A picture is worth a thousand words. The images above are the high point of Harvest 2024. That is me with Pinot Noir grapes from the new Wine Club block. On the right is the Rosé we make from the latest Pinot Noir. On the left is the harvest of the Natalie Chardonnay vineyard.
As you know, we have been working on replanting for a few years. The summary version – in 2022 we asked a local nursery to grow the baby vines in a greenhouse before planting them (with wine club members’ help) in the Nicholson Ranch vineyard in April 2023. This year, their third year, the young vines bore a small number of grapes. Grapes from young vines are generally more fruit-forward and have a softer texture – perfect for making a Pinot Noir rose. I am thrilled to taste the new vineyard’s grapes and wines. I look forward to sharing these with you next year.
The new vines were harvested in the first half of September. The grapes on mature vines take a little longer to ripen—these grapes that make the reserve Pinot Noirs were harvested by the first week in October. The weather in September and October was challenging, fluctuating from a few days of heat with highs in the mid-90s to 100s to a few days moderating to the 70s and 80s. The hot days ripen the grapes faster and require quick decisions on harvesting.
The Nicholson Ranch vineyard is divided into many blocks. Its slope and type of soil define each block. Are the vines on top of the hill, or a slope, or on the valley floor? Is the soil clay, volcanic, or sandy? Each combination of slope and soil will produce distinct flavor grapes. Each block ripens at a different time, some taking a week or two longer to attain the best flavors. When I taste the grapes, I am sensitive to each block individually. The hot days required me to use all my experience in the vineyard to harvest each block when each had the best flavor.
Each block is then fermented and aged separately. After two years of aging, the differences between the wines for each block are more pronounced. The different blocks make a wonderful selection of Nicholson Ranch wines, each different from the other but distinctly Nicholson Ranch.
This upcoming wine club release features the 2021 Dry Farmed Pinot Noir and the 2019 Cuvee Natalie Chardonnay, each from its own unique block. These wines, with their distinct flavors and characteristics, truly embody the magic of the Nicholson Ranch vineyard. I can’t wait for you to experience them.
We hope you had a great Summer and continue to enjoy the next few weeks of wonderful weather. August in Sonoma is very pleasant with highs in the 80s and lows in the 50s, great weather for the grapes to ripen. June and especially July were significantly warmer than last year, with July likely having some of the warmest weather I have seen in a long time. At this stage, the grapes are dark green and tough and able to handle the heat. The grapes started ripening in late July and over time will start softening up and develop sweet flavors. The cooler August has come at the right time for optimal ripening.
As some of you have noticed I write more often about the weather as we get closer to harvest. The weather from now to September greatly influences the color, flavor, and texture of the wine. Either my son Zander or I go through the vineyard regularly to assess the progress of the vines. Soon we will sample the grapes and taste the juice. The sampling is methodical, going through each row in order, picking a grape from every tenth vine, some from the top of the cluster, some from the middle and some from the bottom. Zander collects the grapes and brings them to the winery. We press the juice and let it soak for an hour before tasting it in a wine glass. We assess the juice with the same acute attention as we would a fine wine. We look at the color, the aroma and taste. Does the Pinot Noir juice have the right shade of red, do the aromas evoke flowers, red berries and is it reminiscent of freshly brewed black tea. For Nicholson Ranch Pinot, tea is a key aroma to assess the ripeness. When we sip the juice does it have balance between the sweetness and acidity. All these sensory facets translate to the final wine, so getting it right for harvest is essential.
On a parallel track I pay close attention to the short-term weather forecast. Cooler weather in the 70s will allow us to wait a few days before harvest. A sudden heat spike in the 90s or an unseasonal rainstorm will need a quicker decision. The harvest decision is the most significant decision a winemaker can make. In a vintage where we are blessed with cooler weather a winemaker has more leeway. When conditions are less than perfect the winemaker’s decision will make the difference from good to great.
The 2021 Cactus Hill is the first wine from the 2021 vintage. The weather in 2021 had all the drama of a tougher vintage with a hot spell in early September followed by two, fortunately, small rainstorms. 2021 may have had some drama but this story has a Hollywood ending – a Cactus Hill that is as good if not better than any prior vintage we have produced.
