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What is Veraison?
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Fun Fact by Nancy Hawks Miller, Goosecross: All About Veraison
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How Long Do Grape Vines Live?
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Fun Fact by Nancy Hawks Miller, Goosecross: How Long Do Grape Vines Live?
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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!
The grapes are changing color!
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Fun fact by Nancy Hawks Miller: The grapes are changing color!
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A Year In The Vineyard
Managing a vineyard, like many of the most worthwhile things in life, is a labor of love. Before planting, the grower must make a thorough investigation of the soils and meso-climate1 on the site to determine what variety will perform best in that situation. He must select the various clones2 and rootstock hybrids3 to suit the inevitable variability of those factors throughout the property. He may decide to vary the vine spacing depending on the anticipated vine vigor, or lack of it, in different areas of the site.
After planting and training a new vineyard over a period of three to four years the grower is rewarded with his first small harvest. Once the vineyard is established, keeping the vines healthy is a year-round project. Surprisingly, the weather experienced in winter can have an influence on the timing, quantity and quality of the harvest to follow.
Winter
Grapevines are like roses in some respects. Once we have some frost in November they drop all of their leaves and go dormant for the winter. This rest is very important to vineyard health and performance in the following season. Like roses, the vines require severe winter pruning which will help to determine how many shoots and clusters will appear in the spring. Almost all of the growth from the previous season is pruned off, so that the vines will bear a small, intensely flavored crop.
If we have a long, cold winter, the vines “sleep in”, and come out of dormancy late. If the winter is mild, they’re likely to wake up (we call it “bud break”) early. Bud break is usually in the middle of March, but we’d much prefer that it be late than early. Early bud break increases the risk of frost damage. A beautiful, clear day in the late winter/early spring can turn into a freezing, cold night. The newly exposed, tender buds will be damaged if the temperature drops below 32° F. The risk lasts through about mid-May. This can lead to many nights of poor sleep for growers all over the valley. Geoff Gorsuch, our Winemaker, may have to get up in the middle of the night several times during these months, to protect the vines from frost using wind machines4 and smudge pots5. The upside of early bud-break is that it can translate into an early harvest and reduce our risk of rain damage on the other end. It all depends on the weather that follows.
Spring
Early spring brings the period we call “great growth” in the vineyard, because the new shoots grow like gang-busters. We sometimes imagine we can see them grow! This great growth creates a lot of work, including weed cultivation and suckering6 or shoot thinning. The suckering is done by hand, and is like a post-pruning. We prune during dormancy with the idea that we’ll get certain results, but inevitably, the vines do as they please, and require more of our attention. Once the shoots are a few inches long, Geoff can begin walking the vine rows to make sure they’re developing well and also to look for signs of disease or nutrient deficiencies. This continues throughout the growing season.
The buds flower and form clusters around mid-to-late May. We are fortunate that the flowers are self-pollinating, so we don’t have to worry about bees or wind to carry the pollen. We only worry about the weather. Too much rain, high winds or excess heat can impair pollination. Again, we are fortunate because most years we go for months without rain after the end of April. The weather is blessedly boring and predictable most years, and generally leads to good “fruit set.”7 Once the crop is set, we count the clusters. Of course, there’s nothing we can do about too few, but if we count more clusters than we believe the vines can ripen well, we drop the excess on the ground right then and there.
Summer
When the grapes first form, regardless of the variety, they look like tiny green beads. They’re not recommended for tasting at that point because they’re highly acidic. They plump and develop amazingly quickly. Usually, by mid-to-late July, they’re 2/3 their full size, and the dark varieties begin to soften and change color (we call this veraison). White varieties like Chardonnay go through a much more subtle color change, going from a bright, spring green to more of a yellow-green as they soften.
During this time, Geoff continues to walk the vineyard to make sure it’s healthy, and he monitors the leaf canopy and clusters to see if we need to do further shoot, leaf or crop thinning. He takes leaf samples to do a “petiole (the leaf stem) analysis”, which just means he’s checking for nutrient deficiencies.
