Chard remains and wines

So last week I got to experience my very first California wild fire! I had seen a bunch of fire trucks around town and it seemed like something was up but there was nothing extremely alarming, that was until we were driving from St. Helena to Calistoga. There was a vintage party at the Co-Op warehouse where Neyers stores all their bottled wine where Marie and I dined on grilled chicken and various $50+ wines donated by the wineries that use the warehouse. On the way to Calisotga we looked up at the side of the mountain and saw a huge red glow and could even see the flames jumping up off the tree tops. It was amazing, and terrifying. Being night and not really knowing the geography all that well it look almost like the fire was right on top of the winery, or at the Neyers ranch! Rather than racing up the hill with shovels and hoses, we decided that the fire fighters would probably turn us back anyway and so headed to a bar to toast the 'toasted' remains of the winery. In the morning, as luck had it, the fire turned out to be several valleys over from where we worked, just downhill from Angwin in fact. There was quite a bit of burnage but from what I have heard, not much in the way of property dammage. There were a few wineries that couldnt do their pump-overs or punch-downs for a few days but they can just market thoes wines as "minimally processed". My next fear was that my trails had been burnt. I have been going to Los Pasados State Park quite a bit and riding my bike and that is right in Angwin, but luckley that was spared as well. I did snap this shot on my way up to the trails:


Today I worked on all my wines. Both the Chardonnays are done fermenting and are ready for malolactic fermentation. They were starting to pickup quite a bit of color (brown) from the oak chips though they really don't smell and taste all that oaky...but I racked them off anyway. When racking I did stir everything up and keep the lees as it will provide valuable nutrients to both the yeast and malolactic bacteria. The Rose is dry and has started malo which is something that I don't really want, it needs to be as crisp as possible so I have racked it off the sediment and added a bit of sulphur to stop malo, it should be ready to bottle in about a week. The little bit of malo might not be all that bad in the end, it will be quite a heavy rose and so a bit of softness will probably complement it, but no more than it has already done. Did I mention that I was making a port? Anyway, we pressed one of our Zins a while back that was not quite completely dry and I saved about 4 gallons that was left at the end of the press and in the hoses. To this I added 1.2 litres of brandy and about 12 toasted oak bungs. That might have been a bit too much oak....I tasted it yesterday and it is good, but it smelled and tasted like the inside of a barrel. It does have a very nice and creamy long finish though. It was interesting none the less and I will still bottle it. I racked it off the oak and sediment today as well.

We harvested the last of Cabernet and Merlot from the Neyers Ranch this weekend and will get the very last grapes of the 2008 vintage this Tuesday. Everything is sadly wrapping to a close but as I look back I realize how much I have learned and experienced in a little over two months.

Overall, from what I can tell, it has looked like quite a good vintage. There was a heat spike in late August and then it cooled quite down quite a bit. That coupled with lower than normal yields (looks like about 30% down, across the valley) has allowed everything to be harvested at leisure. There were no rushed pickings, no scrambling at the end, only picking when ready. Everything is ripe, ready, and sweet. So all in all, I give 2008 a thumbs up.

Here are some pictures of the Point Reyes National Seashore where I went last weekend for a bike ride:

10.8.08 Napa and around

So a lot has happened since my last post, been keeping quite busy. No time to write it all down so here are some pictures and recaps. In order:
My Chardonnays are coming along nicely, they are nearing dryness and are smelling great. The colors seem a bit darker in the pictures but never fear the one on the right (sans skins) is coming out quite clean. I drained the chard on the left off its skins last week and pressed the juice out with a colander so that it can finish up with no hidden sugars in the skins. It is amazing the difference between the two, the chardonnay fermented on skins has a bit of and earthy or gritty note and a bit of tannin and seems a bit appley while the other is very crisp, clean, and bright. The rose is just about dry as well. It has lot quite a bit of its flowery nose and is more fruit, which is a shame. It also has a bit of tannin to it and seems to be getting denser. In the end, it may turn out to be a flop but it was still fun to play with.

We harvested the Old Lakeville Syrah a while back and it is almost done fermenting.

Last tuesday our whole crew went to visit Quintessa. Amazing winery, they certainly spared no expense. They have one of the biggest plots of land on the valley floor. They also farm completely biodiamically a lot of which I like but a bit of it seem...gimmicky. It is agriculture so I think that working around the phases of the moon has a lot of validity but fermenting thistle in cow horns? Sounds like witchcraft. They did have new cement egg fermenters though, which have resonate somehow with me, I like how they feel, I like the idea of them, but not sure why.

Came home one night and Tom was skinning a deer he had just shot, hopefully they'll share!

