This Is A Bit Cool For Indian Summer
Here in the North coase we usually see warm and dry weather after the equinox (Indian Summer) that allows our grapes to ripen gently and cleanly – with little Botrytis or other rots. This is what we have seen since the tenth of an inch of rain a week ago: a bit humid, but warm into the mid 80's during the day.
This weather pattern started changing yesterday.
A strong trough is diving south , but to the east of us – what my favorite forecasters call an "inside slider." It looks like the back side of the Sierras is going to get an inch of snow, but here we are only in for cool, windy, and dry – extra applications of lip balm kind of dry.
The temperature near the vineyard at sunrise was 46° F but ut has fallen since then to 42°. We are projected to warm into the mid-70's but it is supposed to be even cooler tonight and Saturday night. I expect this to signal the vines to drop some leaves, at least in the Syrah.
The very dry conditions are going to pull water from the leaves in the daylight hours, unless the wind is consistently strong enough to close the stomates. Yesterday I asked Jean-Marie to put 4 hours of water on the Mourvedre, uphill on the shallowest soil with the lowest water-holding capacity on the site, against this possibility.
Yesterday all the Syrah clones sampled at about 25° Brix. There has been a marked improvement in seed ripeness just over the last four days. Things are moving quickly now – I expect to have all the Syrah off by the end of next week, especially as the dry weather is going to drive the sugars up a bit faster.
The Grenache, Mourvedre and Counoise sampled at 23°, 22° and 21° respectively. I feel we are still on track to bring all these grapes in by early November as we have for the past three years. Right now it looks like the weather is going to help us out – the warmest day in the extended forecast is at day 10.
At the winery: Inoculated the Tannat on Wednesday. The caps in the Pinot are up on Kloeckera, which makes me happy. I will think about inoculating them today, or perhaps tomorrow. I am doing a Pinot Noir experiment in the WinePods: asking whether long deliberate cold soak is actually beneficial (as opposed to faddish), and if a sumberged-cap ferment will produce a drinkable wine.
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Pinot And Tannat In
It was a very long day Friday. Seems like everyone was picking to beat the rain, not just us. My crew of ten guys had already pulled in over 50 tons under lights before they got to our Estate at dawn. They were tired. And SLOW.
And the picking was light –
very light.
A couple weeks ago, I estimated our Pinot at 2.25 tons/acre. When all was said and done Friday, it came in at less than 1.9 t/a. I was hoping for six tons total for Westwood and about 2.2 tons for a willing buyer. I ended up with just over five tons for us, and shorted my buyer down to under a ton. Ouch. The Tannat was even lighter, relatively speaking – we only brought in 0.88 tons when history and our estimate led us to expect well over two tons.
Yield complaints aside, the fruit quality is excellent. It took the better part of the regular day to get the fruit picked, trucked to the winery and weighed. I did not start processing until 6 pm and didn't leave until midnight. Long day.
The expected rain started a little after 8 pm Friday night – it was not as heavy as we had feared. We only accumulated about a tenth of an inch overnight; nothing to worry about after all. Saturday was cloudy and humid but breezy. It did not warm up Sunday as much as expected.
This morning I will be in the vineyard at sunup to sample Syrah, which I expect to start picking for buyers by Thursday or Friday this week, and maybe for Westwood over the weekend. I will be on the lookout for Botrytis after the rain, but really don't expect to find any.
The forecast is for dry, warmer and breezier – there is even a mention of fire weather concern – with cooler temperatures arriving with another dry frontal system by the end of the week. I'll take that forecast, happily.
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Surprise, Surprise!
I was surprised to see so much yellowing in the Syrah when I checked the vineyard Monday – in the shot above you can see a clear line between the Syrah 877 to left of center and the greener Counoise and Grenache to the right. This change happened since Saturday. We aren't out of water; the berries are plump and the leaves aren't dropping. It is just Fall.
Everything I sampled Monday had jumped between 1.8° and 2.5° Brix from a week ago. Forecast is calling for as much as an inch of rain Friday night. I'm bringing in the Pinot Noir Friday morning – could not get the pickers even a day sooner.
