-- Wherein Wes and the crew throw a party, sell a good chunk of the 2008 production, run the interns through their paces, put some nets up, chat with a great wine writer and suggest a few very nice bottles.

Year in the Vineyard Blog, Week #19: July 31-August 6, 2009

By Wes Hagen, VM/WM Clos Pepe Vineyards and Estate Wines

 Welcome back to another installment of Year in the Vineyard!  The weather has been warm, cooling breezes off the ocean have kept us in the high 70’s and low 80’s in the last week, which was perfect weather for our annual All-Star Allocation Barrel Tasting.  The vines are charging through veraison, but getting all the hangtime they need to produce wines of rich, expressive character.  Nets are still going up to protect the delicate pinot fruit from hungry birds, we’ve blended and tasted all of our wines from the 2008 vintage (and sold a good chunk of them), and we’ve had a visit from one of London’s most esteemed wine writers.  We’ve also put two new interns to work—it’s been a busy week!

All Star Barrel Tasting:  On Saturday, August 1^st, 2009 we opened up sales of the 2008 vintage of Clos Pepe and Axis Mundi (our new second label) wines as Futures.  We do this each year to give our customers a good deal and so we have some cashflow at the beginning of harvest.  In the first week of sales we’ve sold through between a third and half of all our 2008 vintage, which was very small due to frost damage in the vineyard.  It’s been our best opening week of sales in our history, which is quite a feat in the current economy.  Or is it proof that people are starting to spend a little more freely?  I like to think it’s because people couldn’t help themselves and love our wines, but I also suspect that the rarity of these wines (only 200+ cases of Pinot Noir produced) moved people to secure them quickly.

 We have about 2000 people on our email Allocation List, and of those about 500 spend more than $500 annually.  Those ‘big spenders’ are invited to come to our Barrel tasting on the first Saturday in August, to taste the new vintage from barrel before it goes into bottle, and if they like the wines, purchase them at significant savings.  I also post tasting notes to those that cannot attend so they can understand the wines and buy into the Futures program as well.

The event ran from 1 pm until 4 pm here at the vineyard, up at the ‘Big House’ courtyard.  Five barrel samples were poured along with current releases, special cellar re-releases, as well as almost 30 wines from Clos Pepe Estate and vineyard designated Clos Pepe wines from Tyler, Diatom, Brewer-Clifton, Ken Brown, Roessler, Longoria and others.  There were close to 50 Clos Pepe wines being poured from more than 10 vintages.  The 1998 Brewer Clifton Clos Pepe Chardonnay and the 2008 Tyler CP Pinot Noir were among my favorites, and of course Ken Brown’s wines are traditionally my favorite craft expression of this vineyard.  New West catering kept the delicious nibbles and artisan cheeses flowing and as always we had a ‘BYOB’ table for the geeks, which followed the theme of ‘Anything Italian’ this year.  From Gaja to Cavit, Altare to Rosa Regale, the wines were all over the board, but there were about 20 gems that kept the table buzzing and people running in to taste something rare, unusual or almost empty.

 By about 5:30 the last of the tasters were sober enough to drive, and we hosted friends, family and volunteers for a great meal at the Firestone Taproom in Buellton.  We drank many of the open bottles, and also had a 2007 Storm Pinot Noir from Le Bon Climat Vineyard that was extraordinary.  Kudos to Ernst Storm for a very nice wine.  I just finished the paperwork and running the orders from this weekend, and the whole family is very excited about the strong sales and the party’s post-mortem.  Drop a few bills (5 to be exact) at the Clos Pepe store between now and next Summer and you can be at the 2010 Barrel Tasting—the 10^th Anniversary blow out!  (Is it me or is this blog becoming more commercial all the time…?)

 Interns:  The accents are strong this year at the Clos.  Not to be outdone by our primary intern this year, Jackson Brooke from Australia, we welcomed Liam Idzikowski (an Irish ex-steeplechase jockey) this week to the Clos as well, who’ll be helping with nets and then a little later with harvest and winemaking.  In between Liam may be touring the West Coast or lounging locally and watching us work.  Jackson has worked in Australia, New Zealand and California and is an ex-Marathon runner, so we don’t need to worry about running this strapping young lad out of energy.  Chanda likes to call our interns her ‘secondary husbands’—as they tend to do the heavy lifting and chores that I forget or avoid.  At least I hope that’s why she calls them that!  The interns were beside themselves with happiness last night as Steve approved their request for a special satellite channel that shows English premier League Soccer matches as well as Aussie Rules Football.  I’m constantly reminding myself of the first rule of wine, taught to me by fellow wine judges ten years back: never go drink for drink with an Aussie, especially after 10 pm.  I may have to add the Irish to that rule.  It’s great to see the intern house bubbling with life and laughter again, and it seems these two are destined to be good mates.  So far there work has been swift and accurate, so I have every confidence that the 2009 vintage will sail right along, both in the field and in the cellar.

