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How We Make Our Estate Chardonnay
Wine making is so simple, it was discovered by accident. Fresh grape juice, unattended, will become wine sooner or later. But here’s the hard part: will the wine be any good? Science helps us bottle wine that is much more predictably sound than it was 100 years ago, but we can’t make memorable wine in a lab.
The real fun and art of winemaking lies in the endless variables that come up along the way. Where and how to plant? When to harvest? How to handle the grapes at the winery? What kind of yeast to add? What kind of fermentation vessel should we use? Which barrels to buy? It goes on and on.
We’re going to focus on the choices that Geoff Gorsuch, our Winemaker, makes along the way to produce Goosecross Chardonnay every year.
Planting A Vineyard
Geoff will tell you that the wine can only be as good as the grapes that make it. There is no way to make a wonderful wine out of mediocre grapes, no matter how skilled the producer. Geoff’s goal is to get his hands on the best possible fruit and then to conserve the beauty of the fruit through attentive, but not intrusive, winemaking.
In our case, as a small, family winery, the winemaker is also the vineyard manager. Geoff is hands-on from the planting of the vines, every step of the way, until the wine is bottled.
You’ve heard the old real estate saw: “location, location, location.” Well, it truly applies in growing grapes for wine. Getting the right variety in the right location is 90% of the battle. We grow our Estate Chardonnay in the coolest region of Napa Valley, known as the Carneros Region. This is an ideal location for Chardonnay, where the grapes ripen slowly in the persistent morning fog, and cool evening breezes. The resulting prolonged “hangtime,” literally means that the Chardonnay has enough time on the vine to develop completely mature flavors and to delight us with a little tropical character. The soil is typical of Carneros, in that there is clay, but it is interspersed with some gravel and sand, improving drainage.
Before planting a vineyard like this, we bring in experts to take soil samples from various parts of the property, and also to measure the specific mesoclimate1 throughout the vineyard. With this information, we can make good decisions about selecting the optimal clone2 and root-stock hybrid3 for the site, and also set up the best spacing and row orientation for eventual wine quality.
For this site, we selected the low-vigor, SO4 rootstock in order to keep the yields down and flavors concentrated. A vertical trellis system4 in this location, running east-west, allows for plenty of light exposure to heighten fruitiness with very little risk of sunburn.
With these choices made, we lay out the posts, stakes and wires for the trellis. We dug the holes, planted and trained the vines and attached the trellis wires by hand. A drip irrigation system completes the installation.
From planting the rootstock or benchgrafts5, 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.
Oakville AVA
The Oakville AVA is home to some of the most famous names in Napa Valley – Robert Mondavi, Harlan, Rudd, Opus One and Screaming Eagle are well-known producers, there, and To Kalon and Martha’s Vineyard grow some of the most sought-after grapes in California.
History
The history of research and innovation in the region, which still thrives today, was instigated by Hamilton Crabb in 1868. The first “research station” in Oakville was Crabb’s To Kalon (Greek for “highest beauty”) vineyard, where he planted over 300 varieties. He purchased the 240-acre parcel in Oakville and, by 1877, he had over 130 acres of producing vineyard and sold cuttings to other Napa Valley growers. As the first commercial winery owner in Oakville, he was producing 50,000 gallons of To Kalon wine. Today, the University of California at Davis has a research vineyard in Oakville and Robert Mondavi Winery is renowned for its in-house research, part of it on the original To Kalon ranch. Crabb’s neighbor, Far Niente winery, began producing in 1885 and by 1887 over 1000 acres of vines were thriving in Oakville. In the long, arduous recovery from prohibition, the Napa Valley became the first AVA in America in 1981 and the Oakville District gained AVA status in 1993.
Location
Oakville is just about in the center of Napa Valley, and is about two miles wide, it’s borders clearly marked by the western Mayacamas mountains and the Vaca range to the east. From its northern boundary, where it meets with the Rutherford District, to its southern boundary, the Yountville District, is just over a mile. At about 5,000 planted acres, it represents about 11% of the total vine-acres in Napa Valley.
Soil
At first glance, the soils appear to be relatively uniform and well defined – a mix of various loams, especially clay, sand and gravelly loam. They’re mainly the result of weathered, broken down rock that washed down the two mountain ranges over the millennia to mix with the with the river and stream deposits of clay, silt and gravel. They rest on a base of gravel that promotes, generally, very good drainage and deep root penetration. A closer look reveals that the two ranges have little in common. The western Mayacamas were pushed up from the bottom of the sea as the valley floor sank, millions of years ago, bringing up a chaotic mix of ancient marine rock formations, sandstone, limestone, serpentine (California’s state rock!), shale and metamorphic rocks. The two large, famous alluvial fans at the base of the Mayacamas are composed of rock and loamy sediment that washed down during storm after storm over the millennia. The eastern Vaca range, rather than pushing up, was formed, layer by layer, by the deposit of repeated volcanic eruptions caused by fissures in the tip of the San Andreas fault as it was dragged north by the Pacific and North America plates. It left compressed volcanic ash (tuff or tufa – often exposed tufa), lava flows, volcanic mudflows, a variety of other pyroclastic deposits (fragmental pieces of rock, such as minerals or glass, spewed by the eruption), and sedimentary rocks of volcanic origin. Virtually every knob and knoll you see in Napa Valley is of the same volcanic origin. Oxidized iron accounts for the noticeably-red soils in much of east Oakville. Heavy rainfall over the Mayacamas may explain the large size of the western alluvial fans. The eastern fans are small and the soil thin by comparison.
