We’ve enjoyed a break in the rain, allowing us to continue pruning in our Carneros Vineyard in the cooler southern part of Napa Valley. Here we’re finishing up our old Wente Clone Chardonnay, planted in 1990, which goes into our Carneros Special Selection Chardonnay and then we’re moving on to the small amount of Cabernet Franc that we have here.
We recently hosted a film crew from Japan. Tony Mori (the show’s host, seen here) and his crew interviewed Ivo and then filmed around the cellar. They want to make California wine more visible in Japan by creating a series of California winery videos and uploading them to the Japanese channel on YouTube on a daily basis, starting this month.
Last night the tasting room team, led by Violet Grgich and Ivo Jeramaz, hosted more than 50 hospitality staff, including hotel and bed and breakfast concierges, tasting room staff from other wineries and restaurant employees at Grgich Hills. Our goal is to let everyone who deals with visitors in the valley to know what we offer and refer them to us.
Natalie Brinkley pouring our Cabernet Sauvignon at the Mustard Festival Grand Opening event at the Culinary Institute of America on Saturday night. More than 1,000 attendees sampled wine and enjoyed food from Napa Valley companies. Thank you to our Facebook fans who stopped by to say hello!
We’re putting together the blend of our 2009 Fumé Blanc, which already has a wonderful acidity and aromas. For our Fume, we have 20 different lots to blend and our winemaking team tastes through each of them, and then makes several trial blends to finally come up with the master blend that we’ll bottle. We like to make blending decisions early so the lots have plenty of time to meld together harmoniously, instead of blending different lots together when we prepare to bottle.
We sowed seeds for ground cover just after we harvested in the fall, before the winter rains. Here is barley growing in our American Canyon vineyard, which has more sandy soil. The thick mass of barley roots prevents soil erosion during the rains and then provides a lot of organic matter that feeds the soil when we cut and mulch it in the spring.
Just a few days ago, this creek bed was dry. It borders the northern side of our Rutherford Vineyard. Thanks to the recent rains, the creek is quickly filling up but no flooding yet.
Grgich Hills will be pouring at the Good Eats & Zinfandel pairing event on Thursday, January 28, 6pm to 9pm at the Herbst Pavilion at the Fort Mason Center in San Francisco. We’ll be pairing our Zinfandel with our friends at AVIA Kitchen in downtown Napa. This is part of the annual ZAP (Zinfandel advocates & Producers) Festival next weekend.. We hope to see you there. For ticket information visit http://www.zinfandel.org/.
A good day for cellar work as you can see the rain hitting outside the cellar door. The National Weather Service has a flood advisory for Napa, so our wishing for rain has really worked out. The 10-day forecast predicts rain for just about every day.
While rain continues to lash Napa Valley, Mike Grgich is busy selling wine in the desert east of Los Angeles. Mike led a winemaker dinner on January 9th at PGA West, a golf club and resort in La Quinta, just outside of Palm Springs. The club is famous as host to the Bob Hope Classic and the PGA TOUR Qualifying-School Finals. Here Mike meets with Chef Jon' Soileau, PGA West and Jim MacDonough, the club’s Assistant General Manager.
We had planned on starting this year’s pruning today, but Mother Nature stepped in with rain over the weekend and a forecast of five more days. We’re below our average of precipitation this year, so we welcome the rain, but this pushes back our pruning until the vineyards dry out enough that we can work in them. We don’t prune in the rain since diseases, particularly Eutypa dieback, spread to new pruning wounds by wind-driven and water-splashed spores released during rain.
Odi Martinez is an experienced hand at separating the yokes from the whites. We use egg whites (albumen) as a fining agent for red wines because it reduces the harsher tannins. Fining is the introduction of a substance to help the clarity, color, odor, flavorand stability of the wine. The winemaking team did a tasting trial and thought the Cabernet and Zinfandel did not need any fining, while the Merlot seemed to benefit from a light fining. We use only one egg white per 25 gallon barrel while many wineries use three to four per barrel. Egg whites have a positive charge that attracts negatively charged particles suspended in wine. These larger, heaver particles settle to the bottom of the barrel and the sediment is left behind when we rack the wines.
Mike Grgich attended the Vintage Club 7th Annual Wine Faire in Indian Wells, CA yesterday. Here Mike is sharing stories with Al Castro, Clubhouse Manager of The Vintage Club, with our Southern California Sales Manager, Melanie Kemp Lewis, and Carlo Mondavi (son of Timothy Mondavi).
The overnight rains and this morning’s sunshine provide a big boost for our cover crops. Even with the recent rains, we’re had only .51 inches of rain so far this month, compared to the average of 1.91 inches. The cover crops are a mix of clovers, vetches and field peas that we plant between every other row. Cover crops reduce erosion, attract beneficial insects, suppress weeds and add organic matter to the soil. This will be plowed back into the ground next spring as "Green manure" for soil improvement
As part of our tour, we show visitors this demonstration barrel on how our OXOline storage system works and “sur lie” (French for 'on lees'), aging works with our Chardonnay. The barrels rest on rollers so it can be rotated to stir up the lees (spent yeast cells) in the bottom of the barrel, which gives the wine additional complexity and body. This rotating takes the place of traditional bâtonnage, where a cellar worker removes the barrel’s bung and manually stir up the lees. With the OXOline system, not only are the lees dispersed more thoroughly into solution, which extracts more of its beneficial properties, but the bung is never opened and no oxygen is introduced into the barrel – the wine remains much fresher, with greater purity of fruit, than with traditional sur lie aging.
Our sales team spent yesterday at the winery, planning for the new year, tasting the current and upcoming wines.. Ivo Jeramaz led the group through a barrel tasting of our wines in the cellar so they can learn first hand how the wines are crafted. Today they are visiting Miljenko’s Vineyard in Calistoga, home to our Zinfandel.
A dense winter fog covered the Napa Valley this morning, becoming thicker in the middle of the valley. Here is our Rutherford Vineyard, which surrounds our winery, obscured by the fog. We’re hoping for a little rain this week, since the vineyards need to collect rain now during the rainy season, which typically ends in April.
While it looks like we have a camp fire in the cellar, we’re actually steam cleaning the barrels after we racked the wine out. We steam each barrel for five minutes, allowing it to penetrate the oak wood to eliminate any off flavors, especially Brettanomyces, a yeast which can cause aromas of Band-aid, barnyard, horse stable or sweaty saddle. After the steam cools into moisture, we remove it by vacuum.
All of our vines are dormant now so you can see the large amount of shoot growth they produce each year. Grapes only produce fruit on one-year old wood so we have to prune each winter. We’ll start in our coolest vineyards (Carneros and American Canyon, close to San Francisco Bay) and work our way north starting in the third week of January.
We’re racking (moving) the late harvest Violetta off its sediment to a stainless steel tank. This is to clarify the wine and to blend the lots together to make a final blend that we’ll then age longer in barrel. Here Luis Mora monitors the wine flowing through a watch glass, allowing him to shut off the value as soon as he spots any sediment.
Today the cellar smells like young red wine as we “rack and splash” the 2009 Cabernet Sauvignon. The wine has finished malotic fermentation so we’ve moved (racked) it out of barrel into stainless steel tanks and we’re splashing it to remove the excess CO2 and any off aromas that may have formed. By introducing oxygen while the wine is young, it helps to stabilize the color and tame some of the astringent tannins, which polymerize (combine with other molecules to form bigger molecules), then precipitate and form sediment, dropping to the bottom of the barrel.
