Hello and Welcome,
This is the Amalie Robert Estate 2015
Harvest After Action Report (AAR .)
If you are reading this
communiqué, you have most likely reached the age where you accept that the
facts, however interesting they may be, are irrelevant. So to spare you from
having to read all of the remaining drivel, you can relax and watch an Amalie
Robert Estate Harvest here.
We will fondly refer to this
growing season as “Vintage 2015: Hell-bent for Leather” and rightly so. And not
just because Frank would have been 100 this year, no that‘s not it. It’s
because it was too damn hot! Wait, is
that the girl from Ipanema!?
When she walks she's like a samba
That swings so cool and sways so gentle
All through the vintages of
2007-2011 we were subjugated to the global warming dogma. And yet, collectively
and exhaustively, those were the coldest farming vintages in recent memory. We
understand we are aging gracefully, and mental recall is not what it once was,
but that’s why we write it down, and can back it up.
That, and we can still read a
chart. Now consider the vintages from 2012 to 2015. “Hotter than the hubs of
Hell!” Ernie’s grandmother, “Bert” used to say. You want some global warming?
Well, we’ve got your global warming right farming here! Nope. We have moved on
to “climate change.” And when you are farming wine it is pointless to dispute
the fact that the climate changes during the growing season.
The vines notice climate change
and act accordingly to ripen their seeds and reproduce before they run out of
growing season. The humans notice the ripening grapes that they can ferment into
wine and use in mating rituals. That is why we have a harvest, to make wine and
(potentially) mate – think about that. No climate change means no harvest and
no harvest means no wine. And everyone knows what that means… So, logically, we
could contend that climate change is good for the human race.
However the fundamental, and
often passed by, question remains: Is the current period of climate change making
good or bad wine? Ask many of the local resident humans and they will tell you
we had a great summer! The tomatoes were early and tasted wonderful, shorts and
tank tops started to appear in June. And the winegrowing community experienced one
of the earliest harvests in recorded history – mid-August for some vineyards.
If you asked Frank, he might say:
“It was just, one of those years… just one
of those crazy years.
If we'd thought a bit about the end of it,
we'd have been aware that it was just too
hot… to cool down.”
Now that we have covered the
basic construct of why we grow wine (Note that poppy cultivation is
still illegal and there are no poppy fields to run through), let’s delve into how
we responded to this year’s climate change. The first thing to acknowledge is
how little we know about what is going on inside the vine, and the corollary of
how little it matters.
Case in point: Driving a
car in Ballard , Washington
As a wine consumer, you assume
the position of the curbside observer. You see the brand names, the vintage year
and Pinot Noir. Great – Waft The Fruit. You have very little idea of how these
wines were grown or by whom. And the chance that you are going to be picking up
stakes and growing your own 35 acres of wine in your next career is almost
zero, but not zero. Trust us, we are here and have done that math.
So what you really want to know
is does that car ever turn? Yes, but just like relying on the weather forecaster,
you are just as surprised as they are.
Back in the day when there were
books that were actually printed on paper made from trees, and bread cost $1
for a baguette, there were motivational business books. One lesson Ernie squirreled
away was to start with the end in mind. This may in fact be the pre-thought
behind the term “asshat” but you never know.
If you have one of those
newfangled phones with speech recognition say “asset” very slowly and see what
it comes back with. Today and toady are also a bit tricky for the speech
recognition software. Either that or they are programmed to get it wrong from
time to time as in: “I hope you sell a lot of wine toady.”
Right. Back on point. So we know
that when harvest visits upon us, we will be bringing in about 65 tons of hand harvested,
pre-fermented nectar suitable for just about any mating ritual you can devise. Did
we ever say great Pinot Noir is like sex in a glass? Don’t forget the candles.
Farmer graffiti – tagging the
harvest wall
Logistically, we need a few
things to make that happen, like tractors and harvest bins and buckets,
clippers and harvesters with hands to harvest. We do have other harvesters and
they are adorned with things like wings and hooves and antlers. Not that
conducive to winemaking, but they certainly do their part – blighters…
Qualitatively, we need wonderfully
expressive aroma and flavor packets filled with a perfect blend of acid, sugar,
pulp, water and seeds attached to a woody structure known as a stem. The vine
does nearly all of the work here and we would be remiss if we said otherwise.
