Left Coast Cowboys

Cousin John, as you’ll remember from this post, is a purist. He makes wine, but spurning our carefully crafted and specially raised UC Davis yeasts, Cousin John uses whatever is floating in the air. In fact, Cousin John only uses au natural techniques and ingredients to make wine. He’s been known to wander the byways of Sonoma picking wild fruit for fermentation. I’ve even accused him, although I have no hard evidence, of trying to make wine out of roadkill. It’s only a matter of time.

So it’s been great fun to have Cousin John make some of his wine from our grapes using his Stone Age methods. Call it the ultimate control group. Since the Cabernet pressing, which Cousin John did with our old basket press, our two Cabernets have been fermenting side by side — ours in oak barrels, Cousin John’s in glass carboys.

This past weekend, it was time for Cousin John to do another racking of his wine, which made the perfect opportunity for a side-by-side tasting. So who is winning? Our college boy yeasts or Cousin John’s juvenile delinquent yeasts? The jury is still out, but both are tasting quite good. However, I still think a college education, even for wine, gives the edge.

Watching Cousin John rack wine the old fashioned way. With tubes, muscles and carboys. No, I'm not nostalgic for THOSE days.

"Terrier" is a unit of measure around here. After racking, Cousin John has two terriers of Cabernet. Appropriate.

Our first tasting was our Rose, the first Rose we’ve ever made.

The verdict: almost all the residual sugars are gone and it's tasting very, very good.

Then we tapped our Cabernet from the barrels.

Compared with Cousin John’s, ours had fermented out more completely. And the oak of the barrel is adding interesting notes. John’s is still a tiny bit fizzy as residual yeast keeps struggling to the last. But the good fruit is holding up in both.

The verdicts on our other barrels are more mixed. Our predominantly Grenache blend and predominantly Mourvedre blends are tasting very good indeed. But last year’s Mourvedre, which is fermenting on its own, is troubling. Andy was ready to pour it out. It’s been reprieved at the last minute and will have a few more months to redeem itself.

All that "tasting" can really add up. So we took off on a hike to the redwoods to burn off the alcohol.

We saw some mushrooms that looked so toxic, even John, the ultimate forager, wasn't tempted to pick them.

He concentrated instead on trying to determine what animal teeth marks we were seeing on some scattered bones.

Obviously, the thought that a large predator was hanging around, caused me not to get the above picture in very good focus.

But I later did get an in-focus picture of the stump of petrified redwood that John the Baptist found in the creek.

And I managed to do that "fuzzy water" photography technique.

All in all, a successful day of winemaking. I’d say we and our college boy yeasts are ahead at this point. But it’s probably not wise to bet against Cousin John.

Our Grenache, Mourvedre and Cinsault have been happily sitting in steel tanks for their second fermentation (with a few rackings to clarify out dead yeasts). This weekend, it was their time for the destination of all good wines: oak barrels. We had the further ambitious plan to develop a few Southern Rhone style blends from our separate varietals. Or at least get as close as we could to a Southern Rhone style blend, given that we haven’t yet planted that key Rhone varietal, Syrah. And we don’t have half the dozen or so other grapes that go into a true Rhone wine. But, baby steps.

The first step was to pull samples of all our varietals from the steel tanks.

Then set up a blending station.

Yup. There’s no fancy blending at Two Terrier Vineyards. We just think of a possible mix and adjust and take notes until we think we have a combination we like. We started with a couple of classic Southern Rhone blends like Chateauneuf du Pape. Well, we got as close to Chateauneuf as we could given that we don’t have the thirteen or so grapes they use. But hey, their blends are mostly dominated by Grenache and Mourvedre with half a dozen other varietals at 1% of this and that, so we thought we could get close enough for amateurs. So we developed a Grenache dominant blend and a Mourvedre dominant blend.

Once you have the formula for your blend, it all becomes a matter of, not shutes and ladders, but hoses and pumps.

You need really long hoses. And lots of them.

See you have to pump the wine in the tanks...

into oak barrels in the wine cave. With a short stop in a carboy for measurement purposes.

This is a complicated and time-consuming process. So note to self: start early. Which we didn’t.