Last weekend I headed to "The City" or San Francisco. There was a concert at the Golden Gate Park that lasted all Saturday and Sunday, the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival. Lots of good bands, the most notable of which was Gogol Bordello! This is the bike parking. Thank god I brought my bike into the city, I can only imagine what driving there would be like. If I ever lived there, I would go completely car-less.

More wines and an oyster adventure

Today we harvested the Thieriot vineyard for their chardonnay. This is the one chard that Neyers does with skin contact and almost without exposure to oxygen. We iced everything (Dry ice/co2): the bins, the juice tray, the tank, the barrels, even gassed the line. And we did skin contact for about 2 hours. Tadeo had told me earlier in the day about the first time that he tried skin contact with the chard, back in '06. In that year, there was a bit of Botrytis in the vineyard but he went ahead and let 'em soak for a bit. He only did 1/3 with skin, the rest were normal-strait to the press. At bottling, all were blended except for a bit of the skin contact that he kept for himself...and it turned out fantastic. The skins give off a bit of tannin and that year there was also a bit of Bot that gave off a bit of a honey, candy smell that you wouldn't know was Bot if you weren't looking for it. Any way, after de-stemming the '08 Thieriot, I gathered up all the discarded grapes and the run off juice from the sorting table/de-stemmer in to a bucket. The grapes consisted of bunches of beautiful/healthy grapes with splotches of raisins, some Bot, some sunburning. All in all, about 2 gallons worth. I then topped it up to 4.5 gallons with the last bit of juice from the press. Ill fermnet all this ON THE SKINS. Something very unusual and different, just to see how itll turn out. I have also been collecting the wooden bungs (stoppers) from the new barrels which are made of the same oak the barrels are, just not toasted. I chipped them up so that they would fit into a carboy and tossed them into the toasted. No, not some fancy gizmo we have at the winery, a regular bread toaster. 5 in all, about 5.44 ounces of oak-toss them all into the carboy so the wine will ferment on them. I also gathered up 5 more gallons of just the strait juice from the end of the press. Sure it is the hard press stuff that looks kinda like apple juice but it is from a fantastic vineyard and I want to see what it tastes like next to the stuff fermented on skin. This juice did get the 2hr skin contact though. Also the press only got up to 1.7 bar so not really all that hard anyway. I also tossed in the same amount of oak bungs, medium+ toast. All were inoculated immediately, no natural ferment for me, I need these babies to be dry in time to bottle and taste before I head out of here. So now I have the Neyers Underground 2008 Thieriot Chardonnay Skin and Sans-Skin batches bubbling away. We should get the lab report tomorrow so ill know if any adjusting needs to happen with the sugars/acids or if the yeast will need any food.

Last weekend Marie, her roommate Elizabeth, and I all headed to the Hog Island Oyster Company in Marshall, CA. The drive was amazing along 1 and the country side also. This place was a oyster farm that had a picnic area out back where everything was BYO (except the oysters, you bought them there). When we called they had said that they were booked through November! So we planned on just buying some oysters and headed to another beach/park area to eat them. Luckily when we got there they said that since there were only 3 of us, just grab a table and if someone who reserved one shows up then we'll have to leave. We had only brought some wine, lemons, and crackers. Oh-how could have done it up. The groups around us brought cases of beer, bottles of wine, cheese platters, charcoal for the oysters, steaks, sausages, etc. And the scenery was beautiful across the bay. With our simple fare we had a blast and stayed for 2 hours. Next time we'll gather a whole group and really do it right. It was the first time I had had raw oysters (or even oysters period). They were OK, kinda salty and the texture was a bit like snot, but it was still fun all the same and I would really like to try them grilled....mmmmm. After 'lunch' we continued south and stopped by a park and who pulls up next to us, but Amigo Bob. I had never met Amigo before but Marie had. He is the organic farming consultant for the Neyers ranch and also advises a bunch of other vineyards. Interesting guy and a bit of a juxtaposition. He looks like a complete hippy flake now ranting about organics but in reality he was very down to earth and was a wealth of knowledge about agriculture and such. We had the blessing to see him again, this time at the Neyers Ranch. They had called him in to check out some vines that weren't doing that well so Marie and I tagged along. The main problem with farming here is water, there just isn't enough of it at the right times. We talked a lot about cover crops, mulching, every-other-row tilling. Also, apparently you can use whey as a fungicide, who knew? They are also having a turkey problem on the Ranch-they are eating the fruit. And the organic solution? Shoot them, they're are a pest in the area anyway. I offered my services to Barbara Neyers. Maybe we can have turkey for lunch one day, or even save some for Thxgiving.

