Contest Alert! First person to answer in the comments what classic ag logo inspired the hat designed by the band from whom I stole today's title from wins a free bottle of unreleased 2009 Tres Violet. Sorry for the complicated nature of that sentence, I never realized how dificult it is to make a question that is not simply answered with a single google search.
Anyway, harvest keeps marching along here and the last of our Carver Vineyard Pinot Noir came in. I tend to get a bit tired of all the talk about how beautiful and graceful Pinot is. I always think to myself, "You know, there are a ton of varietals that can produce beautiful wines if farmed and cellared properly." But while working with the fruit on the sorting table I realized that there IS something unique about Pinot's grace. The cluster itself just might be my favorite. The Rhones like Syrah, Mourvedre, and especially Grenache can be these huge footballs of grapes. The Bordeauxs are a bit thin and lacy looking, a lot of empty space. Pinot on the other hand just looks perfect.
Each cluster fits perfectly in the hand, usually not much bigger than a pear. Each berry is tucked perfectly in place. It is one of those designs in nature where you start to think about what way you can steal the idea and apply it to some other field. Maybe all this love for the Pinot is just due to the fact that we got fruite that is simply much more beautiful than normal. We actually harvesed with reasonable sugar and acid levels this year as well. For an area not know for producing decent Pinot (or rarely even acceptable pinot at that), this vintage is looking spectacular.
In celebration of Paso Robles doing things right, we ended the day with the present we recieved from the tasting room:
While the Double Barrel Ale is the Firestone beer that is all over this town, this is my personal favorite from our local brew house. It's not an over the top California IPA where its all about maximum hops and power. This is a bit more restrained and appropriate for relaxing during these days where the heat just will not stop. In the spirit of relaxing and another hint towards today's contest, here is today's headphone special. Perhaps my favorite little protest song of all time, which helped lead me down the path to having an old timey job like making wine.
Today was a legitimate day of harvest. We run a small operation so when 8 tons of Chardonnay shows up in the morning, that's a big day for this crew. Add in one of our custom crush clients popping up with a ton of Viognier, and you've got your day's work cut out for you.
One exciting thing about those 8 tons of Chardonnay was that for the first time ever, Calcareous brought in some machine picked fruit. I've only worked at small artisanal wineries, so I've never gotten to work with machine fruit. It is always one of those things I get to say, "All our fruit is handpicked", which sounds cool but I didn't have actual experience of the difference. So just for fun, we decided to try our hand at it.
I'd heard horror stories from friends who worked at wine factories overseas about the "bonus" material that comes along with machine fruit, so I knew we weren't just going to go straight to the press like we do with our Estate Chardonnay. We hand sorted through all 8 tons, pulling out anything and everything that didn't belong. It was quite an eye opener. I won't go into the details here, but I'm not sure I'll ever be able to stomach a $3 bottle of wine quite as much ever again. In order to make that cheaply, you don't take the time and expense to hand sort all the fruit. At the end of the day, the fruit was quite beautiful. I'm excited to see how it turns out. There really wasn't much of a difference quality wise, just a matter of sorting out all the junk in the vineyard of in the winery.
So the press ran all day long, and the barrage of fruit was answered with a barrage of beers. We had some pizza delivered out into the country (by my wife, no pizza guy's coming way out here) and enjoyed these boys.
Some Dutch treats I picked up to test out:
Some German Pale
And the Hipster Pub Standard:
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I think I'm gonna go with the kids on this one. Pabst just has a bit more flavor and slight "enjoyability", though the Oranjeboom was a close second. Beck's was pretty much Bud Light with lederhosen. Luckily, the tasting room showed mercy on me and all the rough stuff I've been drinking and deliverd a couple of six packs of higher caliber hops and malt. The future looks bright.
Also some new jams showed up in the mail yesterday, which always helps.
There is no better physical capacity then your sense of smell, I believe. It is definitely more powerful then most of us think and has the ability to notice the most acute differences. Our eyes seem to be the sense we rely on most but our noses are really underrated by most. When thinking about my dog Abigail, she can find the ball in complete darkness with only her nose, like a needle in a hundred haystacks. It almost seems that her entire world is interpreted and experienced through her nose, one sniff at a time.
So why am I going on and on about our sense of smell. Well for us winemakers there is no other tool, human or mechanical, which we use more. We are constantly smelling everything especially during harvest. Every fermentation is monitored daily by checking the sugar, temperature, and by smelling the odors that are being released. These smells are what give us the most useful information about the progress and condition the yeast are in and if there are any signs of stress. To me this is the most rewarding part of the job. The aromas these fungi (yeast) create by eating sugar is astounding and so many times it is almost impossible to detect any one flavor or fruit characteristic because of their complexity. They are constantly changing daily and show different things at different times. So here is to nosin’ around, Cheers!