Instead we hot rodded down to Sonoma for lattes in the morning.

And took a hike around the property.

And activated Mole Patrol.

So by the time we were at the messy, wet clean-up stage, it was dark and cold.

But we did get to see this wonderful sunset.

Which was still amazing even while viewed cold and wet.

Sorry for the long lapse in posting. I’ve been, well, sort of collapsed. See, Sunday we finally got all that Mourvedre and Grenache out of primary fermentation, pressed and into steel tanks. Which means I’m relieved of three times a day punchdown. At least for a few days. Until tomorrow when we pick, crush and get our Cabernet into primary fermentation. Which starts the whole three times a day punchdown cycle all over again. But in celebration of my brief respite, I got myself a pedicure. Before the press. Which wasn’t really smart as I spent the next day standing around in grape juice and citric acid. But still, I wanted to be ready for the Big City when I could finally get back there. And the press? Well, here’s how it went:

First you set up a complicated Rube Goldbergian system of pumps and hoses to get the grapes from the primary vats to the press and from the press to the secondary fermentation tanks.

Then you pump out the fermented grapes from those white bins to the press.

When the hose and pump can't handle any more, you resort to the shovel, brute force and ignorance.

Meanwhile, a large bladder inside the press is separating the juice from the skins and seeds and forcing it out of the press.

There it comes, gallons o'Grenache.

At various points, you have to taste. And it's all tasting very good.

Now comes the hard part: getting the pressed out skins out of the press.

Then trucking them up to the top of the hill for composting.

And by the way, terriers are no help at any stage of this process.

And speaking of terriers, a very large coyote has been spotted lurking about. Terriers would rather snuggle under the covers where it's safe than hang out on an exposed crush pad.

And as for that two and a half day respite in the Big City? Well, I did exciting things like laundry and getting a broken crown fixed. So maybe it’s a good thing that the whole cycle starts again tomorrow. Especially since Cousin John, the Indiana Jones of California, will be joining us. Stay tuned.

It’s been a scary few weeks for grape growers in Sonoma and Napa Counties, what with two long-lasting, drenching and unseasonable storms hitting us at the end of growing season. The problem with late season rain on vineyards is that, just when you are trying to get the grapes to concentrate their flavors (most of us have turned off irrigation for the last month or so), a sudden downpour causes the grapes to swell with water. The best case result: watery, less concentrated juice. Worst case result: the grapes swell so suddenly they burst, inviting mold and insects. Faithful readers will already know that we did a panic harvest of the Grenache and Mourvedre, finishing just hours before the last huge rainstorm hit us. Luckily the Cinsault was already in primary fermentation. The Cabernet was nowhere near ripe enough to harvest. And even with rain threatening, if the grapes aren’t ripe — well picking is useless. But we’ve been advised that Cabernet grapes are tough as old boots. Barring precipitation of Biblical magnitude — we’re talking frogs, toads and bearded prophets throwing burning bushes — Cabernet can take anything. Never willing to accept such things just on a say-so, I went into the vineyards to assess the damage.

Actually, my first step was to bring out the Big Guns. Not that I actually wanted to stop rain. In semi-arid areas like California, where we’ve been known to have seven year droughts, you never pray for rain to stop. But you might want it redirected somewhere else, such as the Sierras, where the snowpack really determines our water situation. So again, the Big Guns. That means the Kachinas. I put them out, faced them to the rain and made my request. Next day the skies cleared. Coincidence? I don’t think so.

Behold the power of the Kachina. This is Eagle Dancer from the Four Corners area of the Southwest.

So out into the vineyards. And yes, there was damage. Not as much as I had expected. And most of it concentrated at the end of the rows.

Here's a bunch with some burst grapes. You can see the wasp already on the job.

Whew! Look at this wasp food fight.

So next step: walk the vineyard, row by row, gathering a berry from almost every vine, and putting them in a ziplock bag.

Grape ripeness can vary so wildly throughout a vineyard, and even throughout a row, that you really need a representative berry from almost every vine to get a real sample.

Then smoosh with the fist.

And mash with the foot.

You need enough juice to do your battery of tests.

