Check out the pics for a glimpse of the harvest action. There’s much more to come now that the vines are starting to behave!
The grape stomp is a classic winemaking image. One that doesn’t always apply but on a small scale there are few tools better to get some juice flowing than a pair of feet! A little juice helps fermentation get going, the first step in the winery to making some seriously tasty wine.
Harvest 2011 has commenced…finally! Last week we brought in our Grenache Blanc and we’re looking towards next week’s Viognier pick to keep the harvest train rolling.
We’re a solid three weeks behind usual but despite the delay the quality of fruit is looking amazing so far. These longer, cooler seasons are great for Alta Colina Vineyard. Because our site is generally above the fog line (though you can see in these photos that isn’t a hard and fast rule!) our vines get a couple extra hours of heat and direct sunlight everyday, which means getting the grapes ripe is not a problem for us! These cooler years let us leave the fruit hanging so flavors can develop without fear of sugar levels getting out of control.
We’re off to a good start…
Winemaker Bob Tillman writes about 2010 in Alta Colina Vineyard:
The winter of 2009-10 brought Paso Robles almost twice our average rainfall, breaking several years of near drought conditions. All this water cleansed the soil of accumulated irrigation salts, and recharged both the soil profile and our well. The 2010 growing season was 2—3 weeks late in getting started (as measured by bud break) and unusually cool throughout the spring and summer. The net of this was a delayed harvest. Our first pick was Grenache Blanc on 9/17, 3 weeks later than normal. Our last pick, Mourvedre and Grenache, came on 10/28 also about 3 weeks later than usual. (I am excluding the late harvest Viognier, picked much later, about which you will hear more later.)
After sweating whether we would ever ripen our fruit, a heat spike in late September gave the vines impetus to get the job done. Then in October a series of storms threatened Paso Robles, but passed mostly to the North with only light rainfall on the vineyard. We were very lucky to have only small losses in our head-trained Grenache and Petite Sirah blocks from the mildew induced by these storms.
Our 40,773 vines yielded 113 tons of grapes, equivalent to 5.5 pounds/vine or about 2 bottles per vine. This was 24% higher than our average yield, a testament to the wonders that rain and weather can deliver. Since the number of grape clusters is constant in the vineyard year to year, all the increase came through more berries per cluster and larger berries. Alta Colina Winery consumed 43 tons, while 70 tons were sold to 11 other wineries in Paso Robles. The breakdown of our vintage looks like this:-Toasted Slope Syrah: 16 tons
-Roussanne: 2 tons
-Old 900 Syrah: 7 tons
-Grenache Blanc: 1 ton
-Grenache: 4 tons
-Viognier: 5 tons
-Mourvedre: 4 tons
-Marsanne: 2 tons
-Ann’s Block Petite Sirah: 2 tons
The long hang-time and cooler growing season seems to have produced our finest quality wines to date—at least based on early tasting of barrels. As I write this in January, we have completed malolactic fermentation and are in the process of initial blending trials. There is much excitement around these wines—it appears that we will continue our string of steady improvement in wine quality as the vines mature.
A punch down is the reason for the chiseled abs on the Alta Colina harvest team. HA…just kidding!
Punch Downs are one of least exciting and most important parts of making wine! As we explained in our previous post about pump-overs, when wine grape juice ferments, the process generates CO2 gas that pushes the grape skins (the cap) to the surface of the fermentation bins. To extract all the beautiful color and tannins from the skins, we have to punch the cap down so it interacts with fermenting juice. We do this 2 to 3 times every day on every bin of red grapes (in 2010 we had about 10 bins).
What’s the difference between a pump-over and a punch down? They both serve the same purpose: to ensure the fermenting juice remains in contact with the red grape skins. At Alta Colina, we generally pump over the bins during the first few days of fermentation and switch to punch downs as fermentation progresses. The main reason is that when grapes are just picked, their skin’s surface is still intact and tough. Trying to punch down a bin of fresh grapes would be like trying to punch down a ton of marbles! So, until the grapes start to break down and our rock-hard abs and arms can actually push the cap down succesfully, we pump the juice over.
Makin’ wine, makin’ wine, makin’ wine! Check out this video to see Bob Tillman pumping over of a single lot of 2010 Syrah. We go for big flavor, big color, and balanced tannins in our wines and pump overs play a big role in making our style of wines.
Making sure the juice remains in contact with the skins is the only way to extract all the good stuff we want in terms of flavor and color from those grape skins. In the video, you can see that the skins form a layer on top of the juice below, that layer is called the cap. As the yeast convert the sugar into alcohol, that process releases CO2, which pushes the cap to the top so pump overs (and later punch downs) are important to push the cap back down so it interacts with the juice.
During harvest we pump over each lot 2 to 3 times daily to get the best color and flavors possible. As fermentation progresses, the cap breaks down and becomes easier to push around! When fermentation finishes (when there’s no sugar left), we press off the juice, which leaves the dry skins availalbe to compost in the Vineyard. Stay tuned to see other steps in the wine making process.
It’s been a great few days with Zach in town from Bend, Oregon. He added on a few days to a business trip to Sacramento and he and his dog Charlie have fallen right back in to wine country life! We did a little tasting, eating, and drinking (or course!) and we’ll be getting up early for another Syrah pick tomorrow morning. Our sister, Katie, and her family couldn’t join us this weekend but they are in for Harvest Festival next weekend. See you there!
The reds have entered the building! We did pick 1 ton of Syrah on Tuesday for a dry rose (delicious!) but this morning’s pick of the top half of Block 8 (aka the Old 900 Block) was the first official red pick of the 2010 vintage. Those grapes made it through the destemmer and successfully ran the shaker table gauntlet to leave us with clean berries to go into fermenters. More Old 900 fruit is to come but we’re off to a good start.
We only brought in the top half of the Block because it is dryer. As is most of Alta Colina Vineyard, Block 8 sits on a very steep hillside. When we irrigate we do so evenly along every row. Despite even irrigation pesky old gravity runs down of course so the vines and the bottoms of the hills end up with more access to water than the tops of the hills. Because those vines towards the top have had slightly less water, everything is more concentrated earlier in the picking season. We will probably pick the second half of that Block next week. Until then, there is plenty fermentation babysitting to do while we wait for the bulk of the Vineyard to ripen over the coming weeks.
As in much of the country this week, it has VERY hot in Paso these last few
days. Solidly over 100 degrees and Bob is showing a little leg to mother
nature in response! Ya’ look good Bob.
The decisions we make all year in the Vineyard determine what we have to work with when we bring fruit into the Winery. We’ve farmed these Grenache Blanc grapes to the best of our abilities and now it’s time to press off the juice and let the fermentation happen.
Check out the video to see how the grapes actually go from grapes to juice (and in about 10 days into wine!).
