Hello and Welcome,
The is the Amalie Robert Estate
Climate Update: August 2019. A FLOG Communication from @AmalieRobert
Estate.
We apologize for the belated
FLOG'ing as we have been set upon by the Great Cluster Pluck of 2019!
Ah, the AUG FLOG. We have been
waiting all year for this one. By the time most folks read this, the heavy
lifting in the vineyard will be finished and we are on final approach to the
Great Cluster Pluck of 2019. Hell may be coming to breakfast, but harvest is
coming to wine country.
And no one loves harvest more
than V. Germanica, aka the German yellow jacket. He is the not so cute one,
second from the left.
And a more recent addition to the
harvest matrix is his distant, and significantly larger cousin, the Bald Faced
hornet. It’s not really a hornet, but in fact a dreadnought variant yellow
jacket wasp. No matter, these bastards live in above ground, highly flammable,
paper nests and are quite aggressive when YOU interact with THEIR environment.
And they define their environment as anywhere they happen to be at any given
time. Watch out!
Skunks will dig up yellow jacket
nests and eradicate them for you. Bald Faced hornets, however, are best handled
with fire. While at times impractical, the flame thrower is a highly effective
tool.
“Captain, I suggest running a
level 1 diagnostic.”
And then there is that. Ernie has
been working on his upcoming “Star Trek into Wine Country” piece, and we seem
to have lost some editorial containment between the two data sets.
“I will try and compensate.”
“Make it so.”
August is the time we start “fine
tuning” or “manicuring” the vines and hope Mother Nature has a like minded
approach. Mani-Pedi and a glass of wine anyone? The past few vintages have seen
arid conditions from August through harvest. Fortunately, this year we have
seen much more moderate temperatures and even a little August rain. Pretty
Farmin’ Nice is how Ernie would describe vintage 2019, so far. And when we get
it in the winery, our job is not to bucket-up.
And as foretold in the June
Climate Update, we will do a “Rootstock Deep Dive.” Yeah, we are gonna get
right down into the effective rooting zone. Look for topics such as available
soil moisture and its impact on harvest dates. Then we will do a fruit zone
pop-up where we will look forward into the weather at harvest.
“Captain, I am detecting nothing
on long range sensors.”
“Helm, maintain course and
speed.”
So, you may be wondering just
exactly what do we mean by “fine tuning” or “manicuring” the vines. Well, let’s
look at it from the vine’s perspective first. Here is what they have been doing
all summer long. They have been growing out shoots and leaves and setting
literally tons of wine berry clusters, including some in the most inappropriate
places.
The reason they do this is they
want to reproduce. They need to ripen their seeds and have some vineyard pest
such as a bird, racoon, deer or other creature, big or small, ingest the seeds
and deposit them (with a bit of fertilizer) in a different location. When this
chain of events has occurred, the vine has completed its preprogrammed task.
The leaves will senesce providing a beautiful vineyard patina, and then the
vine will go dormant for about 6 months. At which point, it will spring to life
and start the cycle all over again. Unless some nefarious gopher gnaws its
roots off. Like it or not, Mr. Gopher is part of the farming lifecycle. And
Ernie doesn’t like it, but it keeps his nursery man in business.
Now, let’s have a look at what we
want from the Great Cluster Pluck of 2019. We are wanting a block by block
Cluster Plucking of wine berries that uniformly reflect their growing season,
not too much sugar, more red fruited aroma and flavor from the skins and no
mold, mildew, rot or other irregularities to sort out. And this year we will be
plucking 42 +1 blocks. The Gewürztraminer colonized the rootstock block, that’s
our +1.
Now, how do we achieve the subset
of wine berries we want to Cluster Pluck from the superset of wine berries the
vines want to produce? That’s easy! We spend the month of August cutting off
everything we do not want in the fermenters.
“Sir, Occam’s
Razor is a mid-14th century Earth …”
“Mr. Data, isn’t it about time
you ran a level 1 self-diagnostic?
