One of the best parts of working in wine on the Central Coast is that you get to spend a lot of time outdoors in some of the most beautiful scenery anywhere around. This morning was no different; I got out the door just as the sun was threatening to come up over the ridge, picked up a thermos of coffee, and was climbing around in a hilltop vineyard in the mountains just west of Templeton by the time that the sun popped up out of the fog blanketing the valley floor.
I was pulling some cluster samples from the Russell vineyard, which is on the Russell family's estate in the west hills of Templeton / Paso Robles. They are selling us a small amount of fruit from this vineyard, and from what I understand, my friend Russell From is getting fruit from here as well, for his Herman Story wines, and Loring Wine Company is in one of these blocks too, so I have some really good company. The site looks down the hill at the L'Aventure winery, which turns out some of my favorite wines in the region (everyone knows them for their pricey, highly rated estate red wines, which are fantastic, but I love their dry rose too, and for about $16 I can afford to drink a lot more of it!)
The top photo tells the story of Cabernet Sauvignon in the Paso Robles AVA this vintage. Not much of it mostly - poor weather when the vines were blooming essentially made for really loose clusters, with very few berries - as you can see, it looks like 80% of the cluster is just plain missing, and that is pretty accurate in a lot of cases. This phenomenon was really tied to bloom date, so it can be really isolated by age of vine, health of the vine, cordon height, elevation, exposure to sunlight, cold air drainage off hillsides, inversion layers, and basically anything else that can influence the timing of the vine. For this reason, it has been really difficult to get solid estimates of crop loads this year, and the vines seem to be ripening at really different rates; vines with little fruit may be a week or more ahead of their more loaded down neighbors.
My guess is that we will be down regionally about 30% or more compared to an 'average' harvest year in many of the Bordeaux varieties, particularly Cab Sauvignon. Ouch! But will the wines be really, really good to make up for the short crop? I think that in some cases they will be. We are having really good ripening weather currently, with cold nights and warm days, and everything seems to be inching its way toward ripeness at a pace that we can keep up with and make good picking decisions. The strategy that I plan to follow with such an uneven crop is to err on the side of picking a bit ripe; it doesn't take much unripe fruit to really make hard, thin wines out of what could otherwise be generous and full. I will try to keep water to the vines, so that the clusters that are ripe will not raisin while the rest of the crop is just getting their flavors in line.
Disaster struck today (well, maybe “Disaster” is overly dramatic…) – the bladder on our main white wine press blew out while pressing a load of Chardonnay grapes. Modern wine presses operate under air-pressure; you can imagine a large, perforated tube with a balloon inside. We load this tube with grapes, then inflate the balloon, which squeezes them gently against the sides, allowing juice to run out through the perforations.
This is a really good way to extract clear, high-quality juice from the grapes with a minimum of tearing of the skins and minimal release of color and tannin compounds into the wine. However, just like any balloon, these membranes are subject to being torn, punctured, or just wearing out over time.
This is what happened today; it is hard to tell whether there was some imperfection in the membrane itself, or if a sharp object (such as a wire or a clip from the trellis system,) started a tear that eventually caused the whole bag to blow open. This is a pretty good tear, nearly 8 feet long parallel to the long side of the membrane – I’ve not seen one this big for a long time. It is much more common to get a puncture or pinhole that can be patched up pretty quickly. Replacing the bladder is a messy, sticky, and hot job if you have to do it in the middle of the day – you have to climb inside the press and undo about a thousand bolts (it seems like,) and then pull it back out the manhole, clean and lube the inside of the press, and reattach the replacement. Luckily we have a replacement on hand, but now we are running without a backup until we can get another replacement sent over from France (at about $7000-9000!!) So we have to be really careful and hope that we make it through the rest of the white wines, in particular. We have about 420 additional tons of white grapes (other than late harvest) yet to come in, so we need to get a bit more mileage out of this press!
So far we have taken in the following tonnage: Chardonnay, 297.72 tons. Pinot Gris, 19.88 tons. Muscat Blanc, 49.23 tons. Sauvignon Blanc, 40.23 tons.
Reds will be a bit further off – maybe late next week at the earliest. I think that Zinfandel and Tempranillo will be likely to be the first red wine varieties that come in.
This was a great movie, available via the Netflix instant online view application.
