Hello and Welcome,
There is one word to sum up the
month of August and that word is “HOT.” In fact, it’s really farming hot. Too
farming hot if you ask us. But as Mother Nature keeps her Stiletto heel firmly
on the throttle, she has been restrained enough to keep us under 100, well
almost.
This is the magic number for the
vines. Below 100 degrees they just keep advancing toward harvest. If the
temperature rises above 100, they want to shut down photosynthesis and protect
themselves from the heat. So the 97 to 98 degree temperatures we see each
afternoon are adding degree days faster than we can say “Pinot in
Pink” Rosé!
And then there are the night time
temperatures. So much for the diurnal cool climate viticulture of 2007, 2010
and 2011 (yeah, we are still riding those ponies…) No, not this year. Evening
temperatures in the mid to upper 50’s and even into the 60’s? For farmin’ out
loud woman, cut us some slack! We are just glowing like the metal on the edge
of a knife…
But it’s all good. The
earth remains firm under our feet. And the Syrah is looking particularly nice
this year. We would hazard a guess that there won’t be all that much Rosé
produced in 2014 if the lady behind the wheel keeps trying to overtake the pace
car.
The big news in the vineyard is
we have finally put all the vine shoots we need where they belong and hedged
off the rest. It took 4 passes this year with the hedger to control the growth,
but it is now finished and we can move on to thinning.
The vines are on this Earth for
one thing and one thing only – to reproduce. They want to ripen their seeds and
have some bird or other animal deposit them in an undisclosed location. To give
themselves the best chance at this, they trained humans to tend to their every
need. Then one day, a human came upon a decomposing cluster of grapes (it was
actually fermenting) and ate it. As our hero awoke, the search was on for more
of these clusters. And that is when the trainer became the trained.
The humans began to remove some
clusters of grapes from the vine that didn’t look quite right, or taste very
good (that was their first clue.) They selected the green bunches when most of
the bunches were deep burgundy in color. They emphatically cut the wings from
the cluster which everyone knows ripens a week or so late. They even built
structures out of posts and wires to get the clusters up off of the ground to make
their work easier.
Soon the vines were trapped in
trellis structures and trained to grow in a Vertical Shoot Positioned (VSP) way
designed by the humans for one purpose – to produce wine so they could reproduce.
The vine was forced to submit, but turned a blind eye to this activity.
In the world of wine quality that
is influenced in the vineyard, thinning is where you create the potential for
the most superior wines. We say potential because once the grapes leave the
vineyard where Mother Nature reigns supreme, they go to the winery where there
are humans asserting control. And as we see from the previous example, humans
can be a devious sort.
At Amalie Robert Estate, we look
at thinning as our opportunity to select the best fruit from our 45,000 vines.
And since we grow all of our own fruit it is up to us to get it right. The theory here is we only want ripe and
wonderfully expressive clusters of wineberries to end up in our fermentations.
There are several schools of thought on how to select those clusters and
differing ways of doing the work. That’s the thing about farming, somebody has
to actually do the work.
Well, here is how we do it. First
we try and figure out how to get a single bottle of wine from each of our
45,000 little winemaker trainees. This usually means about 2.75 pounds of
wineberries per vine. In Pinot Noir we like to see that 2.75 pounds spread over
about 10 to 12 clusters of wineberries.
The vines have other designs.
Sometimes it takes 20 clusters to get there, other times we can get there with
just 8. It all depends on what was happening in June when the vines were
flowering and trying to set fruit. So we need to take detailed cluster counts
and weights from several samples throughout the vineyard. We might even read
the expertly prepared June Climate Update to remind us what was happening.
These cluster counts and
corresponding weights go into the random number generator that produces a
thinning plan to tell us how many clusters we need to remove per vine “on
average.” But in farming there is no “average” vine. The average vine is an
imaginary construct to give the humans some reference on what to do. For
example, we do not see too many vines out there with 20.58 clusters on them.
Its 20 or 21 kid, take your pick.
So let’s say the average vine has
20.58 clusters on it and we need just 14 to get us to one bottle of wine per
vine. Here is where you say, “That’s easy! Just cut off 7 clusters per vine and
you are there.” And then Ernie says, “Right, but which ones?” Note: This is a
far better condition than having 14.2 clusters per vine and needing 16.
And here is where we get down to
the cluster cutting. Without going into too much detail, the best clusters on a
vine are usually grown at the end of the cane. We know this because Dick Erath
said so after he did repeated and replicated trials over several years. ‘nuff
said.
So we like to leave those
clusters at the end of the vine, unless they are compromised in some way, then
they have to go. That means we tend to remove the clusters, with the lowest
ripening potential, closest to the head of the vine. And then there are the
wings.
The wings always have to go,
those little green blighters. They are always a week or so behind. They flower
late, they change color late and they sweeten up late, if at all. We just can’t
be associated with them so we cut them off. They are akin to the perpetual
college student…
So at the end of the cane, our
most prized fruit is - at the end of the cane. These are the clusters of
wineberries that have the highest quality potential as long as Ernie has his
farming plan dialed in – and he does. That man burns Bio-Diesel at 2.5 miles
per hour like nobody’s business. The rest is up to that speed crazed woman flogging
a hot lap vintage to which we are much more than just casual observers.
“All the world's indeed a stage. And we are merely players. Performers
and portrayers. Each another's audience. Outside the gilded cage.” - Rush
Here are the numbers. We ask that
you not print this page for fear of spontaneous combustion. Yeah, they’re hot…
We have recorded 615.2 degree
days for the month of August, providing a total of 1,886 degree days since the
beginning of the growing season on April 1, 2014. The heat accumulation for the
2014 growing season thorough August exceeds the total growing season
heat accumulation for two of the last four vintages. And if we were to
pontificate on what September holds, which we won’t, but if we did, it could be
that the 2014 vintage turns in the most blistering performance since the 2003 vintage
tallied 2,699 degree days. Nah, never happen…
But rain it did, just a bit, on
the 30th for a little while. Mostly slug and fungus class
precipitation, but it prevented another 100 degree day. The last precipitation
was during the trundling thunder cloud burst around the middle of month. Other
than that it has been dry and dusty. But still, it was a turn, perhaps, for a
little coastal influence in the morning to provide some welcome cooling. It
could happen or it could rain, or not. But in farming there is no try – you do
or you do not.
Some of the more astute readers
of this FLOG may well remember September 2013 when we had tropical storm Pabuk
dump 9” of rain in the Pacific Northwest in 4
days. Along with the yearly equipment maintenance, this is just a small, but
significant part of the inherent joy of farming. Total precipitation for the
month of August is 0.11 inches providing a 2014 growing season total of 6.79
inches.
This is what we had to say
last August (Pre-Pabuk):
We have recorded 524 degree days
for the month of August, providing a total of 1,737 degree days since the
beginning of the growing season on April 1, 2013 (Julian calendar day 91.) For
analytical comparative purposes only, the 2010 vintage only recorded 1,722
degree days through the end of OctoBERRRR.
So that leaves us with the months
of September and maybe October if we can hang it out that long. We have never
started harvest here in September, but it could happen this year. We will keep
an eye on the tried and true Walnut tree. Nothing gets harvested here until
that tree gives us some yellow leaves signaling the harvest window is open.
On the far side of harvest lies
the Syrah. Usually a November picking date, but we’ll just have to wait and
see. Or maybe we won’t have to wait, we’ll see.
Kindest Regards,
Dena & Ernie
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