State of the Vineyard II: Harvest and the Parable of Block 305

State of the Vineyard II (early November 2007): Harvest in the Short Hills Bench and the Parable of Block 305

The Niagara Escarpment is a limestone ridge, a prehistoric dorsal fin composed in layers of petrified armoured fish and tiny crushed crustaceans. They lend their mineral remains to our soil in the Short Hills Bench, the same soil my settler and pre-settler ancestors are buried in, the same soil we spread our fathers ashes on, the same soil I may one day be added to myself. Around here we believe you are what you drink; you might even be related to it.

Our lands soils are the residue of an eroded mid-continental mountain range dragged here by prehistoric glaciers. Shards of limestone ground fine off of the escarpments rock face by icy glacial teeth are tossed up in forty feet of dark bronze clay.

(Though the family cemetery is behind the winery

it would be false to claim that this is the source of

the body in our wines)
Home to mountain lions, coyotes, deer, wild turkeys, pheasants and possums; also home to black walnuts, tulip poplars, maples and coniferous trees. The north meets the south in this Carolinian Climatic Zone, on land which supports thick forests but also vineyards beneath the shadow of the Niagara Escarpment.

It's been dry this year but thankfully the rains came in July, not too late to size the berries during their period of rapid cell-division. In what has been the driest vintage in 37 years 2.5 inches of rainfall pounded us in two staccato bursts over two days. This added 10 percent to our smaller crop by sizing the fruit. If the rain had added tonnage alone we would have been pleased since the hot days and cool nights already made the fruit quality very high. But the quality rose further as the vine-quenching waters reinvigorated the plants. And then the tap ran dry till harvest. Perfection.

(After flowering comes fruit-set. The sneaky, stalking vine!)
To explain: All plants eat sunshine and it is the tallest trees that are the hungriest, the whales of the forest. That sunshine is used to combine CO2 from the air with H2O from the ground to make wood, roots, leaves and fruit. Trees have strong trunks and grow taller than the other forest plants to spread their great canopies. Vines are forest creatures that compete with trees. The nimble vine has no trunk, just branches; why waste precious resources on a lumbering trunk when you can use a tall tree as a crutch? The vine creeps along the forest floor and stalks the tree like a snake, striking out from the cool damp shade towards the light above. Once coiled high it spreads its broad leafy jaws in a verdant canopy, then it too eats the sun. When conditions are wet vines reproduce themselves through growth. They shoot bull canes that can root themselves independently so that if the plant is severed one becomes two, and so on. The forest Hydra.

If there is stress however, say too little water for vigorous growth, then the vine has another survival strategy: make babies. The vine produces bunches of seeds wrapped in sweet pulp and thick skins. Self pollinated from tiny flowers wine grapes are in fact the sweetest of all berries.

(Grapes, like other fruit, go through veraison --

they turn colour from green to yellow or red)
It is the stressed environment that all vignerons cultivate. Instead of expending limited resources on long creeping stalks to climb trees the forest dwellers laze on wires strung between posts. They don't hunger for light -- we ensure that they get all they need and more. It is water that we limit by planting them on slopes while under-draining our vineyards with weeping tile. All this results in less plant growth but sweet berries with vine-ripened flavours. Think of the difference between a green pepper and a red pepper. Both may be sweet but the red one tastes "riper" than the green one. That's because green peppers are unripened red or otherwise coloured peppers. Put a green one in the window for a few days and you'll see it go through veraison, on the sunny side first. You've seen examples in the grocery store, the blotchy ones you probably never buy.



So stress is good -- but to a point. Even athletes can over work their bodies when trying to build muscle and cause damage. Too little water and a vine will shut down, even stopping ripening despite ample sunlight. It's about degrees of stress and the type of wine you want to make plays a role too. This July nature provided us with the critical rain at the critical time, especially in the Short Hills Bench and in a tiny spot near Vineland Station. This rain narrowed the 2 inch cracks in the clay and nourished our vines. Data from our weather station in conjunction with a network of others showed that in the growing season of 2007 the Short Hills Bench was both the warmest sub-appellation in Niagara and the one with the greatest daily temperature fluxuations between day and night -- and the most rainfall despite the drought.

(Chardonnay and Pinot Noir grapes, ready to be picked for the Cuvee Catharine Brut sparkling wines)

(Boxes are half full and not because

winemakers are native to optimism. It's to

prevent bruising of the skins)

As always harvest began with Chardonnay and Pinot Noir grapes for our sparkling wine, the Cuvee Catharine named after Henry's wife (that's her actual tombstone above). We always pick this fruit early, at lower brix (sugar levels) and at higher levels of acidity. These are delicate wines that show any imperfection because of their natural crispness. All of the work must be done by hand -- each box is only half filled to prevent bruising of the skins. Bruising causes oxidation and the extraction of unpleasant (for this wine) phenols from the skins. Hand picking is critical to great sparkling wine, more than for almost any other wine.

Chardonnay, Pinot Blanc, Baco Noir, Pinot Noir, Gamay, Sauvignon Blanc, Gewurztraminer, Riesling, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon -- all were harvested in that order and all were exceptional by any measure. So exceptional that for the first time, in 2007, we will be making the full range of our Speck Family Reserve wines in the same vintage: Chardonnay, Riesling, Pinot Noir and Cabernet-Merlot.

