XTREME Harvest

Ahh, harvest: crisp fall mornings that give way to the smell of freshly-crushed grapes, rolling hillside vineyards tinged with brilliant crimson hues, palm trees clicking softly in the breeze above a warm sandy beach . . .

Wait a second. Palm trees?

Okay, I confess. I ditched our team during harvest. I’m not good for much more than sorting grapes or rinsing bins anyway (although Brian DID let me use my oversized feet to gently squish some Pinot Meunier this year.) Instead I try to support them by offering food and company (and yes, taking some of the silly pictures that have graced our Facebook page in recent weeks). I felt pretty guilty heading to the tropics with everyone still working such long hours in an effort to coax the best of Mother Nature’s gifts, but I too was given a gift, and there was only one place to enjoy it . . . . MAUI.

Bovines get branded, triathletes get bodymarked . . . fortunately I had a full week on the beach to get rid of my number 294 suntan before returning home.

Ironically, it was not rest or relaxation that tempted me, but the opportunity to get my butt kicked by some of the world’s fittest athletes. The XTERRA World Championship is the annual culmination of an off-road triathlon series that draws qualified competitors from around the globe, and it was truly an honor to be one of them.

As a first-year triathlete, it was more than a little intimidating to be out there with such talented, experienced (okay, totally ripped) bodies. In the days leading up to the event, however, I was once again reminded what a friendly, collaborative scene XTERRA really is, and by the time the race rolled around, I was ready to enjoy myself.

The event began with an ocean swim – two 750m laps separated by a beach run. I’m not a great swimmer, so my goal was not to swallow too much salt water. It was a televized event, and at one point during the second lap, I looked down amongst all the churning water to see a guy in scuba gear on the ocean floor with a camera pointed up at me! I managed a thumbs up, but saved the smile for my transition to the mountain bike (always my favorite part). The 19-mile course went up the side of Haleakala, Maui’s 10,000-foot volcano, just below the island’s only winery at Ulupalakua. Pineapple wine, anyone?

I took it easy on the climbs and tried not to crash on the sharp lava rocks while taking in the spectacular views on the descents.

I was glad I scoped out this section the day before . . . yikes!

The 7-mile run took us back up the mountain, then down to the water for a beach run, including a treacherous stretch of rocky tidepools. I was happy to make it through with both ankles still firmly attached, and even happier when they slapped two icy cold towels on my head at the finish line!

Those icy cold towels were awesome . . . although I DID feel a little bit like Linus in the Peanuts Christmas play.

It was an incredible, unforgettable experience . . . many thanks to our team for supporting my extra-varietal affairs while powering through the final throes of harvest (an endurance event in itself). Stay tuned next month for the recap of my first Ironman on 11/22. In the meantime, if anybody has tips or fun stories from past racing experiences, please send ‘em my way! Mahalo.

Harvest Lunche’

The harvest of 2009 has been memorable. We have seen non-stop grapes delivered since very early September. The NO VACANCY sign in the cellar has been lit up more often than anytime I can remember.  After the drenching earlier this week, we are now in a holding pattern, waiting for the vineyards to dry out enough to resume harvesting.

One thing that has not changed is the appetite of our harvest crew.  Crushing grapes is very hard work. Making wine at De Loach is more labor intensive than at any of the mega-wineries.  That labor is provided by a diverse crew of guys, all of whom need fuel to make it through 12 hour days. Lucky for us, we have a great kitchen and three times a week, a delicious harvest lunch is served.

The brain trust of De Loach Vineyards enjoys another great meal.

The advantages of having everyone eat together are many. Harvest is long and hard. It helps to have time together laughing, eating and taking a break. Our kitchen crew works hard to include delicious food from our garden. Almost every meal has a salad with fresh lettuce and great tomatoes.  

Chef Sue Boy keeps the crew going all through Harvest

  

The menu for lunch has included such all time favorites as: Taco Salad, Chili, Asian Chicken Salad, Spaghetti and Hamburgers.  Comfort food for winery workers. The same lunch crew of Sue Boy, Lisa P and Janet can whip us a simple harvest lunch and then turn around and prepare an elegant dinner for 50. It is a pretty sweet deal for us.  The only down side is needing an afternoon nap after a satisfying meal.

