Christmas is a-coming!

Whoo hoo! Several frosty mornings in a row.  A Christmas parcel today from Blighty.  O Come All Ye Faithful playing in the background.  A nice glass of Mi Sueno Syrah next to my laptop.   The Vinodogs slumbering in front of a log fire.

Ahhh. Life is good.

Pregnancy prohibited?

If I didn't already know that I enjoy a glass of Soave every now and again, it certainly could be helpful, to aid in my choice of purchasing this wine, to know that this bottle's content was dry and crisp.  That it has 12% alcohol by volume - again, somewhat helpful.  Vegetarian - important to some people, not me (I'm assuming the producer uses bentonite only when fining).  UK units - at this point I'd have to pull out my calculator to figure out the recommended daily allowance for myself (only if I was drinking this in the UK, that is).   I have to say, there is quite a bit of potentially useful information crammed onto the back label of this Soave Classico offering from Tesco.   However, the universal prohibition sign, which I am assuming warns of the dangers of consuming alcohol whilst pregnant, merely looks like getting pregnant is disallowed.   Consumer nannyism at its best.

The bottle is glass - good to know.

Death by Cabernet!

I could not stand them any longer: I had to do something about the swarms of fruit flies that were orbiting my noggin as I tried to enjoy a chilled glass of Sauvignon blanc with dinner last night. Where do these beastly flies come from? Fermentation is well and truly over and there's not even a piece of rotten fruit lurking at the bottom of our fruit bowl. One day Vinoland seemed relatively Drosophila melanogaster free, the next - veritable mobs of those little bête noires everywhere (although they're not black). Of course, it has been unseasonably warm these past few days.

It seemed I had only one recourse, to promptly make a fruit fly trap. And, as soon as I had finished breakfast this morning I was on it. Within a short few hours, my cling film-topped plastic cup, baited with a premium Napa Cabernet sauvignon, contains at least six dozen trapped, dying and dead fruit flies (there are worse ways to pop one's clogs).

Seriously, where are these things coming from?

When to prune?

Like a fine Swiss timepiece, the Far Niente vineyard crew have been out and about these past two days pre-pruning their Chardonnay vines. Once again, this post-harvest operation has been performed in this particular vineyard with precision timing.

Vinoland's vines, as I have mentioned on this blog once or twice, are head-trained and cane (and spur) pruned so I don't perform any pre-pruning. Besides, I'm not exactly a planner-type person (am I, Vinomaker?), so if I get started pruning approximately sometime in February that's planning enough for me! However, I did exercise some forethought this past week and purposely went out and found myself an Advent calendar in anticipation of today, December 1st.

It's all about priorities really, isn't it?

Don't let the grass grow under your feet.

I didn't: I let the grass grow on top of my boots.

After a whole summer of seeds apparently collecting in amongst the laces of my trusty Timberlands, it only took one rain event, followed by sunshine, to bring forth a small crop of miscellaneous vegetation. These old vineyard boots were destined to be retired anyway (I don't normally leave my boots outside), so there is no pressing need for me to mow my impromptu, mobile cover crop.

The same opportunistic weeds take advantage of the first available moisture every year. It's just that this is the first time I have seen it happen on an article of footwear.

Thanksgiving tipples.

The selection of wines for Vinoland's Thanksgiving festivities.

A 2005 Mumm Napa Devaux Ranch (available only at the winery), a 2007 and 2008 Herrera Selección Esmeralda Russian River Pinot noir, and a 2006 Truchard Botrytis Roussanne (brilliant with pumpkin pie).

I wish everyone a healthy and happy Thanksgiving.

Autumn leaves.

This is the last in my mini-series of posts about autumn colours.

There aren't too many deciduous trees in these neck of the woods, evergreens are much more abundant. However, the dozens of American Sycamore (Platanus occidentalis) that line the north side of the Oakville Crossroad are a reminder to me, as I drive to TWWIAGE on a cool, grey autumnal day, that even in California the seasons do indeed change.

Roll on winter!

In praise of anthocyanins.

I had to wander around in the Cabernet vines for a while, with the Vinodogs in tow, before I found a red leaf amongst the canopy to photograph.  I actually found three, all obscured by their surrounding yellowing leaves, but this one was the most red.  The reds, oranges, and yellows we see in autumn foliage are due to a group of natural chemical/phenolic compounds called anthocyanins, carotenoids, and xanthophylls respectively.  The red, with which this post is mainly concerned, comes from the pigment found in anthocyanins.