Climate
Oakville is noticeably warmer than the neighboring Yountville District, to the south, and just a tick cooler than the Rutherford District to the north. Moving from south to north, the valley heat increases as it moves away from the marine influence of the San Pablo Bay at the southern end. Oakville residents often experience afternoon temperatures in the mid-to-upper 80 and 90s, F., in the height of summer. The heat of the day forwards the maturation of the slow-ripening Cabernet Sauvignon that dominates the district. As the heat rises, it eventually pulls in cool bay fog and breezes, and it’s common to see temperatures drop into the mid 50s at night. The fog often lingers until mid-morning the next day, preventing over-rapid sugar accumulation and retaining color and refreshing acidity. This is about as good as it gets for Cabernet Sauvignon. The west side of Oakville is exposed to heavy winter rains and is in the shadow of the Mayacamas, late in the day, in mid summer. The east side experiences lighter rainfall and receives the full impact of the afternoon sun as the day wears on.
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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.
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It’s Flowering Time in Napa Valley
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Fun fact by Nancy Hawks Miller: It’s Flowering Time in Napa Valley
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Did you enjoy this? Here are more Fun Facts from Goosecross Cellars.
NVWR® 77 – Vineyard Practices and Influence on Quality
January 20, 2009 by David
Filed under Napa Valley Wine Radio
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Welcome to Napa Valley Wine Radio! Thanks for listening!
Winemakers, Geoff Gorsuch, Jeff Booth, and Bob Pepi discuss vineyard practices & their influence on quality. Their discussion includes influence of yields, hillside vs. valley-floor vineyards and deficit irrigation, among other topics.
NVWR® 72 – Do Old Vines Make Better Wine?
October 7, 2008 by David
Filed under Napa Valley Wine Radio
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Do old vines make better wine? When you see “old vine” on the label, do you assume that the quality will be higher or the flavor more intense? I thought it would be interesting to explore the subject with Winemakers Geoff Gorsuch, Bob Pepi, and Jeff Booth. Enjoy!
Winemakers: Jeff Booth, Geoff Gorsuch, Bob Pepi
2008 Vintage Update, Part 2
As we said in July – it’s been interesting, so far, and continues to be. In our last update, we reported virtually no damage from the various challenges that have come our way: frost, heat, wind, rain, smoke. But, once the clusters were more developed, Geoff Gorsuch, our Winemaker, noticed a higher incidence of “shatter”1 than he had anticipated earlier. He says that it occurred, most likely, due to either the heat, wind or rain during flowering in May. When these things happen while the vines are in flower, pollination may be impaired and by now we can easily see the places where grapes are missing from the clusters. Fortunately frost damage and shatter won’t affect quality, but they certainly have an impact on quantity, and various levels of loss have been reported throughout Napa Valley.
Regarding the smoke, some local growers are hypothesizing that the smoky haze that hung around at the end of June and early July might have actually provided some protection, when we had a few days of extreme heat, by keeping the temperature down. In some regions, such as Mendocino, there were concerns that the heavy smoke they experienced would slow down photosynthesis and possibly even cause smoke taint. We were very fortunate that our haze was relatively light and we don’t necessarily view delayed ripening as a negative, unless it’s taken to the extreme.
Veraison, the time when the grapes begin to change color, began right on time, around the middle of July. Veraison is the vine’s way of telling the grower that its energy has shifted from shoot development into fruit ripening. Shortly after veraison is complete, it’s time to being gathering grape samples to monitor fruit maturity. Geoff walks the vine rows, collecting grapes from each section of our vineyard, then measures the average sugar, acid and pH. Once the section has reached an average of 20% sugar, he’ll begin tasting, which is the over-riding consideration in deciding when to harvest.
We were surprised when many local growers began harvesting their Sauvignon Blanc the second week of August and in tandem with the sparkling wine growers. In a year of many quirks, this is just another odd twist. Normally the grapes for sparkling wine come in earlier than table-wine grapes because they need to be picked at lower sugars (usually around 18-20% for sparkling wine and about 21% and up for table wine). But, the first reported harvest, here in the valley, began with Sauvignon Blanc on August 7 – about three weeks ahead of normal according to that grower. Following that announcement, quite a few other Sauvignon Blanc producers jumped into the pool. Geoff predicted that our Sauvignon Blanc and Chenin Blanc wouldn’t be ready until pretty close to Labor Day, but he took the precaution of getting the cellar all shipshape and sanitized by middle of August, just in case. As of this moment, he plans to bring in the Chenin Blanc on August 27, just very slightly early.