Alexander The Intern

With harvest cruising along in high gear, I thought I would to opportunity to introduce a valuable member of our harvest team…

 

Intern in his element

 

A nineteen year old student at Santa Rosa Junior college with plans to transfer to UC Davis in the fall of 2010, Alex Alper has the wine business in his blood. His father Brad is a local grape grower who supplies Pinot Noir, Old Vine Zinfandel, and Syrah grapes to DeLoach from the historic Von Weidlich Vineyard in the Green Valley AVA which he manages.

 
As a harvest intern at DeLoach, Alex performs many of the tasks critical to our decision making during harvest. Armed with grape scissors, a hanging scale, 15 gallon trash bags, and a wealth of Sharpie markers, Alex gathers the grape samples we us to generate yield estimates and assess fruit ripeness. Back at the winery laboratory, he crushes the samples, analyzing them for sugar content and acid level. Post analysis, Alex compiles the data he has collected, then adds it into the database that guides us through harvest.

 
When he’s not hard at work in the classroom or vineyard Alex can be found flying high above the motocross track behind the handlebars of his Honda CRF 250. Second only to this young man’s spirit of his adventure is his willingness to discuss his spirit of adventure. If you find yourself at DeLoach in the future and you have the good fortune of bumping into Alex, give him a pat on the back for all his hard work and brace yourself for some marvelous banter!

the special treatment continues…

It’s already October 2nd, and the production crew has been hard at work for well over a month now. In response to Katie’s excellent blog post with Brian treading the Pinot Meunier, I thought I’d add a few pics showing the continuation of the process. Picked on September 22, we brought in just over 1 ton of fruit. Today, it was time to press it off. The “juice” (it is actually somewhere between “juice” and “wine”) is still very sweet. It will finish the rest of its fermentation in barrel for more complexity.

Julian, on his 3rd harvest with De Loach Vineyards, is shown digging out the shrivelled whole clusters of Pinot Meunier.  The fruit is then transferred into the stainless steel “basket” to be gently pressed over the course of a couple of hours.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

With a basket press, often the juice yields are lower, and yes, it does take longer, but the results are well worth it.

 

 

 

the special treatment

Winemaking became a little more intimate today when Brian jumped the wall of a 1-ton open-top vat of van der Kamp Pinot meunier to subject the whole-cluster fermentation to a bit of foot-treading.  Why?  The old-world winemaking technique of pigeage à pied is the most gentle (and practical) method of manipulating the top layer of whole clusters to encourage gentle extraction, release a bit of juice and initiate conventional alcoholic fermentation in the vat.  Most of the clusters beneath the top layer remain intact through their fermentation, which is actually a variation on carbonic maceration (a within-skin, enzymatic fermentation).  Whole-cluster fermentation can contribute significant and unique aromatic and textural components to the finished wine, but the technique is not without myriad crevasses of peril.  Jordan Mackay, author of Passion for Pinot, warns that leaving the stems in the must is “undoubtedly a high-risk gambit”, “chancing the inexcusable green flavors that can result, in pursuit of something more complex and unique.”  The vat environment must also be kept anaerobic with carbon dioxide to deter unwelcome microbes that could get a foothold in the cluster matrix.

Brian managed to multi-task as he took a call from Eric to make some crucial picking decisions – don’t drop the Blackberry!  We’ll blend some of this wine into our 2009 van der Kamp Pinot noir, which Brian promises will be delightfully complex (with beautiful aromatics, and not a whiff of Brian - I promise!)

 

chillin’

With temps above 90°F  the last few days, the grapes are coming in fast and furious, and we’re cookin’ here at the winery!  Today we received Pinot noir fruit from the Maboroshi, Ritchie, van der Kamp and Thornton vineyards – 100% hand-sorting for these grapes, so I’m looking forward to a long night…  While our crew is baking in this weather, many fermentations are kicking off with enthusiasm and I’ve got to keep a close eye on those open-top vats.  We needed to get in some mid-day punchdowns to wet the caps and keep the ferments happy (crucial for keeping the good yeast healthy and the bad microbes at bay), so I rolled up my sleeves and got to work atop a vat of Russian River Valley Pinot…

After checking on the sorting table team (slow, but thorough!) I then trekked over to a neighboring vineyard to check the progress of a Pinot block that we’ll pick soon…  The quality of fruit this year is awesome – I’m so excited about the 2009 vintage!  We’ve got a great crew, and although it’s hot outside (I’m hoping to sneak a dip in the guesthouse pool one of these afternoons…), everyone’s putting in the extra effort to give the fruit the attention it deserves and keep on top of all that cleaning!  In fact, I think they deserve a pizza dinner tonight to break up the long hours!  Now, where are my take-out menus…?  Any suggestions for good take-out in Sonoma County?

