Notes From The Winemaker

• 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.