The seeds in the Pinot are ready. The flavors are ripe and the pulp is pulling away from the seeds. But the skins are still slow to give up their color.
I prefer not to use enzymes on Pinot Noir. But if there ever was a vintage where a cellulase/hemicellulase preparation added during pre-fermentation maceration would help, this is it.
I'm also bringing in the Tannat on Friday.
The weather is supposed to dry and warm quickly after the rain. We will start into the Syrah next week.
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...And Waiting, But Not Much Longer
After five days of warmer weather there is enough onshore push this morning that the marine layer has returned. It is forecast to be cooler for the next couple of days. I'm off to sample the Estate this morning with intern Eddie – hoping and praying that the Pinot is close to ready.
One – I just want to get started! Two – we are looking at a rainy forecast for Friday. Unlike the last rain projection
this one looks to be more solid. By Friday night rain is expected to spread across Sonoma County and into the south Bay. No prediction of amounts yet and there is the promise of warm and dry behind the front.
I have no doubt that the fruit will hold up fine to several moderate shots of rain, without developing Botrytis or other rots. I just don't need the worry. That's why I want to get started – once I am in the flow of harvest I won't have so much inclination to hand-wringing.
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...And Waiting...
In my last post (9/18) I mentioned that the forecast had backed off of rain for Thursday. Well, the revised forecast was wrong.
I was back in the barrel stack topping when the smell of rain hit me from outside. For me it was a bit of a sphincter-tightening moment, but fortunately the front came through without leaving more than a few hundredths of an inch – nothing to fret over.
The Pinot samples on the morning of the 18th posted 22.5° Brix – no change in a week. Sampled Pinot again today and got almost 23.0° Brix. At this rate
it might be October before I pick any Pinot after all.
The forecast (please be right!) is calling for warmer and drier through the end of the week. This would be a good thing. The Tannat is at 23.0 ° Brix today, the Syrahs are around 21.0° Brix and the Mourvedre is all of 19.2° – I didn't even bother with the Grenache and Counoise, since they appear to have just now completed veraison.
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Waiting Game
Bottling yesterday went smoothly. I am happy with the wines, especially with the redFour (Rhône blend) – the package turned out well also.
Now I can focus all my attention on the coming harvest. When that is going to be, who knows? Clear skies this morning for a change, but the
Wundermap is showing mid-40's and even some mid-30's.
That's cold for not even being officially in Fall yet. The projected highs for the next couple of days are only in the low- mid-70's. The vines will not be doing much at these temperatures. I'm off this morning to take some vineyard samples, but I expect them to show that I will be waiting to pick anything for a while yet.
At least the forecast has backed off from predicting rain for tomorrow.
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Oh Great...
Yesterday I brought in a tiny bit of Pinot – some young-vine stuff that was going to the birds if I were not to take it first. The Pinot on the mature vines is still a week away. And now the forecast is calling for rain Thursday-Friday.
At least it does not look to be a lot of rain. And at least it is not coming until after I finish bottling tomorrow – the mobile line has to be set up outside because the winery is already full of fermenters.
I'm just hoping that this is not the start of a pattern of rain. I sampled Tannat yesterday (22.3° Brix) and it is just a bit behind the Pinot in terms of readiness. But I have rarely seen clusters this tight – touch them and berries on the outside literally pop off. The skins are still very tough, but much rain before harvest and these are going to rot. Luckily, all the other varietals (Syrah, Mourvedre, Counoise, even Grenache) have loose clusters this year.
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Genius, Moron Or Dumb Luck
This evening I borrowed 24 yellow stacking lugs (affectionately known as "FBY's") from my neighbor Don Van Staaveren at
Three Sticks and took them up to the vineyard. My 22nd harvest officially starts tomorrow, with a tiny pick planned from our youngest blocks of Pinot – the clone 777 and clone 943.