In replicate.
In private.”
He’s right, you know. The
simplest answer is often the most correct. Through trial and error, paying
attention, and listening to Dick Erath we have a very simple to understand and
easy to implement thinning plan. The only issue we have is replicating this
thinning plan over about 55,000 vines. All done by hand, one cluster at a time.
Oh, and we nip off the late to ripen wings.
“Except for blocks 1, 14 and 15.
The wings from those 3 most amazing blocks make a beautiful Blanc de Noir still
Rosé. Everything you need to make a stunning Bellpine Pearl Rosé wine is
available to you in those three perfectly tended blocks representing Pinot
Meunier, Pommard and Wadenswil clone Pinot Noir. Are you ready for the Great
Cluster Pluck of 2019?!” @GordonRamsay, is that you?
Right. So here we are in August
nipping off extra clusters that the vine has set, wings from the clusters we
want to Cluster Pluck and the thirds. The thirds are the vine’s way of showing
off. Most shoots have 2 clusters of wine berries, sometimes just one, but
usually two. Occasionally, we will have a third cluster of wine berries on a
shoot. And this cluster will look ripe, but it is not ripe.
And if it gets left on the shoot
the two clusters below it will not achieve their full potential. So, a quick
snip is all it takes to improve your wine quality. This fine tuning in the
vineyard pass costs just about 1 minute per vine, by 55,000 vines, by the
prevailing wage. But, once the Great Cluster Pluck starts, there is little time
to cull out these under-ripe clusters.
And all the while these clusters
are anywhere from fully purple to a mix of half purple and half green to mostly
all green. The later into August we go, we favor thinning off the more green
clusters. Now some of these clusters will, as if by magic, find their way from
the vineyard floor into the harvest buckets anyway. A mystery wrapped in an
enigma to be sorted out at the harvest trailer, before the wine berries ever
make it to the winery.
To address the notion that the
goal is to just leave the vine alone and then make the best of it with the
wine, is not a philosophy adopted by @AmalieRobert. We would venture to guess there is a fair
bit of sorting out involved with that method.
At this juncture, everyone take a
deep breath or allocate another portion of wine to your glass – even if you
must open a second bottle to do so. We are going on a “Rootstock Deep Dive”
into the effective rooting zone. Watch out for nematodes.
And if you find Ernie’s 11/16” wrench, please speak up.
“Captain! Klingon Warbird
decloaking at the edge of the Neutral Zone!”
“Mr. Warf, I have had just about
enough of this. Charge the forward phaser array and load photon torpedoes.”
Ernie used to race the ¼ mile
track at Spokane International Raceway park, mostly just for shitz and grinz.
Not that difficult really. When the Christmas tree turns from yellow to green,
you just mash your foot down on the throttle. After 1,320 feet, you can let off
the gas and drop the anchors. Pretty easy. But if you want to actually win some
races, and not just burn rubber, it is a bit more complicated. Speed costs. How
fast do you want to go? Note: Having the fastest car in town comes with some
unwanted recognition.
Similarly, making wine is not
that difficult. Humans have been fermenting grapes for centuries, whether they
knew what they were doing or not. The good news is that fermented grape juice,
even when it is bad, is not lethal. Hence the continuing evolution of wine
quality vis-à-vis the human condition. Why even at a certain point in the
United States history, wine was prescribed for medicinal purposes, because
otherwise it was a controlled substance. Is this a great country or what? Note:
Having the highest rated syrah from the Willamette Valley also comes with some
notoriety.
Rootstocks are the connection
between your inherent terroir and your human terroir. The soil is the soil and
as a winegrower your job is to know your dirt. To be a Master Farmer is to know
what rootstocks to put into your terroir that will produce the highest quality
wine berries across all varieties, and vintages. Of course, you cannot know
this empirically when you buy a cherry orchard, but that orchard left us plenty
of clues. That and the 60 odd soil pits we dug before we selected and then
planted our grafted vines.
