Amalie Robert Estate Climate Update: April 2020 & Library Pinot Noirs

Hello and Welcome, 

 

This is the Amalie Robert Estate Climate Update: April 2020. A FLOG Communication from Dena and Ernie @AmalieRobert Estate. 

  

It has just been a lovely Willamette Valley start to the growing season. Wind, rain, sun and clouds provide an ever-changing landscape of environmental conditions that afford us the opportunity to conquer the agrarian challenges of getting the vineyard ready to bear fruit. And of course, it would not be springtime in wine country without a visit to the shop for some equipment maintenance. Then just wait until you see the numbers! They are just one sig-fig this year, but they are stunning.

First off, we have a little housekeeping to attend to. We have begun using Evite to help us manage in the times of COVID-19. https://www.evite.com/ Evite allows us to send invitations to help manage visits to the winery, so that we can comply with social distancing requirements, while not being socially distant. We have yet to figure out how to schedule specific times, so if you RSVP please indicate your preferred time. We also send an Evite to announce new releases. Note: We are not shipping any wine without your approval.

When you receive an Evite invitation, please notice there are often multiple pages to the invitation. The cover card is just the first page of the invitation (and notice the Pinot Noir stamp on the envelope). The second and third pages will contain details about releases or visits to the winery. Label images or other artwork are sometimes included. From time to time Ernie may insert a coded message, such as the timeless “Be Sure to Drink Your Ovaltine”. Also, we are introducing The Big Blue Button.

And while we are on the topic of cards and wine, we would like to point out that Mother’s Day is Sunday May 10th. Most of the country is still under lockdown and that means someone has to figure out how to make brunch for Mom. We suggest cinnamon spiced waffles with fresh strawberries and homemade whipped cream. Super easy and a very colorful presentation with purple lilacs for the table or a dozen pink roses - like Pinot in Pink Rosé, the perfect brunch wine.

There is still time to up your waffle making game before Sunday, and we are confident in your corkscrew abilities. You’ve got this! But if you need some Rosés, we are here to help. Pinot in Pink Rosé 6 packs are still $100, shipping included. Just press the Big Blue Button.

Digging in the dirt. That is springtime in wine country. The vineyard floor has been recycled to release the nutrients from last fall’s post harvest cover crops. Then Ernie prepped the soil and drilled the new spring cover crop. And the rain played right into Ernie’s plan to germinate the new seeds. Rain in April doesn’t actually require a lot of planning, just being ready to go when the sun peeks out is usually good enough. And so now we have about 18 acres of vineyard floor that is growing fertilizer for the vines. Once their above ground usefulness is at an end, these cover crops will be tilled under and the natural nutrient recycling lives on.

We recorded bud break on April 13th. The vines are starting to wake up and they have their pre-programmed plan. They know exactly what they are going to do and when they are going to do it. We have our plan as well. We know what we are going to do, we just don’t know when we are going to do it. We are in the driver’s seat, but we are certainly not in control.

Next on the vines’ agenda is flowering. We usually have to wait until Dena’s birthday in June, but sometimes we have to wait longer, and sometimes we don’t. That’s farming where we remember fondly, the words of Yogi Berra who once said, “You can observe a lot by just watching”. We will know it when we see it, and we will let you know when we see it.

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Why yes, we have a little equipment maintenance to do. Of Ernie’s 3 Italian tractors, two of them have sequestration stations, aka cabs. And both of these tractors are equipped with air conditioning. (You would think the glass would offer UV protection like your vehicle’s windshield does, but hey this is agriculture.)

And it just so happens that both of the cab tractors need their air conditioning compressors replaced this year. These things usually run in three’s, but the third machine is an open station crawler, so the air conditioning is “au naturel”.

The alternative to not restoring the air conditioning function is to operate the tractor as a full-size convection oven. The heat is from the tractor engine and drive train, and the sunlight is unfiltered and magnified through the glass. The fan, while not providing any cooling, does distribute the heat evenly throughout the cooking space. Replace SPF 15 sunscreen with olive oil, salt, pepper and a dash of paprika and you end up with braised winegrower by mid-August.

And wouldn’t you know it. One tractor has a hydraulic pump attached to the crankshaft pulley. There is no way to just slip on a new belt. That means to change the belt that runs the air conditioning compressor, the entire front end of this machine has to be disassembled. And then reassembled. Correctly. While this is unfortunate, it is not uncommon in farm equipment.