Follows one acre of corn in Iowa for a season, tracing how this crop is grown, how it has affected small town America, and how it is finding its way into everything that we eat and especially drink. Very worthwhile to watch - at least the trailer, which is available at the movie's website - http://www.kingcorn.net/
During harvest, it can be difficult to remember to eat healthily and regularly. It can be hard to even get laundry done and bills paid sometimes! All of us depend a lot upon the other members of our families at this time to keep daily life together.
Our suppliers know that this is an intense time of the year for us as well. Though we generally don't have time for sales calls during harvest, many of them instead make an effort to take care of us - bringing by harvest tee shirts, lunch, cold beers (though I have way too many guys here at EOS to set a precedent of letting them have a beer at work,) and generally showing their appreciation for our business.
This week, we ate particularly well! First, early in the week, Gary Kroll of World Cooperage brought by fantastic Pizza for the entire crew - not sure where it came from, but the crust was perfect and crispy, with sesame seeds around the edge and really good quality toppings. I particularly loved the Jalepeno & cheese pizza!
On Wednesday, the guys from NomaCorc (a synthetic cork that we use for several projects and client wines,) came by with a BBQ feast on wheels! NomaCorc is headquartered just outside of Raleigh, North Carolina - an area that knows a thing or two about BBQ! Wes Ward, the technical sales director for the company, shipped his custom-built, cork-shaped BBQ smoker all the way out from NC and has been spending a couple weeks going from winery to winery, treating them to authentic, 10-hour roasted, pulled-pork North Carolina goodness! Christened the "NomaQue" it is a pretty cool contraption, with built in storage, cooler, and grill all on a tidy trailer.
Donna, the wife of our Cellar Master Dave, has agreed to bring us a healthy, filling lunch every Thursday through harvest. She started this week with delicious, home-made lasagnae for the crew, along with fresh vegetables, green salad, drinks and dessert. Next week is pulled-pork sandwiches, with a full schedule to follow! The love and care that she puts into this is appreciated greatly, and the crew really looks forward to this each year.
Year-round, our favorite, nearby places to dash out for lunch are the excellent restaurant at Hunter Ranch Golf Course where the Kobe Burger and Cobb Salad are perennial hits. And if you really need a decompression break, and excellent small plates, check out Cass Winery, tucked back in a canyon on Linne Road. They have a full kitchen, and a trained chef Brendan, who turns out great stuff. (As an added bonus, nobody seems to get cell phone reception out there!)
I am planning to organize BBQ for the guys on Saturdays, once we get into 7-days a week harvest. It is good to mark the passage of the week and build some comraderie. The winery has an old, but useable Santa Maria-style BBQ pit trailer, and we always grill on used wine stave wood from barrels that are past their useful service life - they burn hot and impart delicious French oak smoke to the meat. Plus we have some pretty capable pit-masters on staff here, and this can be a chance to let them shine!
I was contacted by a writer doing a story on EOS winery for a Swedish wine publication (apparently, we export a fair bit of wine there?) She wanted to do a sort of email interview as a preliminary, and came up with some questions to start the conversation - since I put some thought into the answers, and since they sum up a lot about how I feel about Paso Robles and Sustainable Agriculture, I am putting them up here as well for friends to see and comment upon. Cheers!
1.
1.Please tell me about your background in the winemaking business.
·I trained at University to be a Marine Biologist; I have always been fascinated by the natural world and the way natural systems find their own order.To pay my way through college, I began to work in restaurants where wine was a central feature of the dining experience, and to taste seriously with and learn from the experienced staff members.In this way, I really came at wine from the restaurant side, and this eventually presented me opportunity to enter wine production professionally.I was working in Santa Barbara at Michel Richard’s restaurant Citronelle, when I met some of the people from Sanford winery, just over the mountains in the lower Santa Ynez Valley, (now the Sta. Rita Hills AVA.)I had always loved their wines, and volunteered to help by cleaning out tanks, or rolling barrels around; whatever I could do to learn more about how wine was made.I was given a 2-day a week job, and once exposed I never looked back.This industry was very welcoming; it was a good fit for my scientific side, yet offered a creative outlet in a way that the world of academic science didn’t do; being able to look back at the end of the day or week, or year and say ‘Hey, we did this!’And being in an agricultural pursuit felt entirely natural to me, as I grew up within the cycles of seasons and in close dependence upon the earth.I bit the bullet, and left the world of restaurants to take a minimum-wage job with another Central Coast winery, and it was one of the best decisions of my life so far.From that point, I have worked primarily on the Central Coast, with one vintage spent in Oregon.My most recent position was as winemaker for a company that had their own 750 acre estate Pinot Noir and Chardonnay vineyards, as well as a large two-facility custom winemaking operation which made wines for companies throughout California and the world.This was a great place to see how the ‘big guys’ played the game, and to work with fruit of all quality levels from throughout the premium winegrowing regions within California.I got involved at every level and in every aspect of the world of wine business and wine technology.