Vineyard: We are up to near or just past 50% veraison—some of the vineyard is almost completely colored up, and some is just starting to blush, but the separate sections all seem very consistent in their level of veraison.  To keep the vines healthy and green (which enables them to ripen the grapes properly), I’m a big believer in continuing irrigation right up to when we start harvesting.  A green, healthy vine continues to mature flavors and vineyard expression, while a vine in water stress can shut down and the grapes sweeten by dehydration instead of flavor evolution and true maturity.  We are currently irrigating two weeks in a row and then giving the vines a week off on the third week.  The vines seem to be slowing down and stopping their growth and really focusing their energy on veraison/ripening.  Because of our sandy-loam soil, we do need to increase irrigation amounts over vineyards with high clay content, as water runs through sand and is retained by clay.

Nets/Bird Control:  There are three kinds of birds we watch for here at Clos Pepe.  Songbirds are common and not a big problem…they flit around in small groups and peck at the fruit once in a while, but no real damage is done.  Starlings are the big problem.  Within a few weeks I expect to see the big flocks of hundreds or even thousands of starlings start to dive bomb the pinot vineyard.  A big flock of starlings can wipe out a whole row or two of pinot in minutes, and are the main reason why we net every row when the fruit starts to color up.  The third kind of bird is the beneficial avian:  either egrets/herons that fly inland to hunt gophers when they can’t find surf fish (cool, huh?), and the raptors that keep the rodents/birds away (such as hawks, falcons, kestrels, owls, eagles, etc.)  Nets are tucked up under the vines and tied tightly closed, otherwise birds will slip under them, get into the vines and eat fruit—even with tying a few get caught in the nets every day—and our Border Collie Rosa is happy to jump up, catch them, extricate them from the nets and eat them whole.  Her coat gets really shiny in August/September.  The starlings love to perch on the power wires on the south side of the vineyard, and we may place a propane cannon over there this year to frighten them away and to frighten littering motorists on Hwy 246.

Fruit dropping:  It seems somehow wrong to drop pinot noir on the vineyard floor, but some years we get just a little too much fruit on the vine, and quality demands it.  The vineyard is looking like its holding about 3 tons per acre this year (the interns are out carefully counting thousands of clusters, field by field, to get an accurate yield estimate), so we might cut that load down to under 3 tons in the next few weeks.  The protocol works like this:  wait until 85%-90% veraison, and then drop the least ripe fruit on the ground to guarantee the remaining fruit is perfectly uniform in ripeness.  We will also cut away clusters that are too tightly nested to open up the remaining fruit to more sun flecking which will improve flavor and reduce any herbaceousness (pyrazines) in the remaining clusters.  We are considering collecting the dropped fruit this year and trying our hand at making a barrel of ‘verjus’, which is unfermented green grape juice which is used like lemon juice in ancient French cooking.  We’ve had this idea before, but have never followed through.  With our strapping young interns, you may see some ‘verjus’ bottles being sold to match our extra virgin olive oil in 2009.

Steve Pepe's new book:  Our glorious Vigneron, Steve Pepe, has completed his book on finding, purchasing and starting Clos Pepe, from Long Beach backyard grape grower to California Grand Cru.  The book is called: 'Clos Pepe: A Vigneron's Quest for Great Dirt', and is available for presale at the Clos Pepe Website Store.

Winemaking:  We will be racking and filtering the 2008 Axis Mundi Syrah very soon, and then the last week of August we will put all the 2008 Estate wines in tank (after filtration), so we can be ready for our September 1^st bottling date.  The magic days when all wine is out of barrel before harvest is always relaxing.  All wine is finished, and none is fermenting.

A visit from Stephen Brook:  British wine writer and Decanter columnist Stephen Brook stopped by at Clos Pepe this Wednesday for a vineyard tour, tasting and lunch.  The visit was very productive and I find its very easy to pour our wines for someone with a Continental palate.  We had great conversations about Burgundy, Alsace and Old World/New World styles.  The duck confit salad matched nicely with our 2001 Pinot Noir from the cellar, and I thought all the wines showed quite well.  His thoughts on Clos Pepe should appear in his new book on California Wine that will be edited by World of Fine Wine Magazine and published by Berkeley.  Stephen was a wonderful guest and my knowledge of and perception of wine did mutate due to his commentary those few hours.

Wine of the week (I remembered this week!):  Cade 2008 Sauvignon Blanc, Napa Valley, $26.  The second label for the Plumpjack family of wines, this Cade has become a fun favorite in the house since our ex-intern Brett Brockmeyer (cellarmaster in training at PJ/Cade) started bringing us bottles on his visits.  It’s an easy drinking style that shows off the warm-weather aspects of SB—apple, pear, hints of tropical fruits—not grassy or herbal at all.  In the mouth the wine is balanced and delicious, but certainly off-dry.  I suspect the 1% residual sugar was retained to balance out the firm acid, and it works well.  We slurped down a bottle last night with plate after plate of various kinds of tacos—and the hint of sweetness was an excellent foil for the spice.  A little spendy for SB, at $26, but it’s a classy wine that offers both the geek and the neophyte a tasty sip.  93% SB, 7% Semillon—a deft blend.

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