We’re working lot by lot to empty the 2009 red wines from their barrels. The wines have completed malolactic fermentation (where the malic acid is transformed into lactic acid and releases C02—this reduces the total titratable acidity and adds complexity and enhances the wine’s bouquet.) This produces a lot of sediment that collects in the bottom of the barrels so we rack the wine off into stainless tank, clean the barrel, let the wine clarify and then return the wine to continue to age in oak.
Thanks to recent rains, Spanish Mustard is shooting up between the vine rows. Tradition has it that padres sprinkled mustard seeds to mark the trail that connects the 21 missions in California with bright yellow flowers. This common vineyard plant adds nitrogen to soil and helps keep the dirt in place during heavy winter rains.
Through the end of this week we are bottling our 2008 Zinfandel. This is the last bottling we’ll do for 2009 since most of the cellar crew go on vacation over the holiday. By having our own bottling line that we maintain and use, we feel we are able to preserve the highest quality standards for the wine instead of having strangers bring a portable bottling line to the winery or sending the wine to a bottling facility.
This weekend Ivo Jeramaz, our Vice President of Vineyards and Production, will be in the Phoenix, AZ area for Total Wine stores’ “Meet the Maker” events. He’ll be at Total Wines on Dec. 18th at the Desert Ridge Shopping Center(noon-3pm) and at Camelback Road (4-7pm). On Dec. 19th he’ll be in Gilbert (11am-2pm) and then in Tempe (3-6pm). He hopes to meet some of our blog fans at these tastings.
Thanks to everyone who came to our first-ever Holiday Open House on a rainy Saturday. They had a chance to try some great wines, get some deals and get their picture taken with Santa. Here, Violet Grgich learns that Santa is a big fan of our wines.
Our bottling line can only fill bottles that are 1.5L (magnum) and smaller. We always bottle a few larger bottles (from 3 liter to 9 liter) each vintage but that is done by an experienced hand. Gary Ecklin, our Chief Enologist, who has been at Grgich Hills for more than 25 years, personally fills each bottle with our 2007 Cabernet Sauvignon and then inserts the cork and covers the neck with foil by hand.
We just found out that Wine Country watercolorist Eric Christensen (the is a sample of his work) will join us for our Holiday Open House this Saturday, Dec 12th from 11am to 3pm. Also appearing will be Santa, snacks and discounts on select wines and our olive oil. Holiday shopping doesn’t get any more fun than this.
If you’ve been very good this year, maybe someone is giving you the gift of Grgich Hills. Here three pallets of wine and wine-related gifts are ready for pickup at the loading dock. This is just one day’s shipping during the holidays.
Instead of rain, frost came calling last night with temperatures dropping down to 24 degrees. After harvest the roots of the vine take up nutrients to store as energy for the developing shoots in early spring, the following season. With cold weather, thevine enters winter rest. This is a deep state of dormancy needed to prepare for next year’s growing season.
Joey Brinkley last week finished making the 504 Biodynamic preparation, which uses shredded stinging nettle that is buried in the ground in an inert container (we use clay pots from the local garden store) for a year. We’ll use this preparation when we make a new compost pile at the end of 2010. Stinging nettle stimulates soil health and provides plants with the necessary nutritional components.
Frost covered Napa Valley this morning. Here is a Cabernet Sauvignon vine coated with a light dusting. Next week a much needed rain is suppose to hit the valley.
Nothing says Merry Christmas like giving a bottle of Grgich Hills. Please join us on Saturday, Dec 12th when Santa will be here from 11am to 3pm to share some holiday cheer and a few specials not available elsewhere.
We’re back on the bottle line today, the first time since August. We’re careful to plan bottling on either side of harvest. As usual, the bottling line was a little cranky and it took a few hours to get everything rolling smoothly but now we’re bottling our 2007 Cabernet Sauvignon. We’ll age it in bottle for more than a year before we’ll release it.
Mike Grgich on Friday attended the announcement of the 2010 Vintners Hall of Fame inductees. Mike was inducted in 2008 but he had never seen his bronze sculpture created for each inductee. He posed by his sculpture in the Barrel Room of the Culinary Institute of America’s Greystone Campus and met other Hall of Famers, including Jess Jackson and Dr. Carole Meredith, plus talked politics with Napa’s Congressman, Mike Thompson.
Rainy days like today make you glad you’re inside doing cellar work. We ferment our Fumé Blanc (also known as Sauvignon Blanc) using only naturally-occurring yeasts in previously used small French oak barrels and in these 900-gallon French oak casks, called foudres. That way we don’t overwhelm the wine with oak flavors but add to the body, texture and complexity.. A small portable motor attached to the casks stirs the 900 gallons of wine in two minutes.
We’re finished assembling the OXOline barrel storage system and now the hard part begins: we have to place each barrel (an empty used barrel weighs around 85 pounds) in the cradle and level it so no air pockets (which can collect bacteria and ruin the barrel) are formed. We then use a small hose and nozzle to fill each barrel—these will hold much of our 2009 Cabernet Sauvignon. Once full, a barrel will weigh around 570 pounds so the storage system has to be pretty hefty.
Our 2008 Chardonnay is still aging in oak barrels, but here is a tank of wine that we’ve chilled to protect it while we sell it on the bulk market. Why sell good Chardonnay? This is wine that came from the final, heavy pressing of the grapes or was left behind after we racked the wine to a clean barrel. The wine is good, it’s just not good enough to become Grgich Hills chardonnay, so we sell it off.
UK journalist Jamie Goode yesterday visited with Ivo Jeramaz to learn more about our biodynamic farming and taste our wines. Jamie writes for several wine publications, including a weekly column in the Sunday Express, the magazine The World of Fine Wines and he is the author of the book, The Science of Wine. He has a PhD in plant biology and spent several years of working as a book editor, before he began publishing wineanorak.com, which is now one of the leading wine websites.
Ivo Jeramaz checks the progress of each barrel of Violetta, which is still fermenting and probably will slowly continue for another two weeks. Relying on indigenous yeast to consume the high sugar (the grapes were picked at around 38 Brix) can take a long time as the yeast struggle to finish. They’ll start die naturally as the alcohol goes over the 14% mark, leaving residual sugar, which, of course, is what we want in dessert wine.
While we continue monitoring the new wines, the cellar crew is also erecting more of the OXOline barrel system that allows a cellar worker to fill, top up, extract, clean, and empty a barrel without moving it or disturbing any other barrels. Safety is also improved – the OXOline’s design and the catwalk for access to the upper barrels prevent workers from having to climb over stacks of barrels.
Ivo Jeramaz, VP of Vineyards & Production, and Joey Brinkley, Assistant Vineyard Manager, yesterday packed cow manure from an organic dairy in Sonoma into cow horns. This will be buried over the winter in the soil to undergo an alchemic transmutation (somewhat similar to fermentation of wine). Next year we’ll mix small amounts with water and spray it on the soil. This preparation promotes root activity, stimulates soil microbial life, which increases beneficial fungal and bacteria growth.
Veterans from the local Yountville Veteran’s Home and community members gathered today at Grgich Hills Estate in tribute to a distinguished American Veteran, Deacon Bob Little of St. Helena Church, who passed away on August 28, 2009.
Participants assembled at the winery’s Roots of Peace Penny Fountain to kick off the annual penny campaign, which so far has raised 30 million pennies to remove landmines and provide educational opportunities for children in Afghanistan, Angola, Croatia and Iraq.