2.You decided to join EOS Estate Winery in April 2008, what was you
main motivation behind this decision and what do you hope to
accomplish?
·I’ve always believed that if you push yourself to excel and refuse to play small because it feels ‘safe’ you will be presented with opportunity to positively affect the world around you.I look around and see how the consolidation in the world wine business is really squeezing farmers and small wine businesses – these corporations need to present their shareholders with profits, and they often find the profit at the expense of their grower partners.When Sapphire Brands acquired EOS Estate last year, and announced plans to take it to 100% solar-powered, I knew that this was a company that was ready to do things the right way.EOS is a large enough winery (~4000 tons annually) to have an important impact, for the better or for the worse, upon the Paso Robles appellation – and I am determined to be a part of steering this thing in the right direction.We are putting a lot of wine into the world-wide marketplace with the words “Paso Robles” on the label, and I owe it to all my growers, and to all the other winemakers and wineries around us to make sure that those words stand for quality, for excellence, for value, and for environmentally and socially responsible choices.At the same time, we are really just the ‘little guys’ in the world of wine – we have to work harder, think smarter, be more nimble and turn out better quality in order to compete in a world where we have very little weight to throw around with distributors and ‘Chain’ accounts, and no budget to ‘buy’ our way in.We rely upon relationships as number one priority – with our growers, with our distribution partners, with our employees, and with our customers.Relationships are maybe even more important to our business than our buildings, vineyards and equipment.
3.What, in your opinion, makes EOS and its wines unique? What is your
proudest achievement during your time at EOS?
·EOS draws from vineyards throughout the large Paso Robles AVA – this gives us access to very diverse vineyard resources, and to diverse people with varied viewpoints on how to best achieve quality – some of the best minds in sustainable agriculture are working with us on a daily basis.I was drawn to EOS by the even hand and consistent quality which has been their hallmark – elegance and understatement stylistically, and a commitment to putting top quality wine into bottle at a price that is approachable for everyone.We are in a period of change currently, but when the medium is wine, change always comes slowly – over the course of years, rather than weeks or days.In that context, I am really just at the beginning of my time here, and though there have been important achievements, they are mostly of the sort that will show dividends in several years, rather than immediately.I have really set to work on defining stylistic goals for our winemaking – many winemakers will give good verbiage about “listening to the grapes, and letting them become what they wish to be.”Well, as one of my mentors in this business likes to say, “what grapes really want to do is to become vinegar, not wine!”Quality wine starts with time spent in the vineyard, and with clearly communicating expectations to the growers and vineyard managers, and hearing and learning from their experience.By the time the fruit arrives at the winery, my ability to affect the final outcome of the fruit is minimal – it is more about preserving the quality that is already inherent in the grape; I can’t increase the quality through what I do in the cellar, I can only avoid harming it.Stylistically, I want to refine our goals further, and bring a touch more modernity to our wine style.I’ve travelled to wine regions around the world over the past several years, and there are two main things that just this summer struck me and will define my winemaking to some extent; A.) We can sometimes take our wines too seriously in California, everyone is chasing the next ‘impressive’ wine.Traditional wine regions certainly have their share of these, but they also have a great hand with just plain ‘likeable’ and delicious everyday wines, and B.) Many California wineries try to define themselves as ‘Burgundian’ or ‘Bordeaux’ or ‘Italian’ in style – almost in the way that decades ago, American restaurants only felt that they could be of quality if they had a French or Italian name, menu, and décor.Those days are over for cuisine; chefs everywhere have embraced their own local heritage and ingredients, and it is time for the wine business to have some brave companies and winemakers step forward and proudly show our own style, our own ingredients, and contribute something unique to the world of wine – this is happening slowly too, but gathering force.
4.Please tell me about your views on sustainable agriculture and how
this affects your work at EOS.
