Dear Friends,
We had a good, albeit early and stressful, harvest this year. In my previous letter, I mentioned that heat and rain are the two weather challenges we face at harvest time. This year we experienced both. In early September, we had a few days of 100+ degree highs. In anticipation of the heat, we harvested some vineyard blocks before the temperature rose, testing the grapes every couple of days to check the flavors. The grapes in some blocks were not ready, so we let them stay on the vine. Unfortunately, the hot spell ripened the grapes and dried them more than I’d liked. However, when the rain arrived a week later, it rehydrated the grapes, returning them to their average size. It rained about an inch, with the downside being that the fruit became wet and potentially could become moldy. As a result, we worked with a double crew to pick the remainder of our grapes at Nicholson Ranch before it warmed up and grew any mold. The rain and heat essentially helped cancel each out.
Harvest days start at 5 am, just before dawn, when temperatures are in the low 50s. Picking the grapes when they are cold preserves flavor and aroma. A harvest crew includes a tractor driver, eight pickers, and two leafers. The pickers begin the morning working with headlamps, expertly cutting off each cluster of grapes from the vine with a small sickle-bladed knife. Quickly, working with nimble fingers, they fill up picking buckets, each holding 40 to 50 lbs of grapes. They load the grapes into larger bins on a trailer pulled by the tractor. The leafer’s job (my designated role) is to throw out leaves and any unsound fruit. Grapes that are not ripe or grapes that are moldy do not remain. The tractor takes the full bins to the winery and returns with empty containers to repeat the process. The crew and the tractor go through the block, vine by vine, row upon row, until we have picked the entire block. Usually, we end at 11 am before it has begun to warm up and just in time for a hearty lunch.
At the winery, the grape clusters require further care. They are put through a destemmer, a machine with rotating paddles separating the berries from the stems. The berries are collected in our fermentation tanks. A typical tank is rectangular, 5 ft x 7 ft, and can hold an acre’s worth of grapes. Our entire morning pick of 6 hours can yield just two tanks full of berries. The tanks are refrigerated to keep the fruit cold to allow the grape juice to absorb color and texture from the grape skins. After a few days, we turn off the refrigeration and let the grapes warm up. This step allows the native yeast to start fermenting the juice. We do not add any yeast to the juice but allow native yeast that resides on the skins of the grapes to do the fermentation. Our native yeasts produce distinctive aromas and textures unique to Nicholson Ranch wines.
Fermentation takes between two and three weeks. Once the yeast has converted all the sugar in the juice to alcohol and other aroma compounds, the fermentation stops, and we now have a young wine. The newly fermented wine goes into the French oak barrels stored in our underground cellars. The wine will age for at least two years before it is ready to be bottled. The barrel aging enhances and concentrates flavors and smooths out the texture of the young wine. Another year of aging in the bottle adds to the complexity of the wine.
Most of you will receive the 2019 Dry Farmed Pinot Noir that recently was awarded 93 points from the Wine Enthusiast magazine. The Dry Farmed and all the Nicholson ranch wines are beneficiaries of our sun, soil and the hands that grow and make the wine (let’s not forget the invisible natural yeast who are essential to making wine).
Happy Thanksgiving,