Hello and Welcome,
Well, it all comes
down to this – The Great Cluster Pluck vintage 2021.
The farming experience is an endeavor that culminates in harvest. All of the
coulda, woulda, shoulda is a distant memory. The broken wheels, record breaking 118 degree temperature with a side of
accompanying heat stress and the ever present threat of wildfires
and smoke. It is important to remember that everything contributes to the
success of vintage 2021, but not everything contributes in a positive way.
That’s how it goes when you own the land.
“I tell you, folks, it’s harder than it looks
It’s a long way to the top, if you got some grapes to haul.”
August brought the heat and a trace of rain – more like vapor but we will take
it. The vines are in surprisingly good shape with the canopy holding green and
not showing signs of drought. Maybe that short hedge is paying some soil
moisture dividends. And the wine berries, well, let us SHOW you! They LOOK
marvelous! And they TASTE pretty farmin’ good, too!
Pick me! Pommard on 5C, planted at the turn of the century.
In a Talking Heads sort of moment, “You may ask yourself,
well, how did I get here?” And you may answer, in a very Grateful
Dead sort of way, “Lately it occurs to me what a long, strange trip it's
been.”
It all started about 105 days ago with flowering.
Up until that point, vintage 2021 harvest was only dream. A single possible
outcome among several possibilities, none of which was assured. Last year smoke
was a debilitating event, and wildfires rage as of this writing. But there
is a new and encouraging development. The Queen of the Skies is once again
flying. Check out WildfireToday.com and you will see a
retrofitted 747-400 Supertanker being returned to service.
The GO, NO-GO scenario.
Putting all of that aside for a moment, it is time for us to focus on about 90
tons of wine berries. And “You may ask yourself, how do I work this?”
Well, here is a brief harvest video (produced by VineStories) that gives you a
pretty good idea of how to successfully execute a “wine berry extraction”
effort, aka The Great Cluster Pluck.
But this is just logistics - not so complicated. It’s not like we have to go
looking for the vines. We know where they are. Hell, we planted them. But it
has been awhile since the turn of the century and that is why we use markers on
the posts.
Block 2 marker for Dijon Clone 777 Pinot Noir on a block end post.
The real genius is deciding which of our 42 blocks of wine berries have
achieved their ultimate goal, their singular purpose. There are all manner of
ways to determine this. One is by measuring the sugar concentrations that will
eventually become alcohol, and the corresponding acidity.
These measurements are like the rules of the road. The speed limit is often
expressed as a single number, but everyone really considers it a range. Some skew
more to the upper bound than others. And if you are going to skew to the lower
bound, then STAY OUT OF THE LEFT LANE, please.
And then there is the more hands-on approach. This includes walking the vine
rows and sampling a berry or two from the odd vine. The even vines are
pranksters, so we avoid them. As you experience the palate sensation, you are
looking beyond the sugar sweet and experiencing the aroma and flavor that the
skins release. Sometimes willingly and other times after giving them a good
chewing out.
Wadenswil Clone Pinot Noir waiting to be sampled.
At the end of the day, you must answer a very simple question. You must be
confident in that answer and have a set of ovaries that can back it up. You
know Mother Nature does, she put those wine berries out there. Are you ready to
take them from her?
The question you must answer is simply this: “Who among you are ready to be
cluster plucked and have the sugar fermented out of you?” Once you know the
answer to that question, harvest becomes a logistical exercise. But it is still
farming, so all manner of thigs are bound to happen at the least opportune
time. That’s the agrarian condition - “unfortunate, but not uncommon.”
And you may ask yourself, am I right, am I wrong?
If you go too soon or too late, it could be a successful failure. Things can
still turn out just fine. Or it could be a character-building experience.
Something to learn from. A mistake once made, not to be repeated. “There is nothing to be learned from the second kick of a
mule.”
Dijon Clone Chardonnay ready to be Cluster Plucked.
The Next Big Thing.
