have to do it all at once?

As the sun came up this morning I saw nearly 4 inches of rain in the gauge. Radar has been showing fairly gentle rain rates of 0.05-0.20 inches per hour in our area, from a low pressure system that is parked off the coast. This moderate rate of accumulation means that a good bit of the water will have a chance to percolate into the soil.

Over this same period the radar has shown rates at least double that over the Santa Cruz Mountains, peninsula, and South Bay – areas where wildfires last summer consumed the ground cover.

When I drive over Sonoma Creek on my way to the office today, I expect to see the channel well-filled with a heavy flow of brown silty water. Our vineyard does not drain into the Sonoma Creek watershed, and our focus on erosion control means that surface water running off our property is clear. But the silt load is coming from somewhere, and I imagine things must be a lot worse south of us.

The rain is forecast to continue through tomorrow. Normally winter storms out here drop out of the Gulf of Alaska down the coast, and move fairly quickly inland south and east of us, one after another. As an indication of how unusual this weather is – this low is not projected to move inland. Instead it is just going to fill and dissipate where it sits. Weird – I can't recall this happening before.

I'm hoping for a break in the weather for my flight to Houston (partners' meeting) Tuesday and back Thursday. Today it looks like another storm is due here next weekend.

On Darwin, And Survival

2009-02-12T06:17:00.000-08:00

OK this is not a wine post, but I trained as a scientist, so along with the rest of the rational world this week I am acknowledging Darwin's 200th birthday.

Poor Darwin – his carefully-developed hypothesis on the descent of man and the origin of species was mis-apprehended by some social theorists, and has since been mis-used to justify all sorts of horror. But a correct reading of Darwin actually does yield social metaphors and parables that are pertinent to the current uncertain times.

"Survival of the fittest." Reflect for a moment on all the class and racial bigotry and barbaric conduct this phrase has been used to justify in the last 150 years. In the context of human society, "fitness" is a value-laden concept equated with nebulous and self-serving measures of "worth."

Darwin's formulation was far more self-defining, clear and powerful: he proposed survival of the fittest to thrive under extant conditions – survival simply of the fittest to survive, and to reproduce.

In conditions of plenty, most members of a species are fit to reproduce regardless of any socially-derived definition of "fitness." The "struggle for survival" that Darwin described only obtains under conditions of scarcity, typically scarcity of resources and/or mating partners.

So here's my parable. Consider two groups: one is populated by big, well-formed, well-fed, wealthy, well-educated and morally upright individuals – in every way judged "fit" by society – while the other group are small, ugly, deprived, poor reprobates. Suddenly these two groups are separated from all potential mating partners by a wide desert.

They start across the desert together. The small ones have survived by doing without and conserving what little they have. The "fit" ones run out of water halfway across the desert, and the small ones avoid being killed by the "fit" ones for their water. The ones society judged the most "fit" will be bones in the desert while the reprobates are busy reproducing.

The moral of the parable: in tough times it is better to be lean than big, and tenacious enough to keep the big guys from taking your resources. Nothing else matters.

Some Rain

2009-02-08T21:19:00.000-08:00

We're finally getting some rain, and not a moment too soon. A couple of weeks ago I posted that the persistent high pressure that had been keeping us dry and warm was breaking down. We were promised a good storm five days ago which ended up being a bust – we got about a tenth of an inch out of it here, though the accumulation was more substantial in Monterey and points south.

The next storm dropped about an inch of rain Thursday and Friday. Another storm raced through today – not much accumulation here (once again, the focus was to the south), but we expect more rain overnight as the back side of the trough swings through. The good news is that the forecast is for a new front to pass every two or three days for the forseeable future, with the possibility of a strong storm over Presidents' day weekend.

We need it – mandatory rationing is being discussed by regulators earlier this year than anyone can remember, and know-nothings and other folks with questionable agendas are already scapegoating agriculture in general – and vineyards in particular – for "using too much water." Since I started keeping records, average annual rainfall here in my area has been about 32 inches. We just passed 7 inches for this season.

