Thursday, April 29, 2010

Intensity

The last week or two has been quite intense at the winery. As the warm weather looks to be coming to a close, the window for picking before winter (and bad weather) kick in is closing down; at the same time, many of the grapes are reaching optimal ripeness. Both of these aspects necessitate picking quickly. And we are.

So on a given day, we often have two crushing setups running at the same time. This means there is someone tipping grapes onto a feeding hopper, which feeds to the sorting table, people sorting, then the grapes being destemmed and falling into a bin, which is then tipped into the tank in which it will ferment. I have done most of the jobs in this process: at one point, I might be driving the forklift, pulling bins of grapes out of the cold store room and tipping them, as well as tipping the bins of destemmed fruit into tank (and the stems into a rubbish hopper, which is put out in the vineyard and made into compost). At another point, I'll be sorting. Lat.er, when we are finished, I'll inoculate the tank (inoculate meaning to raise up a small bucket of thriving healthy yeast which are then added to the tank, where they can begin to gobble up all the sugars in the juice and make wine). And, of course, there is always tons of cleaning to do, which everyone helps out with.

At the same time as all of this crushing of red grapes, there is ongoing harvest and pressing of white grapes, such as Sauvignon blanc. This is often received in a machine-harvested form, which means there are no stems to deal with (since the harvester shakes the vine, making the grapes fall off the vine without the stems). The grapes (and some juice) are put into the press directly. The press is set to a program which increases the inflated pressure of a plastic bladder pressing against the grapes, gentling squeezing out the juice. This juice is then transferred to a tank, where it is cooled down and allowed to settle out. As the rough solids that may remain are not preferred in the final wine (or fermenting juice), we get them separated early. To do this we "rack," or transfer the clear juice off of the settled lees. The good juice is put in a new tank and inoculated to ferment. The leftover lees are not wasted, though. They are put through a special filter called a rotating drum vacuum, which can separate out the true solids, which are really only about 15% of the volume. The rest is perfectly fine juice. But just to be safe, we taste it and ensure that it is of high quality before it is recombined with the rest of the juice; otherwise it will be dealt with separately.

So this week, we finished off everything coming from Gimlet Gravels, our home vineyard which surrounds the winery. This was a major milestone, as GG contains Bordeaux varietals and Syrah comprising much of our total volume. We toasted at dinner to this and to the departure or Rosie, one of the interns, who was returning to England for work. But we will continue on with work, and this week should finish off the last of the red grapes, with the remainder of the Martinborough Pinot coming in. Next week, we will finish off the last of the whites with Sauvignon blanc from Martinborough. Then we will be done with harvesting! But no fear, there will still be plenty to do, with all of the ferments requiring careful management and finishing fermentation.


Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Harvest kicking into gear

So it appears that the heat of harvest is on the horizon. Pinot Noir is continuing to flow into the winery from Central Otago. Today we processed 18 tons of Pinot from the Zebra vineyard, from various lots. These lots differ in minute ways, be it a different clone, different rootstock, or section of a vineyard with unique soil or topography. These , differences result in a significantly different wine, at least when the vineyard is planted to Pinot. The way that the Pinot grape can so easily change depending on so many factors is why is has become so famous and beloved. It is not a grape easily predicted or dealt with. So many winemakers producing high-end Pinot plant a Pinot vineyard to many different clones and rootstocks, breaking it up into small lots, and producing a myriad of components which can then be blended to produce a final wine that has a balanced and complex mouthfeel and aroma spectrum.

This approach- to keep the lots separate throughout fermentation and aging in barrel until the point of blending- was what I saw in Oregon, when I worked at Penner-Ash Wine Cellars. The winemaker at Penner-Ash, Lynn Penner-Ash, tasted these separate lots constantly throughout the course of cold-soak, fermentation, aging, and came to know her lots intimately. Any adjustments to the wine were made cautiously, only after it became clear that intervention was the best route, and only in the context of a fine knowledge of the wine, knowledge gained over years working with the same lots. This approach resulted in a great wine, because the components, so well acquainted with, could be expertly blended when desired.

