Hello and
Welcome,
This is the climate update
for the month of July 2012.
“Well, it seemed like a
good idea at the time.” Looking back on the ¡Salud! Pinot Noir auction
and how we got started growing wine. Speaking of which, that event is coming
around again this November 9th and 10th. You can learn
about the mission and how to secure your Amalie Robert Estate ¡Salud!
Cuvee here: http://www.saludauction.org
July has been a really
nice month for farmers who farm wine. We started with some very warm and sunny
days. The vines picked up on the increased warmth and tapped into their reserve
of soil moisture to put up some impressive growth. Good for them. Our job was to
harness that growth and put catch wires around it. Not so good for
us.
This struggle for control lasts a couple of weeks and the vineyard
begins to resemble an overgrown jungle. However, we have seen this before and
know what to do – ROADTRIP!
Wait a minute, that’s not
it. Ernie pulls out the hedger, that’s what he does. The vines seem to sense
this and push even more growth, that’s what they do. Yes, this piece of
equipment gets quite a work-out every year. Notice how Ernie has the flail mower
hooked up behind the hedger so he can “sweep up as he goes along.” Now that’s
farming! We wouldn’t say the hedger has paid for itself, because that is not
what farmers say. They say things like, “Well, that looks like a piece of grit
to me.”
The hedger turns chaos
back into order. We like to hedge a pretty big canopy. We are strong believers
in leaves. The past few vintages have been fairly cool here in the Willamette
Valley and having more leaf surface is certainly an advantage in achieving
ripeness. This point is made in mid to late September through October when the
temperatures are slow to warm up. Cool conditions mean that there is very little
time for the leaves to create and export energy to the rest of the vine. So, we
plan for this and make sure we maximize our leaf surface area. And it looks
nice, too.
We end up hedging the top
of the shoots back down to a height of about 90 inches. By design, this is the
width of the rows in the vineyard. The growth starts at what we call the
fruiting wire, which is at 30 inches, and gives us a 60 inch “solar array” to
harvest sunlight. Because that is what farmers do, we harvest sunlight. Actually
the vines do the harvesting this time of year. If all ends well, we will be back
in October for a little “cluster pluck” of our own.
Right now we are plucking
just a few leaves in the fruit zone to expose the developing berries to the
morning sun. This part of the canopy management is often overlooked in how
important it is in shaping the flavor and aroma profile in the skins. If we pull
too many leaves on our Pinot Noir and we see a nice hot August the fruit can
develop an almost Syrah like intensity. Of course we want that in our Syrah.
Viognier, however, will sunburn like an Irishman in Portugal, so we leave all of
those leaves on.
Leaf plucking is the
beginning of winemaking in the vineyard. This is when we look for a rift in the
time/space continuum to see what the month of August and September will bring.
We don’t have ground hogs in Oregon, so we have to go hi-tech.
If we see a dismal, cool
growing season we may be inclined to remove a few more leaves. But if we see a
repeat of 2003 when we could have ripened Zinfandel, then we are inclined to
leave a few more leaves to shade the fruit.
Among all of the “most
important” things we need to get right, sun development in the skins and the
fermentation temperature that extracts those flavors and aromas are key to the
style of wine we produce. Did we mention that leaf plucking in Burgundy is not
such a big deal? Hmm…
Well, it is about time to
look at the farming numbers.
We have recorded about 449
degree days for the month of July, providing a total of 929 degree days since
the beginning of the growing season on April 1st. This compares with
381 degree days last July and a comparative total of 689 degree days for 2011.
During July, our highest high was 90.9 and our lowest low was 43.9 degrees
Fahrenheit.
We received no
measurable precipitation for the month of July. July 2011 brought the gift of
1.02 inches of rain. Rainfall from April 1st through July
31st was 8.96, and is 0.40 inches less than last year's growing
season to date rainfall of 9.39 inches. Timing is everything.
The trend seems to be
warmer and drier than last year. Hard to believe it could be wetter and colder,
though as we now know, anything is possible. Mother Nature, not very reliable
but somewhat predictable, seems to be turning on her charm.
Next up on the Julian
calendar is Lag Phase. This is the time in the berries’ development when we can
predict final harvest weights. Of course they will be wrong, but they are
usually close enough. Once we know how much fruit we are hanging, we can go back
to the vine and thin off a few clusters to get us where we need to be. Being
where you need to be when you need to be there. That’s the secret to a happy
farmer and catching your flight home.
Kindest
Regards,
Dena &
Ernie