The winery I co-habit with is already done harvesting Pinot for the year, and I have yet to pick grape one. This is in part because our Estate is in a very cool location, but also because I waited until the end of April to prune the vineyard. This was late –
very late. Could be that after this vintage is done I am going to see myself as a genius – or as a total moron.
Driving up and down Highway 12 this evening to deliver the lugs, I was astonished to see how much fruit has come off the vineyards in the valley floor in the last couple of days. Whites and reds both. To my thinking all this fruit was harvested earlier than it should have been. I mean, bud break was not that early, nor was flowering. Or veraison. I ask – where's the hang time?
Our Estate fruit is getting hang time. So far it is looking as though the extra leaf removal our guys did in the Pinot is helping to slow the rate of sugar accumulation in these Dijon clones compared to earlier years. We are experienceing a long stretch of cooler weather, which is helping too. I'm seeing small clusters and small berries, and I'm getting maybe 3 weeks more hang time than other local Pinot. I'm expecting to make some of the most concentrated and balanced wines of the vintage. Choosing to prune late looks like genius.
After the crew finishes picking tomorrow they are moving into the Rhone varietals to drop any clusters that are not well-colored yet. It looks like the Grenache and Counoise are finally at about 75%-85% color. Not a chance that I am going to pick any of those grapes before November 1 – in the normal course of things. Unless rain forces my hand.
See, this morning the forecast talked about the possibility of a cold trough dropping in from the Gulf of Alaska in 7-8 days, and mentioned that this would be unusually early for this type of storm system to reach our area. Suddenly my prescient delay in pruning until after the last big frost of the year looks like it may come up against an early wet season. Moron!
Or maybe its just dumb luck. I will know for sure by early November.
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Happily, Continuing Cool Temperatures
Tuesday the local paper reported on the front page that the two-week heat spell we just got through pushed so many grapes along so fast that the pickers could not keep up with the demand to "get it off the vine." It looks to me so far in the 2008 vintage here that a lot of fruit is coming in too early – before
physiological ripeness.
Than't not going to be a problem for our vineyard this year.
Yesterday I pulled samples from the individual blocks of established Pinot. Both the clone 115 and the 667 gave identical 22.5° Brix readings – actually down 0.3° Brix from last Saturday.
This is what I expected (and hoped) to see as the vines recovered from the extended heat. I noted a bit of scorching on exposed clusters, but Eric Stern, visiting from Landmark Vineyards in Kenwood, said "Ãthis is nothing compared to some of the fruit we have taken in so far this year."
Eric noted that they are already 60% done with their Pinot harvest. I am still at least two weeks away. And the forecast this morning has backed away from predicting another warming trend – the predicted highs are in the low- to mid-80's for the next ten days, with nights in the 50's. It is 51°F, calm and overcast at the vineyard this morning.
When I think about "physiological ripeness" what comes to mind is a balance between the sugar and acid in the juice, but more important, the individual characteristics of the pulp, skin, and especially the seeds. As winegrapes ripen sugar goes up and acid goes down. But "ripening" is about so much more: the pulp softens and loosens up, the skin gets soft and gives up color easier. But the biggest and to my mind the most critical changes happen to the seeds.
The seeds start out soft, spongy-feeling, white and bitter-tasting. As they ripen they turn brown and get crunchy, and the flavor changes to something like cardboard with chocolate.
The balancing act in choosing when to pick arises because sugar, acid, pulp, skins and seeds all change at different rates. Picking at "the" optimum for all of these parameters is impossible – the best that can be achieved is a local optimum. Much of the time, waiting for seed ripeness can mean high sugar, low acid, and skins and pulp past perfection.
This year, for the first time in my 22 vintages, the seeds are mostly ripe before everything else. The color, texture and flavor of the seeds are there, but the skins are hardly giving up any color to the samples. Interesting.
Yesterday I also took our first samples of Syrah. The clone 877 block read 19.2° and the Tablas Creek clone A block, 19.5° Brix. Unlike the Pinot samples, the Syrah skins are already giving up some color.