But left out to fend for themselves they would be sprawled out all over the
ground with unripe and rotted fruit. So, it appears, the winegrower plays more
of an instrumental role and is not just a tool.
Hey Nelson,
riddle me this: Who’s your
Winegrower?
Critical success factors are
things winegrowers purposefully do, or do not do, to maximize wine quality
potential. The decision points surrounding these factors (excluding harvest)
are, in reverse order, crop thinning, leaf plucking, hedging, shoot positioning
and catch wires. We will cover these topics just now in excruciating detail.
Marketing can also help to maximize/monetize wine quality potential, but usually
only after the fact.
Things like vineyard layout and
vine spacing along with the correct clone and rootstock selections are fairly
long term and strategic decisions that cannot be overemphasized. Wine growing
is not like commodities farming where you rotate from soybeans to corn to
winter wheat, sometimes all in the same year. No, you want those vines to put down
deep roots, because you knew when you bought that hillside piece of dirt that
you were going to rely on Mother Nature for the irrigation program. How did
that out work out for us this year Frank?
“I got plenty of nothin’ and nothin’s plenty for me.”
Crop thinning is a fancy
way to say we are going to go out and cut some fruit off of those vines. Crop
thinning can occur for a variety of reasons to maximize wine quality potential.
It can also occur if there is a misunderstanding in the vineyard and that
typically does not improve wine quality, but it certainly can impact wine
quantity. That’s farmin’, where accuracy and precision are acknowledged
concepts, but are given a very wide implementation berth.
As Vintage 2015: Hell-bent for
Leather was drawing to its foregone conclusion we decided to delay our crop
thinning to maximize wine quality potential. All through July and August the
heat was intense and we were building sugars very quickly. By removing crop
during those months, the vine would have taken all of the energy from the
leaves and concentrated it into fewer berries resulting in unbalanced and high
alcohol potential wine.
However, when the first bout of
showers blew through in late August, Ernie said it was now or never and it was
to be now. We took the wings first. These are berries that are formed on the
late to bloom, and ripen, tendril adjacent to the main cluster. We left them on
to help absorb the excess sugars the vines were producing in hopes of having
less sugar in the main cluster, and more uniform ripeness in our wines. The
wings were sacrificed to buy time for the main clusters to develop aroma and
flavor and moderate sugar concentration. Sometimes farmin’ just ain’t pretty.
Pinot Noir cluster with wing
The Pinot Meunier has always
presented an open-ended proposition that Ernie had never accepted, until this
year. It is no secret that we planted Pinot Meunier to satisfy Dena’s addiction
to great Champagne .
So when it was time to take the underripe wings, Ernie said “Harvest ‘em in
buckets and I will ferment them.” And so we did. That and a block of Pommard
had its wings clipped as well.
There’s wings in them
thar bins!
It’s too soon to say for sure,
but Ernie has crafted a nice little “blanc
de noir” rosé base wine that could be bottled as a still wine, or perhaps
not. The blend is unique in that it is about 50/50 Pinot Meunier and Pinot
Noir. Unique for a still wine, but not necessarily for Champagne . We will know more, but have less
of this wine, when we pen the Spring Cellar Report. The underlying principle
here is called “destructive sampling.” It’s a quality control thing.
We also thinned off clusters of
fruit that were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Clusters that grow
together and do not allow for air circulation are the primary targets. If you
were a cluster of grapes hanging out on the vine, then that old Microsoft adage
‘It’s better to be lucky than good” came into play. Imagine that, hi-tech meets
winegrowing!
Now another reason for crop
thinning has a quantitative impact on wine quality potential and that centers
around the concept of fermentation capacity. If you can’t ferment them, then
there is no wine quality to worry about. Around July, Ernie had a feeling that
we were going to see this heat continue and that might mean a larger harvest.
So he banked a few more fermenters just in case.
After the first week of harvest
it became exceeding obvious that we would need those new fermenters “and then
some.” Note: This is a technical farming term that means you are “on the short
end of the stick” which is also a technical farming term that means “it’s your
turn in the barrel” which is derived (allegedly) from the logging and mining
camps of old.
Of course the chance of finding new
fermenters to buy during harvest approaches zero, but it is not zero. Ernie
mapped out the fermentation floor and said “I can take 10 more, but that’s it.
