2022

  • March 21st, 2022

    By

    Dear Friends,

    Happy Spring.  We are enjoying great weather at Nicholson Ranch with bright sunny days and cool nights.  Warm sunshine is waking up the vines from their winter hibernation.  The buds on the vines swell up and open gradually to reveal a small branch with tiny leaves.  “Bud-break” as it is called, is the start of another vintage. 

    2022 is a significant year in the history of Nicholson Ranch.  I am replanting all our Chardonnay and Merlot vines and about half of the Pinot Noir.  I planted the original vines in 1995 on land that had been a cattle ranch for several decades.  Vineyards usually have a life-span of 30 years.  The last few years with fires, smoke and drought have accelerated the aging of the plants.  

    The good news is that I get to plant new little baby vines, this time with more knowledge and less trepidation than in 1995.  Pinot Noir and Chardonnay have excelled at Nicholson Ranch, so naturally I am planting these varietals, albeit with a different mix of clones.  Clones, as many of you know, are slight variations in the variety that manifest as a different nose or a different texture in the resulting wine.  Think of the difference between the Dry Farmed Pinot and the 777 Pinot.  Each of these are crafted from a different clone of Pinot Noir.  The Dry Farmed shows more aroma while the 777 has more texture on the palate.  For the replant, I have selected clones that have produced our Reserve level of wines.  As these new vines age, I expect to craft even better wines through this decade.

    Second, I am increasing the number of vines of Merlot and Syrah.  At present we have two acres and one acre of these vines.  This will increase to three acres for each variety.  Both Merlot and Syrah are more hardy grapes than Pinot Noir.  They tolerate heat and unseasonal rain without compromising quality.  Both Nicholson Ranch Merlot and Syrah wines are new world in flavor and old world in style, showing great texture and finish while showcasing signature California fruit flavors.

    Work on the replanting has begun, with new vines planted in a nursery where they will be nurtured for a year before planting at Nicholson Ranch.  The new vines are a combination of a rootstock and a graft.  The rootstock is plant material from native American vines that are best suited for our soil.  These will first be planted in little pots to establish roots.  Next year, the varietal graft (Chardonnay or Pinot Noir) will be inserted into the stem of the rootstock to create the new vine.  The graft is the same genetic material as each of the clones that we have at Nicholson Ranch.  The new vines will go into the ground in the Spring of 2023 to continue the lineage of Nicholson Ranch wines.

    I appreciate your continued patronage and I look forward to seeing you in the coming months.  

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    Sincerely,

    Deepak Gulrajani

  • January 16th, 2022

    By

    Happy New Year! I hope your holidays brought joyful times, health, and new memories with family and friends. The New Year at Nicholson Ranch started wet with a lot of rain and more forecast in the coming days.  This is a good thing for us, and for the vineyards, as the soil soaks up the rain and stores the water for springtime growth.  The waterfall you see from our tasting room is continuously flowing, filling up the pond below, inviting life. We spotted the first waterfowl to return, a cormorant and a pair of ducks (likely migrating bufflehead). The grass shooting up on the surrounding hills is slowly turning green. When we get more sunshine the hills and the vineyards will be robed in a swathe of verdant green.

    All the wine from 2022 is now in barrels in our underground cellars.  The grapes picked in September fermented in small tanks in the winery.  The first fermentation is when yeast convert the grape sugars to alcohol and other compounds that impart flavors and aromas. This fermentation takes about three weeks.  The wine then goes through the second, slower fermentation called malolactic fermentation (ML for short) that converts the malic acid in grapes to a softer, creamier lactic acid.  The fermentation can take two months (or sometimes longer).  ML just finished for the very last barrel of 2022.  All red wines (with rare exceptions) go through the second ML fermentation. Not only does ML improve the texture of the wine, but it also makes the wine age-worthy.  Without ML, the wine would be excessively tart and texturally rough.

    In addition, ML converts the malic acid which is a food source for some microbes into a more stable lactic acid.  As a result, we can store and age the wine in barrels for a long time without fear of spoilage.  For a winemaker, this is a very satisfying moment, when we guide the wine to being not just a tasty beverage, but one that will provide immense pleasure years after it was made.  Recently, I heard from members who are still enjoying older Nicholson Ranch Pinot Noirs from the 2011 and 2013 vintages. Curious about other vintages we opened bottles of 2008 and 2010 Pinots. Both wines showed beautiful aromas and flavors, belying their age.  For me, these older bottles are like photo albums with memories encapsulated from their vintage year.

    This wine club release includes wines from 2017 that are just approaching their prime, as well as a 2019 “777” Pinot Noir. We hope these wines bring back joyful memories from their vintage years.

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    Cheers!

  • November 5th, 2022

    By

    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).

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    Happy Thanksgiving,