Year in the Vineyard, Week #13
June 20-25, 2009
By Wes Hagen, VM/WM Clos Pepe
Twitter: weshagen (in haikus),  Facebook: Wes Hagen

Summer officially arrived on Father's Day, and the weather is slowly warming up. We had a very warm May and a very cool June, but the temperatures have all evened out to give us a perfect level of growth in the vineyard to develop a canopy that will adequately and consistently ripen about 3 tons of fruit that's hanging per acre at Clos Pepe.

We expect to see a warming trend for the end of June and the beginning of July-which for us means temperatures in the mid to upper 70's in the afternoons, windy evenings to cool us back down, and low temps in the 50's.

I've lived in the Santa Rita Hills for 14 years now, and I am certainly spoiled when it comes to heat. Anything over 80 degrees now feels like a heat wave-we have entire summers that don't go much over 80 degrees, because of the miracle of geology that is the Santa Rita Hills.

After a very short vineyard update, I hope to give the geologic history of Clos Pepe and the Santa Rita Hills.

The vineyard this week: We're getting closer and closer to bunch closure-flowering and fruit set have generally completed, and completed well. There was a bit of shatter, but only enough to loosen the clusters and make them a little more open. We're seeing very consistent berry size, which is great, as berries of varying sizes will have varying ripeness at harvest. Remember the previous lesson? The hobgoblin of pinot noir production is _____ from cluster to cluster, vine to vine. The correct answer is consistency, of course!

With the berries swelling slowly and the bunches taking shape, we are busy organizing and managing the canopy to give the clusters:
• Adequate sunlight to remove vegetal aromas and promote high toned fruit and floral character.
• Adequate wind movement to keep mildew and rot pressure in check while allowing spray applications to penetrate into the fruiting zone.
• 12-15 leaves per cluster in ratio with all vines so the crop ripens consistently.
• Enough shade on the afternoon side to keep from burning the skins on hot Summer days (if they come!)
• New trends in leaf pulling are moving towards hollowing out the interior of the fruiting zone (like a tunnel) and leaving a few leaves on the outside to protect the fruit from sunburn.)

We have finished a fungicide application last week that will last into next week at least, so the fruit is clean and happy. We've been seeing tons of bunnies and squirrels in the vineyard, so we may have to attend to that-I prefer a quick and sure method-a scoped .22 and some hungry dogs to eat the cleaned meat. That's organic pest management!

After another 3 weeks of getting the shoots vertical and the leaves pulled, we'll do some fine tuning before the fruit begins to turn color and nets go up.

Events: Tuesday and Wednesday were spent showing the vineyard to Adam lee of Siduri, welcoming tasters at the Clos, and then finally a stint as a Guest Sommelier at Bradley Ogden's Root 246. I worked the room with three vintages of Clos Pepe Estate Pinot Noir, discussing food, pinot noir, Clos Pepe and the Santa Rita Hills. The food, as always, was spectacular, and the style of wines we make is so perfectly suited to cuisine-very subtle and nuanced wines that respect fresh ingredients and a light hand in the kitchen. Wine poured, amazing plates kept coming, and everyone had a wonderful time.

Thursday was spent driving to San Luis Obispo where we met with our label artist and printer to produce the new Axis Mundi label (which will be Clos Pepe's second label for wines we make, but do not grow). The label is expected to be round, black with silver embossing, and rather cutting edge, where our Estate label is exceedingly traditional. From SLO we continued on to San Francisco to get ready for a Friday in Napa/Sonoma selling wine and a weekend digging deep into our third Pinot Days celebration at Fort Mason.

The Santa Rita Hills is a distinct winegrowing climat in Northern Santa Barbara, California. It was awarded the status of an American Viticultural Area by the US Federal Government in 2001. (I researched and wrote the petition with the help of other local winemakers such as Richard Sanford and Bryan Babcock).

On the far west end of the Santa Ynez Valley, between Buellton and Lompoc, is a ten mile stretch of sandy-loam soil (ancient seabed on a clay subsoil) that is massively influenced by weather patterns from the adjacent Pacific Ocean. The boundaries are defined by the length of two valleys that run east-west from the Pacific-Highway 246 between the Purisima Hills and the Santa Rita Hills, and Santa Rosa Road which is in a valley between the Santa Rita Hills and the Santa Rosa Hills.

Twenty million years ago this entire peninsula was underwater-a Miocene era seabed. As continents shifted and tectonic plates slammed into each other, the Pacific Plate pushed the North American tectonic plate up and out of the Pacific Ocean-hills rose in a north-south orientation, and began to drain seawater until the peninsula we know as Point Conception was high, dry, and surrounded my a number of hills and valleys.

But the violent plate shifts continued. The whole peninsula became authochthonous (a word that decided a National Spelling Bee many years hence), which means it broke off the whole land mass in this area which became a free-floating mantle of land that twisted and turned up the California coast until it has been turned 90 degrees clockwise as of today. That means the north-south mountain ranges are now perfectly east-west, sucking fog, wind and cool air off the Pacific and making us significantly colder than most areas that are about 20 miles inland.

This geological miracle explains the climate, but a mass extinction of small marine creatures called diatoms tells another chapter of the story. As these critters floated en masse to the sea floor (which would eventually be the soils we grow grapes on), they formed diatomaceous deposits that added massive amounts of silica and calcium to the soil profile. That calcium (in the form of pourous white stone) absorbs water when its wet and gives off moisture when its dry, and also significantly thickens the skins of our pinot noir. Thick skins means tiny berries, tiny amounts of juice and amazingly dark, rich and expressive wines.

So the Santa Rita Hills is an amalgam of small miracles; tectonic shifts, diatoms, and of course some crafty and passionate folks that have given their lives to the craft of pinot noir.