I'm not complaining – just concerned. Today I spare a thought and a prayer for our compatriots in South Australia, where a persistent killer heat wave has spawned the most fatal and damaging brushfires in memory. Reminds me of the heat spell and fires here this past summer. Doubled.

Soft Re-Opening Of Our Salon

2009-02-05T20:31:00.000-08:00

Come visit us! Today was the first day we opened our Salon for regular hours since before harvest 2007. This has happened because I finally hired someone to manage the Salon - Eddie Townsend, who assisted me in the winery through harvest this past vintage.

Eddie comes to us from Baltimore with years of experience in hospitality and food and beverage, most recently right here in Sonoma Valley at VJB Cellars and El Dorado Kitchen. His wine interest is broad and deep, and enhanced by current studies with the Court Of Master Sommeliers.

It should come as no surprise to anyone that the wine industry has been hurt by the broader economic recession. At the beginning of 2008 I started to focus on increasing our wholesale distribution, initially with promising success. But the credit crunch caught up with distribution and things have changed. Shifting our focus back to direct sales is something we have direct control over to help us weather this downturn.

Tasting With Our Vineyard Manager

2009-01-22T06:45:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I got together with Jean-Marie Martin, our contract vineyard manager, to taste through the wines we have made from our Annadel Estate grapes. It was highly instructive.

We finally have a sufficient track record with the vineyard – tasting individual lots through four vintages (2005-2008) we were able to debrief and plan a bit better.

First, there is no question that the wines are improving, both as the vineyard itself matures and as our farming of this distinctive piece of ground does as well. We got off to a great start with the 2005 vintage - the wines are huge and still closed in. The 2006 vintage shows increasing structure and depth in the Rhônes. The vintage marks our first 100% Estate Pinot bottling, and the wine is lovely, aromatic and forward.

We knocked it out of the park with the 2007 vintage. The Annadel Estate Pinot Noir is both massive and subtle – we just wish we had more of it. The Rhônes are a bit more restrained than in 2006, but with the vines another year older the wines are more expressive of the individual varietals.

It is still early to judge the 2008's but Jean-Marie was able to pick out that the wines are more forward than the 2007's – consistent with the even year/odd year pattern I have discussed before. The Pinot crop was down again, so the wine has serious concentration. The Rhônes are huge, angular, gangly and unfocused at this point, but promising. The Rosé is just beautiful – the maturation of my blend strategy is giving us a more approachable wine than I produced in 2006.

So Jean-Marie and I were able to chat about farming strategies for 2009 with a clear picture of what we have acheieved with our farming in finised wines, and a clearer understanding between the two of us of where we want to go in the future.

We wrapped up with a pleasant luch at Della Santina's, where we enjoyed a bottle of Valpolicella that had been awarded tre biccheri by Gambero Rosso. It was gratifying to note that wines we had just tasted at our winery shared elements of style and structure with this particular recognized and celebrated wine. It drove home to Jean-Marie the point of how high I put the stakes for our winegrowing.

Change In The Weather

2009-01-21T17:18:00.001-08:00

Well, yes, there was the inauguration – by my lights that counts as a metaphorical change we can believe in. But also we are finally seeing a concrete change – a little rain here in Sonoma.

We woke up today to overcast skies for the first time since Christmas. This afternoon we got enough precip to slick the roads, with more predicted for overnight. Still it looks like this system will drop only about a quarter-inch, and we need much more.

At least the forecast is not predicting immediate return of the parked high pressure that drove local daytime highs to record levels for the past ten days. Perhaps some more precipitation, and more surely a very cold system by Sunday.

Winter Heat Spell

2009-01-13T12:16:00.000-08:00

We are into our second day of 70°+ temperatures – untimely and unwanted for this part of the season. Grapes need dormant time to be their most fruitful.

