Arguably the most crucial part of the 2008 vintage is over, the grapes are in and undergoing fermentation. Great wine is made in the vineyard, and this has everything to do with weather, grape quality, vineyard practices, and yields per acre. There is no way to disguise mediocre grapes with expensive technology or science no matter how hard a winemaker will try.
I like to compare this important fact about high quality wine to buying produce at the Farmer’s Market, or getting your fish straight from the harbor where it was caught fresh that day. You wonder why some restaurants are able to make the simplest salad so much better than what you make at home? Even though you think you are using the same ingredients? It is because of the olive oil they are using, the crisp fresh lettuce, fresh cracked black pepper, sea salt crystals. Compare this salad to one made from bagged grocery store lettuce, salt and pepper from shakers, and low grade olive oil. Same ingredients, extremely different product.
Back to the winemaking… so, while yields were low this harvest (meaning we received less grapes per acre than average), quality is extremely high. I get to witness the white winemaking process at Santa Barbara Winery (our reds are made up at the Lafond Vineyard). I have seen Chardonnay, Riesling, Sauvignon Blanc and Orange Muscat brought down from the Santa Ynez Valley in picking bins on trucks for the past two months. I have tasted different stages of these wines fermenting in tank, noticing the sugars slowly turn to alcohol. Literally turning from pressed grape juice to the first stage of a wine’s life cycle after primary fermentation.
So where are we right now in the process? About two thirds of the wine is done with primary fermentation, the rest besides one lot is just about done. The one lot that is still actively fermenting is the Lafond Vineyard Riesling that we are going to do in a sweet wine style. Assistant Winemaker Ryan Ralston says in his 12 years of winemaking he has never had everything in barrel/tank before Thanksgiving.
Joanie Hudson, Assistant Tasting Room Manager, Santa Barbara Winery
Today, Friday 24, is the end of one of the shortest harvests I can remember at Lafond Winery and one of the smallest. All vineyards in the area were affected by the March/April frosts and yields were drastically down. Our neighbor, Hilltop Vineyards, whose 30 acres of Chardonnay we purchase, normally has over 100 tons, this year they picked 30.
The bright side is that the quality is high. Small yields generally are more concentrated and, of course, with less wine to worry about the winemaker can concentrate on what he has. “All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds”.
The first photo shows Winemaker Bruce McGuire on the line sorting the grapes on the conveyor belt. He is in the grey shirt on the left. The second photo is taken from inside the Tasting Room which gives a great view of the process all the while enjoying a glass of wine.
Click photos to enlarge:
Santa Rita Hills 2007 Pinot Noir
Santa Barbara Winery
The 2007 Pinot Noir was grown in our Lafond Vineyard and the Arita Hills Vineyard located in the Sta. Rita Hills AVA. The cool climate in this area is the result of a geographical anomaly and proximity to the cold California Current that flows down the coast of northern and central California.
The Santa Rita Hills are at the western terminus of Southern California’s Transverse Ranges, the only major east-west mountain range in North America. During the growing season, hot inland temperatures draw in cold ocean air through our valley making the western part of the valley the coldest region.
Temperatures warm as one travels eastward through the Santa Ynez Valley. We often see bud break in our vines in the third week of February, a happenstance that is not as worrisome as in Northern climes because we rarely get a late frost.
This jump-start in vine growth sets up a long growing season with the harvest of Pinot Noir usually occurring in September. As we feared, a late frost affected much of the Pinot Noir to the tune of 1.6 ton/acre (about half of normal). Fortunately, the berries were small and the growing season was moderate leading to a wine of greater concentration than normal.
Vintage 2007 is from 10 vineyard sites up to 18 years old and from eight different Pinot Noir clones. The wine was aged in an assortment of French and Hungarian oak barrels and puncheons. Herbed meats, grilled salmon, truffle pecorino, and sautéed mushroom medley are all exciting companions for the succulent, red fruit flavors of this Pinot Noir.
We are thinking the concentration of fruit will lead to greater agability of this wine, with 2014 seeing complete flavor development and perhaps full aged character out to 2019. Caution is warrented however, because this is the sort of vintage that can get dicey in ten years.