I may be picking Pinot before the end of September, but I think I am 4 to 5 weeks from picking Syrah.
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Oh, It's ON Now!
When they picked Bob Hunter's Pinot Noir for Gloria Ferrer on
August 1st this year it marked the earliest start to the grape harvest in memory (even in my sieve-like recall). It freaked me out a little, since at the time I had not a blush of color in our Estate Pinot Noir.
Thank goodness things change, and change they have. We finally had a prolonged heat spell – the last two weeks saw daytime highs around 100°F and nighttimes in the mid-60's – something that we have missed all Summer. This really pushed our vineyard along. Now we are in our second day of a cool spell, with a return of the marine layer, days in the high 70's and nights around 50°F. This morning at dawn our back deck was wet with drizzle.
This past Saturday (9/6) I pulled my first sample from our clone 115 and 667 Pinot, and got a 22.8° Brix. My normal expectation is that the sugar will rise about a Brix a week, meaning I will be pulling grapes somewhere around 9/20.
Things don't always go according to my expectation. In prior harvests I have seen that the Dijon clones of Pinot have a tendency for the sugar to shoot up as harvest approaches. This year I have had the crews through the Pinot three times to pull excess leaf area, in hopes of moderating the rate of sugar accumulation in the fruit.
My winery co-habitants have been bringing in fruit for a week. I'm grateful that our Estate is behind – I have a bottling scheduled for 9/17 (what an idiot!). I've been travelling and getting ready for the bottling, and away from this blog for over six weeks. Maybe I will have a few more notes to make now that I am closer to home for the next few months.
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Clusters Catching Up
These are the same Mourvedre clusters I showed in my
July 3rd post.
The cluster on the left had developed to the point where the cluster on the right was two weeks ago. I will be keeping an eye on these two to see if the later cluster catches up.
Differences that were evident in the Pinot and Syrah earlier in the season are no longer distinguishable – all the clusters appear similar now. The Counoise has been uniform from day one for some reason this year, when all the other varietals have not.
The berries seems small to me. I'm wondering if this will be characteristic of the vintage.
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New Vineyard Denizen
Today I saw this male American kestrel hunting in the new HVS Pinot block.
Every year since we started the vineyard I have observed two species of hawk, a pair of kites and at least one owl (who I still have not had a good look at – he or she likes to buzz my head from behind at dusk – I feel puff of wind and see a dark flash, is all). But this kestrel is our first falcon, and probably the prettiest bird at the Estate.
I characterize our husbandry of the vineyard as "whole-ecosystem management" rather than "sustainable farming practices". I like to think that having a diversity of wildlife at the vineyard is an indication that our practices are allowing a complete ecology to flourish. I'm hoping to see a female kestrel soon.
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Smoke Taint Vintage?
We are experiencing a high pressure ridge here on the West Coast just now that is 1) baking us under a blanket of heat, and 2) wreaking havoc with our air quality.
After a cool-to-balmy weekend it really started to heat up Monday, when I saw the mercury at 106° F in the afternoon. Yesterday it was 108° and we are expecting 110° today and tomorrow.
Also since Monday we have had blood-red sunrises and sunsets again, as we did in the
middle of June. Smoke from every fire between Shasta and Santa Barbara is trapped under this statewide temperature inversion. Here in Sonoma we just have hazy skies.
Closer to the fires the air is thick with smoke and the smell of burning.
The
million dollar question (literally) for winemakers this vintage is, "
will the smoke affect the grapes?".
The issue is current, showing up in posts on Wines & Vines ("Dark Cloud Over California Growers", July 1, 2008) and Wine Spectator ("Northern California Vineyards Impacted by Wildfires", July 9, 2008).
My interest in this question started last Wednesday when Alex MacGregor, a winemaker friend of mine in Ukiah, called to ask me if I had any experience with smoke tainted wines. I had not, but he mentioned that he had, when he was working at a winery in the Okanagan Valley in 2003.