We will be wall to wall.” So the next morning he made the call and low and
behold there were 14 available. Miracles are not something we pray for, we
depend on them.
He said “I’ll take 10.” The
response was “Are you sure you don’t want the rest? They will be gone within the
hour.” “No. I only have enough floor space for 10 more and you can’t punch them
down if you stack ‘em.” But he did get the quantity discount and that covered
the delivery fee. Farmer first, winemaker second.
That brought us up to 65
fermenters and we filled them all, plus a couple odd balls we dusted off from
the back room. This would eventually lead to a serious amount of punchdown, but
you cannot punchdown what you do not ferment. And the first rule of punchdown
is that nobody talks about punchdown.
Before we thin the crop, we pluck
a few leaves out of the fruit zone. Arguably, this is the most important
factor affecting the way a wine feels on your palate. The texture, to a great
degree, is determined by the amount of sun the wee little wine berries are
exposed to and when.
Soon after flowering, depending
on the weather, the vines may set fruit. That means that a portion of the
flowers on any given vine were successfully pollinated and will produce a wine berry.
Since wine berries are self pollinating, it is not that great of an
intellectual leap to deduce it is Mother Nature’s desire that we make wine each
and every year. And not just for medicinal purposes as was the case under the
Volstead Act.
This year saw that a
disproportionately large percentage of flowers successfully pollinated – which
is better than the opposite outcome. This may be considered the human
equivalent of getting to “first base.” But just because the flowers have been pollinated
it does not mean they will “go all the way” to harvest.
So we wait a couple of weeks or
so after the flowers have been pollinated and we see the wee little green wine berries
beginning to form. This is the time to pluck off a few leaves. The reasons for
plucking around the wine berries are many and can include:
- Better airflow and sun exposure to dry off the morning dew or rainfall that can enable rot to compromise the fruit.
- Improved sun exposure on the fruit to develop aroma, flavor and tannin in the skins as a natural response to said sun exposure.
- To make it easier to thin the crop and subsequently get them ready for their big day – The Great Cluster Pluck!
As winegrowers, we are most
concerned with the second point. First up is timing – Frank had impeccable
timing. We pluck off the leaves after the wine berries have formed all the
cells they are going to form. They need the energy from the nearby leaves to
help the cells form, so we wait about 2 weeks for that to happen.
Next we have to decide how many
leaves we are going to remove. Conversely from the vines point of view, we are determining
how much sun exposure we are going to allow. The primary factor in determining
the leaf pluck program is wine style and mid-palate texture. Elegant, perfumed
ethereal Pinot Noir wines keep their leaves on, leaving a bit to the
imagination. Aromas and flavors develop a bit more slowly and avoid the harsh consequences
of overexposure.
Pinot Noir clusters after having their wings thinned off
It’s like humans getting a
beautiful tan. If done properly, it happens a little bit each day until you
achieve the perfect patina. Then do your hair and take the picture to send to
all your friends! Wines that are more forward and brash are prone to being
overexposed in their fruit zone like that hussy Cabernet. While we don’t drink
it anymore, you usually have a pretty good idea what you are getting yourself
into. Frank had a thing for a Gardner
once and he knew a bit about this:
And each time I do just the thought of you
Makes me stop before I begin…
‘cause I’ve got you, under my skin
An integral part of this discussion
is whole cluster fermentation. This means we leave some of the wine berries on
the stem when we ferment. The result is that we extract some tannin from the
stems and that tannin along with the tannin from the skins forms the mid-palate
texture of our wines. Stem tannins also provide a long crescendo culminating in
a very satisfying and enduring finish.
If you want to experience this
first hand at home try this. Go to the store and pluck a cluster of red grapes.
When you get home, take some grapes off the stem as gently as possible. Hint:
Don’t buy the biggest cluster you can find. Size doesn’t really matter.
Now remove the skin from the pulp
and seeds of about 10 grapes. Put the skins in your mouth and chew them while
you observe the person in the mirror. That look on your face is skin tannin and
it is a direct response to how much sun the grapes were, or were not, exposed
to before they were plucked by someone before you plucked them. Note: You can
rest assured that at Amalie Robert Estate nobody is plucking our grapes before
we do. A little sampling maybe, but no plucking.
