Racking Sauvignon Blanc
Racking is the process in which a wine maker removes the settled solids from the clean juice or wine. The idea behind racking is to clean up the wine by removing settled particulates from the bulk of the wine.
With our Sauvignon Blanc, racking is done after cold settling. This is much like chilling orange juice is your fridge until the pulp settles to the bottom and then pouring off the top liquid. The result is a visually and chemically cleaner product.
Camereon Bendetsen, Santa Barbara Winery
Camereon Bendetsen on the harvest
Saturday September 6th marked the beginning of the 2008 Santa Barbara Winery urban harvest. The inaugural fruit came from the Grassini Vineyard located in the Happy Canyon area in the eastern most section of Santa Ynez. This soon to be appellation is on average ten degrees warmer than the rest of the Santa Ynez Valley.
The warm weather, coupled with little ocean influence makes the vineyards of Happy Canyon ideal for growing Bordeaux varietals like Sauvignon Blanc, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Malbec. The Fruit came down on a flatbed goose-neck trailer in eight food grade picking bins pulled by a one-ton diesel truck down the 101 south. The 154 can be a bit treacherous with a large payload and spilling grapes on the freeway is not an option.
Typically, eight picking bins will yield approximately four tons. This year however, we received 2.75 tons. The small yield was primarily due to an uncharacteristic frost at the beginning of fruit set. The tonnage per acre worked out to about 1.5 tons/acre, which is very low especially for a vineyard planted with 6′x3′ spacing. The upside to a low yield is high quality.
When the vineyard is packed full of grapes uniform ripening throughout the vines can become compromised. This compromise is due to layers of grapes shading the rest of the vine. Consequently, low yields will ensure that all fruit clusters are exposed to the proper amount of sunlight essential for ripening and the Grassini Sauvignon Blanc was no exception.
With a few shifts of the forklift, the gapes rode up the sorting belt and into our press. The urban harvest had begun. The Brix came in at 24.9 with a 3.3 pH; perfect for the non-grassy, slightly tropical Sauvignon Blanc that assistant winemaker Ryan Ralston strives to create. Head Winemaker, Bruce McGuire felt that the Grassini Sauvignon Blanc will play an essential role in the overall flavor profile and balance of the 2008 Santa Barbara Winery Sauvignon Blanc and will continue to be a vineyard that will play a key role for years to come.
Camereon Bendetsen, Cellar Production Technician, Santa Barbara Winery.
Saturday, September 6, we received our first grapes of the 2008 harvest. Urban Wineries are different — space is limited and we have to compete with traffic but in the last 46 years things have not changed all that much.
The photos show the forklift bringing the picking box into the winery then dumping it into the conveyor and lastly the grapes being sorted on the way to the wine press. For white wines we press whole clusters and the juice is then allowed to settle in stailess steel tanks then pumped to barrels to ferment.
Today Winemaker Bruce MaGuire (in the blue sweater) with David, Andy and Enrique inspected the frost damage in one of our younger blocks of Pinot Noir. The prognostic is not good. Some varieties, such as the Riesling, are an almost total wipe-out. The Pinot Noir which normally produces 2.5 to 3 tons per acre looks like 1/2 a ton per acre — not that much different from last year which was also damaged by frost. There were a lot of sad faces.
The group met to plan how to farm what has survived. The amount of fruit that a vine carries will determine much of its care – balancing the fruit with the vine. On the positive side low yields often produce outstanding wines.
Unfortunately, the prognostic is the same throughout California, everyone is certain to be scrambling for grapes.
Last Thursday was the end of harvest. The picking is done but not the fermentation and pressing. The end of picking is always a major crossing — the grapes are in and now the serious part — the winemaking begins. We celebrate all sorts of beginnings and ends — usually with a BBQ — and this was no exception. We were not able to get all the pickers — many had gone home — but we managed to get the permanent crew.
Among the group are — Winemaker Bruce Mcguire, Vineyard manager Andy Joughin, Foreman Enrique Solozano, Tasting Room Manager Mirella Valdez, who organized the event — David Lafond was on the other end of the camera.
By the way, Bruce is very pleased about the harvest — there were some anxious moments – that we would not get full ripeness with some varieties before the rains – but his policy of wait and wait some more paid off.
Click group picture to enlarge:
Today was the last day of harvest for Santa Barbara Winery. The last load of Chardonnay grapes came in this morning. It was also a very busy day in the Tasting Room and while customers were being attended, just behind, in the barrel room, Tyler was struggling moving barrels in place.
And Cameron, who had assisted in the harvest, changed his clothes put on a red jacket and helped out in the Tasting Room. Cameron’s mother, who lives in Florida, when she saw him in the harvest slideshow on the web, reacted like all good mothers everywhere — “Cameron, you need a haircut!”.
This week we are picking Chardonnay from our neighbor, Hilltop Ranch. Hilltop Ranch has 32 acres of Chardonnay which we have purchased for many years. As a good neighbor, we go through their property to access our vineyard on the north side of the river. This is an older vineyard, close to 30 years, and it has been upgraded in the past few years using a modern trellis system producing an excellent fruit.
Since they do not pick at night their second picking, about 7 tons, is stored in our large walk-in cooler overnight, while the first load picked early, also 7 tons, is processed at the winery.
All our white wines are made at the Santa Barbara Winery which as an urban winery poses unique problems but also advantages. The main problem, of course, is traffic but the advantages — services, power and delivery — compensate.
The slideshow — from picking to pressing. You can enlarge the image by clicking it (it may take a little practice).
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