Cleanliness is a key ingredient of making great wine. As wine clarifies, sediment collects in the bottom of the oak barrels so the new wine is racked (moved off the sediment) and placed in stainless steel tanks as we clean each barrel. We steam the barrels for five minutes, rinse with hot water and then dry the barrels before moving the wine back in.
The compost pile on the edge of our Carneros Vineyard demonstrates the heat inside the pile, with steam rising in the cool early morning light. This is a collection skins, seeds and stems from the grapes we processed at the winery, plus plenty of organic cow manure and glacial rock dust, which provides trace mineral elements, covered with straw. Placed in the vineyards next year, it will provide an abundance of beneficial life forms to the soil and plants. We monitor the compost pile to keep the temperature at about 120 degrees F and to keep the pile moist but not wet. Earthworms are a good sign that the pile is decaying correctly.
Napa is receiving a gentle and welcome rain this morning. Winemaking follows a natural cycle: after the rush of harvest, now wine is aging in oak barrels. Here we have French oak barrels cradled by our OXOline barrel storage system. Each barrel holds about 25 cases of wine. Some of that is lost to evaporation and as the wine is moved off the sediment that forms over time.
Mike Grgich welcomed the chief editor of a Japanese lifestyle magazine, Ms. Akiko Mishima, and her interpreter on Wednesday. She was introduced to our organic and biodynamic growing, toured the cellar and then interviewed Mike. There is increased interest in Napa wines, thanks to a Japanese version of the “Sideways” movie, which is set in Napa, not the Santa Barbara Wine Country seen in the US version.
All of our attention has shifted to the cellar now, as we continue to press the red grapes that have been soaking in stainless steel tanks. That means a lot of shoveling of skins, seeds and pulp to be pressed. Here we’re moving Cabernet Sauvignon to the press.
While harvest is over, the long process of grapes becoming wine is just beginning. Today we’re pressing Cabernet Sauvignon skins and pulp (called must) after we’ve drained away the juice. We use a membrane press which has a rubberized cloth that is inflated to force the fruit against the opposite side of the press, gentle releasing the juice. It automatically cycles to press and release the must over a two hour period to extract the flavors without breaking the seeds, which would release harsh tannins and flavors.
In the vineyard, we’re preparing for the next vintage with cover crops to reduced erosion, attract beneficial insects, suppress weeds and add organic matter to the soil. Between every other row we’re applying a mix of clovers, vetches and field peas. This will be plowed back into the ground next spring as "Green manure" for soil improvement. This is a photo of cover crops already growing in our Carneros Vineyard.
Around the vineyard perimeter, we’re sowing different plants, mostly clovers, yarrow, cilantro to attract beneficial insects to help prevent pest and disease problems.
We held our annual employee costume contest today in the tasting room.The voting was close but the winners were Kevin Vecchiarelli (FBI agent) Natalie Brinkley (Pippin Longstocking, or something close to that) and Luana Gerardis (vampire).
If you’re out trick or treating today, please stop by and see us.
Besides pressing late harvest grapes, we’re also busy with all the other grapes that arrived earlier. For Cabernet Sauvignon, the juice sat on the skins long enough to pick up great color and flavors and start fermenting. After pressing the grapes, the juice sits in a stainless steel tank over night to clarify and then we transfer it to oak barrels to finish fermentation. Here Jose Carrasco is filling barrels by hand.
A Facebook fan asked yesterday “During the fermentation process is a culture added to the juice to start the process?” We do not. Here is a photo of yesterday’s juice bubbling away as it ferments.
Even for Violetta, with its high alcohol and sugar, we use indigenous yeast brought in on the grape skins and naturally occurring in the winery. We believe using naturally-occurring yeasts gives another layer of complexity in the wine and its keeping with our traditional winemaking. We want the final wine to have around 10grams of residual sugar (per 100ml) so we don’t want the yeast to consume all of the sugar before it dies.
After the late harvest grapes macerated overnight, we pressed the grapes in our basket press, which we use for lots that are too small for our membrane presses. Pressure is applied hydraulically through a plate that is forced down onto the fruit. The juice flows through openings in the basket, a design that has been used for nearly 1000 years
Another advantage of a basket press is the high quality of juice that it produces. The expressed juice is filtered through the cake of pressed grapes and stems, which clarifies the juice, allowing less sediment into the barrel. Because of its construction, the basket press also provides more pressure, up to around 125 psi, than the basket press.
Today we started harvesting the first of the late harvest grapes that will make up our Violetta. It’s a field blend that’s predominately Gewürztraminer and Riesling, plus some Sémillon and Sauvignon Blanc and nurtured it to encourage botrytis. Because of the unpredictable nature of botrytis, this wine takes a tremendous amount of work, including several passes to pick individual clusters as they become cloaked in the mold that creates this unique richness and flavors in the wine.
Thanks to the recent rain, this looks to be an excellent year for botrytis, which is a beneficial mold that evaporates moisture while concentrating the flavor in the berry but yielding very little juice when we press the grapes. We fermented the thick, rich juice and then aged the wine in French oak to develop its subtle flavors and textures.
Award-wining author George M. Taber joined Mike Grgich today at the winery to autograph Taber’s newest book, “In Search of Bacchus,” a book about fascinating wine-producing regions around the globe.
Taber’s previous books are “Judgment of Paris: California vs. France and the Historic 1976 Paris Tasting That Revolutionized Wine” and “To Cork or Not to Cork: Tradition, Romance, Science, and the Battle for the Wine Bottle.”
Racking is moving wine from one container (in this case a stainless steel tank) to another, leaving sediment behind. This helps clarify the wine and the aeration at this point in its young life acts to stabilize the color and flavors. Here Luis Mora finishes racking Zinfandel, keeping a close eye for sedimentation so he can shut the valve before it’s transferred.
Once we press the grapes, we recycle the skins, seeds and stems back to feed the soil. Since we press the white grapes before they ferment, they are much easier to turn into rich compost for the vineyards. We ferment the red grapes on their skins to extract the wonderful red color, but event after pressing the skins, there is remaining yeast and alcohol, which makes it harder to turn into compost. Some goes directly back into the vineyard as a natural dust control, the remaining red pomace takes more work, but we convert back into compost for the beneficial plants we have around the vineyards.
While winemaking is easier nowadays, thanks to pneumatic presses and gentle pumps, it still takes a lot of manual labor in making wine. This is Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon that was picked o September 30th and has now finished fermentation. The juice has been drained into another tank and now we’re removing the skins and pulp to put in the press. We’ll gentle press the grapes and move that wine into the same tank as we put the juice.
Saturday was a busy day at the winery: Carolyn Prusa, who writes for Boomer Generation and Seniors4Travel, toured the winery and talked with Mike Grgich about our winemaking.
Also on Saturday, Mike hosted a tasting of our Chardonnays for Dr. Andrew Waterhouse, chair of the UC Davis Department of Viticulture and Enology, and friends. In the afternoon, a Ferrari owners club stopped by for a private tasting at the winery.
Mike Grgich and his nephew, Ivo Jeramaz posed yesterday in the barrel room for Jon Wyand, photographer of the upcoming book The Finest Wines of California. Jon has already established himself as one of the best-known wine photographers with two previous books: The Finest Wines of Champagne, and The Finest Wines of Tuscany and Central Italy. Look for the California book on the shelves a year from now.
Just picked vineyard with low clouds hanging over the mountains.
Harvest is almost finished here, so we’re very please to get our grapes in the cellar before heavy rain, high winds and some flooding swept into Napa yesterday. The San Francisco Chronicle reports that the Bay Area hasn’t seen this much rain in October since 1962. The Napa Register shows we received 4.19 inches yesterday (the normal month to date is .34 inches).