Anthocyanins are valuable to plants giving fruit shades of red, purple and blue (cyan, like one of the ink cartridges we periodically replace in our inkjet printers).  Anthocyanins also provide photoprotection for plants whilst attracting pollinating insects (not necessary for grapevines of course), birds and other grape-munching creatures that can aid in the dispersal of seed.  And, of course, it’s anthocyanins we see in all their glory each autumn as the leaves on deciduous trees change colour before dropping.
The thing with grapevines, though, is that it is the grapes that are supposed to change colour, not the leaves.  Grape clusters begin to change colour with the onset of veraison with red varieties deepening to their characteristic purple.  The grapes are also undergoing other complex changes that are not visible to the eye, but that result in an accumulation of sugars and other desirable compounds prized by winemakers and wine-imbibers alike.
The anthocyanin content in a wine ranges from zero in a variety devoid of skin pigment (e.g. Pinot blanc versus Pinot noir), to a maximum of about 2,500 to 3,000 mg/kg in a teinturier variety, such as Alicante Bouschet. In a good glass of Cabernet sauvignon, like a glass of wine from the vine in the above photograph, one could expect an anthocyanin content of about 890 mg/kg.  I am not a chemist, so I am not going to get into how the pigment in grape juice is influenced by acidity, pH, tannin, flavones, co-pigments, iron and other metals - not to mention a dozen environmental factors.  The main anthocyanin (not to be confused with anthocyanidins, their dietetic counterparts) in most V. vinifera varieties is malvidin-3-monoglucoside.  I know, it's hard for me to pronounce too. But, unless you are a winemaker, the actual knowledge that anthocyanins are anthocyanidins that have been modified by the attachment of a molecule of glucose matters little.  What matters most to the average wine-lover is the beautiful purple-blue hue that one espies in the miniscus of the young wine about to be consumed from one's glass.

So, raise a glass of a little something luxuriously red (a squid ink black Petite sirah, perhaps?) and join me in a toast to the attributes of the not-so-lowly anthocyanin.

Going viral.

Long before viral became a marketing buzzword to describe how thoughts, information and trends move into and through a human population, the Napa Valley's grapevines were going viral without any help from social media.

The are many viruses that cause diseases in grapevines, and due to the woody nature of much grapevine tissue, it is often difficult to purify such tissue. New vineyards planted from infected cuttings or budwood will be diseased from the time they are established. That is why a programme such as the Foundation Plant Services (FPS) at UC Davis is so vital to the wine industry. FPS is a self-supporting service department in the College of Agricultural & Environmental Sciences and is very instrumental in the detection and elimination (using heat treatment techniques) of grapevine diseases.

Grapevine leafroll is probably the most wide-spread virus disease of grapevines and there are currently 9 different viruses associated with leafroll. Leafroll spreads slowly from vine to vine and impacts both vine health and grape quality, in some instances reducing yields as much as 50 percent or even more, depending on the severity of infection. Typical leaf symptoms include reddening of the leaves between major veins in red varieties. Thus, we can assume that the vivid dark red of the vine in the above photograph, and the reddening of its neighbouring vines on the Silverado Trail, indicates that it is indeed a red variety.

A green leaf is green because of the presence of a pigment known as chlorophyll. When chlorophyll is abundant in the leaf's cells, as they are during the growing season, the chlorophyll's green colour dominates and masks the colours of any other pigments that may be present in the leaf. Consequently, the leaves of summer are characteristically green, but in the autumn and at harvest time the entire vine takes on a reddish cast. It's very pretty, but it's very unhealthy.

When a virus is present it disrupts the normal physiological function of the vine's cells. A healthy vine will efficiently remove pigments leaving the dying leaf to become yellow, then brown, followed by the detachment of the petiole from the shoot and leaf drop. The red pigment in the leaf, anthocyanin, is usually the most difficult pigment to remove when the vine's phloem has been compromised by a virus. Exactly how leafroll affects the anthocyanin pathway through the vine's vascular system remains a mystery and is the subject of ongoing research. Curiously, a way of checking if a particular vine is infected with leafroll virus is to graft a bud from the suspect vine onto a healthy Cabernet franc vine. This vinifera cultivar is very sensitive to the disease, showing strong symptoms sometimes within as little as 18 months of grafting.

Because leafroll virus does not kill vines, but instead causes reductions in yield, maturity and quality, infected vines are rarely removed from otherwise healthy and productive vineyards. The only effective control of leafroll, or any other grape virus disease, is to ensure that healthy propagating material from virus-tested stock is used to plant vineyards.

