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NVWR® 112 – 2010 Harvest Recap
November 23, 2010 by David
Filed under Napa Valley Wine Radio
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
2010 is a year none of us will be able to forget for a very long time. Fortunately for us at Goosecross, this vintage year may very well produce some of the most flavorful wines in our 25 year history!
Sit back and enjoy a glass of wine while Nancy Hawks Miller, our Director of Education, tells you about this roller coaster of a vintage and what you can expect from it.
For more wine education:
- Visit goosecross.com where we have over 80 carefully researched educational articles available for you
- Enjoy our 2-minute audio Fun Facts on the world of wine and food
- Our video library offers a show and tell on wine production and enjoyment
- See if you can ace our Wine Trivia Challenge!
- Visit Colleen’s Kitchen for delicious recipes, paired with wine
NVWR® 95 – Harvest Recap 2009
December 1, 2009 by David
Filed under Napa Valley Wine Radio
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
It’s hard to believe another harvest has come and gone. If anyone has told you that every year is the same here in Napa Valley, don’t you believe it!
Sit back and enjoy a glass of wine while I tell you about this, seemingly, text-book growing season that threw us a curve ball at the end.
Harvest ends in Napa Valley – Work continues!
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Fun Fact by Nancy Hawks Miller, Goosecross: Harvest ends in Napa Valley – Work continues!
Did you enjoy this? Here are more Fun Facts from Goosecross Cellars.
Goosecross: Crushing Cabernet Franc
Enjoy this 2-minute video of stemming and crushing the Cabernet Franc from our Estate here at the Goosecross winery in Yountville, Napa Valley. Join us on our crushpad – you’ll see how the freshly picked grapes go into the hopper and are fed into the small machine called a crusher-stemmer before going into a fermentation tank. Fermentation for this Cabernet Franc took about one week. Cheers!
Harvest Update from Goosecross
Our Harvest Calendar tells the story. September brought us a few blasts of heat and the grapes came rolling in at a fairly rapid fire. The bad news: It’s exhausting to have so many burners going at once. The good news: A lot of the really hard work is behind us, now, so we begin to see the light at the end of the tunnel. 
So, how’s it going? Of course, you expect me to say it’s going great, so I’ll be pleased to oblige! After the roller coaster that was 2008, this has been a beautiful growing season.
Number one, flavors are right where I want them. Beautiful balance, great flavor intensity.
Number two, yields are nice and normal. In some cases, like our Cabernet Franc, even generous! That’s a relief, although not surprising. When the vines pull back one year they often pour it on in the next.
As we reported, at the end of August, we started our harvest significantly later than we did in 2008. Aside from a few heat blasts along the way, this has been a decidedly cool growing season. Some wineries are still quite a bit behind schedule, but we’ve caught up nicely, thanks to that warm September. Early isn’t the best, in most cases, because it may mean inadequate “hang time” in terms of flavor maturity, unless the whole season was early. Late is a little scary because we can run into rain. A little rain doesn’t much matter, but heavy rainfall can cause rot, mildew, dilution… Some varieties are more susceptible than others.
So, we’ve got Petit Verdot – all three rows of it 
coming in Sunday and Syrah, probably, next week and we’re home free! Let’s hope Mother Nature continues to smile on us! Cheers!
Goosecross Vintage Update – One Week to Go!
The Cabernet, here at the winery, tastes about as sweet as table grapes right now (between 15 and 20% sugar) and we’re about a week out from harvesting our first grapes of the season next week. The Chenin Blanc will probably come in over Labor Day weekend. With the warm weather we’re having right now, it could turn out to be a very busy weekend. The Sauvignon Blanc is close, and so is the Cab up at Howell Mountain.
Last time we checked in veraison, the color change, was just getting underway. Since then, I’ve done quite a bit of leaf thinning, to improve light exposure to the clusters, and also some cluster thinning.
Dropping unripe clusters on the ground isn’t something I like to do, but it’s important that we have even ripening throughout the vineyard and, if some of the clusters are lagging behind, they’ll add green, unripe flavor to the wine. So – off they come – it’s called a “green harvest”. As I check each vine, it’s also an opportunity to assess the crop level, overall. I need to make sure that the vines aren’t carrying more fruit than they can ripen with a high degree of flavor intensity and sometimes thinning is the answer.
Valley wide, harvest began the third week of August with the sparkling wine grapes (Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, Pinot Meunier). Then, a few wineries reported receiving some Sauvignon Blanc the week of the 24th, so it looks like we’re about a week to 10 days behind last year. Yields look about normal (whatever that means) and much improved over last year.