The first thing to cover for the Vintage 2020 numbers is that 2020 is a leap year. If you were born on February 29th or have a wedding anniversary, this is your Special Year! Enjoy it now, as 2024 is a long ways off, and “the future ain’t what it used to be”. On February 29th we recorded a high temperature of 45.3 degrees and a low temperature of 29.7 degrees. We hope you made the most of it.

For the first month of the growing season, April 2020, we logged 133.5 Degree Days. The high temperature for the 30 day period was 79.3 degrees and the low temperature was 30.7 degrees. The first half of the month was cooler registering 41.6 Degree Days and recorded the low temperature. The second half of the month registered 91.9 Degree Days and recorded the high temperature.

And it seems Ernie’s prior vintage rain dances have a half-life. April rain slogged in at 1.33 inches. Note: The rainfall will continue to be expressed in 2 sig-figs. There is no reason for it, it just seems like the right thing to do. Kinda like some lockdown regimes.

Cleaning up the cellar. The COVID-19 SIP regulations have given us an opportunity to raid our cellar and we imagine you may have too. We have tucked into a little Spanish wine from the 1980’s which is sublime, and Ernie’s favorite Northern Rhône Côte Rôties from the 1990’s and somehow we found a bottle of Bordeaux from 1982. We tucked that one back away as it seems it has another 100 or more years to go.

And then we found this. From the very corner, bottom shelf of our library racks we uncovered a cache of our very early vintages. Only a few bottles of some blends and just a handful of cases in total of 2006-2007-2008-2009 vintages. There is an odd magnum or two to be had as well. Of course, we immediately performed the necessary Quality Control measures and are able to report that these wines are just singing!

The first vintage in our estate winery was 2006. That was the year, trial by fire. But it worked out pretty well. We made our first vintage of The Reserve in 2006 – just about 24 cases worth. So, we sent our first vintage of The Reserve, Amalie’s Cuvée and Estate Pinot Noirs off for review. And we sent them to the toughest critic of them all – Stephen Tanzer’s International Wine Cellar. The best review and highest score awarded from the 2006 vintage was a 93. And we were very, very pleased to see that our inaugural vintage of The Reserve earned that score. Our individual wines, Amalie’s Cuvée and Estate both came in at 92 points. As far as inspiration goes, 2006 was a very significant year for Dena and Ernie at Amalie Robert Estate. And then there was Ernie’s favorite vintage, 2007 where The Reserve once again earned the top score from the vintage from not only Stephen Tanzer, but also Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate. Just sayin’.

Please have a look at the following availability. We are offering these wines first come, first serve. If you see something you like, just press the Big Blue Button and an E-mail window to Dena will open where you can indicate your selections. Please specify 750 ml or 1.5 liter format. Dena will confirm back with pricing and availability. Happy Hunting!

And here is a Vintage Scorecard to help you in your quest. You can also check out the Vintage Vestibule to review past vintages.

http://www.amalierobert.com/vintage-vestibule.html

We have all SIP’d and pulled together to flatten the curve. Well done one and all! However, there could be another curve to pay attention to later this year. And that will be in the form of increased maternity ward activity just about 9 months after your local SIP order was issued. Time to find the waffle maker and get busy in the kitchen. Somebody put the kettle on.

Kindest Regards,

Dena & Ernie

Amalie Robert Anniversary and Earth Day Vintage 2020: Do Some Good for the Earth!

Hello and Welcome,

This is the 21^st Anniversary of Amalie Robert Estate. It was April of 1999 when we told Bob, “It looks like we got here too late. You have your cherry orchard sitting on top of our vineyard!” The winery will be open this weekend for wine pickups. If spring whites and rosé (or lamb) are on your mind, then E-mail Dena@amalierobert.com with your thoughts - and we will meet you here, with your wine! A FLOG communication from Dena and Ernie @AmalieRobert Estate.

April 1999, the orchard was in bloom with snow white Montmorency blossoms - 1,188 trees worth. When Ernie first drove the old Massey Ferguson tractor through that orchard, he said it was like driving through a Montana blizzard in freeze frame. Yeah, he was right out there in it, as that tractor was open station – no protective cab. Montmorency cherries are also known as pie cherries and they are mechanically harvested. We harvested the fruit in July, and then came back for the trees. There are a few volunteer cherries around the property and when they bloom they remind us of our very first year as farmers. Learn a little bit more about the Amalie Robert Estate history through an interview with Dena & Ernie courtesy of VineStories.

http://www.vinestories.com/video.php?video=117965190

We planted our first 10 acres of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay (about 15,000 vines) at the turn of the century, with the last vine being planted with some very good friends on Earth Day 2000. And that is when the vineyard at Amalie Robert Estate was established. Happy Anniversary!