That year a large forest fire filled the area with smoke, and actually burnt through the ground cover of the vineyard where my friend worked, affecting their Merlot. Tom DiBello, winemaker at Cedar Creek Winery in the Okanagan Valley (and a former colleague at Stag's Leap Wine Cellars back in the day) mentioned in a 2005 interview with Appellation America that the fire affected their Pinot Noir in 2003.
That very afternoon last week I recieved an email from Arthur Przebinda, author of "Wine Sooth", asking for my take on smoke taint wines. I had already started some online research when Arthur emailed me a short list of references to brushfires in Western Australia and Victoria in 2003-04 and 2006-07 which caused substantial commercial losses due to smoke taint in wines (1, 2). I have cited some of the references Arthur provided throughout this post (thanks for the heads-up, Arthur!).
I have spent the last week reviewing references and talking to various people. The problem is real. The Australian Wine Research Institute (AWRI) has a current page on smoke taint on their website, which cites a seven-page Industry Report on the problem. The Victoria Department of Primary Industries (VDPI) presents a more detailed (bandwidth-choking) 59-page report. Kennison et al. report on smoke-derived taint in wine in J Agric Food Chem. 2007 Dec 26;55(26):10897-901 (abstract here).
Shorter references: - Smoke actually gets into the berries – not on the surface, dissolved in the waxy cuticle as I first presumed.
- Ash fall does not contribute to taint, and washing the clusters before harvest or before crushing will not reduce taint.
- The mode of entry appears to be transpiration through the leaves. It is presumed that the passive uptake of smoke-related compounds is blocked by the Casparian strip in the root structures.
- The critical period is during rapid berry expansion around veraison, when the vines are translocating most into the berries.
- The compounds that appear in tainted tissues, berries and wines are: guaiacol, 4-methylguaiacol, 4-ethylguaiacol, 4-ethylphenol, eugenol, and furfural.
- These compounds don't appear to be metabolized once they are in the grapes – small decreases in concentration after exposure are attributed to berry expansion.
- Some varietals are more susceptible than others: the VDPI report cites Sangiovese (most) > Cabernet Sauvignon > Chardonnay > Shiraz > Merlot (least); relative susceptibilities of other varietals were not mentioned.
- Taint characters survive fermentation and most fining agents are ineffective, though carbon (OUCH!) will take some 4-methylguaiacol out.
- Reverse osmosis treatment can be used to reduce taint in finished wines, just as it has been used to reduce the presence of similar compounds produced by Brettanomyces. Melbourne-based Memstar is already promoting their service on their website (if their warnings on the risk of taint seem a bit hyperbolic – um, they are selling a service after all) and Winetech is sure to follow.
I spoke with Sue Langstaff, sensory guru at Vinquiry Napa, to ask her about evaluation of smoke-tainted wines. She admitted to limited experience, but noted that the actual effects of taint can be slight, particularly in red wines.
In support, Rémy Charest, in a March 19, 2008 post to his blog "The Wine Case", noted regarding a smoke-affected wine that "the smokiness was noticeable by comparison with the other cuvées. I'm not sure anybody would have rated it a defect otherwise, or even noticed it as an external factor."
The Australian references also note that the effects of smoke taint are most problematic in white varietals. Nevertheless, I feel it would be unwise to underestimate the potential for damage to red grapes.
As I noted in an earlier post, we are mowing and discing more than usual at our Annadel Estate vineyard to minimize the risk of fire actually getting onto the property.
So far we have not had the kind of sustained, heavy, oppressive smoke that has impacted the Santa Barbara and Mendocino regions. But I will be taking precautions. I may have the grapes tested for taint compounds before harvest, especially if we have some serious smoke between now and then. I will work with the pickers extra hard to minimize leaf material in the lugs. I probably won't be doing any ferments on stems if there is a chance of taint.
And I'm thinking about maybe spraying the vines with Surround WP™. I spoke with Katie Madigan at St. Francis Winery, where they have been using this engineered Kaolin material to protect against sunburn and reduce transpiration. They have been very happy with the wines they have made with Surround™-treated grapes. I wonder if this material might reduce the susceptibility of the vines to smoke.
