march

  • March 27th, 2024

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    Dear Friends,

    Spring is here!  After an interminable number of rainy days, we finally have had a week (or more) of sunshine daily.  We surely need the rain in California, and I am very grateful to get a typical wet season.  But I miss the sunshine, and it could not have come at a better time.  The rain is excellent; it soaks into the soil, sustaining the thirsty vines throughout the year.  Sunshine in March, following the wet winter, is ideal, just as the young vines are waking up from their winter dormancy.  All in all, a great start to 2024.

    Spring is also when we focus on bottling the wines from earlier vintages.  This year, we will be bottling many Pinot Noirs from 2022 and NIRVANA from 2021.  All the big reds to be bottled, Nicholson Ranch Merlot and Syrah, and Gulrajani Super-Tuscans and Cabernets are from 2021.  Two parallel tracks are essential for bottling.  The first is what is in the bottle, the wine itself, which is both a sensory and an immersive experience.  The second, much more mundane and prosaic, is the glass bottle and the packaging.

    Let us get to the wine.  I taste every barrel to ensure the quality of each barrel and to select barrels to reserve for NIRVANA.  Tasting wine from barrels is one of the favorite parts of my role as a winemaker.  Besides the wine tasting great, the work completely absorbs my attention, letting me forget about all other concerns.  Going from barrel to barrel, I am so grateful for what each barrel does to the wine.  The barrel, as you know, adds aroma and flavor and, more subtly, adds texture and body.  A wine not aged in a barrel can have great fruit and floral aromas.  A wine flavored with oak (essence, powder, or oak chips) will show vanilla, toast, and spice. However, only true barrel aging will transform the texture and integrate the fruit and oak flavors to create a sensory experience of smell, taste, and texture, from the bouquet to the mouthfeel to the finish.  Only patient barrel aging can make a great wine that will go beyond the sensory experience and spark emotions of joy, contentment, and nostalgia.

    Now for the nuts and bolts of getting the wine into bottles and planning the bottling.  After ordering the bottles, foils, labels, and corks, I ensure the bottling truck has been reserved and confirmed well in advance. I measure and check order quantities not just twice but three times.  Fortunately, the agony and stress of supply-chain problems are mostly behind us.  Getting ready for bottling is stressful enough. Better planning leads to bottling the wine without heat and oxygen exposure, which would diminish the quality.  I aim to open a freshly bottled wine and feel the same emotions of joy and contentment that I get tasting the wine from barrels.  

    This wine release includes the 2020 NIRVANA, a wine aged for three years in French oak barrels, and sure to evoke strong emotions with the first whiff of its aromas.  A detailed description is below.  

    Cheers,

    Deepak Gulrajani
    Winemaker / Owner
    Nicholson Ranch

  • March 15th, 2023

    By

    Dear Friends,

    This is a historic year for Nicholson Ranch. I am planting new vines next month in April.  Last year we worked on preparing the land for the new vineyard and the trellis system is now all setup.  The new vines were planted in a nursery in the spring of 2022, first in a greenhouse and then in the nursery’s vineyard.  Presently they are dormant waiting to be transported to Nicholson Ranch in the spring.  In April we will bring the baby vines to Nicholson Ranch and let them warm up for a few days to acclimatize them to their new home.  In the second half of April a team of forty vineyard workers will begin planting each vine by hand.  We need a lot of help since we have 25,000 vines to plant, so we are hosting a Planting Party on Sunday, April 23rd.  All members are invited to plant a few vines, tag them for posterity, then quench their thirst and join us in a celebratory lunch.

    We are replanting 21 acres of the original 31 acres.  (Not to fear, we still have 10 acres of Pinot vines and a substantial cellar of Chardonnay wines to keep you supplied for the next few years).   When I first planted in 1995, I benefited from the advice of grape growers and winemakers.  This time, in addition, I have had the benefit of watching nature for the past 28 seasons create a magical mix of sun and soil, fog and wind, rain, and drought.  Chardonnay and Pinot Noir vines have thrived and continue to be the two primary grapes we grow.  A few things, though, are changing.  There will be more Pinot vines planted and fewer Chardonnay vines.  This reflects the collective palate of our members, who drink more Pinot Noir than Chardonnay.   The new vines will have a new rootstock that is more drought tolerant.  Though California has always had bouts of drought, in recent years the droughts have been more severe. The new rootstock will help with the health of the vines in dry years.  All the clones being replanted are clones that make our reserve level wines.  Only the best of the best is being planted again.  The new trellises will now have small cross arms.  The cross arms, as the term describes, are foot-long metal brackets that are attached to the main trellis post like a T.  The new cross arms will spread the shoots more evenly for greater exposure to sunlight and wind, increasing the flavor and reducing mold.  Each of these changes improve the quality of Nicholson Ranch grapes to create outstanding vintages in the future.

    Fortunately, the weather this year is starting out as the very best for what we need.  The excess rain will keep the soil moist.  We will let the new vines grow their roots to find water. We will not irrigate the new vines till the heat of summer.  Each year we will encourage the roots to go deeper by extending the dry farming period.  In a few years the plants should be completely dry farmed with no irrigation throughout the season.

    This is a very exciting year. Please come and visit and witness the renewal and revival of our vineyards.

    I look forward to seeing many of you this year.  Cheers!

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    Deepak Gulrajani

  • March 21st, 2022

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    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

  • March 24th 2021

    By

    Dear Friends,

    Happy Spring!  It is an early Spring in Wine Country with many sunny and warm days in the low-70s.  The mustard is blooming, adding to the color palette of all the wildflowers on our hills.  We are open again for outdoor tastings.  The green hills and the colorful flowers provide a beautiful vista for our guests as they sip Nicholson Ranch wine in our courtyard.

    In the vineyard, the vines are waking up from a dormant winter with tiny buds emerging from last year’s branches.  From each bud will grow a shoot that will extend in length every week.  By mid-May these shoots are six-feet tall.  Each shoot has a leaf every three inches, each leaf alternating in direction positioning them for maximum sunlight.  The first two leaves that emerge are accompanied by grape-flower buds.  These buds will flower in mid-May, the flowers will pollinate and form tiny berries by early June. The sunshine and the warmth in the three months of Summer will make the fruit bigger and then sweeter and then more flavorful, each an important step to producing the most delicious grapes you have ever had.  As every winemaker knows, good grapes make good wine.  My job as a winemaker is to nurture the vines, harvest the grapes carefully and provide an ideal environment for the grapes to ferment and the wine to age.  Other than that my job is to get out of the way and let Nature take its perennial course. 

    Spring and Easter is a time to experience and reflect on renewal.  The past twelve months have posed extraordinary challenges, but the new buds in the vineyard, however tiny they may be, are Spring’s reminder that it is a new year with sunny days ahead for all of us.

    Plan your trips and visits to Nicholson Ranch and experience the seasons in the vineyard.

    Cheers!

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    Deepak Gulrajani