Harvest 2011 is coming!

As I sit here watching the setting sun duck under the clouds and set our elm tree alight and contemplating what to write this week I realize that while I sometimes consider sitting down to write a chore, okay writing is always a chore for me, I do enjoy the perspective that this blog has given me on what I do and how much I love it.  I hope that you have enjoyed reading it and maybe even have a little better feel as to what goes into making that bottle of wine you are having tonight.  Of course, if it isn't my wine then you may have to guess a little but the basic premise is the same and many of the same choices will have been discussed even if the decision is different in the end.  I find too that sitting down to write sometimes I'm not sure I want to discuss all the nitty gritty details.  Maybe I'm taking too much away from the romance of wine or at least making you realize that it's not the 'natural' product you thought it was, whatever 'natural' means.  In the end though what I really hope for is that you learned a little about something I love, enjoyed some good pictures and will cherish that next glass of wine a little bit more knowing the love, thought and care that someone put in to creating it.
Enough philosophy and back to blogging.  I did take my cluster pictures last week but feeling as though I had nothing to write about but complaining about the weather and the birds I decided not to post.  So you get two weeks worth of pictures again and you can see the effect of some of what I would have complained about when you compare the two.  If you look at the Foch grapes there is a darker area in the middle of the cluster in this week's picture.  That is were the waxy protective layer I think has started to break down.  If you look closer and between the grapes you can see the very beginning of botrytis rot setting in.  Looking again at both pictures I realize the dark patch was already there in the previous week but the mold hadn't started growing yet.  I think the fact that the cluster was already weak in that spot allowed the botrytis to start growing more easily when the rain came.   I'm a little on the fence about keeping this cluster because if it weren't our picture cluster I would cut it off to avoid contaminating the surrounding grapes.  Sebastian did apply a botrytis spray yesterday to the whole vineyard and hopefully that will be able to kill the spores and I will feel better about keeping the cluster until picking, which is maybe 1.5 - 2 weeks away. 

On the chardonnay cluster if you near the top there is a missing grape in this week's picture. Ackk! Make that two grapes!  You can thank some bird for that!  Usually they eat a quite a few grapes from a cluster so either this one wasn't ripe enough so it flew off or it was disturbed before it could really tuck in.  Either way I was bummed to see it missing today.   So those would be our two biggest pests now. 

  The disease pressure came about because of the weather. A little rain, a little humidity and a little warmth and you have some happy spores.  If you look at the last grape picture you can see another problem the rain brings.  When there is a lot of rain the grapes swell as they soak up the water and if the grapes are ripe or close to ripe the excess water can split the skin of the berry providing a food source for mold like you can see here.  The problem with the mold growing on the outside like this is that it can penetrate the grape, enter the stem and then spread throughout a previously healthy cluster.  Fortunately we have very little botrytis at this time and the dry weather on the way combined with the spray applied yesterday will help keep it under control.  So while I am not overly concerned we will certainly be vigilant in the coming weeks.

Back in the winery, two of our favorite volunteers Jake and Lynn arrived just in time to help me get the 2010 ans 2009 pinot noir out of barrel as well as the 2010 Marechal Foch.  They did an excellent job too and the wines are in tank and ready for bottling next week.  I got to go along behind  and clean barrels this year and it was a fun change, less concentration and more muscles.  We have also started sampling the grapes to get a base line for ripeness.  I love all the colors the juice ends up.  Tomorrow we are headed out to a few other vineyards to see how they are progressing.  We may have fruit before we know it!

Racking Barrels

This week was spent racking barrels.  I must be getting more comfortable doing it and I had a very good helper so it all went much smoother than I had feared.  Feared might be too strong of a word but I do feel a certain amount of dread, even that is too strong of a word.  Let's put it this way, it tends to be a job that I put off rather than just get on and do.  So this week I finally got on it, after tasting last week I knew I could procrastinate no longer and with Sebastian's help we whipped through it.

I start the process by racking three barrels to a small tank.  Let me back up, racking is the process of taking the clear wine away from the settled lees in a barrel.  I do this with a pump, a stainless steel pipe hooked to a hose hooked to the pump and a flashlight.  The pipe is a called a racking wand and has a clear tube of glass inline so that I can see the wine as is passes by.  Holding a flashlight up to the glass I slowly lower the wand till I just start to see cloudy wine, then I raise it about 1/4" and set the height.  Using the pump, it takes about 7 minutes to empty the barrel into second barrel.  After the barrel is emptied Sebastian rolls the barrel and collects the lees as it drains out of the bottom.  This is put into a small tank where it settles again and I will be able to rack off the clean wine and throw away the settled lees.  The barrel is then cleaned and returned to the rack to be filled with wine from another barrel and the cycle continues. There aren't too many pictures as we both have to stay pretty focused but hopefully you get the idea. 
On a more personal note my husband and I had dinner last night a new restaurant, well, new for us, called Old Europe Inn across from the Vista Roth's in South Salem.  Our waitress was charming and made us feel very welcome, the food was delicious and the presentation lovely.  We started with a crab crepe that was loaded with fresh crab, spinach and tomatoes.  I could give you a blow by blow but instead I think I'll let that tempt you.  As for wine, we had a bottle of the 2007 Domain Serene Yamhill Cuvee Pinot noir, it was lovely.  Supple and soft with a nice backbone and complemented the food beautifully.  Anyone who tells you to avoid 2007 Oregon Pinots probably doesn't know what he is talking about.  They tend to be delicate, medium alcohol, food friendly delights.  I highly recommend them, generally finding them much more classic in style than the overblown fruit bombs of 2006.  But of course that's just my opinion, go buy a few and decide for yourself.