Hello and Welcome,
The is the 2018 Harvest After
Action Report (AAR) from Amalie Robert Estate. A FLOG Communication.
Bringing in the harvest is the
last act of farming. It is the culmination of all that has happened since the
last time you harvested. And harvest equipment is kind of like winemaking
equipment. You own it all year long, but you only get to use it once a year. You
will look pretty silly running the harvest trailers around the vineyard in mid-April,
unless you are from down under. Farm equipment, on the other hand is used most every
day during the growing season, but not so much during the dormant season. The
dormant season is when you perform the sacred “equipment maintenance” ritual
along with a few “Hail Marys” and prayers to the patron saint of all things
mechanical – Rube Goldberg.
But it is the vertically
integrated wine growers and winemakers (the “ers”) that keep busy year-round.
And let’s not forget the marketers. Without whom, you would not be able to
enjoy a fine and pleasant FLOGing on a semi-irregular and somewhat irreverent
basis.
Enough about us, let’s explore
the tons and tons of sublime wine berries that were brought in this year by the
human harvesters. We will leave the winged and hooved harvesters (aka
blighters) for another FLOG.
Of course, there is math, just
no avoiding it as a farmer. So, pull a cork and sip-along. First off you will
need a piece of scratch paper, unless you want a permanent record, then go
ahead and write it on the table with a Sharpie. In the upper left-hand corner,
draw a 5 gallon plastic bucket with a handle.
Now go ahead and write the
number “20” inside the bucket that you just drew. This represents how many
pounds of wine berries are harvested in any given bucket. Now to be sure this
is just an average. There may in fact be one or maybe two buckets that actually
do weigh 20 pounds, the law of large numbers will see to that. By far and away,
most buckets will not contain exactly 20 pounds of wine berries. (How many
months have 28 days? – All of them…)
Most will contain at least 20
pounds, so we have a little wiggle room when a bucket gets spilled or contains a
compromised cluster that needs to be “sorted out”. Yeah we do that right there
in the field for the rest of the clusters see. They feel shame.
The harvest bucket is the
keystone to making harvest work. So much is riding on this little piece of
molded plastic with a half moon metal hoop precariously attached to the top. For
Pinot Noir in particular, it takes about 4 clusters to make up a pound. You
could say 4 ounces each, or if you are metrically oriented, that would be 454
grams divided by 4. Note: This is an exercise left to the metrically oriented
reader.
Clearly, you can see which way
we are oriented. (Note: Oreintated is not a real word. The same holds true for
substainable, even here on the farm.). It‘s not that we are metrically
challenged, it is just one more conversion to do when your synapses are already
firing as fast as humanly possible. Even Einstein would tell you to write these
conversions down for quick reference, so you could occupy your brain with more
important matters. Like clusters per bucket, then buckets per harvest tote bin
and followed-up with Ernie’s favorite measure: furlongs per fortnight.
And if we have done a good job
in the field, any given vine will have about 12 clusters representing 3 pounds
of wine berries. Now, you see where we are going. If a harvest bucket weighs in
at around 20 pounds, this means there are going to be somewhere around 80
clusters in there. This is true for the metrically oriented reader as well, no
conversion required - yet.
Here is where the math gets a
bit more intense. If we harvest 80 clusters per bucket and any given vine has
12 clusters, how many vines are harvested for each two bucket human harvester trip
to the harvest trailer? The old story problem brought back from the far, far
away elementary school days. Well, the answer is “it depends”, which is mostly
what they teach you to say in MBA school. If only we knew that as kids, we
would have aced math class!
Assuming all the clusters on
the vine are actually harvested, and you know some of them won’t make “the
cut”, we can get between six and seven vines harvested per bucket, or let’s
just say 13 vines for every pair of buckets coming up to the harvest trailer. But
sometimes the winged harvester and the hooved harvester have visited the vine
before the human harvester. This adds systemic variability and skews the entire
multivariable equation in context of the time space continuum.
The long-range implication of
that revelation is that we have about 55,000 vines to harvest. So that is
roughly 4,250 two bucket trips to the harvest trailer. And to consider the
human factor, we would say that is one human making 4,250 trips to the harvest
trailer, or 10 humans making 425 trips to the harvest trailer, or maybe 20
humans each making 210 trips to the harvest trailer.
We go with the 20 human
option, spread over a few weeks in the time space continuum. To give credit
where credit is due, the human harvesters work very, very hard. It is
physically demanding work and not well suited for the chronologically advanced.