Do Some Good for the Earth - Plant some cover crops. And that is exactly what Ernie did. Mother Nature added the secret sauce, known as springtime rains and we are in step with the season. His vineyard floor efforts have yielded succulent little starts of Buckwheat and Vetch that will provide nutrients to our vines naturally. The transition from Computer Science to Agrarian production was not all that difficult. The farm is really just a holistic program that runs each year. The difference is that each year you run it, the variables change. But instead of compiling the program, we harvest the wine berries. Ernie has an app for that, and you can watch it here:

http://www.vinestories.com/video.php?video=117974400

Do Some Good for the Earth - Stay Home, Stay Healthy, Drink Wine, Save Lives. These last few weeks have seen some unprecedented developments. Some of these developments have been in the logistics, sales and delivery of Adult Recreational Beverages, aka wine. Major segments of our economy deemed to be “non-essential” have been closed. It is up to each state’s governor to make the determination of essential v non-essential. It is up to each state’s residents to comply, and then determine if the governor is essential or non-essential. It’s a Rock-Paper-Scissors type arrangement.

In some cases, an unfortunate determination has been made to include businesses that sell Adult Recreational Beverages as non-essential. The Keystone State is such an example. The state controls the sale of all Adult Recreational Beverages through their state run stores - mostly. This would be a good juncture to point out that Adult Recreational Beverages are not sold in the same establishments as are firearms and ammunition. Good to know! Good to go! 

The non-essential determination has led to all manner of unintended consequences, including lawsuits, demonstrations without social distancing and what used to be known as a “Beer Run” across state lines. And that activity can now get you ticketed, fined and incarcerated (and potentially virused). So we are told…

The other alternative is to have Adult Recreational Beverages brought across state lines and delivered directly to your SIP location. The folks at FedEx and UPS make a living doing just that. And get this, it is completely legal! Even in The Keystone State! State and local taxes, of course, are unavoidable and must be remitted in a timely manner even if no one is there to collect them. If a tree falls in the forest, and no one is there to hear it, it still falls and the governor gets a cut.

If you are ready to replenish the Oregon section of your Adult Recreational Beverage cellar, we are ready and standing by to assist you. Our full production of wines, blends and vintages awaits your thoughtful perusal at Amalie Robert Direct. Purchase: Amalie Robert Direct

While you are pondering your selections and filling your cart, we would like to provide some time sensitive ordering information.

Discounts: We’ve got ‘em! Any 12 bottle order receives a 10% discount through the month of April.

Shipping: Our standard shipping fee is $3 per bottle. If you can manage to find 6 bottles (or more) to put in your Amalie Robert Direct cart, we will include continental ground shipping at no extra cost. Wines may be shipped via FedEx or UPS and delivered to your address, a FedEx or UPS pickup location, or in some cases your essential Walgreens. Winery pickup is also available (we are about a 45 hour drive from Philly). Your shipping promotion code is: WhoistheGovernorofPennsylvania. Or you can use: SHIP6 through the month of April.

Order Confirmation: Dena confirms every order before shipment. This provides her an opportunity to ensure all pricing, discounts, delivery logistics and ship date are in order. You can expect her call prior to shipment. Ernie packs the boxes.

Our affinity program is the A-List. When you join the A-List, Dena will confirm your selections from full portfolio, reds only, Pinot Noir only or whatever suits. The discounts are better and the fulfillment costs are lower. And at the end of the day, you are on the A-List. So is Captain Kirk. Check it out here:

http://www.amalierobert.com/the-a-list.html

So until this passes, we recommend following all federal, state and local ordinances to the best of your ability. And if you must SIP, we hope you are sipping some very fine Oregon Pinot Noir. And Pinot in Pink Rosé Lip Sanitizer. Lips are very important.

Kindest Regards,

Dena & Ernie

Amalie Robert Estate Climate Update: May 2019

Hello and Welcome, 

  

This is the Amalie Robert Estate Climate Update: May 2019. A FLOG Communication. 

  

May is the month the vines get busy and in turn the vineyard hands get busy with vine shoots and trellis wires. Miles and miles of vineyard trellis wires. In our vineyard construct, we run about 9 miles of trellis wires per acre. With each and every shoot perfectly tucked in by hand. That ought to hold ‘em till harvest.