The September Harvest Moon will rise and shine the evening of
September 20th. Actually, it will just reflect the sun’s
light, not really producing any light of its own. Most people have had a
co-worker that followed along in the same pattern. The Harvest Moon is the full
moon that rises closest to the September equinox, which this year, takes place
just days after the month’s full moon. According to The Old Farmer’s Almanac,
here are the traditional names for the full and new moons. Click on the graphic
to learn the story behind each of the names.
This is quickly followed up by the fall equinox on September 22nd.
Astronomical autumn will officially begin in the Northern Hemisphere at 3:21
p.m. EDT on September 22nd, vintage 2021 while the Southern Hemisphere
transitions to spring. We can expect more harvest activity and the folks down
under will be looking at bud break.
Rise of the Machines – Mechanical Harvesting.
Do you use a machine, or can you do it by hand? The Great Cluster Pluck at
Amalie Robert Estate has always been a hand harvest operation, and that remains
true in vintage 2021.
But technology keeps advancing, or in some instances encroaching, on our own
individual idioms. Farming, as a business, has very thin margins, and not
always in a positive cash flow sort of way. Note: If someone calls you a credit
to the business, ask if they mean balance sheet or income statement. It makes a
difference.
Looks like someone forgot to grease his zerk.
Premium wine growing is a labor-intensive operation and harvest time is when
the available labor pool is allocated among the producing acreage. The law of
supply and demand fixes the harvest cost. For vintage 2021, the hand harvesting
cost is about $400 per ton of wine berries. That ton of wine berries will make
60 cases of wine. So logically, we can allocate about $6.70 of harvest labor to
every case of wine produced, or about 56 cents a bottle. So you gotta ask
yourself, how does $2 Buck Chuck pencil out?
Instead of hand harvesting, you could use one of the new fangled grape harvesters
that are now available. Mechanical harvest rates run about $550 per acre,
regardless of the tons per acre. Mechanical harvesting is cost effective for
high yielding sites. This is a revolution of epic proportions in the wine
growing world that is akin to the first horseless carriage. Henry Ford and the 15 million model T’s he produced (and
sold) are a tribute to the advance of technology circa the
industrial revolution. The last Model T was built in May 1927. And just like
the previous 14,999,999 cars, it came in any color you wanted, so long as your
preference was black.
Looking across the east fence line September 12, vintage 2021.
The utilization of mechanical harvesters, just like screw top bottles, is not
going away. Both are becoming more and more prevalent. And maybe that is a good
thing. $2 Buck Chuck serves a market need. The annual production runs just over
5 million cases.
The more acreage that is harvested by machine allows for the labor pool to be
allocated over fewer hand harvested acres. And that means more availability to
schedule the most optimal Cluster Pluck dates. Look for the term “Hand
Harvested” along side “Estate Bottled” on our future labels.
The Numbers.
Yeah we got ‘em. We got A LOT of ‘em! More than we really need as far as we can
tell, but vintage 2021 may still hold a surprise or two. The September forecast
looks as idyllic as it can possibly be. Temperatures topping out in the 70’s
with cool nights in the 40’s. Hard to ask for anything better than that. Kinda
reminds us of 2009. An early harvest that produced wines that have stood the
test of time. We know, we spend some time in the library from time to time!
We recorded 594 Degree Days for the month of August, bringing vintage 2021 to
2,252 Degree Days. The high temperature was 110.0 degrees recorded August 12th
at 6:00 pm. The low temperature was 41.5 degrees recorded on August 23rd
at 5:00 am. This temperature reflects a cool onshore breeze coming down from
the Gulf of Alaska bringing clean, smoke free air.
August Temperature Graph, Dallas, Oregon vintage 2021
Rain, as in measurable precipitation, was immeasurable. Not significantly
different than zero. The last statistically significant rainfall of 1.74 inches
was received June 13th. As Pierre tells it, “It has been as dry as a
popcorn f@rt."
We will see you on the Far Side. Please look for the Harvest After
Action Report sometime in mid Okto-VemBIER! Meanwhile, you can check out our Cluster Pluck Video from VineStories.
Click on the image to watch the Amalie Robert Cluster Pluck Video.
And to borrow a line from Jimmy Buffet, “If we weren’t all crazy we would go insane!”
Dena & Ernie
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