As most of you know, premium Oregon vineyards are situated on hillsides which
makes running up and back down the rows more challenging. This adds a dimension
of complexity that is clearly present in all of our wines.
A full day for any human
harvesting wine berries is 100 buckets (50 two bucket trips) to the harvest
trailer. That comes in as 20 pounds by 100 buckets for 2,00 pounds, or one ton.
A metric ton is 2,205 pounds, and, well quite franc-ly, what do you do with
that?
Now go ahead and draw a
harvest tote bin just under the bucket. A harvest tote bin is 4 feet square by
about 30 inches tall. Ours are white, so we know when we get them clean, but
you can make yours whatever color you like.( Maybe a rainbow with a unicorn
would be nice – parenthetically speaking). A harvest tote bin at Amalie Robert
Estate should contain 36 harvest buckets and then a lid is snapped on to
indicate to the yellow jackets that these wine berries are ours. Then we say
the UK abbreviation for post office, which happens to be “P. Off”. Trust on
this, Dena lived there and Ernie has never let it go. They speak English and we
speak American. Good to know if you are planning a trip and need to ask someone
where to “post” something. They will most likely tell you “P. Off!”
The key to the winery
operating as smoothly as it was expertly designed by Mr. Munch, is getting 36
buckets (20 pounds each) of wine berries into each of these harvest tote bins.
Now, go ahead and draw 36 buckets worth of wine berries in your harvest tote
bin and then draw a lid on it. You can add a few angry yellow jackets (V.
germanica most likely) buzzing about trying to sting people, or actually
stinging people, or stinging you, depending on how you are oriented. Quickly
draw an Epi-Pen if you are feeling like you may be going into anaphylactic shock.
Whew, that was close.
Legal Disclaimer: If you
publish your drawing and become rich and famous, we want a cut of the action.
There are three harvest bins
on a harvest trailer that is hooked up to the tractor that Ernie drives to the
winery to drop off full harvest tote bins and return with empty harvest tote
bins. Ernie is inside a cab, so don’t draw any yellow jackets in there. But he
does have his genuine USPS 1989 Montana Statehood commemorative stamp coffee
mug full of morning accelerant if you want to draw that. A postage stamp in
1989 was 2 bits. Even in Two Dot, which is located in Wheatland County,
Montana.
And now, the magic of 36 will
be revealed for all to see. Just to the right of your harvest tote bin, go
ahead and draw a fermenter. A fermenter has the same footprint as a harvest
tote bin, but it is about 4.5 feet tall. Again, ours are white HDPE plastic,
which makes it easy to see the wine berries and resulting wine. But to each his
own.
Now, you don’t really need to
know any of that, it’s called a red herring. Doodle one of those on your desk
blotter, because you won’t have any space here. But what you do need to know is
that our fermenters can only hold 1.4 tons (2,800 pounds when you ferment with
whole clusters as we do, and you would too). Herein lies the lesson: 36 buckets
by 20 pounds by 4 harvest bins fills a fermenter properly. And by properly we
mean it is so full that we can get a warm (but not hot) fermentation to extract
all the great aroma, flavor and texture, but not so full that the wine
overflows and makes its way to the drain. You know, a proper fermentation – not
too hot, not too cold and certainly not overfull. On the other side of the
coin, an overfull fermenter is a sad, but self-correcting situation.
But wait, there is more math.
We have 36 harvest bins. And that just so happens to be 12 trailer loads of 3
harvest tote bins. And those 36 harvest tote bins, at 4 per fermenter, will
exactly fill 9 fermenters. How do you suppose that happened? Recheck your math
on that furlong to fortnight conversion.
On the remaining open space of
your paper, or the rest of the table, draw as many fermenters as you have room
for. Now, fill them until all of the grapes are harvested or all of the
fermenters are full, whichever comes first. Your mileage may vary.
The weather coming into
harvest this year reminded us of the World Series. Those boys from Beantown won
one, lost one and then they would simply not be denied. Even if it took 7 hours
and 20 minutes to do so. It became a World Serious! Congratulations and ring up
those folks at Gillette and get yourselves some razors.
We started The Great Cluster
Pluck of 2018 with a warm, late September pluck for Ernie’s pre-sparkling wine
project called the Bellpine Pearl. This wine is made from the wings of Pinot
Meunier and Pinot Noir. The first vintage was 2015 and it was a white wine, and
with 2018 we return to that style. Maybe, someday, it will actually be a proper
sparkling wine, or Ernie will mess something up and it will be fizzy in the
bottle. Until then, you will need a tall narrow glass, a straw and some form of
eye protection (OSHA approved) to make your own bubbles.
