Anticipation

“Anticipation, anticipation
Is making me late
Is keeping me waiting…”

Harvest 2009 is close. Oh so close.

The Cabernet was at 23.8 over the weekend. Merlot – 23.5.  pHs are in the 3.4s.

So begins the harvest dance, that maddening balance between fruit health, flavor intensity, acidity, pH and brix.

We decided to take our Pinot Gris as juice this year, rather than berries, so we have two 275-gallon totes heading for Palisade this weekend from Washington State.

We also have 5-6 tons of Riesling that should be ready this week as well.

Thursday is the critical day this week. It’s supposed to get down to 36 degrees overnight. We had a hard freeze last year, and had to take what mother nature gave us.

C’mon weather – give us one more week…..

“Blackbird singing in the dead of night…”

Quiscalus quiscula – the common grackle. Also known to anyone who owns a vineyard as “the enemy”.

We netted the vineyard two weeks ago. As we have irregular row lengths, we use the 600 x 100 foot nets, and cover six rows at a time.

You can see how it’s done in the photo above. We put a macrobin on the back on the tractor (forks), put a net bag in the macrobin, and then feed the net up and over a custom-built guide and out over the rows. Workers pull the net out to the sides and anchor it on hooks at the bottom of the trellis posts.

We had good weather this year – mostly sunny and in the low 80s.

The hundreds of grackles that live in the cottonwoods on our farm will now have to forage elsewhere for ripe, juicy treats.

Better late than never…

Finally – veraison.

Took this shot yesterday of the cab up close to the barn. Veraison looks to be about 9-10 days later this year than last year.

For you cube dwellers, Wikipedia defines veraison as “change of color of the grape berries.” It typically signals the change from “berry growth to berry ripening.” In layman’s terms, it’s when the grapes start looking, well, like grapes.

We took some quick brix readings this weekend, just for practice. Most of the vineyard was between 17 and 20, so we still have plenty of time before harvest.

We now need a warm, sunny September, or we’re going to run out of Fall before the vineyard can fully ripen. The sugar/acid dance begins.

It just gives us something else to worry about. Next up – getting the vineyard netted. The birds are eyeing our grapes as we speak….

What a long, strange trip it’s been…

I’ve discovered how hard it is to keep a blog current.

I think it started last year. We were planning a wedding and a honeymoon, plus running the winery. It’s our wedding, right? No harm in taking a little time off – you only get married once (OK – twice…).

Then harvest arrived. We had a tough 2007 – not a lot of fruit. Nothing exciting to write about.

Pretty soon it’s like going to the dentist – you keep meaning to make that appointment, but it somehow keeps sliding to the bottom of the “to-do” list. And finally you’re just too embarrassed to do anything.

Sigh.

It’s been a great year – that’s the funny thing. We got married. Went to Italy for two weeks and ate and drank ourselves silly. Stayed in a freakin’ 5th century castle in Tuscany, for goodness sake (see photo).

I missed writing this blog. It’s good therapy, for one. It gives our friends and family a way to see where all the time and money is going, for another.

OK then – let’s try this again!

“Happy Trials To You…”

This is one of the cooler parts of owning a winery. We just started our 2005 vintage blending trials.

In 2004 (our first official harvest), we didn’t have enough cab and merlot to bottle straight varietals (besides, no one is buying Merlot these days anyway, thanks to Paul Giamatti). So we acted like we knew what we were doing and blended the Cab and Merlot together, along with a smidge of our neighbor’s Cab Franc.

We decided to call it Altitude, if for no other reason than all the good names were already taken.

The 2004 release was more of a “right-bank” Bordeaux – 75% Merlot, 20% Cab Sauv and 5% Cab Franc.

And it’s become our best selling wine.

So, not ones to look a gift horse in the mouth, it looks like we’ll be bottling a Bordeaux blend for the rest of our lives – which is actually a lot of fun.

This past weekend, we swept the lab equipment off the island in the farmhouse kitchen and set up rows of glasses. We have been doing fining trials as well, so we had a lot to choose from with both our 2005 Cab and Merlot (in an effort to keep costs in line we also used French and American oak, so it’s going to get interesting!).

The early results look more like a 50-50 blend this year, but 50-50 is like kissing your sister, so we’ll have to tweak things a little (besides – you can’t say you have a “middle bank” Bordeaux – it just doesn’t sound right…).

At Last….. 2006 Harvest

Finally. After what seems like two months of waiting (wait a minute – it HAS been two months!), the 2006 harvest is finally starting to roll in.

We picked Merlot last weekend, and the Cab is next.

It took forever for the berries to ripen this year. We had a cool, rainy September and October – which is highly unusual for this part of the country. The grapes just hung there, luscious and purple, but the seeds were still green and at one point the brix readings were actually dropping.

Crazy. But then, this is farming.

The Merlot, when we finally brought it in, looked great, and tasted even better. It’s all crushed and being pumped-over as we speak.

Whew. At least the weather isn’t a factor any more. We could screw up the wine, someone could leave a valve open by accident, there could be a fire.

But for now, all that Merlot is safe – cradled in a stainless steel tank, fermenting away.

Harvest is like having a baby. It’s hard, and then it fades from memory, and then it all comes back in a rush. The sight of berries in picking bins. The sound of the crusher/destemmer. The smell of the must. The feeling of all your arm hairs stuck together. The yellowjackets. That first ice-cold beer at the end of the day. Standing in the shower at night and watching grape juice run down the drain.

I love it.

This weekend we’re going after the Cab…..

