The Continuing Adventures of Sierra Reed

I apologize for this delayed post.  At my urging, Sierra wrote the following on Wednesday, Sept 12th:

A few months ago I was in Australia fresh out of harvest and a 2 month trip through south east Asia where wine was unfortunately nowhere to be found or drinkable for that matter. I started to get the bug again for making wine and I began to think of home and my father. Here I was, a year of traveling around the world from one vintage to the next and where did I want to go?  I wanted to go to the one iconic wine region of my country....Napa. Now I wouldn't say my father was the reason I decided to become a winemaker but growing up drinking some of the best Cabernets from Napa certainly did have its influences. I can recall a recent thanksgiving a few years back where my whole family was locked up in Arizona on a cold winter day having a beautiful meal and celebrating the merriment of the holidays. My grandpa was rich with humor from all the margaritas and Texas Hold Um he had been participating in all afternoon with my father. My sister however and grandmother were butting heads that day and as the last dish was placed on the table everything came to a head. Now before I tell you the punch line I must tell you my father prides himself in his rare Cabernet that he so willingly loves to share with us on holidays. So when people don't appreciate him parting with his babies due to being preoccupied with arguing you can only imagine what would come next. My father is a soft spoken great listener who feels he only really should raise his voice if he is truly passionate about a situation and this was on of those few times that the voice came out. So my sister starts up with my grandma and I even think I somehow got dragged in there as my grandpa began throwing one liners on the side line, which although very funny, did not help the situation. Then a loud voice from the end of the table bellows out and says,"If we all cant get along then you don't deserve to be drinking my good wine." He grabbed the bottles from the table and held them hostage as everyone went silent and  instantly everyone made up because we knew we were not going to miss out on those bottles. Moral of the story being..If Cabernet made my father passionate enough to speak up, I would have to be passionate about learning how to make it!

        So there I was Ipad in hand flicking off emails and resumes to Napa from Australia with the taste of Cabernet in my mouth. A taste that always brings me back to the great moments I have shared with my family as a young girl and I wanted to now discover it. So after a week of many opportunistic offers in Napa, I came across this Email from Anna Monticelli, the winemaker at Pina Cellars and her response to my resume was like nothing I had ever experienced. She wrote me two pages about her past and her journey to becoming a winemaker and her time at Pina. This obviously moved me very much and after reading about the wines at Pina, we planned a date to speak from two opposite ends of the world to see if I was a good fit. It only took about five minutes before I realized that Pina was my destiny for the upcoming summer and I packed my bags and was headed for Napa.

         I landed and the next I was off to work and met Macario Montoya, the assistant winemaker at Pina. I was brought up to speed in a few weeks walking all the vineyards with Macario and picking Anna's brain about what was to come. They both gave me the freedom to learn and think independently and do things in the industry that I never had the chance to participate in. I never could have imagined that, here we are just two weeks out till harvest and not one grape crushed. But I have already learned more here in one month about wine making, than in the year prior. I am inspired by Macario and his insistent ways of making me become a better winemaker everyday without sweating the small stuff and believing in myself. If that's not a great mentor then I don't know who is. Anna's knowledge and belief in me thus far has opened my eyes to the strong females in this industry and made me realize that as a winemaker you have to have many dimensions to fight with the best and she does.

            It's Wednesday morning and all I have done is managed to clean a few portable tanks and the inside of the press and I'm already sore. So on that note I am going to kick this butt in Harvest gear and make my team proud because this vintage I'm making Napa Cab! 

Dropping fruit on the ground... Intentionally!

There is an activity underway around the valley that I find mildly disturbing. Workers are cutting grape clusters off the vines and dropping them on the ground, intentionally.  It happens every year around this time.  There are two major reasons this is done.  Fruit that is obviously not maturing on the same schedule as the other clusters is cut off.  In the picture above, this would apply to the greenest clusters. But some of those other clusters don't look too bad. 

Those decent looking clusters are being cut off just to reduce the overall crop load.  If the overall crop load is too heavy, it will stress the vine and all the clusters may not fully ripen. I think most winemakers would agree their definition of ripeness is not just a measure of color & sugar content anymore. Many years ago, most grapes in the valley were deemed ready to harvest based solely on the % of sugar content.  That is no longer the case. I venture to say that most grapes being harvested in the Napa Valley these days are picked when the winemaker is happy with the flavors of the grapes.  This is winemaker directed harvesting.  It can drive growers crazy when the grapes are at say, 24 or even 25% brix, but the winemaker says "They're not ready yet".

