Amalie Robert Estate: Vintage 2020 BOLO & Memorial Day Weekend Open House

Hello and Welcome,

May has been quite a busy month for the Pinot Noir vines at Amalie Robert Estate. They know there is only about 4 months to go before The Great Cluster Pluck. Yep, they are sitting pretty just waving in the breeze! Enjoy it while it lasts, because the first set of trellis catch wires is coming for you.
 

Winemaking: The Continuation of Terroir by Other Means.® A Farming bLOG (FLOG) communication from Dena & Ernie. Estate grown Amalie Robert Pinot Noir and Chardonnay from the Willamette Valley. Have a look and see what we see on Instagram @AmalieRobert Estate. We are posting on Facebook and LinkedIn. Check us out if you can. We can use all the likes we can get…

 

 

Open House Weekend!

 

The winery will be open for outdoor tastings and guided vineyard tours this Memorial Day weekend, Friday through Monday, 10 am to 3 pm by appointment. If you can make it, please click on the BIG RED BUTTON to be among the very first to access our NEW tasting appointment page!

 
If you are going to be somewhere other than here, we have for you the BIG BLUE BUTTON! With a click of this button, you will be transported to a matrix of wines to select from without leaving the comfort of your digital appliance. All purchases above $300 include domestic ground shipping (your PROMO CODE is preloaded). And the NATIONWIDE spring shipping window is WFO (Wide Farming Open)!
  



Vintage 2020 Preview.
 
It is about that time of year when you get to taste the latest vintage Oregon White and Rosé wines. You won’t be seeing any from Amalie Robert, as we chose NOT to release any wine due to smoke taint. However, we can give you a few discussion points as you taste and talk your way through the valley.


Heavy Smoke in the Willamette Valley Vintage 2020
 
When: The most important question you can ask is when was the harvest date. The smoke entered our part of the Willamette Valley around Tuesday, September 8^th right after Labor Day. If the grapes were harvested prior to that, there is little cause for concern. UNLESS the wines were blended with grapes harvested after the smoke entered the valley.
 
Where: Location made a significant difference in smoke exposure. The big fire that created the most smoke for us was from the Beachie Creek and Lionshead fires. They were due east of Salem, and our vineyard, by about 60 miles. High winds helped the fires grow quickly and rapidly filled the valley with smoke. There were also large fires generating smoke south of Salem. We think the least affected areas early on were located at the north end of the valley, but eventually we all had some exposure.
 
How Much: Most wineries did micro ferments (using 5 gallon buckets) and sent the resulting wine out for analysis. While this was a good idea, the main lab we rely on, ETS located in St. Helena, was backed up. They were overloaded with samples, and closed due to fire danger for a few days, so getting results back before harvest was typically not possible. When we called, they suggested sending wine samples to Australia for testing, as they had experience with smoke taint and the turnaround time would be faster.
 
Exposure: When the grape skin is exposed to smoke, the particles cross the cell membrane and bind with sugar molecules (Glucose and Fructose). When tasting fresh grapes, they don’t taste smoky as the smoke compounds are bound to the sugars. After fermentation is complete, the smoke compounds are unbound from the fermented sugar molecules and can then be detected. The question is how much and at what point in the wines’ maturity will those aromas, flavors and textures be present. Sometimes right away, sometimes after a while and sometimes never.
 
Smoking Gun: The indicator compound is called Guaiacol. If the winery has tested the FINISHED wine for Guaiacol AFTER fermenting, but BEFORE going into toasted oak barrels, that would be good to know. Toasted oak barrels can also impart Guaiacol into the wine. And get this, you cannot test Syrah for smoke taint using Guaiacol as the marker, because Guaiacol is a naturally occurring compound in Syrah. Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em!
 
Our test after fermentation came back at over 8.0 parts per billion (ppb) and that is why we have no vintage 2020 wine to offer. Anything over 4.0 ppb is circumspect. Here is a resource from ETS covering the topic.
 

 
The Final Analysis: There were some fantastic wines made from vintage 2020. They are out there waiting to be discovered. And hopefully, vintage 2021 will be free of any environmental encumbrances and we can all get back to the task at hand.
 
 
Amalie Robert Estate Vintage 2020 Statement.
 

