Looking good out here

    Sunset samples-they’re becoming something of a tradition.  Of course, this year’s version is in the middle of October instead of September-which means it get’s darker a whole lot sooner!

     Fortunately, the sun was up long enough that I was able to get all the samples I wanted in sunlight and got treated to a wonderful sunset and start of the evening.  There are certainly worse ways to spend your time.

     Besides all the great views, the goal of tonight’s excursion was to see if the grapes have had a chance to move closer to ripeness after 3+ days of sun-and indeed they have.  We’re now seeing the lead blocks hit 22-23 brix.  The acid levels are still a bit too aggressive-but they too have moved in the right direction.

     Fortunately, we’ve still got the weather on our side-the forecast looks good for the next week.  The birds are definetly out in force, but so far the damage hasn’t been too bad (cross your fingers!).  So for now, we’re still waiting-but we’re getting close.  I suspect that many of the blocks will come to ripeness within a short time period.  Things could get very busy!

     We’ll keep taking samples over the next few days and we should have the start of harvest dialed in soon!

  Well we are getting closer & closer to harvest.  It’s always an exciting-and nervous-time of the year.  You have all your hopes & work hanging out there on the vines…but it’s just not quite time to pick yet.  You watch the weather, try to chase off birds and check the grapes for ripeness.  Mostly you have to wait-which is an activity that most people find less than enjoyable.

     I’ve heard a lot of rumors of low ripeness around the valley.  I haven’t had a chance to check out any other vineyards or see their numbers myself, so I can’t say for certain.  Best I can do is report on our vineyard: as noted in the title I am (very) cautiously optimistic. 

      We had a chance to take our first cluster samples this last Sunday and the results were good:  19.5 Brix for our lead blocks, 18 Brix for the rest of the Pinot.  The Pinot Gris looks to be in the 17-18 brix range.  Of course, we were picking these grapes at this time last year with 23-24 brix.  It definetly has been a cooler year.  That’s not always a bad thing-after all, the 2008′s that we are loving so much right now were picked in a cool year.

     So we’d like to see another 4-6 brix in sugar levels before picking-and we may be able to get it.  It’s been a great week’s worth of sun and looking at the extended forecast (how do they know what the weather will be 15 days out?) it looks like more of the same with the exception of a rain event late this weekend.  That kind of sun & dryness should (should!) get us to acceptable levels of ripeness.

     Of course, I’m talking about sugar ripeness and that’s never the whole story.  We’re truly interested in what I like to call phenological ripeness as well as physiological ripeness-i.e. that the color, flavors & tannins are developed.  I feel pretty good here too-I’m already seeing brown seeds & stems (good phenological indicators) and the color pick-up on crushing the cluster samples looks promising.  Again, 2008 is a good example:  a dry October allowed for plenty of the color & flavor development that we are now enjoying out of the bottle.

     We’ll be back taking more samples this weekend-we’ll get a good idea of how far we’ve come in a week and a good chance to estimate how much further we’ll get – and when we’ll harvest.  Cross your fingers!

Wow. Some of my first posts last year were about Veraison…and here we are again. Well, sorta, cause as noted, we’re running later this year. At any rate, some pix:

A little color at last...

It’s nice to see some color, finally. This color came in last Tuesday-Wednesday during our three day ‘heat wave’. Heat wave roughly defined as ‘temperature over 90′. We’ve got another one today-looks like the temperature might actually get to 93 or so! Whew.

At any rate, all of these cool temperatures mean that harvest will start later this year than last year-probably in mid October. Which day it will be will probably depend a lot more on the rain forecast in October and how quickly all the wineries can move fruit in. But it’s two or so months away-anything can happen. Like a heat wave in September? That’d be nice…

Be careful of your fingers!

One thing we/I do when we’re going to run late like this is to thin the crop down. Less crop should mean the grapes that are left will get riper quicker-something we’ll need this year, I think.

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Hi everyone!  Welcome back!

Start of the 2010 Harvest.

So, no, the post title isn’t about my lack of blogging-although it could be. 

No, it’s been a cool spring & summer-in case you haven’t noticed.  Given the large amount of rain, you probably have.  We like to say here in Oregon that summer doesn’t start until after July 4th…but it’s been a bit too close to the truth this year.

Growth continues...despite the cold & rain.

Sorry for the delay in posting!  Although all the fruit is in, there is no rest quite yet…we need to get the wine through primary fermentation.

Barrel-in on a rainy day...

     Middle of the 4th inning, the tarp is off the field and the teams are warming up.  What am I talking about?  Just a poor baseball analogy for this year’s harvest.  We’ve been waiting a bit here for the weather to clear-and it has-and we are now ready to get back into the swing of this harvest.

     What is still out there?  We still have our Pinot Gris lot to bring in as well as four Pinot Noir lots.  It’s almost all Pommard-the oldest clones and blocks we have.  I’m kinda excited to see what we’ll get.  If there was ever a year for these older vines to shine, this would be it: plenty of hang time, plenty of vigor still left in the vines and crop levels that they should be able to handle.  I look forward to getting them to a fermentor.

     Speaking of fermentors, the first four lots of Pinot Noir have all started their fermentations.  For those of you wine geeks out there, here are some of the key stats: 

Lot     Brix     pH

115     24.9    3.61

114    23.7    3.72

667    23.4   3.66

777   23.5   3.67

     These are great numbers-but wine is more than numbers, it’s flavor and color-and those also are looking good!  The caps that have formed on the fermentors are nice and black and the color of the juice is coming along nicely.  You never really know what you’ll get for a wine’s flavor and color until many months down the road-but so far I’m very happy with these!

Nothing like picking a little Malbec on a nice Sunday, right?  We’re waiting for more Pinot (Gris or Noir) to ripen.  Dad happens to have a few other varietals planted in small experimental quantities.  This includes a single row of Malbec.  It’s in the hottest part of the vineyard, but Oregon might not be warm enough.  But hey, it’s always fun to try new things. 

Dad starts in on the Malbec

That's all the one row had...