We got up at 5:00 a.m. to make certain we made it to Phoenix in time for our 12:00 lunch appointment. We were driving 70 all the way, but we were still one of the slowest cars on the road and the only Prius (just like the previous evening). Trucks would stream past us, driving at a wicked pace. Guess gas mileage isn't an issue down here. The speed allowed us to get to Phoenix early so we had plenty of time to change out of travel clothes and into "tasting" attire for our event at Caffe Boa, a restaurant that describes itself as a Euro-style bistro and wine bar.

We had lunch outside with some trade accounts, weather was perfect for this. We were a little disappointed with the light turnout, but the food was great and the wines showed well. Made a brief stop at My Wine Cellar nearby, a wine shop and tasting bar that does some great wine education programs and visited with one of

The highlight of the day was definitely spending the night at Hacienda Del Sol. We had a delicious dinner with a bottle of wine from one of our neighbors,Trenadue Dry Creek Petite Sirah (Victor Trenadue was also staying at the hotel and they were featuring his wines,something we should look into).

For the next month, AVV owners Hank and Linda Wetzel are plying the nation's roads, visiting with sommeliers, restaurateurs and consumers to tell the winery's story and preview many of our new wines. They are also filing these blog entries along the way, chronicling their trip.

FRESNO-April 2--Our first stop on the trip took us only a few hundred miles from the winery, to Fresno for a trade tasting at a new restaurant called Pangea. We arrived about an hour early. We needed the time because Pangea is located in a maze of shops in a new upscale shopping center. We had a good turnout, lots of great appetizers and much interest in the wines. By 3, we're back on the road headed for Phoenix (an eleven hour trip per our

Although we've crushed the last grapes, there's still more than a month's worth of work to do whether it's filling barrels, filtering the fermented juice, cleaning out tanks or even doing some bottling. But the work load is such that we're planning to go back to our regular work week, which is probably great relief for the crew that's been holding down the graveyard shift.

We can tolerate a few days of rain like we've had this week, but we'd have to reassess things if it goes on for too long. Luckily, virtually all the fruit is in by now with just a few tons left on the vine. The worst case scenario is we don't pick that Cab. I'd rather sacrifice that small amount of fruit than bring in substandard grapes. It's been a great harvest and I certainly don't want to do anything that would damage that fact.

The slower pace has made this harvest a little easier. There's always a long list of tasks for the cellar crew--pumpovers, digging out tanks, bringing in the new barrels (a truck filled with 232 arrived this morning). And while we are still running around-the-clock shifts, we've had the luxury of allowing some of the crew a much deserved day-off here and there.

I've written about the initial rush, then the lull. The pace began to pick up as September turned a bit more seasonal. Now we are at a point where everything has slowed to a snail's pace. Harvest started with the promise of becoming one of the quickest on record. It's ending as the harvest that refuses

Some much-needed relief did arrive last week in the form of 3 16,000 gallon stainless steel tanks. They are now the largest at the winery, holding the equivalent of about 6,700 cases of wine. The tanks were temporarily installed at the end of our parking lot and will eventually be moved outside the new cave we are building. Although we are initially planning to use them strictly as holding tanks, they certainly are making crush just a little easier right now.

There is one thing we hope for during the harvest every year. Good timing.
Like the rain, for instance. It's great to have several good rainfalls during the winter to load up the water table before the buds open so that the vines have something to work with over the course of the growing season, which customarily tends to be very dry.
It's a different matter still to get a big storm in late September or October.
Rain is the winemaker's nemesis during harvest. It can cause grapes to mildew. And water-logged grapes tend to make lousy wine.

In fact, we're about 60 percent through harvest at this point. All that remains are the Bordeaux varietals--Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Petit Verdot, Cabernet Franc--as well as some Syrah. We're less concerned about rain with those varietals due to their thicker skins. But even those grapes couldn't withstand a couple of downpours. The Cabernet that came in this week is of very high quality, though the yields are down substantially. More on that later.

A week or so ago, we took a Brix reading of 23 from the Cabernet Sauvignon on one block. This week, that number fell to 19. So after scrambling since the end of August, we've won a bit of a reprieve.

Smack in the middle of all these Bordeaux varietals is the Gewurztraminer. It always comes at an inopportune time, usually when we are coping with a convoy of Cab or Merlot trucks. We pressed the first Gewurz on Wednesday and more came in yesterday and today.

About the only thing that helps is that the Gewurz is first in and last out. Because our growers up north in Mendocino like to pick the grape at night to preserve the freshness of the delicate grapes, we press the Gewurz very early in the morning or very late at night. Over the next few months, harvest will be a 24 hour a day undertaking.

Yesterday, Mark and I checked the Primitivo, which the crews picked fairly quickly. It's only about an acre block, but the vineyard is on a steep hillside way above the winery and the vineyard has to be hand-picked. The fruit looked very good which means we are likely to handle it as a separate varietal, probably for one of the Alexander School Top of the Crop wines, as we did with the 2005 Primitivo.

Despite the warm weather, I'm still very encouraged that this is going to be a great vintage. This has really been a textbook growing season with temperatures pretty moderate all summer. We're getting this heat now, but we had such good flavor development in the fruit before so I'm not too concerned about what the weather is throwing at us.

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.

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.

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.