When the Drouhins came to town in
the 1980s, they bought volcanic Jory soil in Dundee. They planted vines and
enlisted Ernie Munch to build them a winery. Ernie was the only architect to
tell them what they were planning to do would not work. They hired Ernie,
planted grafted vines and made it work.
So one day, our Ernie met Robert
Drouhin in the famed Seven Springs vineyard where he was sampling wine berries
and putting them in Ziplock bags to take back to the winery for analysis. And
that is when Ernie popped the question. (His recollection of events is
chronicled below.)
“How is Clos de Mouches looking
this year?”
“Ah, you know where the good wine
is made! It is very nice this year.”
“Robert, when you planted Pinot
Noir in Dundee, what rootstocks did you use?”
“We planted on 3309 and 101-14.
Of course, we have irrigation here.”
“Yes, of course. Why did you
choose those rootstocks for Oregon? Was it based on your experience in
Burgundy?”
“Well, no. You see in Oregon, it
was all we could get!”
"It was all we could
get." Hmmm. Of all the rootstocks available, the only grafted vines they
could get in Oregon were some of the shallowest rooting in all the world. But
they have irrigation, so they could augment their available soil moisture
during the beautiful sunny and dry months of August and September.
Now some of you may be wondering
why there is so much to-do about rootstocks. We are going to address that right
now. Rootstocks are the part of a grafted vine that grows roots, obviously.
Rootstocks are grafted (at the crown) onto grape varieties such as Pinot Noir
that grow above ground and bear wine berries.
The significance of any given
rootstock is measured in how deep the roots go looking for water. And sure, we
want to know if they are resistant to nematodes and phylloxera. Those are soil
borne pests that can significantly tax a vines energy by feeding on the roots
vascular system, or even kill it. Akin to leaches on humans, another medical
treatment gone awry. Maybe, why not just write me a scrip for some wine?
Here is an interesting chart. It
reveals the parent material of a whole host of grapevine rootstocks. Rootstocks
are made from crossing two subspecies of American grape that grew up with
phylloxera and can protect themselves from that pest. Most rootstocks have two
parents, such as Schwarzmann which is the result of crossing Riparia Gloire and
Rupestris. See it, right there in the middle? However, there are rootstocks
that have three parents. Can you find 44-53 Malégue? Yeah, Ernie has some of that
grafted onto Pinot Meunier, Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. Correct, that is
Champagne Deconstructed!
And here is yet another
illuminating illustration. It illustrates a vine’s world when planted in a
vineyard spaced 1.5 meters (about 60 inches) for the tractor and 2.2 meters
(about 80 inches) between each vine. But that’s not important. What is
important is the distribution of the roots penetrating through the surface
soil, sub-surface soil, subsoil and subsolum.
The upper most roots in the
surface soil are picking up most of the nutrients that feed the vine. This is
where the fencepost rots, as they say, and it is where most nutrient recycling
occurs. The greens and the browns are tilled into this soil layer and soil
borne organisms decompose the material to provide nutrients for the vine. The
rest of the roots are in a race to the bottom. The deeper the roots go, the
more likely they will find water to sustain the vine during drought (Xeric)
conditions.
And this is where the rootstock
selection becomes critically important. Once we identify the rootstocks that
can protect the vine from nematodes and phylloxera, we are looking primarily
for rooting depth.
The key here is to match the
depth of the roots with available soil moisture. Based on empirical evidence we
know the rooting proclivities of the rootstocks listed in the spaghetti graphic
provided above. They are as follows:
Shallow roots: Riparia Gloire
Moderately shallow roots: 101-14,
3309, Schwarzmann
Moderately deep roots: 44-53M
Deep roots: 5C, own rooted (not
grafted) vines
The next topic is available soil
moisture, what is it and why is it important. Soil moisture is just that, it is
water that it is dissolved in the soil. But it may be that there is so little
of it, the vine roots cannot separate the water from the soil. Hence there is
no soil moisture available to the vine.