An active Syrah ferment. Smells like blueberry cobbler.
Yeast and fresh malbec juice ready for the Rosado.
Last nights feast. Local crab and white burgundy. Why not?
One of the classy grapes arrived today, Pinot Noir, so I felt it was time to step up the beer quality for at least one round. Things could not have looked better coming in from the vineyard. Not only did we answer last year's record low harvest yeild with a record high yeild, the quality of amazing. The free run juice was coming off at 24.5 brix with a 3.21 pH. You could not ask for beter pinot numbers from Paso Robles. When you combine ripe flavors and classic complex earth tannins in the skins, this is the most excited I've ever been about Pinot from our Carver Vineyard. So a proper day to toast with what is still hands down my favorite beer:
I'm sure it has something to do with my love of San Francisco that this is my favorite. But most of all, it stradles that boundry between full flavor and refreshing feel better than other beer for me. So even today, after a long hot day of bringing in the pinot and getting it safely to tank (This year's trial is doing 60%, 30%, and 0% whole cluster ferments. Should be interesting to determine what the mix of stem and intact berries brings to the table.), I can still enjoy and feel revived with my post work beverage.
The first week is always the toughest. Waking up at five in the morning gets you begging for a cup of coffee. However, once you walk in the door and see the tanks full of soon to be wine the excitement comes right back. That first whiff of CO2 coming from a tank is the first indication that the yeast you added the day before are happy and on their way to making wine. And there you are running around getting everything done before more fruit shows up so the whole process can begin again.
Carver Vineyard Pinot Noir, York Mountain.
This morning Jason handed me a bag of Pinot Noir grapes from our Carver vineyard on York Mountain to sample. There is nothing like squeezing cold fruit in the morning with your bare hands and drinking fresh grape juice, full of flavor, color, and acid. The fruit had the right chemistry so were off to pick first thing tomorrow morning.
The most crucial thing when thinking about when to pick, especially Pinot Noir, is the acid. The sugar really is almost irrelevant because it is the acid in the finished wine that gives Pinot its life, that which allows it to be so light on its feet and yet extend the depth of flavors that makes good Pinot. Being an assistant winemaker in Paso, it is almost ironic making Pinot Noir here because of our sun drenched landscape, (avoiding terroir purposely) but site, or place, is everything. With the correct elevation, proximity to the ocean, well drained soils, and viticulture, it is possible to produce a wine of correct typicity and overwhelming individuality. Tomorrow will be the first glance at 2012, cheers!
Tractor, check.... Bins, check..... Truck, check....Here we come!
An old but true adage. So much so that the good people up in Santa Rosa even produced a beer in it's honor. Well, actually they claim it takes "great beer" to make great wine. I hope that's not true, because Rory and Nacho brought in a twelver of these today:
This is the old standby of harvest. Mainly because you can buy it the same time you are filling propane tanks, getting tractor diesel, or grabbing some tri-tip sandwhiches down at Cregor's. I'm not a fan of this, actually I'm quite anti- this beer. Although I'll tip my hat to the Budweiser Don Draper types who thought up the "Superior Drinkability" tag line, I'd put "Marketing You Can Taste" myself. It did at least remind me of a wonderful aspect of harvest though, the time of year. The NFL logo tells you that harvest coincides with high school, college, and pro football kicking into gear. But best of all, the pennant races and playoffs (Are we in store for another epic harvest like 2010?) of America's pastime. This all helps create the context of the harvest. And so be it if I have to drink a few nasty BL's to realize fall is on the way.
Sep 6, 2012 at 10:22 AM
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After a day of fulfilling wine club we were back at it getting the first red fruit of the year. Today we harvested over five tons of Syrah from block 6 here on the estate. This block is one of the steepest slopes we have on the property making it really labor intensive to pick. The fruit tasted and looked great with very clean, oval shaped berries. This year the vines came into balance from the beginning with an even fruit set which led to us not having to green harvest after veraison. These homogenous clusters ripened rather early for us and came off the vine without any raisins. Usually we don’t pick this Syrah until after the Pinot Noir from York Mountain, but like anything in life there are no normality’s when it comes to vineyards. Each year, each block sings to its own tune so it’s imperative you stay on top of fruit sampling and don’t rely on previous year’s harvest dates.
The ever so awesome sorting table. Today was smooth sailing.