The growing season, as a whole, has been very cool and mild, punctuated by a few heat blasts here and there – just what we need. The cool conditions keep the grapes from getting sweet too fast and give us a good shot at the extended “hangtime” we need for peak flavor development. The heat assures us that we’ll get enough sugar to actually harvest and make well-balanced wine. If things continue as they have, we’re looking at a potentially outstanding harvest. Keep your fingers crossed!
See Geoff doing some pre-harvest cluster thinning or discussing veraison.
Fast and furious!
Talk about your jack-rabbit start! If you’ve checked out our Harvest Calendar, you don’t have to ask how the weather’s been. The writing’s on the crush-pad, so to speak. I’m sure there must have been years that have been equally frenetic, but I can’t think of one right now. Everybody’s scrambling to keep up with these impatient grapes!
I must say our Winemaker, Geoff Gorsuch, is in awfully good humor considering the work load. Maybe he’s got his eyes on the proverbial prize – quick harvest means quick finish! 
Could be he’s delerious from lack of rest – kinda like last spring. Could be he’s happy with quality. The berries are small, which is good for flavor intensity and, apart from a couple of recent, rather intense heat waves, you’d call it a cool season. And cool is cool as far as the grapes are concerned! Gives them time to actually mature, in terms of flavor development, rather than just getting sweet.
After getting those hot flashes out of her system, Mother Nature has been just as sweet as a little lamb – it’s so mild and comfortable! And, Geoff says the sugars have actually gone down a little. Yippee! Next week’s forecast is cooler yet.
But, in the last three weeks it’s been Chenin Blanc, Merlot, Howell Mountain Cab, Viognier, Sauvignon Blanc – BAM, BAM, BAM, BAM, BAM!!! And, today it’s Estate Cab; Monday it’s Estate Cab Franc. Chardonnay’s not far off. Whew! You ought to be here – truly! It smells soooo good!!
Hopefully a couple of weeks of mild weather will pause the harvest before the last push. I’d guess every winemaker in the valley could use a break right now. And, while they’re pleased with quality, if they’re like Geoff, the more reports you see, the more we know yields are down quite a bit – not such a happy thing. Our Howell Mountain Cab was down by over 50%! Fortunately, that’s the worst of it, but it hurts.
Anyway – come by for a delicious sniff before it’s all over!
Crush: Day 1 at Goosecross
So, it begins! Beautiful, yellow-green clusters of Chenin Blanc found their way from the east-Napa hills to our crushpad and began their long journey to the bottle.
As we reported earlier, many of our neighbors started a few weeks ahead of us, but we’re pretty much on schedule, maybe slightly early, so far (go to our harvest calendar to follow the blow-by-blow action).
Geoff, our winemaker, measured the tank juice at about 23% sugar – we’re talking seriously sweet stuff – when you buy grapes at the grocery they’re around 15-18% sugar. You can figure that a little over half of the sugar will wind up as alcohol in the finished wine. For the uninitiated, here’s how it goes:
1. The clusters are cut off of the vine with a small, hook-blade knife.
2. When they get to the winery Geoff and his indispensable side-kick, Rosario, sort through the clusters, pulling out leaves, dried grapes, anything that looks like something you don’t want to eat (or drink!).
3. The clusters are fed into the crusher-stemmer which, as you might imagine, removes the stems and “crushes” the grapes. Let me say, here, that crushing is a misleading term because it sounds violent. Violence against perfectly innocent little grapes is repaid by bitter flavors in the wine. The duty of the crusher is to gently break the grape skins and release the juice, thus facilitating fermentation.
4. From the crusher-stemmer, the grapes are fed into the press (we call ours “Lucy”, with affection for Lucille Ball – yes, she was pressing!). Lucy is like a giant strainer. After we load her up a whole lot of juice runs off into the drain pan. It’s called “free run”.
5. When the free run begins to slow down, Geoff applies pressure by way of inflating a membrane inside the press and gently squeezes out a little more juice. He has to be very careful not to squeeze too hard because he wants this Chenin Blanc to be full of flavor, but also delicate, almost ethereal, on your palate.
6. The juice goes into a stainless steel fermentation tank and Geoff turns on the refrigeration to keep the lovely juice cool. If we allow it to warm up, the gorgeous fruity and floral aromatics will be cooked off.
7. Clean up and hit the showers!! That’s enough for one day! All of this work is done outdoors and it was nearly 100 degrees out there!
