Sauvignon Blanc 2011 Harvest

Our sauvignon blanc is coming along nicely! After picking we brought the fruit back to the winery and covered it with a little SO2 and a little dry ice to keep it cool. The fruit was transfered to a 2-ton basket press, pictured below, for a gentle pressing.



















Is it just me or does this basket press look surprisingly similar to the "RECOGNIZER" in Tron?
























After pressing the cool juice was racked to a stainless steel tank for cold settling. Two days later we racked the juice again to a mixture of stainless steel and new French oak barrels and inoculated.



















The wine is already 60% through fermentation and will likely be dry in 2-3 days. After all the worry and pressure and hard-work I am convinced this will be the best SB I've made to date. Then again, drinking the 2010 this evening, I realize it will be hard to beat :)


What (else) we're drinking .... 2006 Ch. Pontet Canet *** Blackberry color with some red and purple highlights depending on the glass and the light. Very expressive nose of bramble, violets, iodine, some nice herb notes and a touch of briny minerality. Note a fruit driven wine. The tannin is just so elegant I catch myself thinking this is why people so love their Bordeaux. The kind of wine that fills an enophile with purpose.

2005 La Gerla Brunello di Montalcino ***

Ruby color. Very soft oak and fresh red fruits on the nose with fresh acidity. Mild tannin, incredibly silky without sacrificing roundness. Stone fruit, plum and long minerality on the finish.

Harvest Begins!

Our harvest began this morning at Wilson Ranch. We picked 3.2 tons from our one acre block of Sauvignon. The fruit looks and tastes amazing after all the hard work we've put in!

The Night Before

It's the night before harvest and I'm thinking I won't get much sleep tonight. It would be so romantic of me to never sleep the night before the first pick of the year but usually I sleep fine these nights. Tonight it's just too freaking hot, and I'm sweating it ... so I'm killing time ....

I dropped a significant but not unrealistic amount of sauvignon blanc with bunch-rot this morning after walking our little stretch of Wilson Ranch with Salvador, the foreman for Oak Knoll Farming. I've worked with Salvador for three years now, and his crew during picking has been the most attentive and disciplined I've worked with every year. This year, because of the nature of rot and raisining affecting the alternating sides of the rows (rot on the west side, burning on the east) we decided to drop the rot today, and pick the raisins separately at first light. There was a place in the middle of the rows more towards the northern side where certain vines just failed to flower properly and the rot and raisining seemed to be more acute in these regions. Everywhere else, the occurrence was sporadic, even rare.

I used a pair of needle nose clippers to surgically remove the rot from the bunches that could be saved. Those that had entirely succumbed were let go. This labor intensive process took most of the day, which left me thinking, Why bother? I kept telling myself, We have no choice. We have no choice. But I wonder if that's true. It all comes down to the fact that I'm here to make the best freaking wine I can possibly from this little corner of the world. No exceptions. No excuses. Anything less and I should just pack up my shit and go home to New York. But that's just it. New York isn't home anymore. This is home. There is no going back. So here I am, dropping clusters, in 97 degree fucking heat. If that ain't love, I don't know what is.


What we're drinking ... Lagunitas Czech Style Pils. 6.2% alc. Bright amber in color, with medium grained carbonation, for those days you wish the sun would just GO AWAY.

Vineyard Update From St. Helena

Harvest is approaching in our little section of Wilson Ranch. Yields are down this year with some of the fruit showing signs of bunch rot in the Sauvignon Blanc (pictured below). In the next week we will be dropping the bad fruit and picking the raisined clusters to crush as a separate lot.


The following week we will be picking the rest of the beautifully ripened fruit (pictured below).


Somehow there is a rumor going around that it's a great year for Sauv B. I wonder how Mr. Sauv B feels about this. It's true that reduced yields can produce great wines, but my 2 cents is that a serious lot of work has to be done to make it great this year. We are sparing no expense in picking our fruit, by reducing yields even further to avoid any moldy or rotten clusters and then separately fermenting the over-ripe bunches for possible inclusion in the grand vin (I think most likely it will be included, considering the taste profiles of the ripe berries at this stage), and I expect we can make a great wine this year -- perhaps even the best Sauv B from Crosby Roamann to date -- but I think the rumor that it will be a great year across the board is not true because I'll predict that producers without the drive or wherewithal to produce great wines from extremely low yields will end up making wines similar to last year, perhaps a touch riper, but with more issues in the cellar considering the bunch rot I've seen.



What we're drinking ... 2004 Damilano Barolo ** robust purple color. Dry herbs on the nose with some tangy red fruit notes. Tastes of fine, drying tannins, a blend of tart cherries and plums, with some spicy notes. Savory.