Welch's vs. Pato

All the reds so far (Zinfandel and Petite Syrah) have come in at a bit higher sugar level, or brix, than Tadeo would like. If the Brix is too high then you end up with a very alcoholic wine and it is questionable if the yeast will be able to ferment everything completely and in time. So to correct this we have drained a bit of juice from each. This will lower the total brix but increase the concentration of juice to skins so that no flavor or color is lost. We all talked about what do to with it, Roberto saying freeze it and make grape-pops and Bernardo saying mix it with tequila for a tasty beverage. In the end I kept a gallon of it in the fridge to drink, and damn is it better than Welch's grape juice. Rich, sweet, slightly creamy, and tart it is delicious. I also kept a 5 gallon batch to try my hand at rose!

So what about Rose? I had talked to Tadeo about my beer making ventures and he told me that I could use anything here to do with as I liked. He has tried to make Zinfandel rose but says that it just doesn't come out right, that the good stuff comes from Merlot and Grenache. So I passed on the Zin, but the Petite Syrah was tempting. I siphoned off 5 gallons and started my the Neyers-Underground 2008 Pato Ranch Petite Syrah Rose. Because the brix was high and Rose is supposed to be light and refreshing, I diluted the juice to about 25 brix from 26.8. In doing so, I also diluted the Ph. This is not desired, Rose being light and crisp needs a quite low Ph through fermentation and I had diluted it from 3.8 to 4.7. So I added tartaric acid in the order of 1g/litre to bring it back down to about 3.7. Ideally the Brix would be more like 23-24 and the Ph more like 3.3-3.4 but since I am only working with 4 gallons, it would be too much playing around to end up with a reasonable wine. We also have a bunch of barrel plugs that come in new barrels and are made from the same wood. I thought about tossing some of these in as 'chips' but decided against it. For this batch, ill just stick with it as is. There will be several to come as the Merlot, Cabernet, Syrah, and Grenache all come in. I plan on playing with each as a rose. Actually making the calls on this wine and doing the testing is already teaching me a ton about wine making.

On fermentation, Neyers allows all their wines to start ferment naturally with native yeast and then inoculate. This way allows the native yeast to get a foot hold and begin fermentation when the juice is ready and create the individual flavors that each yeast makes and then the ferment is finished by the cultured yeast which can handle the higher alcohol and finish in time for bottling.

Last weekend Marie and I went to Mendocino and toured around. Amazing little place but very small. Both the coast and Red Woods were breathtaking.

First Grapes

We got the first grapes of the year in today! 5 tons of Zinfandel. Marie, Roberto, and I started at 7 am this morning by preparing the sorting belt, destemmer, must pump (auger), hoses, and tank. Tadeo, Bernardo and his brother Sergio started at 4:30 am in the field to supervise the picking and then truck the grapes back to the winery. All Neyers grapes are sourced from vineyards in the area, so there are no actual vines on the Neyers Winery property-everything is trucked in. By picking early they are able to get the truck loaded and to the winery before it gets too hot in the day (as long as the vineyard is close enough). They are also able to preserve the natural acidity, which is highest during the cool hours of the night. When sorting we looked mainly for rot and there was very little of it. Rot is a problem with zinfandel grapes because the bunches are so tight, air cannot circulate and moisture encourages growth of nasty things. Cabernet Sauvignon, conversely, has a very loose bunch and so can tolerate much higher humidity and rain with out rotting. But luckily is has not rained for a bit, at least since I have gotten here and it has been quite hot, breaching 100 F during the day. So the grapes that came in were quite ripe and some of the bunches had completely rasinated. In tasting, they were delicious very sweet and chewy but the raisins are not so good for the wine. They can add intense flavor but can also unbalance a wine with too much sugar/ripeness.

So all that was Tuesday. Wednesday Marie and I did the early shift and followed Tadeo to the vineyard at 5 am. An early start, but nothing that doughnuts and coffee cant cure. We were harvesting mostly Zinfandel and a bit of Petite Syrah from the Pato vineyards way down in Oakley. Everything was harvested by Mexicans and then loaded into bins pulled behind the tractor. Marie and I would ride with the bins and do field sorting, pulling out leaves and rotten or other unacceptable bunches. The Zinfandel vines were amazing. They were all bush trained vines meaning they had been pruned to form a bush, no trellising, just big stumps with tendrils growing off the top. Many were over 100 years old, the average probably being around 60 years. All were also planed on their original root stock meaning that they could potentially be attacked by phylloxera (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phylloxera). These vines, though, grow in such sandy/loose soil that it is very difficult for the pest to live and so unlikely that these vineyards will have any trouble. The Zin that cam in was plagued by the odd patch of rot and quite uneven ripening. Some parts of the bunch would be plump and juicy while others were dry and raisiney. This is apparently the difficulty of growing zin, it is very a very ornery plant. This is also a symptom of growing old vines, you have mass variation in yield, health of the vines, and quality. The Petite Syrah on the other hand was fabulous. From much younger vines and trellised, the bunches were evenly ripe and had no signs of rot.

