In which Wes and the crew take the first field samples, get ready for bottling the 2008’s, and watch the fruit ripen as the heat arrives for the weekend.

Year in the Vineyard, Week #22

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

August 21-27

Odds and Ends Waiting for Harvest

It’s 92 degrees outside, as warm as it’s been since June.  We haven’t seen a really warm day like this for months, and the timing and severity of the mini heat wave couldn’t be better timed.  First, the heat is not severe.  Low 90’s will kill mildew and botrytis, but won’t shut the vines down.  It will ripen, but probably won’t burn the skins of the fruit.  And we don’t have to harvest in the heat—that may be most important.  We love to bring the fruit in cool, and who likes to work that hard in hot weather?  Not me…I’ll do it at harvest, but I prefer those cold, foggy mornings (and so do the grapes).  So the grapes are mostly in the 18-20 degrees Brix range (harvest happens between 24-28 Brix for all of our producers), so this will give us a 1-2 brix bump over the next few days and really will get the flavors developing.  Weather is supposed to cool into the low 70’s starting Sunday, and we’ll likely see a small brix drop with the cool weather, and then we’ll keep creeping towards harvest.

These weeks leading up to harvest are some of my favorites.  The farming’s done, the nets are up, the birds are being scared away, and there’s not much that can keep 2009 from being a phenomenal vintage.  The week has been busy but not crazy.  We’ve had to change our schedules slightly as a small and short heat wave has descended, but the timing is superb and we expect cooler weather starting on Sunday.

Vineyard:  The pinot noir clusters are almost all lustrous purple and the Chard is turning a lovely golden color.  We did our last spray for botrytis early this week, as we saw a little poking through in very isolated places in the vineyard.  Of course this heat will likely kill all active spores, but we still have a few weeks of active control so it doesn’t come back when the weather cools.  Any area we expected to harvest (for sparkling) in the next 14 days was not sprayed, not were the adjacent rows sprayed.

Pinot Noir is usually harvested a few weeks after pinot noir here at Clos Pepe—and Pinot is traditionally the first red grape that comes into any winery that works with multiple varietals.  Normally we see Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Gris/Grigio rolling in first through the County, then pinot noir, then Gamay, then other white grapes, then red rhones, Bordeaux varietals and finally zinfandel and late harvest fruit.

Monday means field sampling, so off Liam and Jackson went into the field with bags and buckets, and came back with a total of about ten pinot noir cluster samples from ten different parts of the vineyard.  The ripest numbers came back around 20.5 degrees Brix, and the least ripe were about 17.5 degrees Brix.  We’ll likely pick some fruit for sparkling wine next week—but hey—I said that last week too.

WINE TERM:  Brix:  roughly the sugar weight, by percentage, of a grape.  So if the grape/cluster/sample has 23 degrees Brix, it contains about 23% sugar by weight.  The conversion factor of Brix into alcohol is about .55-.65 depending on yeast and fermentation kinetics.

Crew:  The crew’s been knocking down some weeds with hoes (no chemicals!), filling gaps in the nets, running irrigation sets to keep the vines green and hydrated through the heat.  Knowing that today would be hot, I had them work until 10 am in the field, and now they’re working on getting all the picking bins and fermenters sparkly and clean.  We do not use any soaps or chemicals in this process, so a pressure washer and elbow grease are the key to a clean bin.  I told the crew to drink plenty of water and to spray each other every few minutes to keep cool and make them think of a sorority carwash.  Mmmm…sorority carwash…

The crew’s also been scaring birds away, doing some gopher and ground squirrel control, helping in the winery, oiling and sharpening all of our picking snips, and I’ve also moved my Xbox to the intern house so they have something to do when darts and bocce get old.  Liam and Jackson keep track of who’s won the last few matches of Tiger Woods 2010, or Bocce or darts, and so when I have an after-hour task (Hey, go get Chanda some hay in the barn!), I usually come in and say—‘Hey, who lost the last match of darts..’ or something like that.  Jackson (Aussie) and Liam (Irishman) are a perfect combination of hard workers and really pleasant houseguests.  They are also helping me learn to drink like a proper winemaker.

Bottling/Winery:  Our annual bottling day is less than a week away, which means a bit of anxiety for me until the wine is safe and perfect in glass.  It’s an awesome day—the wine will all be tanked and perfect, and then suddenly there’s pallets of finished, labeled wine stacked in a cool corner of the winery.  Suddenly it’s a product that I can share with the world.  Of course we lay the wine down for 6 months before we release it or touch it.  The wine’s been selling really well—we’re about 40% sold for the vintage as Futures, which gives us a nice chunk of change in the bank before harvest. (Someone’s got to pay for all that expensive French oak!)  I’ll have tons of good bottling pictures for next week—so stay tuned and be excited!

A few words on ripeness:  As a craft, winemaking is very demanding. As a winegrower and a winemaker, I have the rare and difficult opportunity to grow the base material for my craft.  This is like a furniture maker who’s also an arborist and a lumberjack.  I have almost complete control from the roots up.  I also have the responsibility of deciding when to pull the trigger to harvest my own Estate sections of pinot noir and chardonnay here at Clos Pepe.