Then, it rained. It was
amazing and just what we were all hopping around the vineyard for - aka the
rain dance. The first week of Okto-vember was cool and damp. Not enough to encourage
the Botrytis, but enough to slow down sugar accumulation by rehydrating the wine
berries. The best gift of all was to allow a little more hang time for aroma
and flavor development. It was a gift from Mother Nature and all was right with
the world.
The next week we were right back
up in the 90 degree range. So much for a repeat of the wonderfully expressive
2007 vintage. The rest of October, just like those Red Sox, kept the heat on.
It was GO, GO, GO and then GO some more! And so we did, 36 buckets per each. Vintage
2018.
The terms “indigenous
fermentation” or “wild fermentation” refer to those select few individuals who
choose not to add commercial yeast from a bag to their fermenters. We are
included among those individuals. Instead, we rely on the yeast from the
vineyard to start and complete our fermentation.
It is true, that the wine berries
not only have indigenous yeast on them when the arrive at the winery, 36
buckets per harvest tote bin, they also have some other nefarious yeasts and
bacteria. All of that gets mixed together, 36 buckets as whole clusters and 108
buckets as whole berries, into a fermenter and off they go! It’s a “Party in
our Pinot”, microbially speaking.
All of this pre-supposes that
you have successfully chosen days to process said wine berries when the power
company has not chosen those very same days for “infrastructure maintenance"
resulting in a loss of electricity. Fortunately, punchdown is done by hand, so
no worries there. The other environmental concern to be aware of is when the
State of Oregon lifts the backyard burn restrictions. That is usually at the
end of October, and it becomes quite obvious who the closet pyromaniacs are in
your neighborhood. They are all out in full regalia for opening day!
So, while all of this is very
interesting and quite esoteric, you may be wondering how we know the indigenous
yeast from the vineyard is going to ferment the wine berries. For an illustrative
answer to that question we turn our attention to that horrible little insect,
the fruit fly (Horribilis minimus).
Fruit flies, as annoying as
they are, can teach us all a great deal about indigenous fermentation. Much
like the yeast that ferments our wine, fruit flies seem to appear out of thin
air. Two of the right fruit flies, or maybe just one of the wrong ones if you
are (un)lucky can spawn an entire army that will colonize the winery in an exponentially
reproductive fashion. We all know that 2 plus 2 is 4 and that 2 squared is 4,
but 4 plus 4 is 8 and 4 squared is 16. Even Einstein’s theory of relativity informs
us that time flies like an arrow, but fruit flies like a banana. Or was that
Groucho Marx?
Yeast rely on cell division to
reproduce, so none of that egg laying business. However, it would seem that the
exponential population growth of both indigenous yeast and fruit flies are
quite similar. It is a sad day when the first couple of fruit flies are
spotted. From that point on, Ernie is somewhat militant, in an “A type” manner,
about cleaning everything that has, or has had, contact with a wine berry.
Conversely, when you see the
first carbon dioxide bubbles of fermentation, you are elated! Fermentation has
begun! It actually worked! We were not so sure in 2006, with our first vintage
in a brand new building. Two weeks is a long time to wait to see any sign of fermentation.
We had fruit flies the first day for sure, but we had to wait for the
indigenous yeast. Now that the building is inoculated with our own Amalie
Robert Estate indigenous yeast, it just takes a couple of days or so and we
behold the magic of fermentation. Often times through the purview of the fruit
fly.
What gets measured is what
gets done. That is a bit of wisdom Ernie picked up early in his career and it
has served him well. Fully integrated and somewhat autonomous self-calculating spreadsheets
track every vineyard activity and operation. A nickel is not a big deal, but multiply
that little nickel by 55,000 vines and suddenly you have a meaningful number.
Ernie doesn’t start tracking
the fruit fly population until it gets to about 1 million. Once it gets to 5
million, all of the fermenters should be full of indigenous yeast and actively
producing carbon dioxide. Note: The vines are going to need that carbon dioxide
next Spring, but in the meantime, Ernie has a plan.
Refer back to your diagram and
notice the section with all of the fermenters. You probably drew them from a
side view, and that is fine as you can now speckle your drawing with 5 million
fruit flies. And don’t forget to put yourself in the picture. Maybe you are
doing punchdown or washing the floor. Or maybe you just got stung, again… Kinda
looks like a Jackson Pollock sort of thing. Well done, well done indeed!