Virtually the only grapes still hanging in the vineyard are the mixture of varietals in America Canyon used for our proprietary Violetta. The rain is good for the late harvest grapes and we already have some botrytis formed. So, if the temperature warms up, this should be a great year for the Noble Rot that makes Violetta.
We have grapes coming from both directions this morning. We’re picking Merlot and Cabernet Franc in Carneros, at the southern end of Napa Valley. We’re also finishing picking Zinfandel in Calistoga, the last of the grapes from Miljenko’s Vineyard, at the northern tip of the valley.
Here is a shot that shows the amazing color of the first of our Yountville Cabernet Sauvignon, which was picked on September 20th and has been soaking in stainless steel tank since then.
This morning we picked the grapes that go into our limited production Miljenko’s Old Vine Zinfandel. The few rows of vines that make this wine were planted in the 1890s in what is now Miljenko’s Vineyard. The vineyard’s gravelly loam soils are the perfect spot to grow Zinfandel. The old vines push their roots deep into the soil, providing intense Zinfandel flavors that can’t be obtained any other way. We’re also picking our few rows of Petit Verdot, which we bottle separately and sell to our wine club and at the winery.
Violet Grgich hosted famed Chef Kent Rathbun and a small group of auction winners for a dinner at the winery on Saturday. Chef Rathbun is best known for appearing on FoodNetwork’s “Iron Chef America” and defeated Bobby Flay. He is executive chef/proprietor of restaurants Abacus, Jasper’s in Texas and Rathbun’s Blue Plate Kitchen Restaurants. He has been featured in the media, including Esquire Magazine, Better Homes and Gardens, Rosie Magazine, BonAppetit, Southern Living Magazine, Nation’s Restaurant News, Elle, Veranda Magazine, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times.
We still have grapes rolling in daily, but we’re also busy caring for the juice we already have. For our red wines, we do a “splash and return”—this is Zinfandel in the picture—to give the yeast plenty of oxygen to help it start fermenting and to keep them happy so all of the yeast is consumed. While the juice is fermenting in a open top stainless steel tank, we pump over the juice from the bottom of the tank, spraying it over the top of the cap. While this also provides a bit of oxygen, it’s more to extract color and to ensure an even temperature in the tank. If the juice gets too hot, it can kill the yeast before they do their job.
This morning we’re harvesting some of oldest Cabernet Sauvignon vines in Napa Valley: a block in Yountville of the Inglenook clone had been planted on St. George rootstock in 1959. After it’s fermented and aged in barrel, we’ll pick the best lots to go into our Yountville Selection Cabernet Sauvignon.
Yesterday it was Zinfandel; today it’s all about picking about 25 tons of Cabernet Sauvignon at our Yountville Vineyard, on the eastern side of Highway 29. This will form the backbone of our Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon. On top of the usual harvest activity, an inspector from Demeter is visiting all of our vineyards today and checking on paperwork as part of their annual inspector for our Demeter certification for Biodynamics.
We’ve been on a roller coaster the last few days: the temperature shot into the triple digits on Saturday and Sunday and today it’s dropped to around 75 degrees. The heat and sun have ripened a bit more Zinfandel so we picked a small amount, about 10 tons, this morning in Calistoga and we’ll quickly crush it and put it into stainless steel tanks to start its long journey to bottle.
Mike Grgich hosted a sold-out vintner dinner at The Hobbit in Orange, CA last Thursday. Chef-proprietor Michael Philippi served an amazing dinner paired with Mike’s wines. A big thanks to Chef Michael and the staff at The Hobbit and to all the Grgich Hills fans who joined Mike at the dinner for the fun.
We held our first-ever Wine Club Harvest Stomping Party at the winery on Saturday. This wine-club-only event was limited to 50 people, who got the chance to stomp grapes and then create their own unique keepsake by putting their grape-juice stained feet on a white “I stomped at Grgich Hills” t-shirt when they stepped out of the barrel. Afterwards, everyone enjoyed a harvest buffet dinner with Mike Grgich in our VIP room. Thanks to all of our loyal club members who came to this special event.
We poured our Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon last night at a Green Wine event that was part of the 13th Annual Medical Conference presented by the University of California, San Francisco. Held at the historic Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco, this was the opening reception for doctors attending the conference and only six high-end wineries noted for their “green” growing practices were invited to pour. The list also included Medlock-Ames, MacPhail, Segue, Patianna and Honig. Here a couple of MDs who were also Grgich Hills fans stopped by the table.
The compost we’re spreading on our vineyards now was started a year ago, so we’re also creating a new compost pile to use in 2010. It takes a lot of compost to cover 366 acres but it all starts with pomace, which is the skins, seeds and stems from the grapes we pressed at the winery. We add organic cow manure and glacial rock dust, which provides trace mineral elements. Once all of this is blended in a fertilizer spreader truck (the white truck in the picture) the blend is covered with straw. Biodynamic preparations 502 through 507, known as compost preparations, are inserted into separate holes. Just one teaspoon of each preparation is used to inoculate up to 15 tons of compost. These preparations influence the finished compost so that it provides an abundance of beneficial life forms to the soil and plants. We monitor the compost pile to keep the temperature below 160 degrees F and keep the pile moist but not wet. Plenty of earthworms are a good sign that the pile is decaying correctly.
While we’re in the middle of the 2009 harvest, we’re already getting ready for the next vintage. In the blocks that we’ve already picked, we’re now applying compost between every other row in the morning and following up by discing the compost into the soil about two or three inches. This allows the microbial life to filter into the soil in the winter rains and breaks up the soil, so it doesn’t become hard and compacted—which would prevent water from percolating down to the roots. Discing also chops up new weeds and discourages voles and gophers in the vineyard, which can damage vines
Mike Grgich led a group of journalists from Hong Kong and Taiwan in a tasting of our current releases and later they had a chance to stomp grapes. The visit was organized by the Wine Institute to focus on sustainable winegrowing and Ivo Jeramaz, our VP of Vineyards and Production, gave them a quick introduction to Biodynamic farming.
We’re picking Zinfandel today in Calistoga, at the top of the valley. The red, rocky soils and long days of sunshine are perfect for ripening Zinfandel, which has a big cluster, usually with a “wing”, sort of a additional arm, and the berries are tightly bunched so sometimes it’s hard to get even ripening. Mike Grgich liked the vineyard so much, he built his home here and his deck overlooks the vines.
Napa Valley is reaching out to the new and growing market of wine lovers in China so we were pleased that Mr. Leo Liang, a photojournalist with China’s World Traveler magazine visited us on Saturday for a story on family travel. They were able to see the arrival of our first red grapes (Merlot) for this vintage arrive at the winery, follow the process from crushing the grapes to racking the juice to stainless steel tank, and they got to stomp their own grapes in a barrel. The magazine reaches 130,00 mid- to upper-class travelers in China.
On Saturday we wrapped up Chardonnay for this vintage, immediately moving to crush Merlot from Calistoga and Yountville.
Today, we’re harvesting the younger Cabernet Sauvignon from our Yountville Vineyard and the small amount we grow in Calistoga. We’re starting picking here just a few days later than last year so there isn’t a wide departure from what we had expected for this year’s harvest.
Violet Grgich joined Wolfgang Puck at his restaurant, The American Grill, at the Borgata Hotel in Atlantic City last Friday. A sold-out crowd enjoyed the contemporary American cuisine of Chef Puck, which Violet paired with our food-friendly wines. Thanks to Chef Puck and everyone who came to the dinner.