@AmalieRobert is a
dry farmed Estate. We knew that we wanted that expression of our terroir when
we selected our rootstocks and began planting at the turn of the century. We
also knew that our Bellpine soil taxonomy is classified as “Xeric
Haplohumults”. That mouthful of marbles and toothpicks simply means “The soils
are usually moist but are dry for 45 to 60 consecutive days during the summer
between depths of 4 and 12 inches”. During the summer, there is no available
soil moisture in the top 12 inches of soil. Good to know when you are selecting
rootstocks.
The concept to retain here is, as
the growing season progresses to harvest time, the soil moisture available to
the vine goes deeper and deeper into the soil profile. Shallow rooted vines go
without water and deeper-rooted vines are still drawing moisture from the soil.
Matching rootstocks to available
soil moisture. Here we will introduce the most common rootstocks planted in the
Willamette Valley, which are all phylloxera tolerant, and then we will talk
about the rootstock less used (and Ernie’s favorite), 5C.
The shallowest rootstock is known
as RG, as in Riparia Gloire. It has the shallowest effective rooting zone of
all the rootstocks commonly in use. Normally planted in very deep and wet soils
or dry soils where effective soil moisture is controlled with irrigation.
101-14 Mgt, 3309 and Schwarzmann
are all crosses of Riparia Gloire and Rupesteris and are all phylloxera
tolerant. They are all very similar in that they have a bit deeper effective
rooting zone than RG. However, they have varying degrees of nematode
resistance, with 3309 being the most susceptible. Nematodes are very small
subterranean blighters that tap into the roots and feed off the vascular
tissue. As noted above, of the endless medical treatments available, a
prescription of wine can be a pretty good remedy.
The 44-53M rootstock is a bit of
an odd ball as it has 3 parents. Not something you see every day. It is a
three-way cross between RG and Rupesteris and Berlandiari. The effective
rooting zone is a bit deeper than the aforementioned group, with one
distinction. This rootstock does not pick up magnesium from your terroir very
well. This becomes quite obvious later in the season as the vine begins to move
magnesium around from the old leaves to the new leaves. The old leaves look like
they have a red border in Pinot Noir, or yellow in Chardonnay.
And we sum up with own rooted
vines which tend to be deeper rooted than any of these rootstocks. Grapevine
roots have been found at 6 feet deep and beyond when the soil conditions allow.
The problem own rooted vines have is that they cannot tolerate phylloxera. The
little blighter taps into the roots and creates an opening where all manner of
bad actors in the soil enter the vines vascular tissue eventually killing it.
Hence the reason for the phylloxera tolerant grafted vine discussion.
And that brings us to the 5C
rootstock. This rootstock has the deepest effective rooting zone of all the
rootstocks noted above and is the most on par with own rooted vines. Now we are
getting somewhere, deep! And it is tolerant to phylloxera meaning the blighter
still taps into it, but the vine is able to protect itself from the pathogens
that live in the soil. However, as strong a rootstock that it is, 5C is just as
susceptible to “tractor blight” as all the rest. Maybe time to tighten the
loose nut behind the wheel.
Now, let’s put the roots in the
soil profile and head on into harvest. The rootstock is interacting with all
the stratums of the soil. The soil has a depleting supply of moisture as the
Great Cluster Pluck approaches. The vine is depending on its deepest roots to
access available soil moisture. The vine is using soil moisture to cool the
leaves and translocate nutrients throughout the vascular tissue. So far all is
right in the plant kingdom.
As the weeks turn to the days
leading up to the Great Cluster Pluck, winemakers must decide when to “pull the
trigger” and start plucking clusters. A tremendous amount of contemplation,
consternation and even some constipation occurs during this time frame.