What’s next? Geoff will give the CB a few days to get settled. There’s a lot of suspended vineyard dust and grape solids in the juice, right now, and this cool fermentation will go a lot better if the juice is nice and clean. So, after a couple of days, Geoff just has to move the clear juice off of the solids (it’s called racking), add some yeast and we’re off to the races!
**What is fermentation? A simple, natural chemical reaction. The yeast feeds on the sugar, converting it into heat, carbon-dioxide gas and the all-important alcohol.
The yeast isn’t all that crazy about the cool temperature (kind of like trying to get bread dough to rise in the refrigerator), so it’s going to take its sweet time – probably about three weeks. Geoff will stop the fermentation before all the sugar is gone, leaving it slightly sweet – around 2.5% sugar and about 12% alcohol.
In the meantime: Geoff sees several of other vineyards breathing down his neck. Viognier, Merlot, Howell Mountain Cab all on the cusp. So – it’s going to be hot and heavy on the crushpad in the very near future and Geoff will be the equivalent of a chef with a whole lot of pots boiling at once. This is why his lovely wife, Karen, is referred to as a “crush widow” this time of year…
Ultimately, in a few months, the Chenin Blanc will receive final clarification. Before bottling day, in December, it will pass through a micron filter to make sure all the yeast cells are removed so the wine doesn’t get any bright ideas about fermenting in the bottle (very bad PR)
It should reach your table by February or March!
And that’s Goosecross Chenin Blanc 101. Cabernet is a very different game, so stay tuned as we follow it from field sampling to the not-so-bitter end! Click here for an update on how the 2008 vintage growing season has gone, so far.
And they’re off…
Let the harvest begin! In what’s been a rather eventful year, so far, we pile on the oddity that, here in Napa Valley, the local harvest began with Sauvignon Blanc rather than sparkling wine! Moooost unusual!!
Mitch Cosentino (Cosentino is a neighbor of ours here in the Yountville District) was quoted as saying bringing in grapes on August 7 makes a record early harvest for them – at least three weeks early. And then Mumm Napa Valley announced they’ll pick their first grapes tomorrow. The 12th of August isn’t all that early for sparkling wine, so go figure (grapes for sparkling wine are harvested at lower sugars than those for table wine).
Let me recap our quirky season thus far:
- Frostiest spring in decades with substantial crop loss in some parts of northern California – fortunately, our vineyards were, for the most part, spared.
- Blistering heat and wind followed by rain during bloom – there’s definitely noticeable “shatter”throughout our vineyard here at the winery, but it could be a lot worse. It won’t affect quality, but it brings quantity down. Hmmmm… small crops tend to ripen quickly.
- Wildfires in June and July leading to questions about “smoke taint”!? We don’t anticipate any difficulties in that department, but growers in parts of Sonoma and Mendocino lived with heavy smoke, ash and soot for several weeks.
And now, we’re off to the races starting with Sauvignon Blanc! We’re now entering the twighlight zone…
Our winemaker, Geoff Gorsuch, anticipates receiving our first grapes around Labor Day – Sauvignon Blanc and Chenin Blanc are neck and neck in the race to be first – possibly a little earlier, which is pretty much normal – whatever that is…
I gotta say that, while all this is interesting and makes for lots to talk about in the wine blogosphere, we agricultural types usually prefer the boring years – you sleep a whole lot better.
What’s next Hopefully something “normal.” Stay tuned…
Blushing Beauties
Those little green peas I told you about are beginning to blush and they’re a sight to be seen – such pretty little things… These little “peas” are actually Cabernet Sauvignon which is putting out signals that it’s thinking about coming home – not real soon – but maybe in about eight weeks, give or take, depending on the weather (other varieties ripen earlier).
As if I needed reminding, this is kind of like a wake-up call to get ready for crush. To make sure I’ve ordered all the supplies I need, get the cellar ship shape and sanitized, take look at last year’s notes and get my game plan together for this year (it reinforces my illusion that I have control)
Besides acting as an early-warning system for crush, the color change (veraison) signals that the vine’s energy has shifted from shoot development into grape ripening. So – that means we’ll be gathering samples before long. You get a bunch of zip-lock bags and pick a representative sample from each section (we’ve got 11 sections on our ten-acre site). Initially we’re after the average sugar, acid and pH. Once they average about 20% sugar it’s time to start tasting. Flavor is, by far, the most important consideration in a harvest decision, but you’ve got to keep running the numbers, too.
I expect the next post will be from the harvest trenches. So far, we’ve come through frost, heat and smoke without much to complain about except a little inconvenience. But, I doubt 2008 will be known for its volume. Let’s see what Mother Nature has in store for us next and hope our luck continues!