After a few cool days, which slowed grape ripening, the temperature is supposed to rise again. We spent the last couple of days waiting for our Chardonnay to finish ripening and now we’re back with a rush.
We started picking in American Canyon at midnight, in order to have the first truck at the winery by 6am, when the cellar crew was ready to start crushing. Another crew is picking Chardonnay in Carneros where the morning fog is keeping the fruit cool.
Rain in September in NapaValley is a rare occurrence but we had a sprinkling on Saturday and Sunday—.05 inches. People ask if this will ruin the crop, forgetting that France and Oregon always receives rain during harvest. We would have liked to had at least enough rain to wash the dust of the grapes before we harvest them. Here is a photo of the creek that runs along one edge of our Rutherford Vineyard, which shows the valley is still dry.
A film crew from the Travel Channel China filmed at Grgich Hills Estate this afternoon and will interview Mike Grgich at JoLe restaurant in Calistoga over dinner. Here the host the program learns about wine and even tries her hand at picking grapes. The Chinese are interested in learning about wine and we’re excited they asked to visit Grgich Hills. A big thank you goes to The Napa Valley Destination Council, which helped arrange their visit to the valley.
Tomislav Krasnec, US correspondent for Jutarnji List daily newspaper in Croatia (and Gloria and Globus weekly magazines, which are published by the same company EPH) spent the weekend with Grgich Hills for a feature story on Mike Grgich. On Saturday, he interviewed Mike at his home in Calistoga and on Sunday he photographed the winery and interviewed Violet Grgich at her home in Napa. Tomislav promised to send us a copy of the article when it’s published.
Mike Grgich describes winemaking as being both an art and a science. Here’s the scientific side of that equation. Assistant Winemaker Kevin Vecchiarelli checks the Brix (sugar) level in a sample of Chardonnay grapes to see if they are ready to be picked.
As we continue to press Chardonnay, the cellar smells like a mix of just-picked apples, peaches and tropical fruit. Here you can see Chardonnay juice expressed out of the press into a tray. The juice is then pumped into a stainless steel tank to settle any bits of grapes to the bottom of the tank, and then it’s moved into another clean tank to start fermentation using indigenous yeast.
We’re now harvesting the Chardonnay in both our American Canyon and Carneros vineyards. The crews start before dawn to ensure the grapes arrive at the winery cool. This prevents spontaneous fermentation, which would also attract bacteria that would cause spoilage.
We thought we’d have a little break before more grapes ripened, but the Chardonnay in American Canyon is ready now, so the crush pad is humming. We pick in small bins, so the grapes are not crushed before we’re ready, and then the grapes are transported back to the winery in half ton bins (instead of one large hopper, where the weight of the grapes can break the skins and start fermentation) on a truck that hauls 44 bins. This roughly equals 20 tons, which is the amount that we can crush at one time.
This morning we’ll finish picking all of our Sauvignon Blanc grapes, finishing up in four fast days. We’ve enjoyed a smooth harvest so far.
We’re now harvesting the Chardonnay that grows on sandy soil, which ripens quicker, especially with the recent heat spike that we had. Today, we’re bringing in grapes from American Canyon blocks. We’ll be picking through Saturday, and probably will take a short breathing spell as we wait for other blocks to completely ripen. While some newspaper reports suggested we would see a huge crop, our Sauvignon Blanc was down 15% from last year. Because of the relatively cool growing year and our Biodynamic farming, the quality is superb with great acidity, balanced with full ripeness.
We hand-sort all of our grapes at the winery to make sure MOG (material other than grapes) doesn’t end up in the press. Here we have Sauvignon Blanc grapes, which are pressed as soon as they arrive at the winery to preserve their fresh flavors and the must (the juice, skins, seeds and stems of the fruit) goes into stainless steel tanks for two days to settle. The juice is then racked (moved) off the gross lees (the big bits of skin, flesh and seeds that settle in the bottom of the tank due to gravity) into clean foudres (large oak casks) for aging.
We start picking our Sauvignon Blanc before sunrise, since heat can destroy the delicate flavors in this grape. This allows the grapes to arrive at the winery in the early morning and to be crushed immediately, so they don’t sit in the sun. The first Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonnay, which we began picking today, come from the sandy soil blocks in American Canyon. The soil warms up quicker and boosts the grapes’ ripening.
This morning we celebrated the start of our 33rd harvest with our annual Blessing of the Grapes. Locals, wine club members and visitors all joined us this morning on the crush pad with a welcome from Austin Hills and a look back at our success by Mike Grgich. Violet Grgich thanked everyone for coming and Ivo Jeramaz talked about this year’s harvest. Father Manning from Calistoga asked for the grapes and for the attendees to be blessed. We believe it’s a great way to start the harvest.
After hitting 100 degrees on Friday and Saturday, cool weather return to the valley. Here the Mayacamas Mountains behind the winery are shrouded in morning fog and 56 degrees at 8am this morning. We’ll pick our first bins of Sauvignon Blanc tomorrow for our annual Blessing of the Grapes.
Mike Grgich shows writer Robyn Jillian Langwell ripening Zinfandel in Calistoga
Freelance travel writer Robyn Jillian Langwell traveled to Napa Valley on assignment for the New Zealand Herald, the country’s leading daily newspaper. Robyn’s travel story “Crushing the Valley of Plenty” is timed to take advantage of Napa Valley just now appearing on movie screens there, thanks to the release of “Bottle Shock.” She interviewed Mike Grgich to get the true story of the wine that won the Paris Tasting and also about Grgich Hills Estate as a destination. The article will appear in late September, early October 2009.
Before we crush our first grapes from the 2009 harvest on Tuesday, September 1st, we’re busy cleaning equipment, positioning picking bins and generally making final preparations to welcome our grapes. Here, Jose Carrasco steam cleans the crush pad in preparation of harvest.
Crews are sweeping through the vineyards for one last time before harvest to remove any still-green grape clusters. While the clusters will eventually turn color, they are so far behind in ripening that they will impart unripe flavors to the wine if they are picked and pressed with the ripe clusters. So, we cut them off now, while they are easy to spot. This ensures the finished wine doesn’t have green “stem-y” flavors.
(photo: University of Florida--our camera is not that good)
We’ve notice a small infestation of pest mites on the backside of leaves in our American Canyon Vineyard. These mites can damage the leaves, slowing photosynthesis and preventing the grapes from becoming ripe, so we’re hanging on the trellis wires bean shoots that have predatory mites growing on the underside of the shoots.
As part of our farming practices, we do not use artificial herbicides or pesticides so we rely on these beneficial mites. Not visible to the naked eye, they do not bite people, feed on other insects or injure plants. Once released, the predatory mites will immediately begin searching for food on the underside of leaves and discover the pest mites. They also reproduce twice as fast as spider mites, which helps with their efficiency. It can take a couple of weeks for a minor infestation to be controlled.
As part of creating biodiversity in the vineyard, we are working to establish bee hives in each of our vineyards. However, Assistant Vineyard Manager Joey Brinkley discovered nature wasn’t going to wait for us. The cone of bees seen in the picture consists solely of layers upon layers of bees around the queen—they haven’t yet started a hive—that attached themselves to a vine in Calistoga. Joey and his wife, Natalie, carefully cut the branch that the bees had attached and placed them in a nuke (a small, wooden frame that contains the nucleus of a new hive). The bees are docile and are more interested in hunting for pollen than stinging anyone.