So here’s the good news: the pH is at 3.66 which is pretty close to the acceptable level. The Specific Gravity is 1100 which is just about where you want to think about picking the grapes. And the all important BRIX level is 23. Cabernet is typically picked at anywhere between 25 to 29 BRIX. So what our readings tell us is that our Cabernet is just getting ripe enough that, given the current weather report, we should be able to get it dried out and ripened a bit more then picked before the next expected rainstorm. We’re estimating next week around Thursday for the harvest. Given some warmer weather — hopefully at least a few days in the 80s — and we should be able to salvage this.

John the Baptist took a few damaged bunches home to his horticulturist wife. She diagnosed them with a certain kind of mold with a long Latin name. John couldn’t remember what it was. Thanks, John, but it doesn’t matter the name. There is NO mold that is a good thing for wine grapes. The trick is going to be to harvest only the undamaged grapes and let the rest just stay on the vines for the birds and the wasps. Explaining that to the Mexican crews should put a good strain on my first year Spanish.

And in a final positive note, at least from Oscar’s perspective, the rains didn’t wash away the latest baby deer carcass he buried somewhere in the vineyard. In fact, he thinks it improved the flavor.

But just to be safe, Oscar dragged it into the living loft of the barn and hid it under the bed. Nice one, Oscar.

Usually farmers pray for rain. Especially in semi-arid places like California. Except when that rain comes at the end of the growing season and just before harvest. And if you are growing wine grapes. Typically, we shut off the irrigation water (which is only a drip at the best of times) about a month before harvest . That concentrates the flavors of the berry and creates a greater ratio of skin to pulp. Since the skins give all the flavor, color and tannins, that’s a good thing. So you can imagine the calamity when we get dumped on by several inches of rain toward the end of the ripening. Imagine that happening twice. That’s this season in a nutshell. We never got enough of the hot, 100 degree ripening days, then we’ve been pelted twice with early season rainstorms. In early and mid-October, yet, which is almost unheard of in our neck of the woods!

If you’ve been reading, you know we did a panic harvest of all the Grenache and Mourvedre (the Cinsault, as it did last year, ripened early and was already processed). The Grenache and Mourvedre weren’t quite to the degree of ripeness we would have liked. But the cooler weather is making the fermentation go slower, so we may end up having to leave it longer on the skins in primary fermentation, which could counterbalance things.

John the Baptist isn't taking this rain lightly. He and Louis have been shoring up the banks of our creek in the event of flooding.

By the way, I haven’t written much about the daily doings here at Two Terrier Vineyards — mainly because it’s been such a blur of activity — but also because it’s the same routine I wrote about last harvest. Every day. But for a refresher, here are some posts about the processing of the picked grapes into primary fermentation. (Here’s how we get grapes from picking to crush to primary fermentation vats and here and here are how we take them from primary to press to secondary. )And here’s the daily routine of a Wine Babysitter. Which would be moi.

So it’s been the daily round of punchdown, then take readings to test temp, pH, and specific gravity. In between cursing at the sky and staring in disbelief as even more rain clouds roll in.

Even our sunny days have looked threatening.

Did I mention that grapes aren’t the only crop threatened by this unseasonable rain? My tomatoes swelled, burst and had to be harvested immediately. Since you can’t really can bruised or burst tomatoes (the natural bacteria barrier — the skin — has been breached), I boiled this whole harvest down into spaghetti sauce.

You don't even want to know how many tomatoes were left on the vine because they were completely green.

All those tomatoes boiled down into about enough sauce for four.

Did I mention, before I added some sugar, the sauce was so acidic it made a temporary crown fall out?

You think I’m whining? Well, you’ll hear the same thing up and down Napa and Sonoma Valleys. I took my brother, who’s in town, to the Benziger Family Winery tour (take the Partner’s Tour. It’s the best tour in two counties!)

Their Cabernet is still on the vines. Look at the damage. They're hoping we get a week to dry out.

They usually sell their organic tomatoes to local restaurants. This swollen batch is ruined and headed for composting.

So everybody pray for rain to go to someone who needs it. Like the Sierras. That is if we can figure out a way to get the rain to sweep over Sonoma without falling on its way East. Otherwise, 2009 is not going to go down as a good year for Sonoma Cabernet.