Several of the vineyards farmed by Piña Vineyard Management for delivery to Piña Napa Valley, will have less fruit dropped on the ground this year. That's the good news.  The bad news is that the reason there will be less fruit dropped, is because there is less fruit on the vines than in past years.  Vines that were pelted with rain while in their "bloom" stage have a poor fruit "set".  For these vineyards, we're anticipating a light harvest this year.  It's a gambling business.  Always has been. 

Big Steaks & Big Cabs

Every year we donate an auction item to the Taste of Howell Mountain fundraiser.

This is what the promotional ad for the event looked like for last year:

And, as the last lines notes:  All proceeds benefit the Howell Mountain Elementary School.

Prior to last year, our auction lots were typically dinners for 20 - 24, served in the cellar.

But last year, we  decided to offer a more intimate experience:

The winning bid came from Lorna Wood & Bob Long.  The date agreed upon was April 16^th, 2011.  Their group of 7 folks arrived at the winery right on time and we transported them to a new deck I built on the hillside above Piña Vineyard Management. 

 The deck site was chosen because of the extraordinary views.  This was the first “official” use of the deck that is not yet even completed.

In the above picture, Davie is pointing out points of interest to the group.

One point of interest is the group of trees & buildings just over the folks in the picture.  That is Plumpjack Winery.

In the enlarged picture above, is the home we grew up in until 1962. 

More info on that is shared in another one of my posts.

Larry grilled sausages and served Piña Cellars Chardonnay.  We stayed for the better part of an hour before returning to the winery. 

Once back at the winery, Davie & I explained the rules of the game & officiated while our guests played Bocce.

We had planned to eat in the cellar, but at Lorna’s request, we set up for dinner under the trees above the bocce court.

As the bocce games continued, John put the steaks & veggies on the grill.

Eventually, we sat down to dinner.

All agreed that it was a perfect evening for dining outside.

 

And the dinner received much praise.

Leslie Burma, Jackie Rubin & Javier Cardieo helped with all aspects of the dinner.

There were many toasts (that’s Bob & Lorna) celebrating our good fortune.

Dessert was served with our (soon to be released)

Late Harvest Chardonnay, as the sun set.

The following week, we received a very kind & gracious note from Lorna Wood:

Larry,

We all want to thank you and your brothers very much for the fabulous time we had last weekend.  Sharing your "mountain" with us, the view, the history, the stories were all tremendous; but then teaching us bocce and cooking up a awesome dinner to have with your first class wines were the creme de la creme.  It was an event we all will remember and will be hard to top!

I attached some pictures for your album.  Thanks again - we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves!

Lorna Wood, Bob Long, Erika Vogler, Mel and Rosemary Gafner, & Bob and Jan Polichino

We intend to offer the same auction item at this year’s Taste of Howell Mountain, for those of you that might be interested.

As the event gets closer, you will be able to get more information and see the auction lots listed here:

http://www.howellmountain.org/

You need not be present to win!

If you want to bid on an auction lot, but cannot attend, please contact:

Claudia J. Chittim

Executive Director

Howell Mountain Vintners & Growers Assoc.

2260 First Avenue

Napa, Ca 94558

707-252-6229 – phone 

Email: claudiachittim@gmail.com

Above picture created by Leslie Burma

Optical Grape Sorter to the Rescue

So what do you think this mechanical monster is and does?

2010 was a difficult year for most grape growers in the Napa Valley.  It was unseasonably cool through most of the growing season and the grapes were maturing later than usual. Notice that I didn’t say it was an abnormal year. That would imply that some years are normal and it doesn’t seem that we’ve had anything I could refer to as  “normal year” in a long time.  Tedious leafing had exposed the grapes to direct sunlight, just as planned.  Just when we were beginning to think that we might make it to harvest without any major concerns, we got hit with a heat wave.  It was an intense heat wave.  It was as if Mother Nature woke up and decided to make amends for the cool summer.