Now try something you most likely
have not done before. Start by removing the remaining grapes from the stem. Stand
in front of someone with a camera to record this because you will want to watch
this. Chew the stem vigorously and feel the astringent drying that is now
encasing your palate. You have just experienced stem tannin in your own unique
idiom. Post it on-line if you like.
What this trial hopefully
demonstrated is that if you are going to use some stem tannin in your wine, be
sure to dial back the skin tannin intensity. And you do that by shading the
skins from excessive sun exposure. Of course the more stems you add, the more
tannin you will get, so there is a whole cluster balance to be found there as
well.
All of this tannin business comes
together and begins to work itself out about 5 to 7 years after the vintage.
Patient cellar aging will integrate skin tannins and transform stem tannins into
a cascading and expansive spice finish that will curl your toes and leave you
with a little Alpenglow. You can experience this phenomenon now with a great
bottle of 2007 vintage “Amalie’s Cuvée.” Or maybe just settle in with a book, a
really good book.
Now as we all know, and it really
goes without saying, the ratio of leaf pull to stem inclusion is an ever moving
target with climate change.
Off with their heads! Aka
Hedging is up next, or actually just before leaf plucking. Hedging is the
act of removing green, leafy material from the canopy. As vines grow, they are
always trying to escape the bondage known as the trellis. Sure some shoots like
the restraint and control, but others are growing out into the “no fly zone”
and that is where the hedger enforces discipline.
Other than keeping the vines
neatly trimmed, the hedging pass has the effect of redirecting and focusing the
vine’s energy from growing more foliage to ripening seeds to reproduce. Is that
second base coming into view?
As the story goes, when monks
were growing vines to make wine there was a wayward goat that kept nibbling the
succulent shoot tips in a corner of the yard where the vines grew. It turns out
that the vines in that part of the yard ripened before the other vines in the
rest of the yard. Hence and Soforth were sent out into the vine yard to pluck
the clusters and it was determined that the earlier ripening vines made better
wine. This inductive reasoning was quite similar to how the Bordelais came up
with their classification system in 1855 – and it is still used today. That’s
the fact, Jacques!
June and July are the months
where we typically do the most hedging. But with all the heat accumulation and
lack of rain to date we were thinking about ways to slow things down. So
instead of making 4 hedging passes to accelerate ripening, we choose to do just
2. This had the effect of growing more of a bushy canopy, and we don’t have a
goat, so the result was slower ripening leading to longer hang time.
Back in July we couldn’t see all
the way to harvest, but we knew we were going to get some rain. It was going to
happen, but we didn’t know when, how much or how long it was going last. But we
figured if we could slow the vines down enough to hold out for some rain, we
would see the vines rehydrate and ”go all the way” to finish the job of
developing expressive aromas and flavors while diluting the high sugar
concentration. Yeah, that would be a humdinger.
But we had to hold out. Some vine
yards couldn’t wait that long. Some of those deep Jory soils demonstrated what
we knew – they can’t hold their water. Jory soils are relatively new volcanic
soils that are hued red due to the high iron content. They are deep, homogenous
soils that have large pores to hold a lot of water per inch of soil profile. In
some cases, those large pores turned out to be their Achilles heel as they also
allowed the vines to take up water unabated and deplete the soils. A fast horse
doesn’t run long, allegedly.
Our sedimentary soils are some of
the oldest soils in the Willamette
Valley
The one constant we have from growing
season to growing season is our vines. We are all estate grown meaning we are not
scrambling from one vineyard source to another every year. And our vines just
keep getting older with each passing year. In a year like Vintage 2015:
Hell-bent for Leather, vine age and deep rooted rootstocks were the key to
holding out for some mid-September rain.
Rainfall is the key to understanding
Vintage 2015: Hell-bent for Leather. Nothing happens in farming without some
rainfall and the resulting available soil moisture. Rainfall is the business
equivalent to the budget sphincter and the resulting available funds.
We received 0.96 inches of rain
in the second half of September and that was one of the signals we needed to
see, along with the walnut tree showing full color change, before engaging the Great Cluster Pluck of 2015.
Adding the 0.23 inches of
rainfall for the first half of the month provides a total September rainfall of
1.19 inches and a growing season total of 5.72 inches through September. Almost 20% of the entire growing
season rainfall through September fell in the last half of September. Hey
Frank, what if you plucked before then?