Adrian has a slightly different approach. He told me that for year he kept the lots separate, as does Lynn. But once he came to know the vineyards and lots well enough to know what he was working with, he began to experiment with early blending of lots, before fermentation. This approach has both advantages and risks. The advantages are that the lots, mixed early, are able to integrate flavors and develop into a more balanced wine. A lot that is less ripe can be mixed with something a little more ripe, or a softer lot can be mixed with a more acidic or tannic lot. This is only done to a degree; the key apparently is not to overshoot the goal, to ameliorate any rough edges of the lot and bring it more towards a balanced wine, but not all the way. You don't want to eliminate your blending options later. You want to maintain your options, to still have blending components which have flavors differing from each other, so that your "spice rack" during blending is not all the same spice, but various spices which can complement each other in the final mix. If this sounds like a tricky and confusing approach, it's because it is. From all appearances it is an approach requiring knowledge of the lots being mixed, cautious experimentation, and an artistic touch.

According to Sam, Adrian's Assistant Winemaker, the great majority of the Pinot (and for that matter, all of the grapes) will enter the winery in the next ten days! This means that the next ten days will be intensely busy with processing fruit and cap management. In addition I should mention the roughly two weeks after all of the fruit has arrived during which time all of that volume of fruit will finish fermentation and post-fermentation soaking, and will require pressing. There will also be heaps of cleaning to do.

In my next blog I hope to break down the theories and processes involved in the latter part of fermentation and pressing of red grapes. For now, I'll try to get some sleep, which I dearly need after the 12-hour day I just put in as a member of the night shift (processing Pinot, cap management, receiving fruit, and getting everything ready for the various jobs the day crew will undertake tomorrow).

Sunday, April 18, 2010

Harvest So Far...

I have been here in Hawke's Bay, New Zealand, for almost two months now, working at Craggy Range. It has been a slow, gradual ramp up to harvest. The spring and summer were wet and cold, resulting in poor fruit set (and therefore lower yields) and slow ripening (thus late ripening). As I started work on March 1, it was originally expected that harvest would kick off soon. But it's now two months later and it hasn't really hit full swing.

Perhaps a third of the grapes are in, going on half, but it's been largely Chardonnay and Merlot, neither of which are very labor intensive. Chardonnay is pressed on the large presses, put into barrels, and monitored until they are dry enough to top off and be put away for the winter. Merlot is destemmed and put into large closed-top fermentors. These tanks require a bit more work; aerative pumpovers and delestages, 2 or 3 a day, are standard for each tank during the peak of fermentation. To explain a bit more: a pumpover is when the juice from the bottom of the tank is pumped back over the top of the tank and mixed with the skins and pulp, which have congregated near the top of the tank. The pumpover mixes everything up evenly, essentially. The point of doing this isn't just to keep us interns busy. By putting the juice back onto the solids, you obtain several benefits. The solids become very hot (due to the yeast's fermentation, which produces heat), and if not mixed with juice, become so hot that it can lead to mass yeast death, causing a bit of a chain reaction and if not unchecked leading to a stuck fermentation, which is very very bad. So by mixing the tank, a homogeneous temperature is achieved. Equally important is that by mixing the tank, you increase extraction of various desirable components from the skins into the juice. Basically, at the start of fermentation, the skins are full of tannins, flavor, and color, but the juice is full of only sugar. As they soak together, some of the tannins, flavor, and color from the skins leach into the juice. But only the juice in direct contact with the skins will obtain these components. So we mix it all up, so that the far away juice at the bottom of the tank has a chance to get some of these components. A delestage accomplishes a similar objective, but is more intense. The juice is sent to another tank, until the first tank is all skins and the second is all juice, then the juice is returned to the first tank. This results in a more complete, intense mixing. We use both at Craggy on the Merlot, depending on how much of these flavors, color and tannins we desire in the wine. It's like cooking: a little salt is good, but too much ruins the food. The same is true with the components we extract from the skins, especially tannins.