Red coloured foliage, although the result of disease in a vine, really is very attractive. I, along with the valley's tourists, really enjoy the show.

Out with the old.

Do not worry, nobody was harmed in the making of this photograph - especially me! However, these poor, old vines definitely took a beating.

I spotted these vines being pulled out last night on the way home from work. This morning, camera in hand, I was fortunate enough to actually get a photograph of the bulldozer operator pushing the old vines into huge piles. By the time I left work this afternoon all the vines were piled high into 6 or 7 gigantic, tangled mountains of vegetation and steel vineyard trellising stakes - which will ultimately become funeral pyres.

With harvest 2011 well and truly over (and believe me, there has been a resounding, collective sigh of relief heard throughout the entire valley), it is now time to plan for future harvests and replanting old vineyards is often on the agenda.

In with the new.

Poppy Day.

Please, raise a glass of wine and join me in a toast to all the courageous men and woman of the armed forces who perished in wars gone by. Furthermore, let us not forget those who, still to this day, are prepared to perhaps make the ultimate sacrifice of their own lives so that the rest of us may live in freedom.

Remember, freedom isn't free.

There's no such thing as a free lunch.

It's not everyday that you get to have a $600 bottle of wine with lunch, and for me lunch this past Monday was no exception. It was Vinomaker who shared a bottle of 2007 Domaine de la Romanée-Conti Échézeaux during a business lunch at Celadon in downtown Napa. Vinomaker, altruistically, took time away from his busy day job to help facilitate the smooth installation of a new Chief Financial Officer at a winery that he regularly works with. What a sacrifice!

I have always been a firm believer in the maxim that states that the best expensive wine that one might enjoy is the expensive bottle of wine that one didn't pay for oneself (of course, I just made that up). Yet, Vinomaker, not known for being much of a Francophile, was left relatively unimpressed by the contents of this expensive bottle of DRC. The two of us are not huge Pinot noir fans on the best of days, but I was at least curious as to how this wine tasted.

I am not ashamed to admit that I pulled the cork from the empty bottle, that Vinomaker had teasingly brought home, and poured the 3-4 ml of wine, that had collected around the punt, onto my tongue. The wine was definitely Pinot-like, surprisingly very spicy, quite oaky (I'm sure due to this wine's obvious youthfulness), but showed great acidity and balance. I gleaned all this from mere dregs, so I'm thinking a whole glass of this very expressive wine must've been quite a treat. Instead, the reality is that Vinomaker went to lunch...and all I got was this lousy bottle!

Spotted recently in...

...St. Helena, an out to lunch sign that displays a bit of a sense of humour. Pennaluna doesn't really carry any merchandise that I would particularly want to own, but the shop is entertaining in a mindless-browsing sort of way. I just like the fact that on a busy Friday afternoon the proprietor deemed that perhaps walking the dog was of more import than servicing tourists. I wholeheartedly understand. I always prefer to be walking my Vinodogs over any other activity - followed by drinking wine, counting money, then smelling roses :)

I ain't got no body!

Thankfully, this Sauvignon blanc from TWWIAGE has plenty of body to spare.

Happy Halloween everybody!

Beware!

"From ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggedy beasties. And things that go bump in the night."

Yes, it's almost Halloween and I'm quite enjoying all the festive goings-on, including the harvest party at TWWIAGE last night. Good food, good wine, and good friends were all featured in bountiful amounts. Thankfully, the Moselland 2009 Zeller Schwarze Katz was not on the wine list.

To the superstitious out there, people who think that black cats are generally bad luck, I am here to reinforce your worst fears: do not let this black cat cross your path...or rather, your lips.

Black Cat Riesling, sweet and scary, just like Halloween itself.

Harvest 2011...finished!

I have been busy all week dropping dodgy looking Cabernet sauvignon grapes and removing leaves in the fruit zone to facilitate a headache free harvest. Prepping for harvest takes a bit of time, but it makes the actual picking of the crop go so much easier. In the course of stripping leaves from the bottom 8-10 inches of each shoot I came across this bird's nest, most likely that of a California Towhee.

Vinoland's Cabernet sauvignon is now cooling its heels as it waits patiently to be inoculated sometime tomorrow.

Vinomaker and I survived another harvest. Whoo hoo!

There's a fungus among us.

Harvest 2011...hmmph! Even the large, commercial wineries in the Napa Valley are having a bit of a struggle with mould this vintage. Cabernet sauvignon is quite susceptible to quite a few fungi most notably Botrytis cinerea however, the fruit in the above photograph is showing a rather vigorous crop of penicillium. Scary, they're large enough to cast their own shadows.

