I Am Blaming It On The Coyotes:

I haven’t blogged in a while. Sheer exhaustion. The realities of harvest have set in……little sleep, edgy winemakers and vineyard owners, rain, and now Coyotes.

One of the critical activities leading up to the actual day of harvest is irrigation management. It is the main tool we use to try and influence sugar levels, PH, and other grape chemistry. It isn’t a great tool for accomplishing our goals, but it is the best one we have.

Harvest related irrigation decisions are made during a vineyard walk through and usually implemented immediately. Sometimes implementation is critical. Recently I did a morning vineyard walk through and decided we had to irrigate that night. Because we were doing partial blocks it was a manual opertion. At 7:00 I turned on the system and begin a loop around the 20 plus acres to look and listen for leaks.

When you are tired and looking forward to the end of a 16 hour day, seeing numerous geysers in your vineyard is not a welcome sight. Leaks were spewing furiously at multiple locations. The culprit…..those mangy coyotes. Now the flea bitten bums could have walked all the way down the hillside to the reservoir and drank their fill, but that would be too easy. Instead they chew on the plastic irrigation drip lines and get their water that way. More work for the coyote and more work for me. Two hours later and the leaks were fixed.

Barreling Down…

Monday was a big day at Sanglier Cellars:

Viognier: We started at 2 AM picking Viognier from…..you guessed it, the Coyote Vineyard. We have had some really warm Indian summer days and I wanted the fruit harvested before the pH climbed any higher. The decision to pick is a complex one but I was happy with the flavor, the level of “sun toasting” on the clusters, and the acid levels. So we harvested.

The great thing about farming your own grapes that are made into your wine is the control you have over the process. We picked exactly when we wanted to in the ripening process, picked early in the morning to insure the grapes arrived at the winery cold, and got them to the winery early enough to insure we had unfettered access to the equipment we wanted to use.

I have commented on free run grape juice previously and viognier is one of the more delicious varietals. Sweet and pretty. No doubt about it. Our viognier will be 50% barrel fermented in neutral French oak and 50% in stainless steel. We plan to do a partial malolactic fermentation. Our goal: let the fruit shine, a richer feel in the mouth, but with a clean finish. We will let you know how we did in a year of so.

Pinot Noir: Our fermentation of the Russian River Pinot Noir was nearly complete yesterday so we decided to go to barrel. We like to finish the fermentation in the barrel (yes, we like the richer texture we get from this process) so we “barrel down” around 2 or 3 degrees brix. The wine finishes the process in the French Oak and achieves total dryness.

The Best Job in the Winery is monitoring the juice as it flows to the barrels and we always have volunteers to do this job. Numerous glasses are continually placed under the endless flow of newly fermented wine to assess and judge the qualities of this year’s vintage. Our 2009 is combination of clone 777 and Pommard and we do keep them separate until final blending approximately one year from now. But these tasting notes during the barrel down are worthwhile…at least that is my story.

Highlghts: The 777 has a rich chocolate component to its core of dark red fruit. The Pommard has an earthy (if you like mushrooms, think of mushrooms…if you don’t go with forest floor) to its very dark core fruit.

Prognosis: If we don’t screw it up this pinot will be awesome.

Still to Come: We shoud begin harvesting syrah by the weekend and the grenache, mourvedre, counoise, and cinsault to follow.