Vineyard Manager Dave Bos is spending his days counting clusters. Dave does a random sample of grape clusters in each block, based on the varietal, to give us an idea of how many tons of grapes to expect at harvest. This is critical to plan on how and when we’ll pick and also how much space and tanks we’ll need in the cellar to hold this year’s harvest. Right now, the Chardonnay looks a little light but Zinfandel appears to be normal.
Yesterday we bottled the whole production of our 2006 Petite Sirah (only 400 cases made), that’s sold only at the winery and to our wine club. As soon as this one-day bottling was done, we cleaned the equipment and put it in storage until after harvest. Today, we start moving wine to make room for 2009 harvest. We’ll be busy cleaning and sanitizing equipment to be ready to receive grapes.
The grapes for this wine were grown at Miljenko’s Vineyard, which is certified organic and Biodynamic®. Miljenko “Mike” Grgich’s home overlooks our 34-acre vineyard in Calistoga. Petite Sirah is also known as the French varietal Durif, which is a cross between the old French grape Peloursin and Syrah.
After letting stinging nettle ferment (see our award-wining June 10th report) since June we then mixed it with a horsetail plant tea in a special stirring process known as dynamization. This process draws in ambient energy and imprints the memory of the preparation into the solution. The solution is then sprayed on all the vineyards.. The final preparation applied until after harvest, this mixture acts as tonic, strengthening and adding to the overall health of the vines. This will help the vines when we have a heat spike later in the growing season. Stinging nettle is rich in chlorophyll, phosphates, iron, calcium, potassium, silica, vitamin C, vitamin A, and vitamin E. Horsetail counters fungal diseases and improves the vine’s ability to withstand lack of water.
Birds are drawn to the sugar of ripe grapes. As the grapes’ color changes, birds know this is the signal that grapes are getting ripe and they start pecking at the hanging fruit, especially in our American Canyon Vineyard at the southern end of Napa Valley. We use netting that can be easily raised when we pick the grapes. It’s an additional cost of nets and workers but it’s necessary to protect our grapes,
We are starting to get phone calls from visitors asking when will harvest start. The problem with trying to give an accurate date is we usually calculate harvest to begin 100 days after flowering, but there a lots of variables including varietal, weather and soil.
The cool weather last week has slowed down a lot of verasion. The rule of thumb is we start picking 40 days after full verasion, so we’ll have a better idea on the start of harvest after all of the grapes have turned color.
Professors Ivan Pejic and Edi Maletic from the University of Zagreb, Croatia, described their efforts to discover the origin of Zinfandel and presented samples of Crljenak kaštelanski and Plavac Malion Tuesday at the winery. These two professors are famous for their work in tracking down the varietal Crljenak kaštelanski, near Split in Kaštel Novi, Croatia, which is genetically identical to Zinfandel in America. Their efforts were confirmed by Dr. Carole Meredith of the University of California, Davis, through DNA testing.
More than a dozen writers and sommeliers attended the tasting, which also included Grgich Hills’s Zinfandel, Napa Valley, and Miljenko’s Old Vine Zinfandel. Attendees included Charles Sullivan, author of “Zinfandel: a history of a grape and its wine,” Dr. J. Bernard Seps, owner of Storybook Mountain winery, Pierce Carson from the Napa Valley Register, and Kris Margerum from the Auberge du Soleil restaurant.
While we continue to bottle our 2008 Chardonnay, sometimes, it seems all we do is clean. After a day of bottling Chardonnay, we still have an hour of cleaning. Here, Luis Mora is cleaning the corker to ensure it’s spotless before we start bottling again tomorrow morning. Even with all of that work, it still takes an hour each morning of adjusting the machinery before we actually start bottling wine.
While our grapes are not close to being ripe, we’re busy preparing for the harvest. We’ve just received this year’s order of new French oak barrels and we’ve lifted into the OXOline system rack. They come wrapped in plastic to prevent infestation by bore beetles, which look for dead wood and can attack barrels during transportation. Part of keeping a meticulously clean cellar is to prevent mold, mildew and any insects like bore beetles.
The Croatian edition of “Judgment of Paris,” about the 1976 tasting were the Chardonnay made by Mike Grgich beat the best of France, has just been released. Translated by Jagoda Bush, it includes a special foreword and extra photos of Mike Grgich.
Author George Taber reports it has been translated into French, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, and now, Croatian. It has also been sold to a publisher in Bulgaria and it continues to sell well in the U.S. The book was featured in the Scribner fall 2009 catalog along with "Joy of Cooking" and a few other books as "Bestselling Lifestyle Books."
We’re back on the bottling line. We spent Monday cleaning and sterilizing the equipment and then yesterday we started bottling 375mls of our 2008 Chardonnay, which is largest varietal that we produce. Our Chardonnay bottling will run through the next 18 days.
We are preparing to use the 501 Biodynamic preparation that we made last year as a spray on the vines to stimulate photosynthesis and the formation of chlorophyll. 501 is ground quartz (silica) mixed with rain water and packed into cow’s horn and buried through the summer, retrieving it in the fall. We just buried more of the 501 preparation to use during next year’s growing season.
In Calistoga, we continue our experiment of using whey (the watery part of milk that is separated from the curd in cheese making, in the top photograph) from an organic dairy as a natural fungicide to prevent mildew. We sprayed it on a block that has a history of attracting mildew, using the same blower that we use for sulfur. Our goal is reduce the amount of sulfur we use in our wines, while still protecting our vines from mildew.
National Sales Manager Donn Danielson joins Food & Wine editor Dana Cowin at special dinner kicking off the Aspen Food & Wine Festival.
The dinner raised money the magazine’s Grow for Good, a national campaign to raise public awareness and support for charitable initiatives aimed at increasing consumer access to locally- and sustainably-grown foods. Because of our leadership in organic and Biodynamically growing our grapes, Grgich Hills was the featured winery at the event. The chefs were Michel Nischan, The Dressing Room (next door to Paul Newman’s Westport Country Playhouse) in Westport, Conn., and Christopher Keating of the Hotel Jerome in Aspen.
A picture of Mike Grgich from 1979 is featured in the “Portals to the Past” exhibition on display now through October 4 at the Napa Valley Museum. The exhibit is organized thematically into eight galleries, each marked with an entrance portal. Visitors can take a walk through history by entering portals that will give them an appreciation of early culture, work and play in Napa County.
The viticulture portal honors wine industry innovators from a 1979 series of photographs by Tom Zimberoff and includes this black-and-white portrait of Mike. Other wine industry pioneers featured include Louis Martini, Jack Davies, Robert Mondavi and his sons, Joe Heitz, Peter Mondavi, Andre Tchelistcheff, Warren Winiarski and the Smith Brothers.
Vineyard Manager Dave Bos mixes a preparation of stinging nettle that will ferment until July, when we’ll mix it with water and spray our vines. This preparation acts as tonic, strengthening and adding to the overall health of the vines. This will help the vines when we have a heat spike later in the growing season. Stinging nettle is rich in chlorophyll, phosphates, iron, calcium, potassium, silica, vitamin C, vitamin A, and vitamin E.
Ivo Jeramaz, our VP of production and vineyards, describes the special care that goes into our Carneros Selection to a fan during Auction Napa Valley. We poured our limited production Carneros Chardonnay and Yountville Selection Cabernet Sauvignon today at Taste Napa Valley, which is the Auction’s casual lunch and tasting that includes all of the best restaurants and wineries in the valley, including the French Laundry, the Restaurant at Auberge du Soleil and the CIA. This year the lunch was held t the Robert Mondavi winery. All money from the Auction goes to support nonprofits in the Napa Valley.