Retail: 25.00/750ml
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What can we expect from the 2008 vintage? An entire year of weather is reflected in the wine that is produced in a particular harvest. Certain weather patterns produce specific varietal character and expression, and in most cases affect the amount of fruit that comes off of the vine and into the winery.
2008 will be a low fruit yielding year, just like 2007 was. Extremely low rainfall produced small berries. What is lacking in quantity can be made up in quality. Low yields mean less fruit, but vines put more effort into the hanging berries making for concentrated fruit (”more flavor per berry”). According to Assistant Winemaker Ryan Ralston, “When you have a vine putting all of its power into less fruit it’s going to really concentrate those flavors.”
If you have had your radar on Santa Barbara County in 2008 you recall that we were hit hard with frost damage in April (temperatures dipped below freezing on April 20). So what actually happens in the vineyard when there is frost damage? A recent article in the Pacific Coast Business Times explains, “the freeze slowed vines’ bloom, which in turn meant that fruit hadn’t set when spring winds and May heat waves arrived.” Some growers were hit harder than others. This season’s weather also led to uneven ripening, requiring more hand sorting through grapes to weed out berries that were not fully ripened.
Thicker skinned red grapes will continue to be harvested through November.
http://pacbiztimes.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=388&Itemid=1
Joanie Hudson, Assistant Tasting Room Manager, Santa Barbara Winery
Yesterday we got in our first load of Hilltop Ranch Vineyard Chardonnay, neighbor to Lafond Vineyard in the Sta Rita Hills. The 45 acre Hilltop Ranch Vineyard is planted to 32 acres of Chardonnay and is close to 30 years old. It is flanked to the north and south by Lafond on the northern side of Santa Rosa Road. The grapes went on an exciting journey from picking to pressing in just a few hours. They were trucked down to our urban winery facility where the white wines are processed (Santa Barbara Winery) immediately after being collected from the vines.
We received 4.4 tons of fruit yesterday and will be getting more all week. The winemakers are pulling double digit hours-long days monitoring the harvest around the clock. Days off are almost non-existent and sleep is precious. This is the life of a winemaker. He or she works all year round, but there is one incredibly intense part of the year where the most exciting decisions and processes take place.
Joanie Hudson, Assistant Tasting Room Manager, Santa Barbara Winery
Harvest is in full swing at our downtown winery, where we process all of our white wines. Over the past couple of weeks we have been getting in truck loads of tiny small cluster berries such as sauvignon blanc and orange muscat. Today we received about 5 tons of Thompson Vineyard Chardonnay and about the same tonnage of Monterey Sauvignon Blanc (Musque Clone).
We receive fruit by the truckload, which brings it right to our front door, parking right in front of the visitors area of the winery. The juice immediately gets pressed off of the skins and fermentation begins soon afterwards. We have gotten the opportunity to taste sauvignon blanc juice through the stages it takes from just grape juice to an active fermentation. As the wine is fermenting the sugar disappears and it turns into wine as those sugars convert to alcohol. Each day the juice is a noticeably less sweet.
Visitors today can taste the chardonnay berries that we have in the tasting room as they sip through current releases of our 2007 white wines that were going through the same process just one year ago.
Joanie Hudson, Assistant Tasting Room Manager, Santa Barbara Winery
Thursday the 25th of September the urban harvest crew received the largest tonnage of grapes for the season. The grapes were Sauvignon Blanc from the Jack Mcginley
vineyard, formerly called the Westerly vineyard. Ryan Ralston, the assistant winemaker for Santa Barbara Winery and Lafond Winery wines has a pension for creating Sauvignon Blanc with balanced, rounded tropical fruit flavors, little astringency and crisp finish.
“The key to having great California Sauvignon Blanc is allowing mother nature to exude its full effects on the grape. To do so the winemaker and vineyard manager must have some faith in the sometimes fickle California climate and let the grapes hang until peak ripeness is achieved.”
Anything less would be uncivilized and add bitter, grassy and sometimes harsh poly phenols and phenolics to the wine.
Photo above shows whole-cluster grapes dropping into the press from the conveyor. The stems provide channels for the juice during the press cycle. The grapes enter the press undamaged.
The bottom photo is of juice being extracted through the press. The press has a large bladder which on being expanded by air, like a giant balloon, gently pushes the grapes against the wall of the press and its screen.
Cameron Bendetsen, Sata Barbara Winery
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