About the harvesters, I really felt for them. They were paid by the number of bins that they harvested so all were running and harvesting as fast as possible. It was incredibly backbreaking work done by the spectrum of young/old male/female workers. It was relatively cool in the morning but by the time the sun came up, it was scorching hot and dusty dry. Very brutal work. People bitch about food prices now, imagine if we actually paid these people a wage relative to the work they do. It struck me as out-sourced slavery.

Snooping around Napa

View Larger Map
So this was my route out here when all said and done. Out of curiosity of my MPG and in case anyone was planning a similar trip in a '03 Ford Ranger 2.3L 4 Cylinder 2WD truck; here are my totals for gas and such:

Average Price: 3.807375
Total Quantity: 150.033
Total Cost: 565.71
Total Miles: 3714
MPG: 24.7545539981204

Here are some pictures from water skiing, we went out again on Wednesday afternoon. This time I felt much better on my legs. Once I got the feel for it, it was a lot like snow skiing and I was able to cut back and forth across the wake and even get a lil air! Near the end of the day I started trying to slalom but was not quite able to get up, but it was close.



Wednesday morning Marie and I headed out to Calistoga to visit some wineries and check out the scene. Many were close to her house so we packed a couple of bottles of Neyers Merlot to tip especially cool people and took off on bikes. The first, and by far the best that we visited, was Envy Estate. Their only white was a Sauvignon Blanc done the in the fume style (a little bit of oak) and were nice. Their reds, thought, were great. Petite Syrah, Cab, and a Bordeaux Blend. The guy who showed us around just walked in from the cellar with dirty hands and all, I love it. We gave him a bottle.

The second was Vincent Arroyo, tiny little place who only sells from their cellar-no distribution. Nice atmosphere and the wines were very nice.

The third was August Briggs. First a note about tasting rooms: some are just open hours and anyone can show up, the rest are by appointment only. The first two and the last (Storybook) were by appointment while August Briggs was open. To get a more personal experience, I highly recommend the appointment wineries.

Last was Storybook. The story behind this winery is that it was originally built way back in the day by two brothers named Grimm. Yep, the same Brothers Grimm. Anyway, it burnt down and then was re bought by some other guy who liked the history and so he incorporated it into the name and label of the winery. The engraved barrel below is also the logo/label for the wines. The vineyards are also from here, amazing views of the hills and mountains from this winery. One interesting thing is that they coated all their barrels with a "Non-toxic, breathable anti-fungal coating" because "if you are going to spend $1300/barrel, they might as well look good". To me it looked like a lacquer or wax coating. I am curious as to how this affects the wine, sure it is "breathable" but I doubt as breathable as bare wood. And whats wrong with the classic mouldy cellar? Some places are just meant to be messy.

Final Leg

I made it to California on the 23rd. After a nice couple of days in SLC, I headed out and did about half the drive one day stopping in Winnemucca, NV and then finishing the trek on Saturday. And thank god I did. If I had to find this place in the dark, I would have been sleeping on the side of the road. The place I am staying is amazing. The Johnstons own a little cottage next to their house that consists of a single bedroom, living room, and kitchen. It is perfect for me. Even better is that they live on the same drive off the main road as Neyers Estate meaning that my commute to work every day will be a 1.5-2 min walk, maximum. After that I found out that they have a ski boat and love to take it out. I think I may be in paradise. No phone service and no Internet at the house but I can use the winery's computer whenever.

The night I arrived, after settling in, I headed over to the house for dinner with Cindy, Tom, and their daughter Chelsey. We had a great, simple meal of home grown lamb and salad (did I mention that they raised sheep?). They broke out a bunch of wine that Cindy makes from grapes grown on her mothers property that was amazing. Their friend David Arthur, who is a vintner here in Napa, stopped by with his daughter and her fiance. What a better intro to the area. Well, it gets better. Sunday we all went out to the lake and spent all day water skiing and tubing around and had Elk sandwiches for lunch. I was able, for the first time, to get up on the skis and was just getting to the point where I could get outside the break by the end of the day. Today my back and legs are killing me but it is such a good pain.

Today was my first at the winery. I finally got to meet the winemaker, Tadeo, face to face after months of talking to him on the phone. It was an easy day and it looks like grapes won't be coming in for at least another week or so but it is nice to be able to ease into the swing of things and learn how they do things here. Our crew will consist of Me, Tadeo, Marie (another intern, from Texas), Roberto, and Bernard. Both Carlos and Bernard speak little to no English so I got to dust off the cobwebs from that part of my brain which, felt quite nice. A very small operation, Tadeo is expecting about 22o tons this year. In comparison at Villa Maria we processed a total of 11,500 tons and some nights I would work through 300-400 tons in 12 hours. This week will be a bit slow so I plan on touring around the area and hopefully finding some trails to bike. Apparently, if you are in the business, the other wineries will wave their tasting fees....