And soon enough the fruit fly
is interacting with your environment. From their point of view, you are
interacting with their environment. Hard to say who is right or wrong, but a
fruit fly in your ear or up the nose is clearly right out. And when they show
up at your house, because they are in your hair and your clothes, you have
performed cross inoculation - whether you knew it or not. And the whole cycle
starts all over again, in your environment.
Ernie takes a more top down
view. His view is looking down from directly above the fermenter. And he sees a
piece of 4x4 HDPE plastic that sits on top of the fermenter and covers the wine
berries.
He had these tops custom cut
and they sit just inside the lip of the fermenter. At each corner there is just
a wee little bit of a gap where they don’t fit snug. The fruit fly is
predisposed to find this opening, and this is where they try to gain unauthorized
access to the fermenting wine berries inside.
But they are greeted with the
by product of indigenous yeast – carbon dioxide. A fermenter will produce about
14 times its volume worth of carbon dioxide. Ask anybody, that’s a whole lotta
gas. With the tops in place, all of that gas has to escape from the 4 corners
where the tops are not snug. And that is where the fruit flies mass for attack.
But there will be no attack because they have all been asphyxiated. That’s a
twofer for carbon dioxide. It’s not such a bad gas after all.
The other alternative is a
Venus flytrap plant. Ernie first saw one of these in a winery setting while
chatting with Steve Doerner at Cristom. We were delivering Pinot Noir wine berries
to Cristom before we built our winery, and the significance that that plant represented
was lost on us, at the time. The Venus flytrap plant is a poignant reminder of
the sheer magnitude of the situation.
Eventually, about 4 to 6 weeks
after harvest, the indigenous yeast complete their task and transform Fructose
and Glucose into alcohol. They have produced a boatload of carbon dioxide
responsible for killing most of the fruit flies and now lie dormant at the
bottom of the fermenter, and on virtually every surface of the fermentation
deck. They lie in wait, ready for the next harvest and the onslaught from a new
battalion of fruit fly.
Then it was done. The end of
October saw the Syrah and Viognier harvest, just before a nice shot of rain the
next day. After the rain, the soil was perfect to drill in the fall cover crop.
This gave Ernie a chance to get a jump on vintage 2019. The best laid plans…
If it has wheels or balls it
will cause you trouble sooner or later. Today, this is in refence to tractors,
Italian tractors in particular, to which Ernie owns three. One has steel
tracks, and two have wheels. Out of the two with wheels, one has balls. The
tractor in question has both wheels and balls.
Dena holding a
pair of “Tractor Balls”
Off he goes, drilling away on
a beautiful November day. It was simply perfect, the week of the ¡Salud!Pinot Noir auction planting our cover crop that will hold our soil through the
winter rains and provide nutrients for our vines next Spring when it is tilled
under. What could possibly go wrong?
Well, once Ernie got the
tractor out of the 7.5-foot-wide row, he could clearly see what went wrong. The
tractor balls were in place holding the seed drill to the three-point hitch,
but he was missing a few lug nuts and a wheel stud or two.
Based on his 20 years of
farming experience, and a few years of street racing, he knew what he needed to
do. He also knew he had to get that tractor out of the field before the rains
would most certainly arrive. Or, like back in Montana, wait until next spring
to drive it out. It was a situation to focus the mind and provide a sense of
urgency. What a time to be out of beer.
The decision tree went
something like this. Order a new wheel, wheel studs and lug nuts, swap the tire
onto the new wheel and remount on the tractor. Then finish drilling cover crop
and drive the tractor out of the field before the rains made it a permanent fixture.
As Ernie set this plan in motion, he remembered the words from his old boss at
Microsoft - the Army guy. He said, “A plan never survives first contact with
the enemy intact.”
It turns out that agricultural
tractor wheel technology had changed over the past 20 years, and his style of
wheel was no longer being produced. A glimmer of panic ensued. A call to the
local dealer turned up a very small wheel that could be used to move the
tractor, but not a permanent solution. The glimmer began to glow. The local Ag
store had never seen anything like this wheel before. But they offered to build
one out of scratch… Burning brightly now.
So, a call to the importer was
the next step. The parts man was Clarence and while he was reluctant to deal
with an “end user”, he finally relented to Ernie’s subtle “A-Type” ways. Any
parts man worth his salt will ask for the serial number of the tractor as a
defense mechanism. No serial number, no parts and goodbye. Ernie had his newly
renewed insurance policy on the counter, thumbed through some pages and there
it was. The serial number was the key to taking the next step.