We have chosen to involuntarily withdraw from vintage 2020. We live on our vineyard and winery property and bore firsthand witness to the smoke event that spanned September 7th though the 16th. The intensity, duration and physical impact on our vines is undeniable.

 

Our underlying philosophy is to express the purity of our site through the unique characteristics of the vintage. We ferment with whole clusters, indigenous yeast and barrel age our wines for 18-24 months. We bottle without the addition of fining agents such as egg whites and we do not filter or otherwise manipulate our wines before bottling. We are 100% estate grown.

 

These traditional wine making fundamentals have stood the test of time well before we founded Amalie Robert Estate. They have also served us well for the past 20 years. When we release a bottle of wine you can depend upon our stewardship of the land from vine to bottle and commitment to excellence.

 

To make smoke taint free wine in vintage 2020 by following our guiding principles was simply not possible. We knew there was no pathway to release a premium quality wine under our name.

 

These are our choices, and they are the right choices for us. We have high hopes that these fires and the devastation they have caused will provide a strong impetus to better manage our natural resources, including the life sustaining air that all earthbound plants and animals require.

 

 

Additional Resources.

You can read our real-time, on-site updates written from the vineyard here.


2020 Vintage Update: Earth, Wind, Fire & Smoke


Special Update: Oregon Wildfires and Potential Harvest Impacts


Special Update: Oregon Wildfires II and Wine Implications
 

Amalie Robert Estate Harvest After Action Report: Vintage 2020 Creates a Vacuum & Our Vintage Statement

Kindest Regards,

Dena & Ernie

Amalie Robert Estate Situational Review: Inflorescence, Vine Spacing and PAR, Oh My!

Hello and Welcome, 

 

This is the status of vine growth mid-May vintage 2021. The vines are a bit ahead of themselves this year and we, as farmers, are following their lead. But we know where they are headed, we have seen this movie before. Funny thing is, the ending changes every time. 

Wadenswil inflorescence in Amalie Robert block 10.

Do you see those bumpy looking things in the middle of that shoot? Those are called inflorescence. If all goes well and according to plan, they will become clusters of wine berries. In this case Wadenswil wine berries, the best kind!

 

A FLOG communication (Farming bLOG) by Dena & Ernie from Amalie Robert Estate. Oregon Willamette Valley Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. Have a look and see what we see on Instagram @AmalieRobert Estate. We are ramping up on FaceBook! (If you don't like us, we don't wanna know…)

 

Inflorescence to flowers to wine berries.

Around mid-June they will flower and look like little golden pinecones. Come the middle of August they will start to turn mauve one by one and in no particular order that is apparent to humans. All of this precedes The Great Cluster Pluck that typically starts in October, but that is yet to be scheduled. We normally add 105 days to flowering to pencil in a harvest date - but not always.

 

Now you may be wondering how many of these yet to be clusters it takes to make one bottle of wine. We like the way you think! The simple answer is one ton of wine berries will produce about 60 cases of FINISHED wine. NOTE: Finished wine is the wine you have left over for bottling after sampling, laboratory analysis, spillage and wine tasting from barrels - repeatedly.

 

Wine tasting from barrel at Amalie Robert.

While this answer is accurate, it is not very illuminating. By the miracle of The Completion Backwards Principle (credit to The Tubes), we know that one 750 milliliter bottle of wine is produced from 2.78 pounds of wine berries. And this lays bare the inherent flaw in winemaking – we are mixing the US/Imperial and Metric system.

 

As most people who grow Pinot Noir will tell you, a typical cluster of Pinot Noir weighs in at about a quarter pound (112 grams). So logically, you would surmise that you need about 11 clusters of Pinot Noir to make a bottle of wine, more or less.

 

As a domestic producer of Pinot Noir, we know that a single acre of land is 43,560 square feet. If that land yields about 2.5 tons of wine berries, which is pretty close to the historical average for Willamette Valley Pinot Noir, then we will produce about 150 cases of wine. The birds, deer and other nefarious creatures help to maintain a natural ecological limit on wine berry yields.

 

Now let’s drive home the point - 150 cases of wine from that one acre is roughly 20,000 clusters (5,000 lbs. X 4 clusters per pound). But how many clusters are we asking EACH VINE to produce? How many bottles of wine is that per vine?

Clusters on one Amalie Robert Pinot Noir vine. 