(This is my brother Matt pre-harvest; note the clean

shave and the cheery disposition. The latter will be

maintained through the icewine harvest in December)

Our task is to get consistency in our vineyards even when the soil, the plants and the weather may vary. I think that we do a pretty good job of this year in and year out. Matt my brother spends nearly all of his time training and coaxing the vines to grow the quality we require. Yet vines are alive, they aren't machines and from time to time despite all your convincing them otherwise they will do their own thing too. I like to tell the following story as a parable of what boutique winemaking is: This year our Block 305 Cabernet Sauvignon acted unusually. Matt trains this beautiful vineyard for our reserve tiers of wines -- it's more than just reduced yields which make the fruit from here great. Still, this year the drier than usual flowering period for this later starting variety gave the appearance that some of the vines were on a different clock than the others. About one in twenty had lower sugar and crisper acidity than the others which still had their characteristic boldness for the reds we have come to expect from this block. What to do?

(The view towards one of the preserved forests on

our land from our eponymous Short Hills Bench Vineyard)

We make three tiers of Cabernet-Merlot blends from varietal (red and rose) to Reserve to Speck Family Reserve. In 2007 the conditions have permitted the production of each tier and at exemplary levels of quality. Whenever we feel that quality dictates, however, we follow the time-honoured practice of declassifying or blending down some or all of any given tier, either as wine or grape. This has the effect of keeping quality high at all levels.

(Triage: Mssrs. Decampo and Breau hard at work)

We could have left this small amount of fruit hanging (only 5% of the total really) and harvested everything together as red without dramatically effecting the Reserve wine. In most places in the world this would be common practice. But great wines are great by the accumulation of many little touches and what we decided was that here we really two wines growing in the same vineyard, a red and a rose. So even as Block 305 acted a bit unusually it was also an opportunity -- earlier than for the red harvest we combed through the vineyard with our best pickers and gleaned the fruit from these 1 in 20 vines. This is another time honoured practice called triage, most often employed by us for making Botrytis Affected Riesling. The fruit from the Cabernet Sauvignon triage was expectedly of lower brix than the remaining fruit which we let hang longer to wring out the last hours of autumn sun (why not, there wasn't any rain in the forecast and the acidity was good?).

There was a special home for the fruit hand-picked in the triage, in a new wine we have made only twice before and for which we especially want fruit of lower sugar levels, our premium Cabernet Sauvignon Rose. It was a win-win as the fruit left to hang got deeper, darker and sweeter while the fruit we harvested early was crisp and delicate. Exactly what we needed for red, exactly what we needed for rose, both wines made better by the triage.

(All in a day)

Our customers will never know that they are getting a healthy portion of our very best vineyards fruit in our happy Cabernet Sauvignon Rose -- but all they need to know is that they like the wine.

Daniel

State of the Vineyard, Part I (June 2007): First flowering

(Bud burst)
(Note: Every Saturday and Sunday I run my two dogs Olive and Popeye in the vineyards. Inspired by the first flowering in the vineyard I wrote this e-mail on my Blackberry and sent it out as an e-blast to a small group of friends. The response was so great that I started the blog in October. State of the Vineyard Parts II and III will follow.)


Sunday June 3rd, 2007

"Hi all

Just walking Olive and Popeye and thought I'd send you an update on the vineyard: The Baco Noir started flowering overnight which means that Chardonnay, Pinots Noir and Blanc and Gamay won't be far behind. Riesling, Sauvignon Blanc and the Meritage reds (Merlot, then Cabernet Franc, then Cabernet Sauvignon) will follow, all in roughly that order. So, with flowering just started, it will be about 100 days till harvest (rule of thumb) -- but a lot can happen along the way speeding up or slowing things down. Harvest for still wines usually starts in the second or third week of Sept so we're right on track.

(Pre-flowering -- the little caps still cover the flowers)
After a slightly slow start this year the vineyards are in major growth mode. We actually prefer a slow start (meaning cool weather through mid-to late May) since it delays bud break. This means minimal risk of damage should we get a late spring frost. (If the buds aren't out then they are less susceptible to frost damage.) We have wind machines if necessary but winter is really our biggest frost worry, not spring. Ahhh, farming.

In Niagara the season goes from winter right into summer. Spring is very cool and short so the vines barely react to it. When the heat does come on the green growth explodes out of the vines. For example, the shoots on the later budding Riesling have grown about 2 feet in 2 weeks! I'm looking at a Baco Noir vine as I write this and it has enjoyed 3-4 feet of growth in the same time.

(The tiny caps are off revealing tiny flowers with
5 stamin each. Those that self pollinate become grapes)
The mild winter just past has meant a very good bud count. Buds have burst every 4-6 inches on the vine so we have a very consistently distributed crop. After shoot thinning (to keep the best positioned buds) we will be left with the canopy trained for high quality: vertical shoot positioning, consistently distributed buds all at the same height on the vine and rows planted north/south for even sun exposure on both sides of the vine (this applies to our latitude in our hemisphere). All of these factors even out ripening and push fruit aromatics, so-called physiological ripeness, as well as sugar/acid balance. Unfortunately much of this work has to be done by hand -- but who said quality came easily, or for free?!

(From zero growth to hero growth in 2 weeks: Cabernet Franc)
All of our vineyards are in the Short Hills Bench on moisture retaining clay soils. We had a lot of rain over the winter and some of that is being held in the clay. As our vines are all quite established with deep root systems they have access to water far down in the ground. The dryness hasn't been an issue for us to this point and won't be for a while. Still, it has been a fairly dry spring so far and we'd like to see some rain. Let's hope for cool nights with rain and warm weather during the day!



Back to running the dogs (Popeye is off chasing a jack rabbit the size of a small deer!)

Daniel

(PS -- Olive and Popeye recline at home

after a good chase awaiting a cookie

in lieu of the rabbit they didn't catch)