AVV: August 2007 Archives
If I had to sum up the 2007 vintage after the first week, here's how I'd characterize it: turbo-charged.
We've just about finished picking all the whites on our property, the Chardonnay and even the Viognier, which customarily wouldn't come in for a few more weeks. It's about what you'd expect given the weather this year. After a fairly moderate summer, temperatures have been pushing 100 the last few days and the dry conditions in the vineyards (we've only received about 65 percent of our normal rainfall this year) have really accelerated the harvest.
Meantime, the rosé we're making seems to be taking a cue from the vineyard. That rosé we thought would need 12 to 18 hours to pick up the colors and flavors we were seeking, finished off in about 5 hours. We drained off about a third of the juice and left the rest to keep soaking for a few more hours. We'll blend the components back together down the road to get the profile I'm looking for.
The fruit is ideal. I was looking for a brix (the measurement of the sugar levels in the grapes) of between 22 and 23 which is exactly what we measured when the grapes arrived this morning. That should yield a wine with high acidity, which is what we are seeking in a rosé as well as lower alcohol levels.
In total, we received about 58 tons today, Sangiovese, Chardonnay and Zinfandel. Less than half of what we'll see when things really get pumping. So far, the weather has been great, but we're all a bit wary of the heat that is supposed to spread through this week. There's a small window that could really cause problems. In truth, if it hits 100, as the reports are predicting, that wouldn't necessarily be so bad. The grapes go into a self-protection mode and shut down. But a couple of days in the 90s would take us in another direction, pumping up the sugar levels to beyond where we want them.
So the day of reckoning is finally upon us, that time that is the focus of everything we do around here at AVV. Harvest 2007 has arrived. It's a bit earlier than usual...quite a bit compared to last year.
You never really know what to expect when you go into it every year. All that work in the vineyard, the leaf pulling and the crop thinning, you hope the endgame is worth it all. But a spate of really warm weather or an early storm can really throw all of your plans out of whack. At this stage, however, there is no reason not to be optimistic.
The first truck to roll into our crush pad brought Pinot Noir from our vineyard along the Russian River. Pinot is usually the first varietal to ripen, but that usually doesn't happen until sometime around Labor Day. Last year, the first Pinot didn't arrive until September 14.
The crews began picking at daybreak, around 6:30 this morning. The weather was cool, perfect picking weather. Some of our vineyards are machine harvested, but Pinot is delicate and has a short peduncle--the stem that attaches the bunch to the vine--so it really needs to be hand-picked.
Five hours later, they were done and the first truck arrived at the winery with the Pinot, 12 tons of it. The clusters look good as they tumbled from the gondola into the crusher.
At Alexander Valley Vineyards, we have this great tradition when the first grapes show up. All the employees gather around the crushpad, we pop a couple of bottles of Champagne and toast the new vintage. It instills a lot of camaraderie and brings everyone together, not that they really need that since they are going to be seeing a lot of each other over the next several weeks.