It depends on vine spacing. Right now the vines are not too concerned with any of this. They are busy growing leaves to harvest sunlight. Leaves form their solar array and that will provide energy to the vine and negative pressure to the roots to extract soil moisture. And they are looking for a specific spectral range of light from 400 to 700 nanometers. This spectral wave band is what vines use in the process of photosynthesis. This is known as Photosynthetic Active Radiation, abbreviated as PAR.

 

Typical Willamette Valley Oregon vine spacings for Pinot Noir using a Vertical Shoot Positioned (VSP) trellis are often between 6 and 8 feet. Since most vineyard sites are on hillsides with side slopes, much narrower spacing is not sustainable due to tractor rollover potential.

 

7.5 foot row spacing of solar array at Amalie Robert.

To get the lineal feet per acre of solar array (trellis) for each spacing, divide it into 43,560 square feet. For example, at our 7.5 foot row spacing, we have a solar array that is 5,808 feet long. Just imagine the vines all planted in a single row. The height of the canopy should then be 1:1 with the width of the rows to maximize sunlight harvesting. Pro Tip: Unless you want lower alcohol potential in the wine, then cut a shorter canopy.

 

4 foot spacing between vines at Amalie Robert.

Assuming a 4 foot spacing between the vines, we will have 1,452 vines in an acre of land. That is our 5,808 lineal feet divided by a vine every 4 feet. And each vine only has 30 square feet to work with which will help drive deep roots. Using our historical Willamette Valley Pinot Noir yield average of 2.5 tons per acre, this means we will end up with about 3.44 pounds of Pinot Noir clusters per vine. And at 4 clusters per pound, that works out to 14 clusters per 4 foot of solar array.

 

The wider the row and/or vine spacing, the more clusters are required of each vine. Here is another way to look at it – how many bottles are produced from a single vine? Or maybe how many vines are represented in a single bottle?

 

 

That brings us to the final conundrum – how many glasses of wine are there in a bottle of wine? This is an empirical evidence exercise best left to the individual reader. However, we do recommend replicated trials in a controlled environment. Hint: The answer is the same using milliliters or ounces.

 

Kindest Regards,

Dena & Ernie

Amalie Robert Estate Climate Update: April 2021, Tilling and Drilling

Hello and Welcome, 

The April Pink Super Moon (on National HEMI Day 4/26) was quite a sight to see all up close and personal. Not that it was actually pink in color, but instead it derives its pink moniker from Phlox subulata—commonly called creeping phlox or moss phlox—which also went by the name “moss pink” which blooms in the northern HEMIsphere this time of year. And as you would imagine, the blooms are pink. 

 

A FLOG communication (Farming bLOG) by Dena & Ernie from Amalie Robert Estate. Oregon Willamette Valley Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. Have a look and see what we see on Instagram @AmalieRobert Estate. We are ramping up on FaceBook! (If you don’t like us, we don’t wanna know…)

In 1964, Chrysler’s new technology took the internal combustion engine world by force. The highly innovative and new design proved worthy on the racetracks, dragstrips and backstreet grudge matches. While several HEMI displacements were engineered from the early Red Ram 241, to the 331 “Baby HEMI”, the 354 and dual 4 barrel carbureted 392 in your Dad’s Chrysler Imperial, the final factory displacement of 426 cubic inches just made the 7.0 liter cut off for sanctioned racing. And that is why the BIG 3 auto manufacturers of the day each had 426, 427, 428 or 429 cubic inch racing engines. Their goal was to put them into the lightest cars possible in hopes of winning races at racetracks and dragstrips across the country to promotion their brands. The HEMI engine was a mechanical marvel that was so successful it was banned from NASCAR after its first year. And then along came the Pink Elephants.

 

Not to be outdone, Mother’s Day is THIS weekend. With these series of events occurring so close together, who can doubt it means Rosé Season is in full bloom?!

 

While there is no vintage 2020 Rosé due to the potential for smoke tainted wine, we do have a little bit of the sublime 2019 and a few bottles of the highly perfumed (think Wadenswil) 2018 barrel aged Pinot in Pink vintage Rosé to offer. You can read our FLOG posting on the smoke impacted vintage 2020 here.