Ernie spent most of April dodging raindrops and getting the vineyard floor turned, tilled and seeded for the summer with a cover crop mix of Buckwheat and Vetch – a timeless combination not unlike Pommard and Wadenswil.

     

                       

“Owners/winemakers Dena Drews and Ernie Pink have always marched to their own beat, opting to release their extensive range of wines after they have had some bottle age.” – Josh Raynolds, Vinous, June 2019

Now it is the vines’ turn to take the lead. With plenty of soil moisture and warm temperatures in early May, the vines took the advantage and played right into our viticultural plan. You see, while Ernie was out burning diesel, the vineyard crew was preparing for this very event. Their task in April was to count to 12, on about 50,000 vines.

Deep Dive - Vine Shoot Spacing

This is our “deep dive” into vine shoot spacing and the number 12. First, lets review the mental construct that precludes the number 12 and that is vineyard spacing. Yep, we are talking about vine density or vines per acre. The next time you look out into an open field try and visualize 43,560 square feet. That’s an acre. Or when the NFL comes back on, that football field is 1.32 acres including the endzones.

Or you could do it the Ernie way. He decided that the most optimal vine spacing on our dry farmed sedimentary Bellpine series soil would be 7.5 feet for the tractor row and a cozy 4 feet between each vine. That provides us with 1,452 vines per acre. Using farmer math, we can break that down like this.

First, we start with our acre of land, 43,560 square feet. Then we divide that by our tractor row spacing of 7.5 feet and that gets us to 5,808 lineal feet of vines per acre. Said another way, an acre is a strip of land that is 7.5 feet wide and 5,808 feet long. A quarter mile race track is 1,320 feet long, so a mile would be 5,280 feet. Ergo, we are 1.1 lineal miles per acre. That becomes important next month when we talk about a fully functioning canopy, aka our solar array.

So what we do is break up that 5,808 lineal feet into a vine at every 4 feet. Logically, 5,808 divided by 4 gives us the magic number of 1,452 vines per acre. There is a little more math left to go, so if you are starting to feel some swelling at your frontal lobe, this would be the right time to break out the duct tape and apply a few wraps.

As most of you have no doubt figured out, each vine has 30 square feet of soil to colonize. It has 2 feet each front and back and 3.75 feet side to side. The only variable is effective rooting depth. Ask Ernie about rootstock growth habits sometime. Or just wait until the August drought for the rootstock “deep dive”.

Right, back on point. The trellis system we adopted for our vineyard construct is called Vertical Shoot Positioned or VSP. And we employ a single Guyot, because he couldn’t find a date. Actually, that is a farming term we will get to soon, relatively speaking. When you train vines to grow into a trellis system, which you have to do each and every year as they seem to have the attention span of a gnat, you have to decide on cane pruning or cordon spur pruning.

In the last best place to grow Pinot Noir, we choose to cane prune. This means we take a (smart) shoot from last year that was successfully trained to grow into the trellis and wrap that on the fruiting wire which is conveniently located 30 inches above the vineyard floor oriented (not orientated) in a horizontal plane. This is so that the new shoots can be trained to grow vertically into the trellis system until they reach a total height of 90 inches at which point Ernie goes out and hedges their shoot tips off. That’s our canopy, it’s 60 inches tall starting at 30 inches off the vineyard floor and tops out at a solar radiation maximizing 90 inches. Assume 18 inches thick and for each 48 inch long, single Guyot that makes 51,840 cubic inches of canopy, or 30 cubic feet. That’s the same soil footprint at 1 foot deep. Hmmm…

We are going to bring it home now. When you wrap a cane onto the fruiting wire the cane is called a Guyot. In our vineyard construct we have 4 feet between each vine and choose to run a single unidirectional 4 foot Guyot, mostly. While it wasn’t obvious at first, Viognier does not like a single, unidirectional 4 foot Guyot. So we tried a double, bi-directional 2 foot Guyot, but not much better. How about a double, bi-directional 3 foot Guyot, happy now? Yes, I like that. Very good.

A cordon is what they typically use in the Napa-Sonoma Nebula. It’s as if someone put down a cane one year and forgot to prune it back the next. For those of you who don’t know, Cabernet Sauvignon is the galactic faux pas that was created when Sauvignon Blanc met Cabernet Franc in Bordeaux. It’s a different world in a galaxy far, far away.

On each Guyot, there are several buds that will push shoots that in turn will produce clusters of wine berries. From a wine quality point of view, we would like to have enough space between each cluster for good air flow and sun exposure. That means we are looking for about a 4 inch space between each shoot distributed equally along the 4 foot cane. We want 3 shoots per foot of cane times 4 feet of cane. Aha! That’s how we get to 12. So easy a winemaker can do it!