We destemmed all of the fruit we harvested today without the use of any crushing to be as gentle as possible. We like whole berries fermentations to maximize the fresh fruit characteristics achieved by keeping the berries intact. I will post more about this in the future as it mostly applies to our Pinot program. The fruit then went into various size tanks to undergo a cold-soak for up to three days before any yeast gets added. This allows several things; first it cools the fruit down so no unwanted native and/or wild yeast can begin fermenting within the must. Second it allows for the extraction process of colors and tannins to begin without the presence of alcohol and at a consistent temperature to stabilize the enzymes within the berries themselves. Lastly, and most basic, cold soaking extends the amount of time the must sits on the skins simply by delaying when we would inoculate.
Just another day in paradise for us in Paso Robles as we were blessed with an amazing Sunrise, Cheers!
The first pick of the vintage is always a time of celebration. Most years we pick our Estate Chardonnay first, and 2012 was no exception. The usual practice is to get all the employees from the vineyard, cellar, tasting room and office, along with families and hand harvest the fruit. Combining a big crew with just one acre of Chardonnay adds up to finishing early and a big communal breakfast. The fresh pressings are blended in with some bubbly for a very special mimosa.
You can't drink Champagne all harvest long though. The long hot days leading into working nights leads the winemaker to beer. Having a lower proof drink avoids the embarrassment of waking up on the cellar floor or crush pad the next morning. For this harvest I'm going to document all the beers that pass through the cellar fridge. From top to bottom, good and bad. The obvious choice for starting off the vintage in celebratory mood was of course The Champagne of Beers!
Miller High Life, while no critical darling, is a wonderful easy drinking beer. The key here is extremely light flavors and nothing obviously off putting. A beer that you can't really say anything bad about, but then again, you can't say anything really good about it either. After cleaning the press and racking the chard must to a settling tank, the refreshment was palpable. Overall, this was not a horrible way to start the beers of 2012 harvest.
Sep 5, 2012 at 8:11 AM
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Today we finished picking our Estate Chard and inoculated the first lot of the season. We like to use a dependable yeast stain isolated from Burgundy, which ferments slowly and efficiently and enhances the varietal and fruity esters we look for in Chardonnay. The temperatures here in Paso are above normal for this time of year pushing everything to ripeness rather fast. This week will be the beginning of all day and all night shifts and the magnificent juggling act that takes place when you are harvesting red and white grapes on the same days while also processing fruit for custom crush clients. It’s always interesting to think, “well I wonder how this is going to work?”, but with a good team you get the job done and at the end of the day still like each other. Here is a picture of lunch on Labor Day, cheers!
Ceviche de Atun, local caught albacore tuna. Wonderful way to celebrate!
Vineyard Manager Martin getting the show on the road.
The day has finally arrived when we get back to work and start making wine. Not to say we haven’t been working these past few weeks scrubbing tanks and equipment, but that really isn’t the part of the job description we aspire to. So the 2012 COSECHA (Harvest) kicked off today with the first pick of our estate Chardonnay. The morning fog was perfect keeping us and the fruit chilly while we happily took the grapes from the vines. This year was everything we hope for in a growing season, very warm temperatures allowing the grapes to mature evenly and smoothly.
The first fruit for our 2012 harvest, Estate Chardonnay Block 10.
The estate Chardonnay was characterized by small pocket clusters yielding just over a ton per acre and the summer heat during August made for just enough golden skins on the cluster shoulders indicating the ripeness we look for in this style of Chardonnay. We are definitely not aspiring for any rendition of an old world wine and appreciate the climate in Paso Robles that creates full flavored, textured, and layered wines. We make three different styled chardonnays here at Calcareous, mainly differing in oak and malo-lactic levels.
The fruit we harvested today will be cold settled then racked into a variety of French oak barrels letting each fermentation to go slowy by managing temperature. Then we let it rest on its lees occasional stirring allowing secondary fermentation to carry out naturally in barrel. The miniscule yields we get from the vineyard really concentrate the flavors within the berries themselves giving us the components we desire. Every year the vines get a little bit older, the roots dig a little deeper, all adding more depth and typicity to the final wines each vintage. Not only is this wine the most exciting because it gets harvested first but because it is so much fun to make and watch evolve during its elevage in the cellar.
I made a guess in June this year when we would start harvest and I chose September 1, so I was pretty close only missing it by a day, not bad! For the first time in two years we began picking in August so hopefully this year won’t be such a nail biter going into the fall season. We will be posting daily Harvest on-goings and pictures so stay tuned. Cheers!
The 2012 Calcareous Vineyard Harvest Team and cadet toasting with Champagne and Chardonnay press juice mimosas. (John, Luis, Martin, Ignacio, Rory, Herschel, Jason)
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