Hurry up – and wait…..

There’s no occupation quite like farming to teach you to “go with the flow” in life (well, that and raising children).

Most people work in corporate America, with ISO 9000 and Six Sigma and all these programs designed to wring every bit of efficiency and variance out of a system.

And then you have farming, where most of us are humbled on a regular basis.

All summer long here in Colorado, the grapes have been 2-3 weeks ahead of schedule. They budded early, veraison was early, we netted early. Did I mention that everything was early this year?

And then September hit.

It’s been cool, with occasional bouts of rain. We’re seeing typical October weather in September.

And so we wait.

As of last weekend, the Syrah was at 24 brix, the Merlot was at 21 brix and the Cab was only at 20 brix.

It’s now going to be a race to harvest everything before the first frost.

I love farming. It’s a daily reminder that we’re not in control…..

Winefest

We made it through our first Colorado Mountain Winefest this past weekend. Just barely.

Winefest is the biggie out here each year. It attracts 6,000-7,000 people, and it’s our one chance to pour, schmooze, and hopefully, sell.

We’ve spent the last four weeks getting permits, designing a booth, getting shirts embroidered, buying a tent and tables, and last (but not least) bottling wine.

By Friday afternoon, things were looking pretty grim. Deb had taken the day off from work and had driven out to Palisade to set up the booth and the tent. It was rainy, cold, and very windy. We could only put up the tent frame, for fear that everything would blow away in the night.

Saturday dawned clear, cool and less breezy. By 10:30 am the gates had opened and people were streaming in. As one of the brand new wineries, we got a bold listing in the Winefest program, and we were hoping that a few extra folks would drop by and see us.

Leanne (being the amazing artist that she is) had decorated our booth with old wooden boxes, galvanized tubs, fresh flowers, straw and other antiques. She even hand-painted our logo on some old barn wood as a sign, and we hung it from the tent frame. We actually looked like we knew what we were doing.

Deb had also ordered 50 fresh baguettes from a local bakery. When I went to pick them up Saturday morning, all I could think was “Is she crazy? Who’s going to buy all this bread?”

Silly me.

Eight hours, 50 baguettes, and 15 cases of wine later, it was over. The day was one big blur – none of us had a bite to eat, anything to drink, or even had a chance to wander around and look at the other wineries. I don’t think I went to the bathroom the entire day – it was a zoo.

Thank goodness Wendy came out from Denver for the weekend. Cassandra, Lauren and Lindsey worked as hard as anyone. We couldn’t have done it without them.

The label was a big hit. The Port (oops – we can’t call it that anymore) was gone by 1:00 pm. The baguettes we gone by 3:00 pm. Some of the people attending the festival were “gone” by 3:00 pm too (if you know what I mean).

We got a lot of names for our mailing list. Now we just need to get them into a spreadsheet, and get more distribution in Denver so these folks have a place to buy.

The local TV station filmed our booth (so they told me – I don’t remember seeing them). We were on the 10:00 news that night – for about a half second. I grabbed a still or two from the video – you’ll see them in this post somewhere.

When the dust had settled, we ended up selling almost $3,000 worth of wine. Not all bad for a first-year, part-time winery.

It would be nice to relax a little and revel in our modest success, but crush is coming. Time to unpack the picking lugs, power-wash the macrobins, and stock up on cold beer. Until then…..

Tractor Envy

We need a new tractor.

Our little 1970s Ford 1300 tractor came with the farm. It’s simple, cute, old, and hard as h**l to steer.

The 2-cylinder diesel engine is rated at 16 hp (which probably means about 12 hp at the PTO). It runs amazingly well – which is precisely the problem. I wish the darned thing would die so we can get a new one.

This tractor is at its absolute limits every time you hook something to it. It barely runs our 6’ deck mower, and with the 50-gallon Rears sprayer on (with a full load) it can barely climb the gradual hill we have at one end of the vineyard.

We broke a left front axle a month or two ago, and our local New Holland dealer (Western Implement, Grand Junction, Colorado) delivered a consignment tractor so we could get some field work done. We showed up at the farm one Friday night and there sat a shiny Ford 1720. The next morning I hooked up the sprayer (and later, the mower) and fired her up.

Unbelievable.

This newer Ford had 25 overall hp, with about 22 hp at the PTO. More importantly, this tractor had power steering and power brakes. It blasted through spraying and mowing (no pun intended) with ease.

We’ll make it through harvest this year with the current tractor, but once you’ve tasted power steering, there’s no going back.

Santa – if you’re listening…..

Your Pad or Mine?

We finally have a new concrete pad in front of the winery. Words cannot express how handy this is – no more washing barrels and Macrobins in the gravel.

We framed and poured the pad a week ago, and finally got to walk on it this past weekend. In the photo, you can see that we dug and rigged a drainage trench along the edge of the pad in the foreground of the photo. We hope to mortar bricks over the PVC pipe (with spaces between the bricks) to create a simple drain as water runs off the pad. The PVC trench ties into the septic system and leach field for the farm.

The real fun will come in a few weeks at harvest. We can now rig a tent over the pad for shade and crush right on the pad before pumping into the winery.

It’s amazing how you come to appreciate the simple things in life – some 2×4s and a couple of cubic yards of concrete and you feel like you’ve won the lottery!

Next on the list – grading the property, adding topsoil and compost, putting in an irrigation system and planting a yard this Fall (after harvest, of course). We’ve got a wedding planned for next summer, and we’ll need a green, lush, healthy lawn…..