 

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Tilling and Drilling – Preparing the Vineyard Floor for Vintage 2021

 

The vineyard floor is what we refer to as the top foot of soil. This area is where we as winegrowers can impact the nutrients and soil moisture that will be available throughout the growing season. And like everything else in farming, there is a specific and limited window of opportunity available.

 

The vineyard floor is really 2 vineyards in one. Every other row is planted to a permanent cover whose only treatment is mowing. In our case, permanent grass means Tall Fawn Fescue – it’s a bunch grass also known as Festuca.

 

Viticulturally speaking, mowing this permanent cover can significantly impact the amount of soil moisture available to the vines. A short cut means the grass uses less water, leaving more available to the vines. Letting the grass grow takes more water out of the soil profile. This can be useful in areas that have deep moist soils.

 

Canes before and after mowing.

And we mow up last years canes in the permanent cover crop rows. The browns and greens are what keeps our soil microbes busy digesting and then releasing all of these nutrients for our vines. The permanent cover crop rows also provide our beneficial insects (think lady bugs, ear wigs and all kinds of spiders) a place to call home.

 

Ernie drilling in cover crop.

The cover crop rows are where we till the soil and incorporate the cover crops to naturally supply nutrients to our vines. Last fall, Ernie drilled in a winter cover crop of Austrian winter Peas and Barley. These two plants help to hold the soil onto the hill during the winter rains and provide nutrients when tilled into the soil the following spring.

 

Opening up the soil with the chisel plow and the open air crawler.

But first we open up the soil with a chisel plow. This tool has a fairly simple job. It breaks up any tire compaction, trims off shallow vine roots and helps to aerate the soil. And it is hooked up to the open air crawler, so Ernie gets a refreshing springtime ride. It’s kinda like driving around in a top down 911 Porsche. Kinda…

 

Mixing in the cover crop with the rototiller to feed the vines.

Next up is the rototiller. This tool mixes the green cover crops with the soil and places it right below the surface. We consider the soil to be the plant’s stomach, and dinner is served!

 

Buckwheat and vetch starting the growing season.

Planning ahead, Ernie then drills in the summer cover crop of Buckwheat and Common Vetch. Just like Pommard and Wadenswil, they were made to go together. Both of these plants are easy on the water budget, but at 20+ years of vine age our roots have gone deep. And it is kinda funny to see the quail lined up in each of the furrows scratching out a few of the Common Vetch seeds for themselves. They are not big fans of Buckwheat, you see.

 

Buckwheat is a fantastic little plant with Superpowers! First off, it can start to bloom about 3 weeks after it germinates. Pollen is protein and a good dietary supplement when our army of carnivorous predatory insects can’t find any mites or other hapless victims to feast upon.

 

It is also a great soil conditioner and enhances the activity of mycorrhiza fungi. Mycorrhiza fungi function as a symbiotic extension of the vines root system. The plant makes organic molecules such as sugars by photosynthesis and supplies them to the fungus, and the fungus in kind supplies the vine water and mineral nutrients, such as phosphorus, taken from the soil.

 

Common Vetch (and Austrian winter Peas) adds to the mix by fixing nitrogen from the atmosphere to its root system. Both the Buckwheat and Common Vetch survive in our dry farmed vineyard from the morning dew of an “on-shore flow”, meaning moisture and humidity riding the jet stream in from the coast. Once these cover crop plants are tilled into the soil, the soil microbes convert the green plant material into nutrients the vine can use. Spring or fall, we till it all!

 

Spring growth in the Chardonnay block.

The numbers. April 2021 was a bipolar month if ever there was such a thing. Our high temperature blazed 90.9 degrees on April 18th at 3:30 pm, while our cold temperature was a frosty 27.9 degrees on April 5th at 6:30 am.

 

Our Degree Days reflected the warm temperatures later in April logging a total of 236.8 Degree Days. The first half of April contributing 89.8 and the second half with the remaining 147.0 Degree Days. Quite a respectable start to the vintage and it certainly explains the rate of growth in the vines and the grass. Ill-fated vintage 2020 began the growing season with 133.5 Degree Days.

 

Rain showers totaled 1.01 inches and came in two tranches, both at the end of the month. The first recording 0.43 inches and the second 0.58 inches. These showers are exactly what our cover crop seeds needed for germination and establishment. So far, so good!

 

Kindest Regards,

Dena & Ernie