Before I end this note, I have a small ask – please refer the Nicholson Ranch wine club to friends and family. As a thank-you, for each new member you sign up you receive a $200 credit that you can use to pay for a wine club shipment or for purchasing additional wine. New members can sign up online on our website www.nicholsonranch.com. Just send us an email with the name of the new member and how you would like to use your credit. If you sign up more than one member, you receive additional $200 credits for each member you refer. A gift that keeps on giving.
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.
Happy New Year! We are delighted to have had a great 2023 and look forward to a beautiful 2024. The weather in 2023 was cooler than our average year, extending our harvest to November. The wines are now in barrels after completing the primary fermentation and the secondary malolactic fermentation. They will now age for two to three years in our underground cellars undisturbed, gradually transforming flavors and textures.
At present, aboveground, the winter rains are making our surrounding hillsides green again. The wind and rain clear the air, so the days following the rain are sparklingly clear. It is a bit nippy (by California standards) out there, but the sunlight invites one to rejoice in the shades of green lit up by the angled winter sunshine. When it does rain, our waterfall wakes up and, for a couple of days, gushes exuberantly, transforming our view to one you may see serendipitously on a remote hike in the hills. For us, it is front and center, framed perfectly from the window of our tasting room.
I invite you to visit our colorful California winter wonderland, rain or shine – no snow but a beautiful season. As a travel note for many of our members from out of state, now through the end of March, hotel rates and airfares are less than half the price than in summer. Restaurant and winery reservations are more accessible. Make Nicholson Ranch your anchor visit and explore Wine Country this winter. Please feel free to email me directly at dgulrajani@gmail.com or guestservices@nicholsonranch.com for suggestions. I love traveling to other wine countries, and I would love to share my favorite places in our Wine Country with you.
While you are here, you will notice that while the grass is green, the grapevines are not. The grapevines drop their leaves around Christmas, going into three months of restful dormancy. The dormant plants store all their sap in their roots to protect the plants from cold, frosty nights, leaving dry leafless branches above. The main activity in the vineyard is to prune the dry branches to prepare for the new season. A crew of about fifteen people prune each vine by hand going from one vine to the next. The pruner gauges the health of the vine by the thickness of the branches, called canes, and may keep three or four canes for a vigorous vine and maybe just one cane on a weaker vine. All the remaining canes are cut off and dropped between the rows to be mulched and returned to the soil. Each grapevine is now perfectly structured to sprout new branches and bear fruit for the 2024 vintage.
Please visit and witness the start of the vintage. The centerpiece of your visit is, of course, a tasting of Nicholson Ranch wines. This winter, we have added two Gulrajani heartier reds to the menu for you to enjoy. I look forward to your visit.
I am writing this letter a month earlier than expected. We had a wet winter, a late spring, a mild summer, and a somewhat early fall. All combined result in what may be one of the latest harvests in my memory. To be picking Pinot Noir in October is unusual. That said, the longer the grapes hang in the vineyard, the more flavor they develop. It also means I will be swamped in October, the expected time I would write to you, so I am using my found time to reflect on past vintages and weather.
Two common questions I hear are a) When is the best time to drink Nicholson Ranch wine, and b) What are the best vintages for our wines?
When we send your wine club wines to you, they will have already been aging for at least three years and very often for five years since harvest. As you know, we barrel our wine for two years and let it age in the bottle a bit longer. Our younger wines will show more sweet fruit – pear, apple, and apricots for the Chardonnay and strawberry, raspberry, and cherry for Pinot Noir. They will also offer more texture as the young tannins make an impression on your palate. As the wines age and are five to eight years from harvest, they show more complexity. All that means is that each fruit is less individually discernable as the flavors have now melded together through time. As they age, the wines will also have spice and mineral or earthy flavors. The texture makes a more subtle but lingering impression, like a well-worn piece of clothing. At ages nine and ten, the reserve wines show a nice balance of fruit and spice. Beyond ten years, we see a drop in fruit flavors, making the wine more earthy and “old world” in style.