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Cluster Irregularity
This is how the Mourvedre looks today. You can see
that there is a fairly wide dispartiy between the cluster on the right with pea-sized berries and the one on the left where the berries have hardly started to size.
This disparity is greater than I saw in the Pinot Noir a little over two weeks ago. I didn't get a pic of the Pinot clusters today, but the differences between the earlier and later clusters there have largely disappeared.
My expectation is that the same will happen in the other varietals. I noted today that there are pea-sized berries in the Grenache as well but there are also clusters that have just started to bloom. At least the Mourvedre seems done with bloom.
I was out in the vineyard today to meet with another winemaker who buys Grenache, Counoise and Mourvedre from us. She is concerned that there will be differences between these early and late clusters (She also noted that she is seeing a similar phenomenon in vineyards she is looking at all over Sonoma County) that will persist through harvest.
That may be the $1,000-per-ton question. In my experience there are analytical and sensory differences between first and second crop, and between pre- and post-frost first sets. However, that is not what we are dealing with in our vineyard this year – the early and late clusters at the Estate are all post-frost first crop.
I have seen this early/late bloom phenomenon several times before in my career, and can say I have never tasted a significant difference at harvest. The clusters end up looking the same post-veraison, and if there are differences in taste by harvest they are too small for this poor old palate to detect. Smaller than angels dancing on the head of a pin, but real enough in the imaginary realm of the gedanken experiment to be an open question in my mind.
There really are times I wish I was still doing research at a large winery, where I would have the time and resources to pursue this kind of question.
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Smoke Cleared - For Now
The weather has cooperated, helping firefighters tamp down the last of the local blazes, and the smoke has cleared from the air here in Sonoma Valley. But
the north of the State is still smoky, especially from fires south of Big Sur and west of Red Bluff. The guys fighting the fires in Mendocino National Forest caught a break a couple of days ago when a persistent temperature inversion finally broke, improving visibility enough that grounded tanker planes and helicopters could finally take to the air.
We are having unusual weather here for early July. It is relatively cool, but also relatively dry. The winds that seemed to blow throughout late May and most of June have subsided – lucky for the firefighters – but every little bit of weather that rounds the persistent trough off the coast brings the threat of dry lightning and more fires.
I was in the Estate vineyard this morning, and the set in the Pinot is really outstanding. This could be another fabulous Pinot vintage. By comparison I see that some of the Rhône grapes are showing wide variation in cluster development. On the same vine I see clusters with pea-sized berries and clusters just finishing bloom.
Fortunately most of the crop on these vines is in between. After veraison it will be easy to thin the clusters that are behind (they will still be green when all else is colored) and I'm not worried about the stuff that is far ahead of the rest – it is a small fraction of the total, and may actually pass raisining to dry husks before harvest. I'm expecting great things from our Rhône varietals this vintage as well, it's just going to take a little more farming effort than the Pinot.
For the last week we have had a marine layer and temperatures in the low 50's in the mornings, with early clearing and afternoon highs in the high 80's. Through the weekend we expect to see temps rise into the 90's, which would be good for the vineyard. I hope to see some veraison before the end of July – keeping my fingers crossed!
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Really GOOD Blogging
Lately I have run across some
really good wine blogs. The other day I was fact-checking one of my own posts and came across
a group of newish blogs – well, entirely new to me.
It may be hard to fathom, but honestly I started keeping this blog back in 2005 as a personal journal – something to help me record what, when and why I did things in the vineyard and winery, to help me fact-check my own too-fallible memory. And to get the occasional rant off my chest.
After I opened our Tasting Salon in Sonoma, every so often someone would come in and say they found the place after stumbling across and reading my blog. "Wow" – I thought.
It wasn't until 18 months after starting the blog that I finally linked to it from the commercial Westwood site. I didn't start the blog as a marketing tool, but duh. Now the site metrics show that the blog gets twice the hits of the main page. Go figure.