Corks undergo a rigorous selection process before they have Grgich Hills Estate branded on them. First, the cork producer screens the corks before shipping to a broker, such as Scott Lab, who conducts their own test for 2,4,6-trichloroanisole (TCA), which is the cause of corked wine. TCA has a distinctive odor, usually described as moldy newspaper, wet dog or damp basement, while also masking the wine’s aromas.
We purchase only Grade A corks, the highest level available. Before we buy corks our Assistant Winemaker, Kevin Vecchiarelli, takes a sample of at least 10 corks from each bale of 10,000 corks. He places the corks in neutral alcohol (usually vodka) for 24 hours. The interaction of TCA and alcohol releases the distinctive odor of corked wine. If Kevin smells a hint of TCA or any other off odors, he rejects the entire bale of corks. We use five different cork companies so we’re not dependent on any one source, just in case they have a problem.
An instructor shows Victor Corro (left) and Odi Martinez (right) how to adjust their respirator.
Last week the cellar crew took part in OSHA-approved training for our respiratory program. The trainee first pulls on the large cover (the yellow bag in the photo) and the chemical Bitrex, a bitter tasting substance that can be detected in very small concentrations, is introduced as a spray. Once the crew member knows what Bitrex tastes like they pull on their respirators and Bitrex is sprayed again—if they’ve properly fitted their respirator, they taste nothing—if not, they taste bitterness in their mouth and have to try again.
We are preparing the bottling line for bottling the 07 Merlot and 06 Yountville Selection starting on Friday and continuing all of next week. We are also moving barrels in order to organize them for the 09 vintage
About 10 weeks after bud break, the first flower clusters will start to flower in our American Canyon and Carneros vineyards. Flowering (blooming) is where the pollination and fertilization of the grape vine takes place to develop grape berries.
While the grape vine is flowering, a strong wind, unseasonably cold or a hard rain can prevent pollination, resulting in fewer grapes this year. After flowering, the fertilized flowers will start to develop into berries and unfertilized berries will fall to the ground, so this period greatly determines the crop level for this vintage.
Famed TV chef Alton Brown poses with Luana at the Grgich Hills table during the annual Monterey Wine Festival last weekend. Alton was particularly impressed with the Carneros Chardonnay and promised to consider Grgich Hills in an upcoming show he was planning on wine.
The recent rains, followed by sun and heat, have given a big boost to cover crops between the vine rows so we’re mowing in some spots. This mulched up cover crops provides great organic matter to the soil. At the same time, we will start cultivating the soil in all of our vineyards. This is where an miniature plows rip through the top 6-8 inches of soil, uprooting weeds and drawing moisture to the surface for use by the vine.
We are wrapping up suckering in Yountville and we’re planning on suckering our Calistoga Vineyard on Thursday. See Suckering Chardonnay, April 22nd, for a discussion on suckering.
We’ve also just finished applying the Biodynamic spray #500, cow manure packed in a cow horn. This preparation is greatly diluted in water and then activated by stirring. Sprayed on the soil, the preparation promotes root activity, stimulates soil microbial life and helps in the release of trace elements.
The big project in the vineyards now is suckering our Chardonnay in American Canyon and Carneros. Suckering removes any unwanted growth including doubles, which is where two shoots have formed in the same position on the vine. By removing the growth, we force the vine to expend all of its energy into the stronger, better positioned shoots. Suckering also keeps the vine canopy open, allowing sunlight and air to move through the leaf canopy so mildew doesn’t develop.
(Not our spader but they all look pretty much alike from the rear)
If you look out of the windows of the winery this morning, you may catch a glimpse of an All Terrain Vehicle applying the Pfeiffer Field Spray, a biodynamic preparation packed with microbes that stimulates soil life. Following close behind you’ll spot a spader, which mechanically reproduce the age-old garden technique of "double digging," The shovels open up the soil structure by digging down six inches and removing the soil then digging again up to a total of 12 inches, while not mixing the sub-soils with the topsoil.
The spader uses narrow shovels on shaft so it has a reciprocating, alternating up-and-down motion, duplicating what used to take an entire crew of people with shovels. Spading improves drainage and aeration and incorporates green manures (the chopped up cover crops).
Frost warning until 9am this morning in the North Bay area—no signs so far of frost damage on our vines.
We hand bottled our 2008 Olive Oil last week and it’s for sale in the tasting room ($22). The tasting room was already sold out of the 2007 bottling. The oil is from our organic and Biodynamically grown trees, which are primarily in American Canyon.
You can hear the glass bottles rattling on the bottling line throughout the cellar today as we bottle our 2008 Fume Blanc. Ivo reports it is tasting great right off the bottling line but we won’t release it until mid summer.
Cover crops as tall as the vines, ready to be mowed in Rutherford
In the vineyard
Pretty much all of our Chardonnay in American Canyon has budbreak with some Sauvignon Blanc out and Merlot buds starting to swell. We’ve found our vines are showing budbreak about 7-10 days later than our neighbors in American Canyon—with more even budbreak—for several reasons: we pruned later and following the cycles of the moon and we’ve taken care not to compact the soil or use herbicides. This allowed the cold rain to soak in and cool our soils, instead of running off the compacted soil as they did elsewhere in the valley. The cool ground slows bud development. This delay is actually a positive sign, since we should miss any damaging frosts, but now we’re hurrying to finished cultivation.
Ivo reports that the long-range forecast this vintage is for a dry year (as were 2007 and 2008), mildly warm and we are anticipating an earlier harvest.
We continue to mow cover crops in our most southern vineyards. Our industrial-strength mower uses tiny hammers that swing vertically around a rotating bar inside the cover. This action picks up brush and vine clippings and pulverizes it, leaving it on the ground as organic matter that will enrich the soil.
The cover crops stand as high as the vines now, so we need to cut these plants down or frost could settle on top at the same height as the just-opening buds, freezing them and ruining the grapes for this year.
Californai Regional Sales Manager Paul Hayashi poured at the annual Hedge Fund Benefit, hosted by San Francisco 49er owner John York. Here, Paul is being protected from thirsty attendees by two 49er players: on the right is David Baas, guard (number 64 in your program), and Joe Nedney (number 6), kicker from nearby San Jose State.
Just-pruned vines surrounded by Spanish mustard in Rutherford
After the rains of last week kept us out of the vineyards, we have pruning crews in Yountville, Rutherford and Carneros, working hard to finish up by Saturday. For healthy vines we leave two buds per shoot and for a weaker vine we leave one bud, so all of its energy goes into the grapes.
A skilled worker can prune 45 vines an hour, or roughly (depending on the vine density) 1/3 of acre a day. Pulling the cut canes out of the trellis system takes the most time. Cabernet canes take more effort to prune since they are a harder wood, compared to the softer wood of Chardonnay or Pinot Noir. We leave the vine clippings between the rows and mulch them later on when we mulch our cover crops.
So far, we have not seen any bud break in American Canyon or Carneros, where we typically see the first growth of the new growing year.
In January, this creek bed behind the winery was dry. This morning, it’s covering the roots of trees along the banks and rushing to empty into the Napa River. The rain has been the big factor in the vineyards the last few weeks. At the start of the year, we didn’t have rain and now we had an almost constant supply. The Napa Valley Register reports today we have had 18.10 inches of rain since July 1, 2008 and normal is 20.47 inches, so we are now getting close to average. The good news is the rain has filled our Carneros reservoir and it’s rapidly filling up the one in American Canyon. We’re waiting for the rain to subside before starting to prune in our upper valley vineyards. By not pruning in the rain, we reduce the risk of introducing disease on the freshly cut vines.
