HUGE thanks to Janis Switzer of the Paso Robles Press for featuring Alta Colina in today’s issue. We had a great time on the Vineyard with Janis, her husband, and Lisa Pretty a few weeks ago. Thanks again to Janis for this great piece on our history.
And isn’t this a great picture of Bob?! Thanks to the Forbes family for lending us their amazing photography skills! Check out the Bryn Forbes Gallery for more.
Check out Google Maps’ current satellite image of Alta Colina Vineyard. The bottom third of the image looks right. The lack of vines planted on the rest of the property is a bit suspicious though!
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!
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.
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!
Last friday morning marked the first pick of the 2010 vintage for Alta Colina. We gathered on the Vineyard for a 6:30am start time. This 1.5 ton pick was the first of 2 or 3 Grenache Blanc picks over the coming weeks. We picked a small portion earlier in the season to ensure good acid levels so we can use the wine that comes from these grapes in our white blends. The first pick went smoothly so we’re hopeful this sets the tone for a glitch-free harvest!
This has been an unseasonably cool summer. Very few days have broken 100
degrees (or even 90 degrees for that matter). A few nights ago I was up on
the Vineyard with some friends after a strange sunny/shady/sunny/shady kind
of a day and for the first time in months the view from the Vineyard was
obstructed by clouds. But, despite what seemed like bad weather, we saw the
most spectacular sunset of the summer. Alta Colina Vineyard always delivers!
Well, this morning Bob and I popped up to the Vineyard with Elizabeth and Sandy before opening the tasting room. They are both from the Bay Area and in the wine business but even knowing many of the intimate details of the wine industry we still got a great “wow” when we came over the hill.
As always, Alta Colina Vineyard is looking beautiful, and with 100 degree temperatures all week the grapes are turning a maturation corner and the harvest itch is setting in. We’re looking at starting in about 3 weeks, which puts us about 3 weeks behind last year. So far so good and most of the excitement is still to come! We’ll keep you posted as things progress around here.