This is all by way of saying I'm a bit surprised that this little journal of weather reports, thank yous, and occasional minor triumphs (or setbacks) is interesting to anyone but me – especially when I read some wine-topical writing that is actually good, and incidentally entertaining.
I'm talking about discovering blogs by Steve Heimhoff, Tom Wark, Arthur Przebinda, and Josh Hermsmeyer. These guys are taking the time to write really interesting stuff, and to do it well. Chapeau, people!
(Quick disclaimer: There are hundreds of great wine blogs on the internet. I miss Emily Resling's.)
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New Banking Relationship
Earlier today I got official word that the new financing arrangement we have been working on for what –
forever? – funded. Westwood is now one of the brands supported by the
wine division at Silicon Valley Bank.
This is
huge for us – our biggest accomplishment of the year as a business and a major milestone on our path to success. The new, expanded credit facility makes it much easier for us to increase our plantings at the Annadel Estate.
Stronger banking support also will help us more aggressively support the brand as we release new wines in the market, and manage the transition from being a winery that relies on all purchased fruit to one that is nearly 100% Estate-grown.
Silicon Valley Bank serves an elite group of wineries. I think its cool that we have been invited to play in the same sandbox.
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Fires...
It has been very smoky here in our Valley for the last week or more. First the Humboldt Fire made everything hazy, and then the much closer Wild Fire over in Wooden Valley (northeast of the town of Napa and northwest of Fairfield) really started
to smoke up the place.
Sunrise was blood red this morning. Everything outside is starting to show a light coating of ash. A short time ago, a friend who works with Phil Coturri told me all his guys are up fighting a new fire near Cavedale Road above town.
The area last burned when a power line hit a tree, touching off the 1996 Cavedale Fire which burned over 2,000 acres and seriously damaged homes and vineyards on the western slopes of Mount Veeder.
So far this year's Cavedale burn is small, and let's hope the fuel load has not built up much since the big burn twelve years ago (who could believe it has been that long!).
I talked with Jean-Marie today and we arranged to get the big disc and tractor out to the Estate tomorrow to knock down the dried vegetation surrounding the vineyard with at least a 30'-wide setback. If an ember drifts down and the dried stuff gets torched, we're hoping to keep the blaze from jumping into the trees and climbing the hillside above the property.
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Putting It Out There!
I'm spending more time filling wine orders these days. This is a good thing! I just recently started shipping wine to
New York. The first order shipped today in fact.
I'm working with Brian DiMarco at Barterhouse, a very specialized distributor with a high quality book. Ours is one of just three California brands represented. I'm really excited for Westwood to be there.
Also this week Westwood started showing up in the State of Pennsylvania's Premium Selection Stores. Buyer Steve Pollack really likes the wines and has a great plan to build our brand.
Over the last couple of months I was happy to get some wines sold in Arizona through Integris Wine Partners, our distributor there, before it got too hot. That is one market that definitely switches to colder beverages in the Summer.
Springboard Wine Company has been doing a fabulous job for us here in Northern California, as well as working hard to hook us up with quality representation in other regions. I'm proud to be one of their select clientele, as well as a supplier.
Now it is time for me to start booking plane tickets. I need to go visit and help our partners in Southern California, Texas and Washington to get things moving again.
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Pinot Fully In Bloom
Checked out the progress of bloom today This is a cluster in the clone 115 Pinot. You can see every stage of bloom here.
At the right of the photo you can see a few flowers with protective caps (calyptra) still covering them. Wine grapes have "perfect" flowers – both male and female parts – and can self-fertilize. More often than not this probably occurs when the calyptra is still covering the flower.
Most of the rest of the flowers in the photo appear to be fertilized – the ovules appear to be swelling and some stamens have fallen off.
I shot this photo from below the canopy to catch two clusters. The one on the left is at about the same state as the cluster in the photo above. The cluster on the right is a couple of days ahead of the one on the left – the ovules are clearly swollen to almost bb-sized. It is also good to see very little "shatter" – unfertilized ovules falling off their stems – so far.
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