We expect to see the Sauvignon Blanc very soon after we crush the Chenin Blanc and then it will be non-stop until, most likely, mid October. It all depends on the weather!
Be sure to check our Harvest Calendar, frequently, to experience “crush” along with us! For the July 1 update, click here.
1. Shatter: This term is used to describe crop loss due to impaired pollination. Normally this will mean missing grapes from within the cluster rather than the loss of the whole cluster. The most common cause of shatter is heavy rain, hail, strong wind or extreme heat.
2008 Vintage Update, Part 1
It’s been interesting, so far. We saw the first signs of new growth right on time, middle of March, accompanied by night after night of frost. 2008 has been called the worst year for frost in about 30 years and millions of dollars in loss was reported throughout the north coast.
So, what do we do about it? As they say, 80% of success is just showing up and Geoff, our winemaker/vineyard manager, soon lost track of how many nights he showed up, driving around the vineyard checking temperatures. Damage starts when the temperature drops below 32F. and, if it’s getting close, he turns on the wind machine, which looks like a giant fan. It simply moves the air so the coldest won’t settle down on the vineyard. Some growers use smudge pots, which burn oil or diesel, to warm the vines, and others use overhead sprinklers to keep the new growth insulated right at 32. There are growers who take a calculated risk and don’t have any frost protection and many of those growers paid the price this year. And, some vineyard managers reported crop loss in spite of showing up and doing the work. We count ourselves very lucky to have come through such a challenging situation unscathed.
Daytime temperatures were fine and the new shoots grew like crazy, as they always do, in the early spring. We spend time in April and May refining the work we did at pruning time. It’s very common to see more shoots than we anticipated and suckers that don’t belong, so we thin them out and also tuck the remaining ones up into the trellis wires as they lengthen.
May was cooler than normal, for the most part, until it suddenly heated up just as the vines began to flower, mid month. We had temperatures around 100F. for about four days, which can burn the flowers and cause crop loss. About a week later we saw significant rainfall, which is another way to impair pollination.
A blessed oddity of the grape flower is that it’s self pollinating. This means we don’t have to concern ourselves about bees or wind – just the weather.
After making his cluster counts, Geoff, again, counted his blessings because while he saw some loss in the Cabernet Franc it wasn’t severe and the clusters generally appear to be well formed. In fact, there was cluster thinning to do in almost all sections of the vineyard, especially the irrepressible Petit Verdot. The winter pruning is the greatest tool we have to determine crop size but, ultimately the vine calls the shots. Of course, when the counts show a deficit, there’s nothing to be done. More often, in our very favorable climate, we see more than we anticipated and thinning is essential to promote flavor intensity later on. He will continue to evaluate the crop level as the season progresses.
Shoot development looks good and Geoff has continued removing shoots and leaves, strategically, to improve light exposure, which heightens fruitiness. The thinning also improves air flow, and helps keep the risk of mold or mildew to the minimum. As soon as the shoot growth tapers off he’ll hedge the tips. Hedging the shoots keeps the leaf canopy in balance with the crop which prevents excess shading and plays down potential green character.
The grapes look like small peas, right now, and aren’t recommended for tasting! They’ll continue to plump to the size of small blueberries and should start turning color later this month. We’ll be back a little later with another update. Keep your fingers crossed for a mild summer!
Pruning 101
It’s March – I know these vines look like they’re dead right now, but they could wake up and start growing, literally, any minute, just like the roses in your garden. So, it’s time to get this business of pruning wrapped up. Geoff, our Winemaker, foolishly agreed to show us how it’s done. 
He’s a very patient man!
First, a little carbo-loading for the arduous task ahead:
Geoff explains the theory and, with trepidation, hands over the pruning shears to Mark, our Tasting Room Manager, downtown, at Wineries of Napa Valley.
We managed to come out of it with all digits intact
So – the theory, according to Geoff Gorsuch: “For each vine, it’s a balancing act – getting a leaf-canopy to cluster ratio that’s appropriate for the vigor of the vine and the site. Balanced vines make balanced wine.”
“Before”
“After”
Next post: Geoff explains in a little more detail
NVWR® 37 – Vineyard Development
March 6, 2007 by David
Filed under Napa Valley Wine Radio
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
What does it take to plant a vineyard and get it into production? Geoff Gorsuch, Goosecross Winemaker (and winery co-owner with our host David Topper), explains how we went about replanting our estate vineyard as he talks with Nancy Hawks Miller, a 20-year veteran of the wine industry and our Director of Education.
Especially for our listeners, we are pleased to offer a 10% discount on all Goosecross wines (with free shipping for case purchases). Please call us toll-free at (800) 276-9210 and mention code: PC37 (that’s Papa, Charlie 37).
Extra Value Text: Goosecross Short Class – Grape Growing and Wine Making