Irrigation may be necessary a few times during the long, dry season, but Geoff prefers to keep it to the minimum. Too much irrigation or fertilization may take away from flavor intensity. He can test the vines in different parts of the vineyard to see if they’re becoming water-stressed and respond accordingly.
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Goosecross: Springtime Shoot Thinning
Geoff Gorsuch shows how and why shoots are thinned in the vineyard.
Cluster Thinning
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Fun fact by Nancy Hawks Miller: Cluster Thinning
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How We Make Our Estate Meritage
In 2002, we had to re-plant our home vineyard here at the winery because the Chardonnay we planted in 1978 was diseased. The phrase “crisis as opportunity” comes to mind.
After almost 25 years, we had a chance to take a fresh look at our property and re-evaluate what belongs here. It’s a process! We hired three different consultants to take soil samples and check the meso-climate1 throughout the site. Much to our comfort and delight, the three consultants came back with almost identical recommendations: Plant red Bordeaux varieties2.
What Is Meritage Wine?
With that decision made, Geoff Gorsuch, our Winemaker, immediately thought about making a Meritage wine. A Meritage (pronounced like “heritage”) is a blend of Bordeaux varieties and so the wines are usually Cabernet Sauvignon or Merlot- based (there are white Meritage wines, too, but they’re less common). Since varietal wines had been the standard of excellence here in America, the Meritage Association was created to distinguish hand-crafted, high-quality blends from simple red or white table wines or generic, so-called “jug” wines. Geoff wanted the freedom to blend the varieties together in the way he most prefers, regardless of varietal percentage. He takes the best our property has to give, and blends it into a beautiful expression of our vineyard site to make a single- vineyard, estate grown, Meritage blend.
Planting The Vineyard
We hand-planted lots of Cabernet Sauvignon, some Merlot, and small amounts of Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot. Our consultants helped us select the various clones3 and rootstock hybrids4 to match the variability of the soil throughout the 9.5 acres. The vine spacing also varies, depending on the anticipated vine vigor, or lack of it, in different parts of the property. Before planting we re-graded, installed drain-tile and brought down the acidity of the soil a bit.
The vineyard is on the valley floor between the old Rector Creek and the Napa River-Conn Creek junction. Small as it is, the vineyard has been divided into 11 different sections according to variety, clone, rootstock, spacing and other variables. These sections are monitored separately regarding water, nutrients, canopy management5, and of course, harvest date. It’s a lot for Geoff to juggle, but it’s the only way to get the kind of results we’re looking for.
From planting the rootstock or benchgrafts6, it is 3-4 years to the first small crop. We think of the vineyard as mature when it is 6 or 7 years old, and hope that it will be with us for decades.
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Pinot Noir
Common synonyms: Pineau de Bourgoyne, Franc Pineau, Noirien, Salvagnnin, Morillon, Auvernat, Auvernaut noir, Plant Dore, Vert dore, Burgunder blauer, Blauer Spatburgunder, Clavner, Blauer-Klavner, Schwarzer Riesling, Mohrchen, Schwarzer Burgunder, Pinot nera, Blauer Nurnberger, Nagyburgundi
They say that if Cabernet Sauvignon is the thinking man’s wine, Pinot Noir is pure pleasure. But, it’s viewed as a problem child in both the vineyard and the winery, and perhaps the only reason it’s survived over the centuries is that when it comes together just right, it makes some of the silkiest, most sensual of wines.
This is perhaps the oldest variety we know and researchers believe it’s probably a selection from wild vines made by the Romans perhaps as long as 2000 years ago. It appears that Pinot Noir was called Morillon Noir in the Burgundy region of France in the 4th century AD, and by the 14th century it was still known by several names, including Pinot Noir. It was grown in different parts of France, but the Burgundy region made it famous and it was and is a key player in the Champagne region.