Fungi lack chlorophyll and need to live on other organisms to obtain nourishment, they are parasitic. Fungal diseases are known as 'secondary invaders' because they thrive on grapes that have been damaged by birds and bees, or grapes that have already had their overall health compromised by diseases such as powdery mildew (Uncinula necator). Wet weather, in the run up to harvest, often causes the worst cases of infection on already injured grapes, so because of the early fall rains 2011 may be a bumper year for fungi.

Of course yeast is a type of fungus, but it's also very important for fermentation. Wine made from spoiled berries is often tainted with smells and tastes like, well, mould. Lovely. But, it is problematic vintages like 2011 that seperate the winemaking men from the boys. Ferment on...

Photograph courtesy of the Marketing Queen.

An eggstraordinary fermentation.

Concrete tanks as fermentors and aging vessels are not a totally unheard of trend in Napa winemaking, so I am not reporting anything new. However, it was only until this past week that I was able to get up close and personal to a clutch of 150 gallon egg shaped tanks at a local custom crush facility.

The Romans, some 2000 years ago, used concrete platforms on which to process grapes for winemaking and may have even used concrete tanks for fermenting wine. Clever chaps those Romans - look how they perfected the use of concrete for the unreinforced, coffered concrete dome of the Pantheon in Rome - just brilliant. To this day, there are wineries in the Napa Valley that have never used anything but concrete fermentors: just visit Mayacamas Vineyards during harvest to see their large concrete tanks in action.

Up until fairly recently, the majority of concrete tanks being used in the US were produced in France, Burgundy to be exact. Now, however, a California manufacturer using innovative technology has designed a superior egg with an improved concrete composition. Sonoma Cast Stone, a concrete company located in that other valley (in the town of Petaluma, coincidentally once known as the Egg Capital of the World), has true to American ingenuity, engineered a nifty new take on the egg. Any interested party can purchase an egg in one of eight designer colours. How Californian is that? The outfit has even added a pomace port for ease of cleaning which was a major complaint about the French-made eggs.

The pros and cons of fermenting in concrete? On the pro side; low temperature fermentations, elevated fruit notes, richer aromatics, and breathability. On the con side; excess aeration (breathability, anyone?), sanitation, and the possibility of contamination from spoilage microbes e.g. Brettanomyces. Perhaps laughably, a Monsieur Marc Nomblat, of the French firm ETS Nomblat SAS, has been quoted as saying "nobody had Brett problems with our concrete tanks." Titter, titter!

Vinomaker and I have not yet tried a wine that has been produced in a concrete fermentor, so we have no personal experience with the end result, although Chronic Cellars 2010 Stone Fox is on my radar.

To ferment in cement? That is the question.

UFO, or what?

This cute, little alien-like egg recently showed up at the winery where I am gainfully employed (henceforth to be known only as TWWIAGE). This egg is perhaps the most appealing piece of promotional material I have ever seen: it is certainly more engaging than the Boswell Company's French oak toothpicks. The hawkers of this little, elliptical wonder are onto something. I'd buy one!

A growing trend, it seems, is for winemakers to use the aforementioned eggs, or concrete tanks of various dimensions, as an alternative to stainless steel. I cannot see TWWIAGE switching from stainless steel, (when 85% of our white wines are barrel fermented and sur lie aged), to cement anytime soon - the approach to winemaking at TWWIAGE is rather traditional.

Not even a thimble full of wine could be fermented in this solid concrete marketing tool from Sonoma Cast Stone, but it would make a great paperweight. More to follow...

Get your macronutrients here.

The soil is not white in Oakville, these mounds are large piles of fertiliser heaped around the edge of the Opus One vineyard waiting to be applied and disked in.

Whilst vineyard managers are primarily concerned with all things harvest at this time of year, they must also consider whether an application of fertiliser is necessary. Apparently, the people at Opus One who are responsible for the health of this particular vineyard have decided that a good dose of potassium sulphate (K2SO4) is in order. I am assuming that it is K2SO4: potassium chloride (KCl) is another form of of potassium fertiliser that could be used, but it should not be used in a vineyard that may perhaps have an existing salinity condition.

Late autumn or early winter is a good time to treat a vineyard as full advantage can be taken of winter rainfall to move the fertiliser down into the soil and on into the root zone. Seeing as this vineyard was ripped out last spring, perhaps due to some unnamed creepy crawly, this empty field is a clean slate on which a new and improved, and fertilised, vineyard can be planted.