Slither Up To The Bar . . .

When you work at a winery with a public tasting room, you get to meet people from around the world. They come in all shapes and sizes, with diverse backgrounds, hobbies, interests (and levels of drunkenness), but they are united in their love of wine (well, ok, some of them have just been dragged in here by someone ELSE who loves wine). Sometimes they bring their kids, who like to marvel at the giant French rabbit on our front porch before moving inside to discover our secret crayon basket. Locals often bring their dogs, who generally seem content to flop down on the ground while their owners imbibe. We love them all, and we thought we had SEEN it all, until this past weekend, when a gopher snake slithered right across our threshold into the tasting room. I was pouring our Maboroshi Pinot Noir for a delightful couple from the UK when I happened to see it slipping silently through the open doorway.

Will DeLoach Vineyards become the Russian River's first snake-friendly tasting room?

My guests claimed snakes basically don’t exist in the UK, but they have always been a part of my life. Growing up near the American River in Sacramento, I can’t count the number of rattlesnakes we found coiled on back porches during the hot summer months, hidden amongst the weeds (which, naturally, we romped through barefoot), or once, curled up in my mother’s riding boot. She thought it was a sock bunched up in the toe, and couldn’t be bothered to remove it while making the short walk to feed our horses. It was only upon her return that she pulled her foot out of the boot, heard the familiar rattling sound, and was horrified to realize she had been playing footsies with a baby rattler!

As kids, we learned to think snakes were kinda cool, as long as there were no rattles on the tail, and I even ended up having one as a pet for a couple of years in high school: a smallish Indonesian Garter snake named Slim. My mother remained terrified of them despite their frequent apppearances in our lives, and I elected not to tell her about the new goldfish-eating family member stashed in my bedroom. This worked out fine, until I came home one day to discover that it had slithered out of its cage, nowhere to be found. I had to tell my mother, for fear that she would chop its head off (if she didn’t faint first). I don’t think she slept much for the two weeks until Slim returned, hungry but unscathed, from his unsanctioned vacation to the far reaches of my closet. Needless to say, he moved out shortly thereafter.

Happily, none of the tasting room visitors panicked when our snake showed up last weekend. I transported it gently away from the building, pleased with myself for finding some cozy rocks that it could slither into. Incredibly, it showed up on our doorstep again the very next day. I guess there’s nothing like  the warmth of a tasting room!

just another day of harvest…

day & night

…she rose from a dreamless slumber to grace the winery entrance: a giant bronze goddess to watch over us.  Guiding the quiet dawn light and silently mocking me as I am still working at dusk.  I keep stressing my mind – madness to magnet keeps attracting me.  We are bursting at the seams with Pinot grapes, yet I can’t but gently encourage them to stay the course, and finish fermentation with health and happiness (although a little yeast stress might give me the complexity I’m looking for in my wines…)  A certain company executive suggested I use my bathtub to ferment the surplus grapes – only the best accomodations for our fruit!  Yet such a vessel would necessitate a pigeage of generous plunge…

If I were a Pinot grape in a cozy open-top fermenter very much wanting to jaunt through fermentation, these are my thoughts:

I try to run but see I’m not that fast
I think I’m first but surely finish last.

It’s truly impossible to predict how one fermentation to another will proceed…  Careful processing, attentive monitoring and a keen nose will be our best allies.  But sometimes those little buggers have minds of their own…

5th Annual Lobster Feed

 

On Saturday, August 8, over 90 Wine Club members and friends were treated to a warm summer evening at the Guesthouse while sipping our newly-released Pinot Blanc and nibbling appetizers.   The festive mood for this event was set when guests were seated, donning lobster bibs.  In the tradition of Maine Lobster Feeds, guests stood back and the chefs poured out buckets of yummy food!  Guests sat at long tables piled high with lobster, tiger prawns, sausages, artichokes, fresh corn, onions, garlic and potatoes…yum!  Sleeves were rolled up and the feast began! 

 

We’ll let the pictures speak for themselves… it was fun and everyone had a great time!