The vines could care less. Sometimes there are 6 or even 8 shoots per foot of cane. Sometimes a shoot will have a double shoot that grows right next to it. Imagine an aerial view of any interstate in the USA. Those cars are not equally distributed along the road. And then there is the guy in the far left lane doing one mile an hour over the posted speed limit. The spacing behind that car is short, and over time will come to reflect the temperament of the following drivers.

So, that is what the vineyard hands were doing in April. They were out there equally distributing 12 shoots along a 4 foot cane, about 50,000 times. And what about the epicormic buds? Yeah, we take those suckers off at the same time!

During the month of May we have the vines right where we want them, growing into the trellis wires! And they are getting some help from a team of specially trained vineyard workers. Now get this, since there were only 12 growing points and not 25 or 30, the shoots grow faster and that makes it much easier to catch them in the trellis wires.

Surface the boat! The deep dive exercise is concluded.

Farm Equipment

It wouldn’t be May without an appropriate tribute to farm equipment. “Hey, is that a new battery cable? Looking good!” Most every corner of the wine growing planet has produced some form of wine growing equipment. Some more useful and certainly more reliable than others. As Ernie has lamented frequently, all three of his tractors are of the Italian persuasion, oh joy.

The hedger is French and mounts on one of the Italian stallions. After 20 years, they have worked it out. The flail mower is made domestically, by an Irish founded company. The rototiller, which is as tough of an implement as you are likely to find, is German. Jawhol!

That leaves the vineyard sprayer, which comes from our good friends up north in Penticton, British Columbia, Cehnehdeh. You see up north, “a” is pronounced “eh”. Ernie had to buy a new sprayer a few years back. It was the same manufacturer and he just upgraded to the latest version. While this may sound kinda funny, farm equipment does evolve. Better components, larger tanks and more money.

“What the hell is a sprayer?” We hear you. Check out this vintage advert for sprayers in 1924. Some were designed for the horticulturists of the day to apply some sort of airborne mixture to a rose bush. The goal is for the ejecta (in a water vapor form) to land on the rose bush and prevent mildew or other nefarious insects from taking over.

While the modern-day implementation may have changed, the goal remains the same – to prevent mildew from growing on your bush.

The gentlemen of the day, however, appear more concerned with other, more pressing matters.

For roughly $25,000 CDN, you too can purchase a device that will apply an airborne mixture of sulfur and water to prevent mildew from growing on your horticultural bush or agricultural crop, such as wine berries. Water is simply the delivery vehicle to get the sulfur onto the vines. Much like French fries are a delivery vehicle for ketchup. And yes, sulfur is organic, but we are not so sure about the ketchup.

When you purchase a new piece of equipment, you are buying “time”. While there are “all kinds of time”, there never seems to be “enough time”. As in “productive time” without “down time”. “Over time” as equipment depreciates, it begins to offer the Master Farmer “some time” to reverse engineer its inner workings.

While Occam’s razor is a fine tool to be implemented in most situations, it is rarely applicable to farm equipment. Much better tools are hammers (in a range of sizes), the internet, telephony and electronic payment processing capability. And speaking of “buying time”, there is Next Day Air.

Farmers, while generally risk adverse people in their non-farming lives, are also somewhat impatient. As in “this needs to be done now before the rains or hail or birds arrive”. Hence the TLA (Three Letter Acronym) RFN which stands for “Right Farming Now”. Pick your pestilence, in any given agricultural endeavor at any point in the growing season, but especially harvest, and you will see the true metal of a Master Farmer shine through.

In Ernie’s case it was 24 hours from the problem detection point until returning to productive time. Pretty good, really. But the protocol is very simple. The first step is identifying you have a problem. That was the easiest step, as one side of the sprayer was spraying the vines and the other side was not. Ok, that’s a real and verified problem.

The second step is to determine why the problem is occurring. Since the valves on the sprayer are all electronically controlled, Ernie focused on tracing power through a variety of fuses, connections, switchboxes, relays and solenoids, most of which were not designed for easy access. It’s an Italian tractor pulling and providing the power to a Cehnehdiehn sprayer.

After consulting the owner’s manual, which was actually written in American English, performing a set of tests, and leaving 2 messages with the manufacturer, it was time for lunch. Lunch lasts just as long as it takes for all of the second step activities to gel into a plan of action. Then it is back on the phone to the manufacturer.