Of even bigger concern is the lack of rainfall. We have only had about 5 inches of rain since harvest – less than half of "normal" – and today the forecast is for dry at least through January 23rd. This morning even the NOAA forecast discussion described the situation as "worrisome."

Sheesh.

2008 - The Year In Review

2008-12-31T09:14:00.000-08:00

We had a pleasant (if a little lean) Christmas here chez Kelly and hope yours was one of hope, cheer and good health. As the year draws to a close it's time for me to look back over the highs and lows for Westwood in 2008, and forward to 2009.

High: We closed with our new financing partner, Silicon Valley Bank. This was huge for us, and validated the efforts we have made with the vineyard and the brand.

High: Sales in 2008 started out well! We opened new markets: Pennsylvania, New York, Arizona and Southern California. Sales here in Northern California were steady, if not spectacular, and growing. A steady stream of visitors to the Salon kept things interesting and fun.

High: Improvements to our business practices have lifted some responsibilities off me, allowing me to focus more on improving the grapes, the wines, and sales.

Low: Hindsight is 20/20. In retrospect I saw signs of slowing sales due to the weakening economy as early as May, though it was July before I recognized it. The situation continued to deteriorate through the start of harvest – when Springboard Wines, our Northern California broker, trimmed us from their book in part due to developing resistance in the market to $60 Pinot Noir – through the end of the year.

High: We pruned the Estate vineyard later than usual, and dodged a bullet when we missed damage from a huge late-season frost.

Low: Bad weather during the set of the Rhône varietals – Syrah excepted – led to really uneven cluster developement. We had to drop about 50% more crop than expected; some clusters remained stubbornly green after the bulk of the crop in these varietals completed veraison. This cost us yield for Westwood and $$$ in grape sales.

High: Harvest was a breeze, and wine quality is outstanding. I had excellent help in the cellar from intern Eddie Townsend.

Low: Sales have been unbelievably weak through the end of the year. So 2008 ended on a low note.

Looking forward to 2009:

We are already seeing some signs of possible economic recovery – new Wine Club sign-ups, and requests for samples from a couple of distributors, for example.

We are moving forward with plans to plant another 8 acres of the Estate Vineyard. This is really exciting – these blocks will give us new options for grape sales and for developing Westwood's lineup.

In 2009 I will get my first commercial crop off the Pinot Noir clones 943 and 777, which should give a notable increase in the complexity of our Dijon-clone bottling. Plus, I will get my first indication of how the Haynes Vineyard selection of Pinot performs at the Estate.

We are going to re-open the Tasting Salon full time, and bring in new help in direct and wholesale marketing.

Bottom line – for the time being I'm feeling optimistic in the face of the current challenges. It should be no secret that the wine industry as a whole – and the upper-end especially – has been hurt by the problems in the larger economy (c.f. "Constellation Cuts...," "In The Red," "Wine As An Economic Indicator," "...Consumers Turn Cautious," and on, and on...). But we have weathered downturns before, and if 1,000 new acres of grapes in Napa, a new million-gallon custom crush facility opening in Carneros, and successful sales of brands such as Sebastiani and Flowers are any indication, we will get out of this one as well.

Winter Weather

2008-12-15T20:11:00.000-08:00

Looks like 2009 is headed for being another drought year. Yesterday was just our second significant rain event since the end of harvest, bringing us to a whopping 3.8" to date here in Sonoma. We have also recently – finally – had some cold weather, with several nights below freezing. The vines need these "chill days" to go fully dormant and to produce a decent crop next year.

The lack of rain is a bigger deal. So far this season we have received 3" less than average. I'm not worried about our Estate vineyard – in fact a drought year can mean easier farming for us, with fewer inputs needed to achieve my quality goals. From my perspective the worst case would be a repeat of 2006.

My concern is for wider California. Water politics here get nastier every year. Rationing is not fun to live with in the household, but it could be disasterous for agriculture and industry when the econonmy needs a chance to recover.