Things looked bad.  We had grapes turning to raisins, especially on the sunny side of the clusters. I have read, and believe, that the single most important factor for quality wines is a uniform crop.  But with the raisins, our crop was less than uniform.

Anna, our winemaker, suggested a fairly expensive solution to this dilemma. She suggested we use an optical sorter.  We had to decide between spending lots of money for top quality grapes or producing something less than top quality wines. When we looked at it that way, we had no choice.

So our good friends at Walsh Vineyard Management had an optical sorter that we could rent.

So what exactly does an optical sorter do?  This is the amazing part.

An optical sorter looks at each berry and decides if it is worthy of being made into quality wine. 

Did you catch that … “each berry”?    So how does it do that? 

Thomas Ulrich, in an article for Wines & Vines, described the process like this:

“The destemmer detached berries from the stalks by moving clusters of grapes along a pair of vibrating inline berry separators. The fruit fell onto a notched roller sorting table that pushed the stems and other debris over the side of the machine and moved the berries into the optical sorter. A vibrating table carried them to a rope conveyor made up of 99 parallel cords that aligned what was left of the harvest for a final inspection.

The optical sorter photographed the berries and extraneous debris as they moved towards the ejection jets located at the end of the rope conveyor. The jets fired as seeds, jacks, raisins and imperfect berries cleared the end of the conveyor, hurtling them toward a waste bin. Momentum from the rope conveyor carried the unblemished grapes past a threshold and into a bin set aside for collecting the harvest.”

In this YouTube video, you can see the optical sorter in operation.  Unfortunately, you can’t see the air jets actually blasting away at the substandard berries, but you can see the speed at which the berries travel down the conveyor. As you watch the video, keep in mind that each of those speeding berries is closely evaluated before they can make it past the air jets and into the “keep” bin.

Technology helped us survive yet another difficult growing year.  We’re due for Mother Nature to give us a normal year, whatever that is.

Grapes Gone Wild!

This is what a typical Pina Vineyard Management Farmed vine looks like this time of year. The canes have been hand tucked to be inside the trellis wires and the clusters are developing nicely within the fruit zone. The fruit zone is a horizontal band about a foot tall. And as the name implies, it is where the fruit grows. The reason the grapes only grow in this area is because the fruit only forms on buds that arise from the previous season’s growth. And each of the vertical canes (branches) was pruned back to 2 buds during the dormant season. In fact, the clusters above were formed during the 2008 growing season. Before pruning for the next year’s crop, some folks will study the buds on some pruned “sample” canes to forecast the number of clusters that can be expected, and prune accordingly. This is done by opening up the buds and studying them under a microscope. You can actually see the beginning formations of the clusters. I was amazed the first time I had the opportunity to see this.

Later in the year, the grapes will look something like this:

So what happens to a vine that does not get pruned back at the end of the growing season?

Here’s a good example: The picture above is a enlarged section of the picture below:

When a vine goes un-pruned, clusters form all over the vine. The above vine was not pruned because this block of vines is scheduled for removal. There are too many clusters for the vine to carry them all uniformly to full maturity during a regular growing season. The resulting crop is out of control and would not produce the quality of fruit used in most high end wines.

These are obviously “Grapes Gone Wild”

The Piña Plucker

The Piña Plucker By John Pina

In the harvest of 2002 we experienced some sun-burnt fruit at our Buckeye Vineyard due to an extended period of hot dry weather just before harvest. Our winemaker, Cary Gott, was concerned so we asked the picking crew to drop fruit that had significant shriveled berries. The result was clean fruit for the winery but significantly less due to the amount dropped.
The 2003 harvest experienced similar hot dry weather, again burning the berries exposed to the afternoon sun. Cary and I looked at the vineyard the day before our planned pick and again we were concerned with the amount of shriveled berries. The plan was to again go through the vineyard the morning of harvest and drop any burnt bunches.
As I was driving home that evening I considered the options and came up with a plan. I drove straight to the second-hand store in Healdsburg and bought all the forks they had on hand. I then went home to my shop and started cutting and bending the prongs to fashion a suitable berry removal tool. I took two forks and riveted them together facing opposite directions. One fork retained all four prongs, but they were bent as a uniform rake. The fork on the other end retained only the two center prongs that were also bent to form a two prong rake. The idea was to use the full rake to remove all the berries on a burnt bunch while the two prong rake was used to remove individual burnt berries. I worked late to produce a dozen of these “pluckers” so that there would be more than enough to supply one to each member of the harvest crew the next morning.
The next morning when I presented the tools to the crew, I’m sure they thought I had lost it. I explained that the purpose of the tool was to remove only shriveled berries rather than the whole bunch. Of course, it was easy to find the burnt berries as they are only on the side of the bunch that got the hot afternoon sun. It only took a few minutes before they were comfortable with its use and made extremely good time going through the vineyard.
The next generation of pluckers is still two stainless forks but now they are tightly welded together.
We began to share these tools with our vineyard management company clients and even considered having them commercially produced. Modified VSP trellis systems have reduced the need for this tool lately.
John C. Piña
Spring 2009