“Well, it could be …” Yes, of course it could, and I just saw a unicorn run by. After getting a matrix-like download on sprayer valves, and phone numbers for US based parts houses that might have inventory, Ernie was on it. But first a call to the closest parts house. “They are really busy right now. I can take a message and have them call you back.” Ernie left a detailed message with the part number he would most likely need. Two days later, there was a call back, “What can we help you with?” That’s just farmin’ great.

One of the advantages of newer equipment is that the parts have evolved and become easier to disassemble, if you have the newer tools that evolved alongside said parts. Hammers, however, are universal and percussive maintenance has stood the test of time. An hour later with everything disassembled, cleaned and reassembled in accordance with the manufacturer’s recommendation, lo and behold, it still did not work!

  

Once the impossible is ruled out, only the improbable remains. After all the internals were verified, the only possible explanation was the motor that controlled the valve. Sure enough, it worked one out of three times. Looking back on it, that one time it did work was most likely sampling error. So, back to the list of parts houses in hopes the inventory supply chain had functioned as intended and correctly stocked the shelves with all the right parts in all the right places.

The most local parts house was still far too busy to take the call or return the call from the hour prior. At that point Ernie made a phone in Yakima, Washington, ring and spoke with Jonathon. It was 3:35 pm. ”Why yes, we have one of those. We have a bunch of them.” Ernie immediately thought about buying a spare and just as quickly forgot to do so.

Once the part was physically verified as actually being in stock, the financial transaction ensued. Credit card declined? How could this be? Run it again, same result. “Is this an American Express card? We don’t take that.” New card and we have success. 3:45 pm.

Yes, I do want Next Day Air, Ernie confirmed. After the $400 valve motor an extra $25 was gravy for next day delivery. “OK, UPS picks up at 4:00, we should make it.” Ernie fell silent as he heard the pitter patter of parts man fingers gently working their magic on the UPS shipping website. “Got it” came through at 3:52 pm. Now the hard part. Waiting to see if it actually arrives. Who remembers sending off box tops as a kid, only to grow old and unfulfilled?

Miracle of miracles occurred at 9:55 am the VERY NEXT morning when the most beautiful UPS truck on the whole planet backed down the driveway. “Here you go, have a nice day.” Ernie scurried back into the house and with surgical precision opened the box. It looked just like the valve motor he was trying to replace.

Down to the shop, a quick tap with the most appropriate hammer and the old valve motor was off and the new one was on. Now the moment of truth, would it work? Ernie wired it up, flipped the switch and just as sure as Shinola, it did. Throwback to the old Microsoft days in Europe, “We don’t ask for miracles; we depend on them!”

The Numbers

May started off on a tear with the first half of the month recording near record high temperatures. Mid-May transitioned to an influx of rain and cool temperatures. Were we seeing an ominous preview of harvest 2019? Then the end of the month came through with more moderate day and nighttime temperatures. Just ideal for capturing the new vine shoots in our single 4 foot Guyot Vertical Shoot Positioned trained trellis system - mostly.

May’s high temperature was 93.2 degrees recorded early in the month on the 10^th. The low temperature for the month was 34.3 degrees recorded on May 1^st. The diurnal shifts in the first half of the month were wider and produced a higher average temperature of 59.01 compared with the second half of the month at 57.97 degrees.

Degree Days for May were 295.3 with the first half of the month registering 161.0 and latter period 134.3 Degree Days. The growing season to-date Degree Days stand at 400.3 for 2019 compared with 392.3 Degree Days for 2018. While an 8 Degree Day difference is measurable, at this stage of the growing season it is statistically insignificant. Just don’t tell the vines, they are getting ready to flower.

Rainfall came mostly during the third week of the month, well before flowering, registering 1.53 inches, providing a full month total of 1.79 inches. While the data support no conclusions as of yet, Vintage 2019 is shaping up to be pretty farmin’ nice.

Kindest Regards,

Dena & Ernie

Amalie Robert Estate Climate Update: April 2019

Hello and Welcome, 

  

This is an Amalie Robert Estate Climate Update: April 2019. A FLOG Communication. 

And as the first real FLOG of the year, we would like to give you a little “peak” at what you might encounter on your visit to the International Pinot Noir Celebration (IPNC) via PDX this year where Amalie Robert Estate is a featured winery.

While it looks like a snow covered mountain, it is really a giant volcano getting ready to blow. It could happen at any minute, but in geological terms a minute can be a very long time.