The vines, and in turn the
subject of our discussion, the wine berries, are pre-programmed. If their roots
have access to available soil moisture, they are in no hurry. They gradually
increase sugars by using their malic acid as an energy source thus becoming
sweeter. The skins continue to develop aroma and flavor. Eventually the sugars
reach a range of around 23 Brix and the acids drop down to give us a pH around
3.4 to 3.6. When these factors align with a very pleasurable aroma and flavor
profile, it is time to get out the harvest buckets.
If you have shallow roots in a
dry, well drained hillside that hasn’t seen rain for 60 days, life is markedly
different. The vine has taken all of the available soil moisture available to
the roots and is now translocating water from the wine berry to sustain itself.
The wine berry is now starting to desiccate. The wine berry is losing water and
concentrating its sugar and acid, without much advancement in aroma and flavor
development.
In the lab, you see the sugar
concentration increasing which is normal, and the acid concentration is rising
as well. This is not normal, it tells you the berry is losing water, not
ripening. Once the sugars reach about 25 Brix, or 15% alcohol potential, you
most likely have missed the optimal harvest window. Elvis has left the
building.
“Captain, they are coming about!”
What comes about, goes about and
climate change has brought this issue to the fore. Shallow rooting rootstocks
have a natural tendency to advance the harvest window by a few days. The desire
to Cluster Pluck before the birds, rain and the rot visit themselves upon the
vineyard is a strong one. However, that desire must be tempered with our goal
of producing world class wines in every vintage, climatically challenging or
not. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
“Fire phasers and photon
torpedoes, full spread!”
@AmalieRobert 5C is
the rootstock of choice that spans the full spectrum of climatically
challenging growing conditions. 5C can tolerate longer drought conditions and
still achieve elegant aromas and flavors. In cool vintages we can adjust our
canopy management and vineyard floor vegetation to achieve aroma and flavor
ripeness. As we compare Cluster Pluck dates with some old timers who still grow
own rooted vines, we see a strong correlation in own rooted vines and that
handsome 5C rootstock.
And now what you have all been so
patiently waiting for, the numbers. Our slow and steady march to the Great
Cluster Pluck of 2019 continues unabated - one day at a time. August provided
very moderate temperatures and a little tinkle of rain. Our neighbors to the
south have yet to really set themselves on fire, so we don’t have smoke taint
to worry about. Or excessive atmospheric particulate that prevents us from cooling
down at night.
The month of August continued the
everything in moderation theme, and then promptly put moderation in moderation
with a significant ramp up in heat for month end. Let’s break it down like
this.
August 1 through 15 recorded
273.1 Degree Days with a high temperature of 92.8 recorded on August 4, 4:12 pm
and a low temperature of 50.5 degrees on August 11 from 3:00 am through 4:00
am. This represents a diurnal shift of 42.3 degrees during the first half of
August. Rain was a trace at 0.02 inches.
The second half of the second
half of the month of August provided the heat we had been expecting all month
long. The last week of August saw temperatures cresting the 100 degree mark at
the farm. But a fast horse doesn’t run long, and the intense heat was not
sustained for more than a couple of days. Ernie is still suffering flashbacks
of vintage 2018. Note the 55 degree diurnal shift listed in the Salem weather
graph for Tuesday, August 27.
The high temperature for the
second half of the month was 100.1 degrees recorded on Tuesday, August 27 at
4:12 pm. And get this, the low temperature for the second half of the month was
49.1 degrees recorded on August 22 at 5:36 am. August 22 brought 0.07 inches of
rainfall.
The second half of the month
recorded 321.7 Degree Days for a monthly total of 594.8. The year to date
growing Degree Days stand at 1,903.7, compared with 1,954.4 from vintage 2018.
Whoa!
Whoa! When I say whoa, I mean
WHOA!
- Yosemite Sam
Kindest Regards,
Dena & Ernie
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