Assistant Winemaker Kevin Vecchiarelli describes our Old Vine Cabernet Sauvignon to local writer Stefan Blicker during Saturday’s Premier Napa Valley
Wine retailers, restaurateurs and wine wholesalers from across the U.S., as well as Japan, China, UK and Canada, invested in their businesses by purchasing nearly $1.5 million in barrel futures at the NVV's 13th annual Premiere Napa Valley mid-winter barrel tasting and auction held February 21st in the Barrel Room at the Culinary Institute of America. Revenues were off by nearly a third from the record-breaking 2008 event, but most people were happy that the lots still attracted interest and good bids.
Grgich Hill’s lot of ten cases of Old Vine Cabernet Sauvignon from our Yountville Vineyard earned an $8,000 winning bid from our good friends at The Wine House in Los Angeles. We’re proud to be the custodians of some of the oldest Cabernet Sauvignon vines in Napa Valley: we have a block of Inglenook clone that was planted on St. George rootstock in 1959.
Ivo Jeremaz, our VP of Vineyards and Production, describes biodynamic farming to Kris Margerum, wine director for Auberge Resorts, yesterday during the First Taste of Yountville. This trade-only event was held for attendees in town for the Premier Napa Valley. We poured our Premier Auction lot and our 2004 Cabernet Sauvignon, Yountville Selection.
In the vineyard
We are now the proud parents to 46 baby chicks. Because Joey Brinkley lives in Calistoga, the chicks are at our Calistoga Vineyard so he can keep a close eye on them. They’ll be raised there for about two months or so until they are mature enough to live on their own at American Canyon Vineyard in the portable coops there. The chickens add biodiversity and plenty of nitrogen to the vineyard, plus they eat lots of bugs. We have a mix of six chicken breeds: White Leghorn, Silver Lace Wyandotte, Buff Orpington, Black Sex Link (A "sex-link" chicken is one, that at time of hatch, can be sexed by its color. Sorry, we don’t come up with the names, we just report the facts) and the traditional Rhode Island Red and Production Red.
Speaking of American Canyon, we have probably just another day of pruning there and in our Carneros Vineyard, if we can get into the vineyards. We have an average precipitation of 5.03 inches of rain in February but until the recent rains, we had seen only about half of that amount. Since July 1st of 2008, we have received 13.13 inches of rain (at the Napa State Hospital, according to the Napa Valley Register) while normal season to date is 18.07. The forecast calls for only a small chance of rain on Wednesday and Thursday, and possibly Friday.
We’re offering a box of Cabernet-filled chocolates, a votive candle to set the right mood, an official Grgich Hills logo plush towel (perfect for a hot tub for two), and topped off with our seductive 2004 Cabernet Sauvignon. And as our own contribution towards encouraging romance, we even included free shipping for a total of $100. Click here to find out more.
In the vineyardWe’re wrapping up pruning in American Canyon and Carneros. We have probably just another day of work, if we can get into the vineyards. We don’t like to prune in the rain, due to the open cuts on the vine that can quickly become diseased, not that the crews can’t work in a light rain. So, depending on the weather, we may finish tying vines to the guide wires. The cold rain we are receiving right now is really a blessing: it should push back budbreak until the end of March, instead of the vines budding out in early or mid March, when they are more vulnerable to frost.
To help our customers celebrate Valentine’s Day with that special someone, we’ve put together a package that’s guaranteed to stimulate all the senses, and save you money, too (you don’t have to tell them that part).
In the vineyard
We continue pruning in our two coolest vineyards, American Canyon and Carneros. Depending on the weather, we hope to finish all of the Chardonnay by the end of this week and most of our Sauvignon Blanc will be pruned, too. We also continue to plant new vines to replace dead or badly damaged vines.
We did a survey of our owl boxes and almost all of them have barn owls still living in them, so we're pleased that they liked their home enough to overwinter there. The owl boxes have been so successful in attracting owls, which naturally eliminate gophers, that we’ll install more this year.
Vineyard Manager Dave Bos filed this report, not from the vineyard, but the Sacramento airport, on his way to talk about Biodynamic farming at a Midwest Wine and Grapes symposium. Afterwards Dave is joining up with our Man in the Midwest, David Kouzmanoff, for some vintner dinners.
2008 Cabernet Sauvignon being aerated after it finished malolactic fermentation
In the cellar
After a long bottling run, we’re back to babying our 2008 wines in the cellar. Some of the 2008 red wine lots finished malolactic fermentation while we were bottling so we’re moving them out of barrel long enough to clean the barrel with high pressure hot water, letting the barrel dry and then moving the wine back to start aging in barrel. This will take us to early April, when we’ll fire up the bottling line again.
We will also start putting together blends, particularly the 2008 Fume Blanc and Essence but also the Zinfandel and Cabernet Sauvignon. We like to make decisions early so the lots have plenty of time to meld together harmoniously, instead of blending different lots together when we prepare to bottle. After years of experience with our vineyards, we pretty much know which lots will make the Yountville Selection and which ones will form the Napa Valley blend.
Vineyard Manager Dave Bos demonstrates pruning to leave two buds per shoot.
In the vineyard
We continue the long journey to hand prune all of our vineyards. We’re still working in American Canyon and Carneros, our first vineyards that will come out of their dormancy with bud break. The moon continues to descend (appearing lower in the sky then the night before), which decreases the gravitational pull of the moon so less sap (the vine’s life force) is lost when we cut the vine. With the nice weather, crews are working six days a week to take advantage of these dry days, so the pruning cuts have less likely chance of Eutypa dieback, a fungus that slows growth and can kill a vine. Infection occurs when airborne fungal spores settle on fresh pruning wounds during or immediately following rain. These pruning wounds become resistant to infection about two to four weeks after pruning.
Our sales and marketing team held a Sales Summit meeting at the winery last Thursday and Friday. As part of helping them sell Grgich Hills wines, they learned more about our farming and winemaking practices from Ivo Jeramaz, Vice President of Vineyards and Production (on the left), who led them on a tour of the Yountville Vineyard’s 50-year-old vines and our American Canyon vineyard.
In the cellar
After a break over the holidays, the bottling line is running daily in January to bottle our 2006 Cabernet Sauvignon, Yountville Selection, and Petite Sirah, plus the 2007 Miljenko’s Old Vine Zinfandel. So, how do they get those capsules on the bottles? The bottling line runs up to 70 bottles a minute, 300 to 350 cases in one hour or 1,800 to 2,100 cases a day. After a bottle is filled, the line moves the bottles to a separate machine that pushes the foil caps on (made of tin – no lead since January 1991–and then another machine, a spinner, smoothes down the foil around the neck of the bottle.
Our cover crops are responding to the recent rain. Here you can see the first flowers of wild mustard, also called Spanish Mustard, in our Rutherford Vineyard. Wild mustard seed grows best in soil that has been disturbed and you can see the difference since we disc every other row between the vines.
Legend has it that Franciscan Friars spread Spanish mustard along the route as they built the “Rosary of Missions” that extends from San Diego to Sonoma so that others could find their way.
By the way, Grgich Hills will be participating in Mustard Magic, the opening event of the 16th annual Napa Valley Mustard Festival, held at the Culinary Institute of America on January 31. This two-month festival celebrates the period when the mustard is at its most spectacular in the valley. For more information on the festival, visit the festival Web site at www.mustardfestival.org.