Did you see any purple lilacs make their stunning debut this year? Here in Wine Country that is an indicator that the Pinot Noir vines are coming around from their 6-month hiatus (Not that they really went anywhere exciting during their time off). It is also the time of year Ernie switches his morning accelerant from French Roast to Bold Italian.

Ah, springtime in Wine Country. It reminds us that while you don’t have to be crazy to grow Pinot Noir, it certainly helps. April brings all four seasons in a weekly variety show. You want a crash course in climate change? Come on out to the farm and try to get something farmin’ (related) done!

And when that magic break of sunshine does appear, you will be glad you ordered a couple hundred gallons of bio-diesel when you had the chance and before everybody else wanted theirs. Tractors and implements, when properly engaged, can affect significant change.

As in a rotation of the cover crop from the fall mix designed to feed our vines and hold the soil onto the side of the hill in the face of 45 inches of annual winter rainfall. To the spring mix that provides a wonderful environment for our beneficial insects and also fixes nitrogen to feed our vines. These little plants draw moisture from just the top few inches of soil so as not to compete with the vines. It may be the vineyard floor, but it has a job to do like everything else. It is the Master Farmer’s job to figure that out. Sustainable cover cropping - Not everybody does it, but everybody should.

As previously described, in excruciating detail, a vineyard ecosystem is quite simply the physical implementation of a mental construct, rife with the effects of unintended consequences. In software terms, when something does not do what it is supposed to do you would say “That is a feature not a bug.” In farming, when you run a little short of cover crop seeds you say, “That is an experiment and this over here is the control.”

Another common farming phrase is “I meant to do that.” With that simple phrase, you can never make a mistake. Here’s how it works. Let’s say you brew decaf for the morning accelerant – an apparent mistake. Your caffeine deprived breakfast companion catches you out. When they push the point of you having made a mistake by brewing from the wrong container, you very boldly assert, “Oh, I meant to do that.” While this may lead to further interrogation, you have absolved yourself from having made a mistake.

But this is a powerful phrase and we caution that you use it with some discretion. At work for example, when you mistakenly open an E-mail attachment that brings down the entire corporate network – worldwide. Or maybe in front of the traffic cop who is interested in learning more about your decision to run a red light. Very powerful indeed.

And guess who is making an aerial assessment of the vineyard this fine spring. Yep, it’s our winged nemesis Vespula germanica, Aka: Those Damn Yellow Jackets. But with a little ingenuity and a strong will, we can turn this event to our advantage. And have some good fun in the process.

Yellow Jackets identified – Collect all four!

This is the time of year Vespula germanica (the chubby one with the bad attitude) is looking to establish new nesting sites. That means they are buzzing about and can be trapped. April or even into May is the right time to catch these blighters so you can fatten them up all summer long. Start with the standard cylindrical Yellow Jacket trap and add your favorite attractant. We like salmon scraps for bait, because Vespula germanica likes salmon scraps. That is bioengineering here in Wine Country.

Once you lure them into the traps, you can change their diet to suit your intended uses. Corn will fatten them up just fine and is not too expensive. Of course, once they are in captivity, they become a lot less fussy from a dietary point of view. However, they can get pretty cranky depending on how successful you were at filling the traps. You will want to resist the urge to name them.

Now, fast forward to your summer BBQ on the back deck. You can add a few of your fattened-up Yellow Jackets to the Chex mix. We recommend a little extra Worchester sauce in this preparation.

It is always good fun to add them to the ice cube tray with a little food coloring to obscure their presence. We like yellow because it looks like amber from thousands of years ago. While it is not a common occurrence, they can reanimate upon thawing.

And when someone asks how a Vespula germanica got frozen in their ice cube and then flew up their left nostril, you are ready with the most appropriate response (ever) – “I meant to do that.”

Of course the more creative adults will want to pull the wings off of them. Kinda cruel we know, but just remember they do have it coming to them. And much like ordering diesel, you will want to get your Epi-Pen prescription filled before you actually need to use it.

So there it is. The vines are awake, the vineyard floor has been turned, reseeded and showered upon. And we are on the hunt for Vespula germanica. Springtime in Wine Country, vintage 2019.

And that brings us to the numbers, with a brief introduction from the patron animation of farming.

“This April it was hot, and then it was not. And sometimes it rained, but only on you and for no more than just a day or two.

Tilling the soil and mowing the grass, that doesn’t leave much time to sit around on your …”

The first number to be aware of is 60. That is 24 old G’wzr vines and 36 new G’zwr vines, while in separate blocks, they will all be in fruiting harmony this year. Add that to the 50-some thousand Chardonnay, Pinot Meunier, Pinot Noir, Syrah and Viognier vines and we have quite a unique mix of varietals here on the Estate. You may say random, we say eclectic. And yes, we meant to do that.

