We checked the sugars in the vineyard this morning. All the blocks are in the 25 to 26.5 range-- pretty close to where we want them. Sugar content (or "brix" as it's known in the trade) is important-- it translates to alcohol in the finished wine. The winemaker looks for other indications of ripeness: have the seeds turned brown, for example. Most important, are the flavors fully developed? We strive for intense cabernet character that reflects the personality of our vineyard. So the fruit has to be really ready.
Checking sugars involves a walk through the vineyard with a supply of plastic baggies, while pulling individual berries to try to get a "representative" sample. You pick from both sides of the vine rows since the orientation to the sun differs.
You can measure the "brix" in the field with a device call a refractometer-- a gadget with a prism inside which measures how much the juice bends sunlight. You smush up your berry sample right in the plastic baggie, place a couple of drops on the refractometer, look through the eyepiece, and voila! 25.4 or 26.2, or whatever. The kids love to participate. They run up and down the rows with their baggies, grabbing grapes, then smushing them all up. Their sample may not be that scientific, but it's lots of fun. The big reward comes at the end. Run the pink juice through a strainer into a cup. At this point the juice is 20% sugar or more-- what kid won't love that!
Our harvest is already seasonally late. The basal leaves on the vines are turning yellow. The last several years we have picked the crop by mid-October. This year has been late from the get-go. Spring and bud-break were late, as we had cool weather and rain well into May. The calendar sets up the annual contest between the vineyard manager, who wants to get the crop in and avoid a nasty weather surprise, and the winemaker, who is all about flavor ane "hang-time". To produce an extraordinary wine, you take some risks.
Wine farming involves lots of challenges. "Mother Nature bats last" is an expression you hear a lot in the Napa Valley. The 2011 season began with a drawn-out winter, a very late spring, and a serious rain in the middle of June. The timing of the rain could not have been worse for a lot of growers. The vines were in bloom, and the rain knocked off a lot of the flowers. In many areas of the Valley, this significantly reduced the fruit "set". Some growers lost most of their crop. The olive crop has been similarly impacted. Fortunately, because of the location and orientation of our vineyard, our vines are always slower to get going, and we dodged this bullet.
The summer has been cool for the second year in a row, which pushes the season further into the Fall. This works for us, since our particular clone otherwise tends to sugar-up more quickly than it ripens. Things get hairy when the weather turns cool or we start to get rain after mid-September. This year we've had both. Damp, cold weather can wreak havoc in the vineyard. The ripening process slows, and mold and botrytis can develop quickly-- two things we don't want in our fruit. The rain went away, and we removed the lower leaves around the fruit to allow more sun and better air circulation. It's been a little breezy and the days have warmed up and dried things out. It was 38 degrees in our vineyard last night, but will make it well into the 70's for the next few days. These conditions look perfect for finishing off the 2011 crop.