So there’s some choices;  pick the grapes early to make a restrained, elegant wine that will age and find balance in the cellar and may require some patience, pick it really ripe for big, rich, in-your-face fruit character while risking that the wine will be too hot and out of balance for long-term aging, or perhaps something in between?  Those of you have had my wine know that I am usually one of the first to pick this vineyard in an attempt to make elegant and food friendly wines that can age up to a decade or more.  My general rule is that I do not add water, acid or enzymes to my Estate ferments.  If pinot noir is the ultimate vehicle to showcase a vineyard’s character, why would I manipulate the wine in a way that obfuscates the typicity of Clos Pepe?  So I have to be careful.  Picking under 24 Brix can lead to less-than-ripe flavors, but 24 Brix can make wine as high as 15.5% alcohol if the ferment is really efficient.  So I am bound to angst when the grapes get into the 23 Brix range—I lose sleep, taste a lot of berries, discuss style with Chanda, Steve and the interns, and finally come to a decision based on lab samples and flavor.  Winemakers who say they don’t take Brix and pH into account when deciding when to pick are, in my humble opinion, completely full of shit.

Do the ‘Kingmaker’ critics prefer ripe or overripe wines?  I prefer to suggest that they love what they love and are very consistent in awarding point scores according to their stylistic preferences.  I will say that picking early (or right on time in my world) does seem to handicap a wine on the 100 point scale.  If you’re tasting through 100 wines in an afternoon a delicate, nuanced wine may easily be overshadowed by a big, rich, ripe wine.  It’s easy to fall into the trap of more flavor = more points, especially in a culture steeped in Whoppers and Oreo shakes. 

Just like music, every style of wine has a place.  A bottle-aged Burgundy with a perfect piece of salmon, a young, fat SRH pinot noir with strong cheese (Eppoisses, anyone?), a big Napa Cabernet with a fatty steak and frites , or a bottle of 17% zinfandel after a long 10 mile hike into the Sierras (good alcohol to weight ration if you have to pack a wine in and share…).  I’m not much of a cocktail wine guy, I usually use wine at table and with food.  As a result, I craft wines for my own aesthetic sensibilities, and because the ten greatest wines I’ve ever tasted were all old, elegant and complex enough to make me swoon.

Wine of the Week:  Axis Mundi 2008 Syrah, Santa Lucia Highlands, Sleepy Hollow Vineyards.  I have yet to suggest one of my own wines in 22 weeks, so it’s time for some self-serving tasting notes.  The idea for Axis Mundi came at the end of harvest last year when we had plenty of extra empty barrels and no fruit left in the field at Clos Pepe.  As you likely remember, we were devastated by frost in 2008 and only harvested a bit over a ½ ton of fruit per acre.  Joe Davis, winemaker for Arcadian wines, mentioned that there may be a few extra tons of Syrah at Sleepy Hollow and I jumped at the opportunity after getting the green light from Steve and Cathy Pepe.  The fruit was gorgeous and as ripe as anything I’ve worked with, so I got to do a little cellar manipulation to make the wine as balanced as possible.  Starting at 28 Brix, I added some Arrowhead (legally, this was done to facilitate a finished fermentation), and added just enough acid to make up what would be lost during ferment.

Back label reads:

Axis Mundi (AK-sis MOON-dee) is a philosophical term that denotes a sacred space, the World Tree, where compass points meet and fields of opposites become harmonious.  We are all the center of our own universes—wherever we are, whatever direction we face, the Axis Mundi is within ourselves; our senses, our action and how we impact the world around us.  The same is true of a bottle of wine.  It first represents the vineyard, the vintage, the fermentation and aging process, and then finally the hands that shaped it into craft.  Wine at table is magical; distractions fade and the importance of friends and family is illuminated.  We hope this bottle of wine will help you recognize the miracle of every breath and that truth always seeks the middle ground…the Axis Mundi.

“If the back label makes perfect sense, do not drive or operate heavy machinery for 2 hours.”

The finished wine spent 11 months in 25% new French oak barrels, and is dark, rich and amazingly seductive, but structured by great acidity.  The alcohol is right at 14% alcohol, and the wine shows its beautiful cool-climate syrah character with aromas of jasmine, orange blossom, blackberry, white and black pepper.  The goal was to make a $40 syrah, put it in a slick package under a Stelvin cap and sell it for about $25.  This will be a smoking bargain wine that will sell out quickly.  We’re selling it as Futures right now on the website for $19 a bottle.  If you are interested, please make a login account at the clospepe.com store, and then before ordering, send me an email at wes@clospepe.com This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .  I’ll upgrade your pricing to ‘List’ status so you can get the $19 price.  Realize that the wine won’t ship or be ready for pickup until February, 2010.  Holy crap, is it really almost 2010?  Good thing I’m not Mayan or I’d only have two years to live!  If the world does end in 2012, I will give each of you a case of Estate pinot noir! Promise!