April Degree Days, aka heat accumulation, started the growing season off with a very respectable 105. Add another 2,000 and we can call it the vintage of the year. What follows is a somewhat brief description of the farming construct “Degree Days” for those inquiring minds that were too shy to ask or had more important mental challenges to conquer. As if…

A Degree Day is a made-up number. But it does represent the full wine growing season beginning in April through harvest. And being a number, it can be compared year to year providing all sorts of analysis paralysis (hard to do with colors). Numbers give us confidence, validation and a sense of comfort in knowing where things stand in relation to other similar things. Age, they say, is just a number, but hair loss is real.

Take wine reviews for example. Regardless of what you may have read, the 100 point scale is in reality a 16 point range from 85 to 100 inclusive. Degree Days here in Wine Country run the range from a very cool to cold growing season of around 1,700 to a very hot and intolerable 2,700. That is a 1,000 point range that provides a wide variability in the styles of wine produced from vintage to vintage.

Now wine berries have distributed themselves around the planet based on where the heat is, or is not. The Willamette Valley is a good home to Pinot Noir and other varietals that have a tendency to develop very expressive aromas and flavors while only accumulating enough sugar for moderate alcohol potentials. These two phenomena should occur at about the same time. Most of the time. And that is the time to harvest and ferment them into wine.

Other varieties grown in warmer regions, like the Napa-Sonoma nebula, would not develop aroma and flavor in the Willamette Valley before the end of the growing season. This would make poor quality wine that would have to be augmented with Syrah from eastern Washington. And the “Red Blend” category was born…

Thinking caps on. Back in the day when a loaf of bread was a quarter, Degree Days were calculated on paper ledgers using a pencil. A person with an outdoor thermometer would write down the high and low temperature of the day and average it. Please note the inherent systemic variability of sampling error in this system. If the average was below 50 degrees there were no Degree Days recorded because the vines are not getting anything done when it is that cold.

Any value above 50 degrees was written down as the Degree Days accumulated for that day. So let’s say your office thermostat is set to 72 during the working hours and 68 the rest of the time. The daily average high and low temperature is 70 degrees. That means you are accumulating 20 Degree Days per day, or about 600 degree days a month. Apply that to 7 months from April through October and you have 4,200 Degree Days in your office space. Maybe it’s time to change out the office vegetation with some Tempranillo vines.

But you don’t. Because the real average temperature is 72 degrees for about 8 hours and 68 degrees for about 16 hours providing a real average temperature of 69.33 degrees. This works out to 19.33 Degree Days per day, 580 per month and 4,060 per growing season. The variation in the vineyard space is significantly more pronounced with daily diurnal shifts covering 50 degrees or more. So just like evaluating fine wine, more samples are in order!

We derive Degree Days, as you would imagine, differently than most. Our weather station takes a reading every 12 minutes. Each 12 minute temperature reading is logged into an electronic spreadsheet that converts the temperature reading into a number representing the Degree Days for that 12 minute period. We then have the computer sum the 3,600 individual temperature Degree Day values into a monthly total. Add the months from April through harvest or October 31, whichever comes first, and that is the total Degree Days for the growing season. We then overlay the rainfall each month to add a bit of complexity to the growing season. Easy peasie, lemon squeezy.

And that is how we can tell you the high and low temperature of each and every day of the growing season and at what 12 minute interval it occurred. For April, we will just split the month into the first 15 days and the next 15 days. The first half of the month was cooler on average, with a high of 62.4 and a low of 35.1 (27.3 degree diurnal shift). The second half of the month was where the real heat was with a high of 78.4 and a very chilly low of 32.7 (45.7 degree diurnal shift). The Degree Day totals were 18 and 87, mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive.

April 2018 came out of the gate with 110.1 degree days with a high temperature of 82.9 and a low of 31.50 degrees (51.4 degree diurnal shift). We are hoping to avoid the arid conditions that finished off that vintage, but the tail does not wag the dog as they say.

And yes, we had rain, 5.33 inches to be exact. We got all the right drops in all the right places. That served as a reminder that Ernie needs a new hat…

Join us next month when we will do a deep dive on shoot spacing, the number 12 and why you can never get rid of all those water sprouts. Here is a hint, they are called “epicormic buds.” You know, suckers.

Kindest Regards,

Dena & Ernie