If you’ve noticed some variability among the Pinot Noirs you’ve tried, one likely explanation is the difficulty of cultivation. It buds early in the spring, exposing it to frost damage and flowers early, too, increasing the risk of poor pollination. It’s best confined to the coolest wine-growing regions or it loses aromatics and acidity. The yields must be kept low and it has to be handled with kid gloves in the winery, too, or the results don’t justify the effort.
Another reason for variability is that it’s an unstable variety, and tends to mutate more readily than other varieties. It’s not uncommon to find one or more vines in a section with a single shoot that has characteristics that differ from the others on the same plant. If you took cuttings from several different vines from and old Pinot vineyard to start another, you’d probably end up with a number of slightly different representations of Pinot Noir, and some of them better than others. It’s only been relatively recently that we’ve realized that we need to make careful and controlled clonal selections if we want to grow top notch fruit.
This is an early-maturing variety that needs to ripen slowly, which explains why it found a happy home in Burgundy and Champagne. It grows all over eastern France and you can also find it in Germany, Switzerland and parts of northern Italy. Pinot Noir from the new world didn’t make much of an impression until relatively recently. Here in California, for the most part, it made dull, light-bodied red wine until about the 1980s when we began to get smart about clones and where to plant it. The breezy marine influence of the Carneros region is our home for Pinot in the Napa Valley and it does very well in other cool spots in California, notably the Russian River Valley, Sonoma Coast, Santa Maria and Santa Rita Hills AVA. Oregon came on strong about the same time we geared up here in California and there’s a lot of excitement about the Pinot coming out of New Zealand.
Pinot Noir prefers to fly solo, in most cases, rather than being blended and tends to reflect its environment more than having a dominant, unmistakable flavor profile. In fact it’s been said that the Burgundians view Pinot Noir as a vehicle for expressing the local terroir more than a showcase for their efforts. The most common descriptors are those of red fruit, like strawberries and raspberries and often a sense of gaminess or earthiness. It’s a thin-skinned grape so the wine is usually very soft on the palate. You can find ones with tremendous color concentration and big tannins but Pinot Noir is more often a subtle, graceful red.
The silky texture makes Pinot Noir easy to enjoy when it’s young and very versatile at the table. It’s a favorite with salmon, but it can run the gamut from grilled Ahi, to the Thanksgiving turkey to roast lamb or a good steak. The soft tannins also make Pinot Noir an easier match with cheese than other reds so it’s a great one to include in your wine and cheese party with cheeses that range from semi-soft to quite firm. You can find delicious recipes to pair with Pinot Noir or any other variety if you go to Colleen’s Kitchen.
Flavor profile: Sweet, red fruit, cherry, strawberry, raspberry, rose petal, earthy, mushroom, forest floor, violet, green tea
Weight: Light to medium bodied, silky texture
The Glassy-Winged Sharpshooter… It’s War!
It sounds like some new, secret, stealth airship. And in fact, it is. But the war isn’t a military one. It’s agricultural. And it’s being fought in vineyards throughout California.
The glassy-winged sharpshooter is actually an insect, about one half-inch long. It feeds on the water-conducting tissue of over 35 different kinds of plants and crops, including table grapes and wine grapes.
The feeding itself isn’t the problem. The problem occurs when the insect carries harmful bacteria, Xylella fastidiosa, that causes diseases in plants, including almonds, oleander and alfalfa among others. Certain strains of Xylella can also seriously affect citrus and stone fruits, but we haven’t seen them in California so far. For grapes it means Pierce’s Disease, an extremely serious problem.
Here’s how it works: The sharpshooter feeds on an infected plant, and then transmits the bacteria when it feeds on the next plant. The bacteria get into the grapevine and multiply, spreading throughout the plant’s system, blocking the movement of water, nutrients and minerals. Growth is stunted, the leaves dry and turn yellow and the fruit colors prematurely. Eventually, as the vine becomes weaker, the grapes won’t ripen.
Worst of all, there’s no known cure for Pierce’s Disease – the only solution is to rip up infected vines and replant. So avoiding Pierce’s in the first place is paramount to growers which means fighting the glassy-winged sharpshooter.