Harvest 2008 Debrief - The Winery

2008-12-04T18:19:00.000-08:00

I was originally going to do the vineyard and winery in one LOOOONG post. What a snore that would have been. In this post, lessons learned in the winery in 2008:

I was not able to do as much with dried stems this year as I had hoped. When we brought the Pinot in I added a moderate percentage of green stems to half the fermenters, and set aside an equal amount of stems to dry before adding them back to the other half of the fermenters. This was instructive. The green stem fermenters developed a pretty perfume, but had less color and developed a bit of a reduced funk at the end of the ferment (which went away at pressing) while the perfumed aroma persisted. In contrast, the dried stem fermenters had a more complex briary aroma and showed no color loss. What was a bit of a surprise – when I added the dried stems later in the ferment it actually cleaned up some reduced characters. Unfortunately, the weather and timing of the rest of our picking this year did not cooperate for me to dry any more stems for the Rhône varietals.

Taking a page from the notes of a few other Rhône producers, I experimented with green stems in the Syrah and Mourvedre. Several years ago I was tasting Copain Syrahs from barrel with Wells Guthrie in their cellar. I was astounded to learn that he makes at least some of these wines 100% on stems. Here in California it is the rare Syrah vineyard indeed that does not yield clusters with nearly-fluorescent green, non-lignified stems at harvest. This bothered Wells not at all, and tasting the wines I could understand why – I would have had to use my imagination to pick up any sort of "green" notes, and the wines were pleasingly complex and deeply colored. This experience took away my fears of green stems and put the idea in my head that Syrah on stems could work for our wines as well. Then this vintage as I was preparing to pick our Syrah, I got a call from my friend Alex MacGregor while he was actually treading the fruit on stems in a tank of his Syrah. That was the push I needed – this year one-third of our Syrah went into the wood fermenter on stems and we treaded it down before crushing the rest of the fruit on top of it. I followed the same protocol for the Mourvedre this year – I have yet to chat with anyone else who has tried Mourvedre on green stems. So far I am liking the results – a lot.

The character of the 2008 vintage wines fits the even year – odd year pattern I have observed. So far the 2008 wines are very deep and concentrated, but are showing softer and more forward than the 2007 wines did at this point. Going all the way back to 1995 I have noted that our wines in odd-numbered years are hard and closed, while the wines in even numbered years are softer and more forward.

My conceptualization of "tannin homeopathy" continies to evolve. For a number of years I have been kicking around the idea of managing tannins through the approach of treating like-with-like. The process started years ago, before I understood seed ripeness. I noticed that some deeply-colored red wines, our Syrah included, would throw a lacquer of color on the inside of the bottle as they aged. At the same time I was trying to understand why some old-world producers co-fermented reds and whites together: what benefit derived from mixing Syrah with Viognier, or Sangiovese with Trebbiano or Malvasia. Researchers were talking about "co-pigmentation" (c.f. Boulton) but could not show persistence of the phenomenon during aging. At the time I believed that Syrah and Sangiovese seeds were deficient in some unspecified phenolic compound(s) that historical winemaking had shown could be supplemented by adding these white grapes. At about this time purified enological tannins, primarily from the South American hardwood Quebracho, became available. With the idea of supplementation in mind I experimented with these tannins in our Syrah and – presto – no more lacquer in the bottle. Later I came to understand that Syrah and Sangiovese may not be deficient per se in particular seed tannins, but are perhaps more likely to be picked before the seeds are ripe than other varietals. Now that I have a better handle on harvesting when seeds are ripe, I have a different take on winemaking with exogenous tannins – whether from a bag, from added stems, or from co-fermentation with white grapes or pomace. Now I'm looking at the broader tannin picture: subtleties in seed and skin flavor, stem lignification, and the hard year/soft year alternation. Generally, I am likely to add more exogenous tannin when the fruit comes in more "tannic." Recently I have extended my thinking to encompass general acid levels – if acids seem low or pH's high I am also more likely to supplement the phenolic structure. This idea continues to evolve. We will see where it takes the wines as time passes.

