cropthreash

Notes from the Vineyard


Past "Notes from the Vineyard"


Handmade wines since 1983.

 

Notes from the Vineyard

 

 

SPRING 2006


After a winter of exceptionally high rainfall, the grapevines in our area were very happy. The root zones were flushed of harmful salts, so the vines grew vigorously, producing lots of flower clusters. To obtain good quality in 2005, a lot of money had to be spent in the vineyards during the spring and summer to control growth--carefully training and trimming the vines to avoid excessive shading. Also, the large crop of fruit had to be thinned.

With grapes, there is an inverse relationship between quantity and quality. A vine with a large crop has difficulty ripening the fruit, so it tends to produce unevenly ripened clusters, which compromises quality. A vine seems to have only so much flavor it can impart to the grapes it bears. So, when faced with a large crop, one must eliminate the excess clusters to concentrate the flavor into the remaining ones. This year it was essential to thin severely. For example, with the chardonnay at Bien Nacido Vineyard, we removed three quarters of the clusters during the summer, and, later when it looked as though there was still a big crop, we went back and trimmed again, removing the shoulders to reduce the cluster size. Had we not thinned, the quality would have been marginal; as it was, we still ended up with a generous, yet excellent quality crop.

The fall was mercifully benign-we had great weather for the harvest, rewarding those that did a good job in the vineyard with first-rate grapes. In this newsletter, we offer two wines that we think are indicative of the high quality achieved with this vintage, a sauvignon blanc and a rosé. The red wines offered here are all from the 2003 vintage, which might be considered 2005's polar opposite, as the crop was tiny. However, the 2003 vintage had its own problems, but once again, detailed attention in the vineyard made the difference between success and failure.

 

Adam Tolmach