Treading Lightly – The Kubota Secret

The Kubota Secret

I have several childhood memories of growing up in the middle of vineyards. One of the images that I’ve carried with me is my father driving a Caterpillar D-2 pulling a disc through the vineyards on a brilliant spring day. There was a lush crop of Mustard, so tall that the tracks of the CAT were not visible – Just the upper half of the tractor floating through the Mustard with my dad at the helm. There was a small flock of red-winged blackbirds following closely, ready to swoop in and snatch earthworms as their world was turned upside down.

Over the years, Pina Vineyard Management (PVM) has had many Caterpillar tractors. They are great machines. In recent years, we’ve been adding some John Deere tractors to the fleet. The overwhelming factor when purchasing these tractors was function. They were chosen to get the job done, pure & simple. And PVM also has lots of Kubota tractors chosen for the same reason.

In the Spring of 2006, the local Kubota tractor dealership approached us with a unique proposal. Kubota had been working on a new tractor and they needed somebody to give it a well rounded field test: Work it hard, find its strengths & weaknesses – If you find problems, we want to know. Say no more, just give us the key. But, they said, there is one more thing:

Keep it a secret.

The tractor was delivered on an overcast day after a period of rain. It came with at least a half-dozen Kubota Engineers that were eager to test the metal of their baby. Their enthusiasm was admirable. After several hours they left and headed back to Japan.

After looking at the top picture, you may be wondering what the big secret is. It’s the side-view picture that will give you the answer.

Yes, a wheel tractor that also has tracks or a tracklayer that also has wheels.

Pina Cellars (in cooperation with Pina Vineyard Management) hosted the Kubota new tractor unveiling for the media and some local farmers. In the picture above, that’s brother Davie explaining our involvement with the project and describing our “testing” of the new Kubota Power Krawler.

You can check out the Kubota website for more information:
http://www.kubota.com/f/aboutkubota/prl67.cfm

If you do, note the pictures that were taken in the PVM vineyard that sits high above Miner Winery. It’s a bit too steep to feel comfortable in most tractors.

After a day of testing - Kubota’s dirty secret

This is beginning to sound too much like a Kubota advertisement, so I’ll get to the point that I intended to make. And that is that new vineyard equipment is changing to meet the needs of new vineyards.

New vineyards/old vineyards, what’s the difference?

Well, for starters, new vineyards are typically planted in much closer rows than old vineyards. My dad’s old CAT D-2 wouldn’t fit down the rows of most vineyards planted these days. As a result, many tractor manufacturers are now offering narrow gauge tractors.
A growing concern among growers is soil compaction. Those old CAT D-2s looked pretty heavy, and they were, BUT the weight was distributed over a much larger area than today’s wheeled tractors. And that’s one of the big selling points of the new Kubota Power Krawler. It doesn’t compact the soil as much as a similar sized wheel tractor. How innovative of Kubota you say? Well, yes and no. It’s not like they invented the concept.

Photo courtesy http://www.fightingiron.com/FI-Heritage.htm

PVM gave the Krawler a thorough testing with several different implements and we were impressed. PVM now owns one of the new Kubota Power Krawlers, and will continue testing another production model for Kubota. Great machines – but I’m thinking the image of the driver sitting in a “climate controlled” cab with the high tracks visible while discing down the mustard is going to fall short of my recollections from the good old days.