We will all be happier with more Grenache, less Mourvedre in the Rosé. I love the complexity and depth of our 4-Part Rosé but the 2006 was really outside the mainstream – far meatier and sweatier than most people are comfortable with even in a bone-dry Rosé like ours. I addressed this in 2007 by upping the Grenache content – it helped a lot. This year I dropped the percentages of Mourvedre, Syrah and Counoise further. The 2008 wine is lovely, with fresh strawberry and mineral notes from the Grenache complemented by more animal characters from the Mourvedre and Syrah, and peppery aromas from the Counosie. I will never add residual sugar to this wine. I will continue build the mid-palate with lots of lees stirring, and to finish it 100% malolactic to be able to bottle it unfiltered. It is extra work for a wine that – deriving as it does from saignée de cuve on the reds – is essentially a by-product, but worth it as it produces something unexpectedly complex and with the ability to age.

I'm experimenting with long cuvaison in tank before going to barrel with the Rhône wines. Last year I followed through on a thought I had been brewing for a while: aging my Rhônes in larger vessels. Since I started working with El Dorado County fruit in 1995 I discovered that some – maybe all – Syrah can be overwhelmed by new oak. And unlike raising wine in Burgundy, where Pinot Noir rests almost exclusively in 228 liter pieces, wines in the Rhône are often aged all or in part in larger oak tanks of 500 to 3,000 gallons, called foudres. (Note that as far as I can tell, anything larger than a barrique or piece may be called a foudre.) I started wondering if part of the reason California Syrah – mine anyway – so often so little resembles its Old World cousins is a general over-reliance on our (my) part on small oak casks for aging. I don't have any foudres at my disposal but I do have stainless tanks. So last year I kept the Mourvedre, Syrah and Grenache in tanks for a full year. They developed beautifully in tank, each showing more pepper and spicy complexity than I have observed in the past. There was no evidence of reduction. Just before harvest this year I pulled off Syrah to go to barrels and blended up the redFOUR pre-blend (Mourvedre, Grenache, Counoise and just a fraction of the Syrah – perhaps to be increased before bottling) before putting that to barrels as well. This year I took things a step further, and made nearly the final redFOUR blend (Mourvedre, Syrah, Grenache, Counoise and small percentage of Tannat) which will stay in tank until just before next harvest. So far I am liking the aromas and textures – a lot. I'm not claiming that a year in inox and a year in small pieces yields the same wine that two years in oak foudre would, just that so far this change in aging strategy seems to be giving wines that more closely meet my expectations for these varietals.

I'm narrowing down the number of yeast strains in the winery. Choice of yeast strain makes a difference. The proper, or lucky, pairing of varietal and yeast strain can make a better wine than a poor pairing would. The yeast industry pumps put several new strains a year, each optimized for some particular application. But I've always known that a good or lucky choice of yeast is not going to make a great wine. I've never been one to try a new yeast strain just for the sake of doing it, but now I'm moving toward ignoring new strains altogether - there just doesn't seem to be enough to be gained. This change in attitude came in a minor revelatory moment this year when I stuck my nose in a friend's ferment of Grenache with strain T73. Not that there was anything wrong with it, just that it did not smell at all like I want my Grenache to smell. I thought to myself "thank goodness I didn't try that combination." Thinking it through a little further, I'm now cutting out a number of strains I have used in the past: no more BM45, GRE, BGY, D254, L2226, or Syr. I'm just using AMH, RC212, D80, VQ15 and Uva43. These strains have shown the ability to do very well pretty much every red wine I make now.

