Notes from Neil
This collection of Migration Winemaker Neil Bernardi's 'Notes' is almost as close as you can get to experiencing the 2013 Sonoma County Wine Harvest! (You know, without actually participating yourself...) We hope you enjoy!
Why Barrel Fermentation?
It is oft said that Chardonnay is a winemakers grape. It is malleable, and can be beautiful in a breadth of styles. So many of the choices that one makes throughout the year can distinctly affect the resultant wine – pick timing, yeast type (or native), ML conversion, stirring, barrel vs tank fermentation, to name just a few. This breadth of styles and techniques in part explains Migrations long R&D cycle (we started making CH in 2001, but didn’t bottle one until 2008!). Barrel fermentation in neutral oak is one of the keys to our program, in that it yields a very distinct aromatic and textural wine profile. The addition of micro-amounts of oxygen during fermentation yields a softer wine with complex fruit aromatics. Compared to tank fermentations, barrel ferments typically have a rounder mouthfeel and a creamy edge to the aromas. Tank fermented Chardonnays tend to have crisper, more distinct fruit aromatics and more apparent acidity. To risk sounding like a wine nerd, I would describe some tank ferments as ‘angular’. As Migration Chard has evolved, we have found that the 90/10 barrel ferment to tank ferment ratio is just right. Of that 90% fermented in barrel, 35% are new barrels.
Harvest Bio – Aline Cresswell – Sonoma County Lab Tech
I have been staring at a blank screen for about 20 minutes, wondering how to start Aline’s bio. Do I go with her sharp intellect, her handsome boat shoes and mismatched socks, her love of academia and all things nerdy, her voracious appetite for knowledge, or her staunch and unwavering belief in Dutch superiority? How to convey in just a paragraph the complexity and depth of her love for raw data, chemical analysis, and the millennium falcon?
Aline has only been with our team for a short while, but has already proven herself to be extremely important, managing much of the data and lab analysis that is so critical to a successful winemaking operation. She hails from the great state of New Mexico, matriculated at Rhodes College where she received a degree in biochemistry, and later attended UC Davis where she received a Masters Degree in Viticulture and Enology. In sum, she knows a lot of stuff, and is a big fan of green chiles. I have also included a picture of her favorite animal, which I had never even heard of, the tartigrade. [Editor's note: We thought the photo was too scary to post, check it out at your own risk!]. Seriously, take two seconds to read about this thing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tardigrade
Harvest Update
The rain has come and gone, thankfully followed by a strong wind and warmer temperatures. After inspecting quite a few vineyards with Jerry Chong, our illustrious Grower Relations manager, it appears that we dodged a bullet in most cases. The forecast is predicting good temperatures, no precipitation, and a potential heat up at the end of next week. In the winery, things are starting to reach the end of fermentation, and can be pressed and put to barrel, freeing up tank space for the next round of fruit.
Harvest Update - Weather
Check out the forecast below indicating potential precipitation over the next few days. As you can imagine, this is not exactly a dream scenario, considering the amount of Chardonnay and other varietals we have in the field. On the positive side, it is only a day or two of potential rain, followed by cool days, and the potential for an ‘Indian Summer’ event in early October. The good news is we already have a lot of fruit (60% plus) in the barn, and quality is high.
My New Assistant
This is my son Lucca, helping me test grapes at Bien Nacido in Santa Maria. He was munching the green berries and thought they were ready to go, apparently I have been letting things hang a bit too long.
Tools of the Trade – The Press
The press has got to be one of the coolest pieces of equipment in the winery.
These things are workhorses, and are the focal points of many actions in the winery. While there are a few different types of press (basket, bladder, membrane, bucket) the idea is more or less the same: separate the liquid from the solid. In the case of whites and rose wines, that means squeezing the fresh fruit until most of the juice is collected in a tank. In the case of red fermentations, that means pressing the fermented skins until most of the wine is and collected.