·I grew up in rural Minnesota at the time that the small family farm was going extinct one by one as the suburbs sprawled, and the next generation went off to work in more financially lucrative careers.Both sets of my grandparents had farms of less than 500 acres each, but they also had outside jobs that made that possible – they farmed more out of tradition and love of the land than for the income that was derived from their efforts.Of their children, only 3 have continued to be involved in agriculture – two in agricultural support careers, and one uncle farms part-time the original family place built by my great-great grandfather when he arrived from Sweden in the late 1800’s, in addition to his career in technology in Minneapolis.I believe that I am the only member of my generation that is still involved in agriculture at all.In Paso Robles, agriculture is still viable for small farmers because the wine business depends upon, and rewards quality.Industrial agriculture has encouraged and stimulated the creation of standardized commodity markets for many agricultural products in the United States to the point that yield and efficiency are the only attributes that are rewarded by the market.Under these systems, large, ‘efficient’ companies using high levels of chemical inputs and operating on tight margins are driving smaller farmers out of the arena.I hope that we can work with and reward growers of all sizes whom are committed to quality and sustainability – the Central Coast has been at the forefront of sustainable agriculture in vineyards, and some of our growers are in the pilot program for the Central Coast Vineyard Team’s “Certified Sustainable” effort.By coming up with an objective certification program, hopefully the market will financially reward growers who are going to the extra steps to ensure that they are doing the right thing for our business and our environment for the long-run.
5.Which are the key advantages of winemaking in Paso Robles? The main
challenges (if any)? Please give a brief description of the region´s
climate and weather patterns and how these affect the quality of the
grapes and wines.
·The Paso Robles AVA is a relatively large appellation, with a lot of variation in soils, local climate, topography, and viticultural philosophy.This is both a blessing and a challenge – you can not apply the same technique in two vastly different locations and expect the same result.Though the old standard grape varieties of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Chardonnay are still the dominant plantings locally, there are growers experimenting with nearly every variety imaginable; varieties native to Italy, France and Spain, as well as ‘American’ varieties such as Zinfandel and Petite Sirah – some of these vineyards now have vines of great age.Rhone and Mediterranean grape varieties have really attracted a lot of attention here locally, and seem to fit perfectly into our climate and growing conditions.There are relatively few serious pests to deal with compared to other regions, so chemical usage is very minimal and generally selected for ‘soft’ chemistries.The basic climate is balanced on a razor’s edge between the cool Pacific Coastal region just over the Santa Lucia Mountains to the West, and the hot, dry inland climate of the southern San Joaquin Valley about 2 hours drive inland to the East, (it’s about 15-20 miles through the mountains between the town of Paso Robles to reach the ocean.)The days are hot during the growing season – 95-105F degrees is quite common; but as the inland regions heat up, the rising air pulls in cool breezes and fog from the Pacific (year-round temperature of about 48-55F degrees,) through several gaps in the mountains, which cools the entire region beginning an hour before sundown or so.Nights here are generally cool, around 50-55F degrees.Warm days help to build rich fruit flavors and soft tannins into the grapes on the vine, while discouraging fungal diseases, and the cool nights help to preserve color and aroma, and allow the vines to recover water and mineral balance and ‘catch-up’ from the heat of the day.
6.What, in your opinion, makes Paso Robles such a thriving viticultural region?
·It’s the people.The Paso Robles wine region is populated by passionate, determined people from a variety of backgrounds who are dedicated to constant improvement of farming, winemaking, and marketing our wines to the world.We have a world-class Agricultural & Business University in the form of Cal Poly just 25 minutes to the south, and their newly-formed Enology and Viticulture department is already releasing dynamic, enthusiastic young people into the industry throughout the state.Though Paso has in the past sent much of its fruit north to the big wineries who use our vineyards as sources for large regional blends, there is a trend toward more and more of the fruit being fermented and marketed by local vineyards who proudly proclaim “Paso Robles” on the label.There are small wineries who have become the darlings of the media as they push the limits of viticulture and enological style, attracting attention to the entire region.And there are larger wineries whom have shown how strongly the wines from this region can compete on a national stage.We are still working on increasing the knowledge of our region with the average wine consumer – we aren’t as recognizable as Napa or Sonoma yet, and we will always have a different meaning in people’s minds than those areas.But we are building our reputation by leaps and bounds, and are rapidly becoming an exciting new quality and value region that wine drinkers are embracing and enjoying and sharing with their friends, and making a part of their lives.We are a leader in responsible environmental vineyard development and management – we are a choice that people can be comfortable making.This is a dynamic and constantly developing region – stay tuned as we continue to define ourselves and push quality higher – I’m excited to be a part of the coming years!