So while that sounds intense, the pumpover and delestage are basically simple processes, requiring one of two people for half an hour per tank. If you are good, you can do two or three tanks at once between two people, and very little of your time is spent on cap management (a broad term encompassing pumpovers, delestages, and punch downs, another way to mix the skins and juice). Furthermore, the Merlot are fermented in large tanks, so that a lot of volume requires only minimal effort. This is the opposite of Merlot's nemesis, Pinot Noir, which is a fickle grape dealt with in a vastly different manner.

And so the Merlot is starting to wind down, and the Pinot is trickling in. We have just started to receive Pinot, from Central Otago. It has been beautiful fruit so far. I'm impressed with the clean, beautiful status of the fruit, especially considering it has been transported all of the way from the south island to reach us here in Hawke's Bay. I give credit to Adrian Baker, the winemaker, for having the eye to pick his Pinot at a fresh ripeness. In California, many winemakers wait and wait and wait until their fruit is at the height of ripeness, a type of ripeness that results in dense, dark, heavy flavors and flabby wines. Adrian picks when the fruit has a sharper balance, healthier fruit, and vibrant flavors. The wines do not taste young, they taste balanced and rich. I think it requires a certain knowledge of your vineyards and careful management of the vines (here credit is certainly due also to the vineyard crew) to time the pick perfectly and obtain fruit at the correct moment.

So the fruit arrived from down south, and we sorted through it, picking bin by picking bin, carefully removing any underripe (greenish, pinkish, light red) fruit or overripe (raisined) or diseased (a few bunches with Botrytis bunch rot) and any wings or shoulders looking funky. The perfect Pinot Bunch should be the color of ripe blueberries with perhaps a touch of purple, no pink and no raisins, clean and firm and crisp on the palate. I eat a lot of grapes as we sort to get a feel for the perfect bunch. There is much variation even within a vineyard, as some bunches within a vine or row of vines will be richer, another sharper, another flabby. This all contributes to the complexity of the wine, but sorting is necessary to remove those cluster which would contribute an undesired sort of complexity (aka funky or obvious flavors).

After the fruit passes by the sorters on the sorting table, it is conveyed up into a destemmer, and the grapes fall into a bin, via which the grapes are moved to fermentors. Sometimes, the fruit is not destemmed. The stems, Adrian tells me, can add a certain something to the palate of the final wine. The stems can contribute tannin. Of course, so do the skins and seeds, but Adrian feels that sometimes certain wines benefit from a little of the stem tannin, which has a different character.

Two kinds of fermentors are used: stainless steel tanks and wooden cuvees. The cuvees are the more interesting, being a more ancient technique, and being more risky and uncommon. As with all wood, they breathe, and allow some oxygen to enter the wine, perhaps allowing it to mature more rapidly. The wood also can add tannin and flavors to the wine, although since they have been used many times, the flavor and tannin contributions are minimal.

Meanwhile, some Riesling, Sauvignon Blanc, Viognier, and Cabernet Franc have passed through the winery as well. Some of these have gone to the Giants winery, where only a fraction of our volume is processed. I'll go visit that winery later and post about what goes on there later.

Saturday, April 17, 2010

Douglas Wisor Memorial Scholarship

I am creating this blog to detail my experiences as the 2010 recipient of the Douglas Wisor Memorial Scholarship. I am incredibly honored to have received this scholarship, which was created to honor the memory and legacy of who I have come to understand was an amazing man, Doug Wisor. In my time in Hawke's Bay, New Zealand, I have met many people who knew Doug, and by all accounts he was a man of great influence and inspiration. I hope only to document my experiences in Hawke's Bay and working at Craggy Range so that I can do my part to honor this man, and perhaps to learn something.