The unit pictured above is a membrane press, and really it is pretty simple. First you fill the press with grapes. Next the brown PVC material on the right hand side inflates, pressing the grapes against the drain channels on the left hand side. Voila, juice should be pouring out at this point! The type of press, how you operate it, and how clean you keep it can all make a big difference in the resultant wine or juice, so we usually spend a lot of time dialing them in.
To Sort, or not to Sort
If you have ever visited one of our wineries, you probably noticed a sorting line, much like the one pictured below. What are we sorting out that makes such a difference in the finished wine? For starters, we want to make sure that there is no MOG getting into the fermentation tank. MOG, or material other than grape, can take a lot of shapes – leaves, canes, rocks, lizards, all things that don’t make wine delicious. Perhaps more importantly from a quantity standpoint, we are also looking for unripe grapes and rot that may have been missed in the field. From my perspective, removing these two items is key. Unripe grapes tend to have grippy, immature tannins and higher malic acid, a combination that detracts from overall quantity. As mentioned before, rotten clusters can contribute musty flavors as well as oxidative enzymes. Removing as many of these clusters as possible makes the difference between a good and a great wine.
Harvest Bio – Truckers
During harvest, these guys make the world go round. Whether delivering fruit, shipping wine from place to place, or hauling bins, truck drivers are like the bees of the wine world, leaving cheer or dismay in their wake as they flit from winery to winery. Below are a few things I have noted about this noble breed over the years:
- As in any profession, to be a really good driver is a bit of an art form
- Truckers usually have a solid nickname, such as Big Mike, Happy Mike, and M’Dave (these are actual nicknames of drivers we know)
- Truck drivers have the capacity to make you sing with joy as your cherished Pinot Noir grapes, coddled since pruning, arrive on or before the determined 7 am time slot. They also have the capacity to drive you to tears of frustration as you sit helpless, waiting and wondering where the load of said cherished grapes is, and having it arriving 6 hours late, with only a half-hearted shrug as an excuse (this happened yesterday!)
- Like the seven dwarves, truckers come in various shapes and forms – there are happy truckers, grumpy truckers, sleepy truckers, and once in a while a dopey trucker
- These guys work really hard but are usually underappreciated
The gentlemen pictured above are two standouts of the profession, Kevin and Kurt, who work for Eagle Transportation. They are doing the hauling of all the fruit from our Ridgeline Vineyard to our winery, and are excellent at what they do.
Ridgeline Vineyard Harvest Update
We started harvest at our Ridgeline Estate vineyard today in earnest, a full 15 days earlier than last year, with block 40, an extremely steep southerly facing gravel slope that would get a begrudging nod of approval from the Cote Rotie. This is typically our first pick off the ranch and, due likely to the extremely low yields, makes wines of incredible intensity and depth. The Ridgeline vineyard is the cornerstone of the Decoy Cab, Merlot, and Red wine bottlings. Winemaker Don LaBorde has a veritable treasure trove of individual soil, rootstock, and site combinations to work with, adding nuance to his already formidable stable of vineyards. This ranch usually ripens over the course of ten days to two weeks, giving us a chance to harvest a small amount per day, as we are limited by the steep slopes and small staging areas. This aerial shot gives a good sense of the terrain.
The Lazarus Effect
I wonder if science has tried to explain the restorative properties of opening an ice cold beer after a long day’s work? Certainly, from a physical standpoint, hydration and temperature are key elements, but I would posit that the process itself is an equally important element to the satisfaction one feels. The fact that you are drinking a beer is a tacit acknowledgement that the day’s work is over (well, most of the time), the toils of the moment behind you. You sit back and tell stories about the days deeds and misadventures with your comrades, wondering if life can get any sweeter. Beyond the pure enjoyment of sudsy, delicious beer, it can be an incredible motivator, a lifter of spirits, like some great, tin, blue-mountained carrot on a stick, that can resuscitate even the most haggard and despondent of crews. Hence the old adage, “It takes a lot of beer to make good wine.”