Aging the wine beyond ten years depends on the vintage. Four factors inherent in the grapes align with aging – sugar, acidity, flavor, and tannins. Most years, the weather allows us to get three of the four lined up. Some years, by the grace of nature, all four factors are in harmony. There is a fifth factor, time itself, that melds the components together in magical ways, such that, the wine can be a wonderful surprise even in years where you may not expect it.
Before I get to the vintage-by-vintage assessment, I would recommend you enjoy vintages 2015 and earlier now. You can keep a bottle if you want to see how they age. Vintages from 2016 to 2020 can be enjoyed now or held longer.
I will highlight the past vintages from 2009 to 2020. The 2009 vintage was considered the best year ever, especially for Pinot Noir. However, many reviewers consider 2019 to be an even better vintage. In tasting Nicholson Ranch wines, both are at an equal level of sophistication. What about the intervening years?
2011 saw early rain that forced winemakers to pick fruit before they were deemed ready. 2013 to 2016 was one of the most prolonged periods of drought we have experienced in California. 2017 had excessive heat, and post-harvest fires that remain seared in my memory. 2018 and 2019 were two years after 2012 when winemakers could sit back and wait for the stars to align. 2020 is still fresh in the memories of many here in California – vast swaths of smoke engulfed vineyards as forest fires burned for weeks.
Vintages all factors were great – 2009, 2012, 2018, 2019
Vintages where the magic has worked – 2010, 2017, 2020
Vintages where the drought helped – 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016
Vintage 2011 – Good for Chardonnay. not great for Pinot
Here are my thoughts on tasting past vintages.
Pinot Noir – Cactus Hill
Vintages 2018, 2019, and 2020 – Fruit forward and rounded textures. Drink or hold.
Vintage 2016, 2017 – Spice and earth flavors augment the fruit. Drink.
Vintage 2013, 2014, and 2015 – more concentrated flavors – wines are excellent. Enjoy now.
Vintage 2011, 2012 – Most old-world style with spice and earth aromas – past its prime.
Vintage 2009, 2010 – Fruit forward with spice and earthy notes. Both years are excellent. Enjoy now.
(NIRVANA, Dry Farmed and 777 vintages are similar to Cactus. Sonoma Valley and Sonoma Coast will not age as long – drink vintages 2015 and earlier)
Chardonnay – Cuvee Natalie
Vintages 2018, 2019 – Most aromatic, fruit forward (2020 vintage not yet released). Drink or Hold
Vintages 2016, 2017 – Integrated, softer texture. Delicious. Drink or hold.r te
Vintages 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 – These are drinking very well. Great balance. Mineral notes. Excellent
Vintages 2009, 2010, 2011 – Showing aged character of caramel and honey. Interesting wines.
(Spring Hill and La Colina vintages are like Natalie. Sonoma Valley and Sonoma Coast will not age as long – drink vintages 2015 and earlier)
I have seen considerable fluctuations in weather from year to year, but Nicholson Ranch wines are consistent year after year. The consistency comes from farming my vineyards, making the wine yearly, and cellaring them in our underground caves. I have tended the vineyard since 1995, allowing me to get the best from the grapes. I have been a full-time winemaker since 2009, creating a consistent palate for each wine. The wines have aged in the same cellars, enhancing the flavor and texture. In good years, like 2018 and 2019, most wines from across the Sonoma Coast appellation are good. In other years, like 2017 and 2020, good producers will always make great wines.
Enjoy the 2020 Cactus Hill, 2017 Cuvee Natalie and the 2017 Sonoma Valley Pinot in your wine club shipment.
I hope you are enjoying a wonderful summer with friends and family. We are enjoying a fantastic season at Nicholson Ranch. July and August brought the heat precisely at the right time, nourishing the vineyard from a wet winter and a cool spring. The vines need the summer heat to grow their shoots and leaves to create a canopy of green to nourish the young fruit.
This year the fruit looks ideal, with two clusters per branch, each cluster full of berries (about 80 per bunch). Twelve to fifteen bunches will make a bottle of wine.
But I am getting ahead of myself.