It was great fun, but it was just one of
those years…
Shoot positioning, putting
up catch wires and whipping the vineyard floor into shape in April is when the time
critical vineyard work starts. Throughout the summer heat, we continued our
canopy management and vineyard floor practices to minimize the loss of
available soil moisture. Alas, these tasks, while time consuming and expensive,
can have only a moderate impact. But they are the fundamental vineyard practices
that paid great dividends at the end of a hot, dry vintage.
So we are back to where we began.
The Great Cluster Pluck of Vintage 2015: Hell-bent for Leather began, as it
always does, in earnest but with some new friends – 159 of them to be exact. Say hello to our newest variety –
Gewürztraminer. Ernie grew 159 clusters of this little rascal and that bucket
and a half of grapes fermented out to just about 11 bottles of wine. To all of
you home winemakers out there, he feels your pain.
The big debate that seems to take
a lot of air out of the room this time of year is plucking on flavors v
plucking by the numbers. We always pluck by the numbers because we numbered our
blocks. How else would the analytical “A Type” layout his farm? Numerically,
block by farming block. Of course we taste the fruit first to decide which blocks
to pluck.
Once we decide which blocks are
ready to go, our thoughts turn to cluster pluckers. To achieve the maximum
impact in the field we are looking for 20 to 25 people a day to bring in the
harvest. Anything less than that and, really, you are just farmin’ around.
By the first week of October we
had gotten a couple more showers and a fair chunk of land plucked, but there
was another “Special Project” hanging out there. The Syrah is always late and,
by definition, harvested right on time.
One of Ernie’s micro-projects is
his cool climate Syrah. He has 4 clones planted with a few vines of Viognier
scattered throughout the block. Syrah likes heat and plenty of it. But to keep
its cool climate vibrancy it also wants a cool end to the growing season. Well,
sometimes it is better to want than to have.
Syrah wine berries in the
raw
And the Syrah block, like every
other block, is always plucked on aromas and flavors. Ernie thinks about
plucking it frequently throughout harvest:
And each time I do just the thought of you
Makes me stop before I begin
So he waits. The good news is
Syrah doesn’t really rot. It has thick skins and can take a bit of rain. Not
like that other noir grape, Pinot, who can dish the dirt, but can’t take the damp.
So we are sitting back and thinking with this warm and dry year, maybe our cool
climate Syrah vines are basking in the vintage of their lifetime. With just
1,188 vines, this is a cluster pluck he needed to get right.
At this point, it’s all over but
the numbers. Note: Vintage 2015: Hell-bent for Leather numbers will be
presented in a mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive manner with a
multi-year, graphic summation for your connivance. We just don’t want to know
about it.
During the second half of
September we accumulated 138 degree days. Our high temperature was 91.4 degrees
and our low temperature was a nippy 34.9 degrees. Adding that to the 168 degree
days from the first half of September yields 306 degree days. Growing season
degree day accumulation through September stands at 2,303 degree days.
September rainfall was 1.19 inches for a growing season to date total of 5.72
inches.
But it’s not over until Kate Smith
sings “God Bless America .”
This, allegedly, was Yogi Berra’s reference to knowing when it was, allegedly,
over. Our Vintage 2015: Hell-bent for Leather Cluster Pluck was one for the
record books. Extra tons and encores had us in the field for what seemed like here
to eternity. We plucked the last bucket of Syrah grapes on October 15th
and, after a full and bountiful 30 days, left the harvest stage.
But we returned on the 28th
For that we are certain
We plucked the Late Harvest Viognier
Without coercion
And that fact leads us to yet another
set of numbers that may be uniquely our own. We accumulated an additional 112
degree days through the first half of October bringing our Vintage 2015:
Hell-bent for Leather total to 2,415 degree days. Our high temperature was 91.8
and our low temperature was 39.2 degrees Fahrenheit. We received 0.32 inches of
rain through the 11th of October bringing our growing season to date
total to 6.04 inches.
To think we did all that;
And may we say - not in a shy way,
More, much more than this
We did it our way.
Thank you Frank
for letting us hang out on your star.
Kindest Regards,
Dena & Ernie
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