Clarence was not impressed. He
said the tractor came with 20-inch front wheels. Ernie confirmed his wheels
were only 18-inch. “Well, then I can’t help you.” Ernie’s mind flashed back to
the day he was standing at the Guigal winery talking with Marcel Guigal about
Syrah clones. Think of something to say, and do it now!
“Well, the tire size is
280x70x18. Do you have any wheel that would fit that tire and my tractor?”
Ernie’s question was met with a “Harumph.” But that happened to be the magic
question that returned a part number! HA! This is going to work! But the next
question foreshadowed things to come.
“Do you have one in stock?”
Ernie asked, oh so gingerly. “Nope. The last one we sold was in 2006.” It turns
out that no one in the United States had one in stock. And that if Ernie were
to get one, it would have to come from the supplier, if they still had any.
Being an Italian tractor, with both wheels and balls, the supplier was located
in Europe, mostly likely Italy and that was a 2 week lead time, at best. If
they had one. Cost approaching $1,000 all in, converted from metric.
Plan B arose like a Phoenix out of the smoldering ashes of the decision tree. It
turns out, Ernie had a spare wheel from his other wheel tractor, that does not
have balls. It is 100 horsepower, just no balls. The wheel leaked air, so he
replaced it. The replacement wheel also leaked air, so he put a tube in it. But
the wheel fit a 20-inch tire, not an 18-inch tire. However, the center mounting
spokes were identical.
The local tractor dealer said
that he knew a guy that could help Ernie with his problem. And would he be
interested in checking out a new tractor while he was here? Off to King’s
Industries to meet the key to this whole sordid affair. Ray King has a
relatively small, but very well-kept machine shop not very conveniently located
to the vineyard.
Friday afternoon, on the way
to the ¡Salud! Pinot Noir auction, we met Ray King. Ray
looked at Ernie’s handiwork on the 18-inch wheel and the nearly new 20-inch wheel
and gave a quick nod. “I am not sure I can have it done today, but I am leaving
town on Sunday, so I have to get to it before then unless you want to wait
until next week.” “I can pick it up anytime tomorrow, if you can get to it,”
Ernie heard himself say.
Saturday morning, he got the
call. “Your wheel is done. You can come by and pick it up anytime.” Ernie
thought to himself, either this Ray King guy is really good, or he has no idea
what he is doing. Ernie was betting on the former. He wasn’t asking for a
miracle, he was depending on one.
Sure enough, the wheel looked
like it was just shipped from the factory. Ray explained how he tack welded a
ring onto the good spokes, cut them off the wheel as one piece and then welded them
into the 18-inch wheel. Ernie smiled and said, “I see you have done this
before.” $175 dollars and 4 days later, Ernie was back drilling cover crop.
Almost.
It turns out those wheel studs
and nuts were as scarce as the wheel. So, it was another call back to Clarence.
No serial number required this time, so it was a much shorter call. Add $150
for a set of 5 wheel studs, nuts and washers - Next Day air.
Back to Les Schwab to get the
tire mounted onto the newly repaired wheel. Ray insisted the tire be taken off
the wheel as he did not want the tire catching on fire while he was welding the
wheel. Ray is the kind of guy that doesn’t run with scissors. Add $75 for a new
tube, dismount and remount.
Now, Ernie had all the pieces
to complete the repair. The glimmer of despair was replaced with the boldly
burning fire of conquest! Pull out the floor jack, turn on the air compressor
and get the impact wrench! We are going to mount this wheel! And so he did.
Every time Ernie goes to get
in a tractor now, his precheck sequence has added responsibility. He must check
not only their wheels and balls, now he has to torque their Italian studs and nuts.
Finally, the numbers. Let’s
start with some serial numbers. While you are not likely to run across these
unique sets of numbers, they are the real deal. If you happen upon them or they
upon you, please let us know. Or your local law enforcement officials as they
will know what to do.
260-75754
117-33556
B6258927
18401PZ163
3.141592653 (Actually this is
not a serial number. It is Pi and goes on forever!)
And we have a NEW video to
share! You can check out the Facebook page for the Dallas Oregon Sheriff’s
department here. Recognize anyone? See something, say something.
And the farming numbers.
“Hotter than the hubs of Hell” was the expression Ernie’s grandmother, Bert,
used to say. Ernie just says, “Twenty-five hundred. You are a smart guy, you
figure it out.” Way too farming hot to grow elegant Pinot Noir. Syrah, yes of
course. A manly wine in touch with its feminine side. But Pinot Noir, not so
farming much. But there it is. 2,502 degree days. Not since the horrific 2003
vintage (2,699 degree days) and the also ran 2014 vintage (2,499 degree days)
have we been subject to such intolerable growing conditions.
