Far from finished.

This time of year, harvest time, The Napa Valley Register includes in its weekly 'On Wine' section an additional feature: a harvest report.  The harvest report details harvest goings-on in the entire Napa Valley American Viticultural Area (AVA); including all 16 sub-AVAs from Carneros to Calistoga.  Being a vine-geek I love to read it, especially since the Coombsville AVA has been in the mix since harvest of 2012. TWWIAGE's winemaker is a frequent contributor for the Oakville AVA. I had always assumed the reports were accurate, however there was a bit of an oversight in this week's dispatch.
Reporting on week 3, a local Coombsville vintner (who shall remain nameless) was quoted thus: "All the whites are off in our neighborhood..." Really?  Well, his white grapes might have already been harvested, as have Vinoland's, but just several hundred yards from his vineyard is another, rather sizable vineyard with a not insignificant crop of Chardonnay - that's still hanging.  Can't miss it. Titter, titter.
The past two days, the folks at Far Niente have been busy preparing to pick their Chardonnay. And tonight seems to be the night.  Well, it'll be overnight, Monday morning, actually.  I'll probably hear the picking crew and their tractors in the early hours.  And tomorrow, when I leave for work, I'll see that the fruit has been harvested.  Only then, perhaps, will the neighbourhood be devoid of white grapes.
I shouldn't believe everything I read.  I usually don't.  Ho Hum.

The Land Remembers.

Another new book arrived in the post today.  The book, The Land Remembers, is ostensibly a treatise on viticulture and terroir.  However, my first impression, after a quick shufty through the book, is that this book is more about one man's love affair with his very own garden of Eden at Indian Springs Ranch, Kenwood (Sonoma Valley).
George MacLeod and his family bought acreage back in 1974 without really knowing anything about winegrape growing, it seems.  But he brought plenty of passion with him.  If one is in doubt as to Mr. MacLeod's romance with the land, his inscription to me, at the front of the book, says,"To Vinogirl - Here is a true vineyard love story! With affection, George, grower".  Case closed.
The Land Remembers has some interesting sections on soil, topography and water, with accompanying charts and photographs - all the vine-geeky stuff I love.  There is a short chapter on 'Microbial Terroir' which has really piqued my curiosity.  I am really enjoying all the viticultural reading I have been doing of late.  This book is a lovely addition to my humble reference library.
The book was written with Arthur Dawson, and other contributors.  One of the contributors is yours truly: yes, I contributed a photograph of a smudge pot (page 79).  Ta da!  That's my 15 minutes of fame done.

True Wine Lover 17.

I have just finished reading Vineyards in the Sky a biography about pioneering California vintner Martin 'Rusty' Ray.  The book, which reads like a novel, was written by his second wife Eleanor (herself, in a small way, a contributor to California's wine history - y'know, behind every successful man...).  It tells of the interesting life of Martin Ray; a man whose persistence, and passion, in championing for strict varietal wine regulations, and the establishment of identifiable viticultural areas in California, made him quite a controversial character.  And, nowadays, hardly anyone in California has ever even heard of Martin Ray.
Martin Ray, a protégé of Burgundian transplant Paul Masson, railed against the production of cheap blended wines - wines whose producers then passed off, onto the unsuspecting consumer, as varietal wines.  (Let me just say, Ray despised Thompson Seedless grapes.)  In 1936, Ray purchased Paul Masson's La Cresta vineyard and winery (2000 feet up in the Santa Cruz mountains).  Six years later, after selling La Cresta to Seagrams, he developed his own vineyard on another crest to the northwest: his very own vineyard in the sky.
Ray made a bit of a nuisance of himself by insisting that California vintners should make 100% varietal wines - wines that he believed could compete with any of the wines coming out of Europe.  He was a bit of a stickler.
Martin Ray was also perhaps one of California's earliest advocates of the use of clonal selections in winegrowing, himself identifying and then propagating Pinot Noir and Chardonnay clones that were originally brought to America by Paul Masson.  Interesting reading - if you're a vine-geek like me.
Today, June 26th, would have been Martin Ray's 112th birthday.  Happy birthday Rusty!

A little book of horrors.

I am always looking for good viticulture reference books and my brand new copy of Vitibook just happens to be a great one.  Written by Diego Barison et al., Vitibook was actually published last year, however, I only just learnt about it.  I had contacted Glenn McCourty, who is a Viticulture & Plant Science Advisor at the U.C. Davis Cooperative Extension for Lake and Mendocino counties (on the advice of wine columnist Dan Berger), to ask if he knew of any published data on Vitis clonal selections that are available to the grapegrower.  And yes, he did.
Vitibook is a little gem of a book out of Italy that is just perfect for a vino-geek like me.  The book is very thorough in its coverage of grapevine morphology and phenology and it includes interesting statistical data about grape-growing regions around the world.  The section on clones is informative and is exactly what I was looking for.  It is the horrifyingly graphic chapters on grapevine diseases and pests that really make this book worth owning.  Replete with full colour photographs that document all sorts of grape maladies and creepy-crawlies, it is a small wonder that anyone would ever decide to develop a vineyard at all.  Frightening.
Vitibook is a wonderful addition to my modest collection of all-things-grapey-reference books.