The following two months are critical in the development of the grapes. The Summer gives us whole clusters of grapes. They are raw, dark green, hard to the touch, and tart after completing their first development phase from flower to fruit. In the next stage, the vines will focus on developing the berries’ sugar, color, and flavor. The change in color of the berries from dark green to pink is the first sign of this change. This change of color is one of the most critical events in the wine-growing season. It is called veraison. All winemakers mark their calendars because from veraison to harvest takes about six or seven weeks every year. Veraison is the time that allows us to prepare for the upcoming harvest.
The grapes gradually make more sugar, and the skins turn from green to pink to an intense red. The sugar content, called brix, is the easiest to track week by week. A simple hand-held device measures the sugar to keep track of the progress.
The last phase of ripening is the development of flavor. If the grapes taste like grapes, they are not ready for wine. When ready to pick, Pinot Noir grapes should have strawberry, raspberry, and cherry flavors. These flavors express themselves at the end of ripening, over a short period, changing daily. There is no hand-held device to tell you how much strawberry flavor is in the juice or what the mix of raspberry and cherry is. The flavor decision is all up to the winemaker’s palate. When I taste ripe Pinot Noir grapes, it evokes memories of flavors from years past and the consequential wines. Deciding whether the grapes are ready is instinctive and formed by years of experience. The harvesting decision is the most significant decision a winemaker will make. It is one that I wait for every year.
I am thrilled to share my passion and the fruits of our labor with you. Thank you for your continued patronage and for allowing me to do what I love.
This wine shipment includes the 2020 Dry Farmed Pinot Noir. Along with all Nicholson Ranch 2020 Pinot Noirs, the Dry Farmed Pinot Noir has received excellent reviews from the Wine Spectator and Wine Enthusiast. Your accolades are always the best, and it is nice to be recognized by our peers.
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!
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.
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).
We are approaching another harvest, and it fills me with excitement and anxiety. Witnessing the joy of harvest and being an active participant in the annual cycle of the grapevine is exciting. Knowing the plants are completing their year’s work in producing magnificent fruit is incredible. Yet, I must balance my excitement with the vigilance of monitoring the weather. Currently, and for the next two weeks, we are having perfect summer weather- 85 degrees in the day and 55 at night. As we go into the fall, the daytime temperature usually cools down to 75 degrees and allows the fruit to ripen at a slow pace. This extended season allows the grapes to develop complex flavors. However, my concern is about heat and rain.
In the past ten years, we have seen unexpected heat in the fall or sometimes even rain. Heat spikes take temperatures into the 90s and sometimes 100s, shorten the season, forcing us to harvest grapes before their prime. These spikes are rarely catastrophic since they affect only one section of the vineyard. Our vineyard has several grape varieties and several clones within each type that give a diversity of ripening times. Chardonnay will ripen first, followed by Pinot Noir and then the big reds. Amongst the Pinot clones, Cactus Hill ripens first, followed by Dry Farmed and 777. A heat spike event is most consequential to the block nearest the ripeness peak.
Rain, on the other hand, can be disastrous. As the fruit ripens, the skins become softer and less resilient. Rain and humidity promote fungi that begin to rot the fruit. Rain in California arrives in late October after all the grapes are picked. Every other year, it rains unexpectedly in September or early October while grapes are still on the vine. A small amount of rain, less than a half inch, may not do much damage. But a more extensive rainfall will leave water on the leaves and the fruit—perfect conditions for mold to develop and destroy the crop.
In each case, heat or rain, understanding the individual block of the vineyard and the level of resilience within the section is crucial in making thoughtful decisions. Having farmed Nicholson Ranch for over 25 years has allowed me to navigate the vagaries of each year and course correct appropriately. To this point, most of you will receive the 2019 Cactus Hill Pinot Noir. The 2019 vintage had two three-day heat events in September and a few days of a light drizzle. Despite, the uneven weather, the 2019 Cactus Hill has gone on to win the Best of Class award at the San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition, the largest competition for American wines.
As we approach harvest, here’s hoping that it is filled with calm weather and is easy and smooth.