I'm finally embracing that I'm a Pinot Noir winemaker. I'm comfortable with and confident in my approach to Pinot Noir, and I humbly submit that the wines have turned out well. But as many other winemakers here in California are, I am still working toward a well-resolved and completely natural approach to making Rhône wines. For several years now I have been hearing comments that my Rhône wines are "Pinot-like." In the past I have taken issue with this assertion, but no more. I have always said that my approach to Pinot has informed my Rhône winemaking, not dictated it. This is true – the methods I use to make the Rhônes are not identical to those I use to make the Pinots. But in the fermenter especially, there are similarities – mostly in the matter of the number and timing of punchdowns, and in the approach to cuvaison. This year I decided that this is what I am confident in, and if it makes the Rhônes a bit Pinot-like compared to the competition, that's not necessarily a bad thing.

So it was still a long post. These are my notes for next vintage.

Harvest 2008 Debrief - The Vineyard

2008-12-02T20:19:00.000-08:00

Most of the work for the vintage is done. Left to do: just a racking and inoculation for ML on the redFOUR blend. The ML is already done on the Pinot and Tannat – they are ready for SO₂ and then some benign neglect.

With the vintage behind us, here are some of my observations and take-away lessons. First up, the vineyard:

Late pruning was a GREAT idea. In hindsight, the decision to prune late – which saved us from the ravages of the late April frosts – looks like foresight. Jean-Marie and I are thinking of pruning late every year, though maybe not as late as May.

Yields were down, with the presumptive corollary that quality was up. Frost or no frost, we came up 15% short of predicted yield in the Pinot, just 3% short in the Syrah, and a whopping 30%-35% short in the other Rhône varietals. The Pinot clusters and berries were smaller than normal, which may suggest some damage from the frost but also could have been caused by blazing heat during berry expansion. Syrah was near-perfect in every way. The other Rhônes suffered form poor weather during flower set, which led to very uneven rates of development among the clusters. To correct this we did a heavy color thinning after veraison – once a majority of clusters were colored I said "if it is still green it comes off." It was the right decision, though it hurt.

Leaf thinning high in the canopy to control rates of sugar accumulation – it worked. For years I have wondered if there was any way to reduce the rate of sugar accumulation that plagues the Dijon clones of Pinot Noir. Hedging was ineffective, as was irrigation. Counts showed that I had about 35-50 leaves per cluster. I figured 15-20 leaves per cluster would give better source-sink balance and slower rates of sugar accumulation (c.f. Kliewer & Dokoozlian). Last year I pushed the crew to remove laterals from inside the canopy but they didn't really get the hang of it. This year I spent a lot of extra time training the guys in what I wanted to see and the results were better, though I still had about 25 leaves per cluster. So I sent the crew through a couple of times after veraison to pull leaves from higher than 18 inches above the fruit. Average leaf count at harvest was 15-18 per cluster. Sure it was not a controlled experiment and I'm not going to draw a final conclusion from one year of practice, but for the first time ever I did not get any surprise sugar jumps in the Pinot.

Vertical kicker canes work to control berry size. This year, our reproducible success with leaving a vertical kicker cane on strong vines in the Grenache and Counoise to give smaller berry size went from experiment to routine practice. We employed the technique for the first time in the Mourvedre, where a few of the vines are quite vigorous.

We weathered the late heat spell better than many did. Here in the North Coast we experienced a serious heat spell in late August and early September that caused some fruit to shoot up in sugar and lose weight. Given that there were already expectations of a short crop due to the April frost, this heat pushed many producers to pick earlier than they should have. Maybe it was the late pruning, but we did not have this problem thank goodness. We picked our Pinot on October 3rd and may have been among the last producers to do so in Sonoma Valley and Russian River. But I was very happy with the balanced physiological ripeness of the fruit.

No smoke issues with our Estate fruit. Following up after harvest with some of my friends who had much greater exposure to this year's wildfires, yes some of their fruit came in with smoke taint. Ours did not – not the slightest discernable or measurable iota. We were lucky.

So this was more or less what I learned in the vineyard. Next post: the winery.