Right. The last set of growing
season Degree Day numbers we shared were April through August. The degree day
accumulation through August was 1,954 Degree Days. Not so bad, pretty good
overall. But what we thought would be a more moderate fall, morphed into a warm
and exceedingly dry end of the growing season.
September added 342 Degree
Days and October added 205 Degree Days for a 2018 vintage total of 2,502 Degree
Days. You can check out the 16 year growing season Degree Day chart below to
see how vintage 2018 stacks up. Channeling vintage 2007, 2010 and 2011: “Miss
me yet?”
And it was dry, dry, dry as a
popcorn flatulent. The first 2 weeks of September gifted us 0.51 inches of
precipitation. However, the 90 day period preceding that September shower was
one of the most beautiful summers to be had in Oregon, and all of those days
were without precipitation. So that rainfall really didn’t get down to the
roots. The opportunistic grass, gentle fall breezes and Photosynthetically
Active Radiation (Farmer speak is PAR, you know it as sunshine) took care of
that moisture in short order. Harvest began nonetheless on September 17th
as we were sure (praying) more moisture was in store for us.
October delivered on that
promise. The 6th of October registered 0.44 inches of rainfall. That
was 3 weeks after the last 0.51 inches of rain, and as they say, too little too
late. But we are farmers, and we just take it. Here is the second kick from our
friend the mule. The high temperature in October was 82.4 degrees. That’s not
bad, you think out loud. That temperature was recorded on the 16th
of October. A little late in the game for that kind of heat. Hey Frank, can you
get us some more beer and sunscreen?
So, climatically speaking, we
have just about an inch of rain from June 11th through October 28th.
Heat accumulation from the same period, June through October, was 1,717 Degree
Days. Simply unprecedented. And let us remind you that when we planted the
Pinot Noir, Ernie was keen on the deep rooting proclivities of 5C rootstock as
we were going the dry farmed route. We will talk more about 5C, but we are not
there yet.
At this juncture, we know what
you are thinking. Ernie is just whining about over extraction, the demise of
elegant, lower alcohol Pinot Noir and you would be right. But he is also
waiting out Mother Nature for his Syrah and Viognier.
Everyone thought Ernie was
daft for planting Syrah in the first place. He took the first class, one-way,
nonrefundable ticket all the way to crazy town by grafting those vines onto the
deepest rooting, latest ripening rootstock available to him – 5C.
Everyone said 5C will never
ripen Syrah. You will be lucky to get Pinot Noir to ripen on 5C. That rootstock
sends the roots too deep looking for water and they will not experience the
drought condition needed to stop growing leaves and start ripening fruit. The
vines will be stuck in a vegetative cycle and direct all their energy to
growing more leaves, not ripening the fruit. Everyone said you will not be
successful growing Syrah in the Northern Willamette Valley.
If you see “everyone” tell
them we said “hello”.
So that “ungrowable” 5C
rootstock underlies most of the vineyard at Amalie Robert Estate from
Chardonnay, Pinot Meunier, Pinot Noir and, of course, Syrah. Wine berries grown
on our sedimentary Bellpine series soil and 5C rootstock have been the “hot
ticket” these past few vintages.
While everyone is freaking out
over skyrocketing sugar accumulations from lesser, shallow rooting rootstocks,
Ernie is planning his work and working his plan. He is about 20 years in on his
plan and has seen most of the idiosyncrasies and agricultural vagaries. But
every year is a new set of answers, even though the questions remain the same.
Labor is a new and challenging issue each and every year. That’s farmin’.
And if you refer back to our
handy-dandy Amalie Robert Estate, site specific Degree Day chart, you can see
how the 5C rootstock with deep, moisture extracting roots, can help moderate
these arid conditions of the last several years. In fact, 5C and own rooted
grapevines are very similar in their rooting proclivities.
Mother Nature does have a
sense of humor, or is that irony?. The 29th of October gave us over
2 inches of rain, and that is when Ernie “pulled the trigger” on the Viognier
and Syrah-ah-ah-ah-ah!
We apologize for the lateness
of this communication, but we had a little more “action” than we were expecting
this year. We endeavor to be more timely for vintage 2019. Hey, we are pruning
the vines right now!
Kindest Regards,
Dena & Ernie
