Every September for the last 20 years, the Blessing of the Grapes marks the beginning of Harvest. On the table is a blue box with grapes to be blessed. It contains all 5 Bordeaux varietals (Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet franc, Merlot, Petit Verdot and Malbec) from our estate vineyards.
At 9am we are called from our offices. The first step is to grab a mimosa and pastry (not pictured).
Next, the whole company gathers in the courtyard to hear the Blessing from Father Gerald of The Carmelite Monastery (home of the annual intern fundraiser and BBQ).
Father Gerald read a prayer and a passage from the Bible. I translated his prayer, and by "I translated" I mean I asked for backup from my professional translator mother and professional catholic aunt (gracias Tia Stephanie!) and read from a Spanish Bible he brought. I'm not the most comfortable public speaker but it went alright.
Father Gerald, myself and La Biblia.
Father Gerald sprinkled the grapes and the audience with holy water, then two Spanish guitarists played for us. In 2008 the after-blessing entertainment were two mimes who mimed being grape clusters. If you're into mimes, art vs science or french (all of which I am) click here.
Margrit Mondavi came to The Blessing as she does every year. What a classy lady.
Next a photo-op with the blessed grapes and this year's interns: Ryan (Canada), Madeleine (Switzerland), Shiri (Israel) and Chelsea (California). Not pictured is the lab intern Patricia from Brazil. Quite an international group we have.
The high female to male ratio this year makes me think I am going to have a pretty pathetic Harvest Beard Championship 2011.
Or not. Either Ryan will be hairy enough for all 5 of them, or these ladies will surprise us. I'm hoping for the latter.
This time last year I was already knee deep into Harvest. This year the grapes need a little more time on the vine. Today we did a vineyard walk to assess the maturity of the grapes and get an idea of when we will harvest them.
We spent 3 hours walking every block and tasting the berries. We get the sugar and acid numbers from the lab, but more important for the picking decision are the flavors that we get when out tasting. When we taste the berries we are asking questions about the texture of the skins: are they gummy, chewy, crunchy, drying, etc.
As we walk down a row we pick berries and then spit the seeds out into our hands and look at their color. Unripe berries have green seeds and as the berries mature the seeds lignify and become brown. Here you can still see a few green seeds.
These are a couple of brown, mature seeds. My winemaker and viticulturalist do this every day this time of year. I've only made it out once so far.
While walking our blocks, we passed the neighbor's vines. These were planted in 1945. Most vines poop out after 20 to 25 years, but occasionally you find a hearty stock that can survive and thrive a lot longer. Usually you see it for Zinfandel, vines that are 70 years old, etc.
Side note, the term "Old Vine" is not regulated and can mean anything from vines that are 30 years old to over 100 years old. Also, it is not synonymous with "Good."
I like old vines because they are more likely to be head trained like these. They look so chaotic, like rastafarian plants. Unless you are planting grapes in your back yard, no modern plantings are done in this style. This trellising system is too difficult to mechanize and make uniform. Also notice how far apart they are from each other. This doesn't efficiently use the land.
More on trellising systems another time . . . .
Chaotic good.
Deep in that mess are Sauvignon blanc grapes.
Sauvignon blanc is cropped differently than red wine grapes. High quality red wine grapes are typically cropped to 1 to 2 clusters per shoot, and a vine can have 10 to 15 shoots. Which leaves us with 10 to 30 clusters per vine.
Looking closely at this vine you can see a lot of clusters. I've counted up to 65 clusters on a single vine of Sauvignon blanc. Granted, it was a different trellis system. But anyway, a white grape like Sauvignon blanc and a red grape like Cabernet Sauvignon are grown very differently.
From this day's tasting, we're pretty close to bringing the fruit in. I'm excited and nervous!
These are Real Wood Barrels. French Wood (wrapped in shiny plastic).
This is how they arrive at the winery from France.
Some places in Napa have started harvesting white grapes (sparkling wine, sauvignon blanc, etc.), since we only make red wine we are still in the calm before the storm. We are using the time to prepare this year's new barrels to be filled with 2011 wine. The barrels will not be filled until sometime between December or January but we need to process them in advance because it is a time consuming task and not something that can be done during harvest.
This would be a beautiful sight, except for all the work that it entails. Good thing we have interns.
Enter Madeleine. Madeleine is an intern this year, she comes to us from Switzerland. When barrels arrive from France they are all wrapped up and besides removing the packaging we need to prepare them to receive wine.
We prepare them by conditioning them with water to find leaks and remove residue from toasting (see video for details).
Even empty barrels can be heavy, so we move them with a forklift.
The forklift places 2 barrels on this red rack to be inspected and then filled with water.
We insert a lamp through the bung hole to check out the evenness of the toasting and make sure everything looks good inside.
These barrels are a medium toast.
This is the same barrel with different lighting.
Barrels are toasted by being placed over an open fire for defined amounts of time. Little time = light toast. Long time = heavy toast. And there are several shades in between.
Close up of the inside. The higher the toast level of the barrel, the more "wood" character it will impart on the wine. All kinds of flavor and aroma characters fall under "wood" like vanilla, cigar, smoke, tar, leather, etc. There is no "good", "bad" or "perfect" amount of toast, it all depends on the wine's style. In fact few wineries buy all their barrels with the same toast level. Typically you buy several different toast levels to give the winemaker options.
After they are visually approved, another intern (Shiri) fills them with 5 gallons of water at 180F. Shiri comes to us from Israel. (Hooray for ladies in the cellar!).
Here the protocol is 5 gallons per barrel, but I have worked at other places that fill the barrels (60 gallons) to check for leaks. Next the barrels are bunged and roll on the rack for 10 minutes. This allows us to see if there are any potential leaks.
After 10 minutes they are placed upright to check the integrity of the heads. Common areas for a barrel to leak are between staves and in the croze (the groove where the head meets the staves).
See diagram below:
If we find a leak it is best to repair it now using 5 gallons of water, than find it later when the barrel has 60 gallons of wine in it. If a leak is found, a senior cellar worker can usually fix it on the spot. We have spare shims and pegs to repair minor leaks.
If the barrel is sound it is moved to another area to be emptied of the hot water and rinsed with cool water. Then sent back into the cellar to be painted.
