Scott's Vintage in California: Post 17. Viticultural interlude

Hi All,

A couple of interesting things occurred this week viticulturally. The first was I went on a grading calibration with some winemakers, viticulturists and upper mgt last week. It was good to taste some fruit with those guys and get a feel for how they grade cabernet compared with how we do it in Australia. Its a collaborative effort with everyone putting their two cents worth in. The session was driven by technical viti who get more involved over here in such decisions than back home. the grades were recorded on an ipad and became the field grade for those blocks. Another thing they do differently over here is they field grade alpha numerically, whereas our field grades are just a letter. There were some very smart vineyards and one in particular stands out, the Steinhaur vineyard which is up in the eastern hills bordering Napa Valley. This is an A grade vineyard and is high, so ripens later than the valley floor. As such flavours have time to develop and wine made from this vineyard is high quality. What I liked about the vineyard though was the cordon/canopy architecture. Back in Post 13 I described the trellis set up and I liked it because it spread the fruit laterally, which means there is very little clumping and each bunch has its own space. This vineyard is a superb example of that theory in practice. I will include some photo's below.

Steinhaur Vineyard

Notice the how far away from the cordon the left hand bunch is

The cordon wire is the one on the right.

Another good shot of the distance laterally between bunches

A cracker of a vineyard

You can see in the last photo above, the canes growing out at an angle from the cordon, not vertically. Advantages are; sun exposure on bunches early in fruit development through to harvest (can be a negative as well), improved spray penetration, reduced need to thin out clumps (saving some bucks), and visually impressive. as mentioned above, a disadvantage can be afternoon sun exposure.

Another interesting nugget I found last week was when I was driving between ranches at about midnight the other night. I saw a heap of lights in a block near our Stanley Ranch and thought "what the hell is that?" It was lights on tractors lighting up the vineyard for night hand picking. Yep, you read right, hand picking at night. There were about six tractors set up with LED light strips on frames on their three point linkage, lighting a panel each across the block and pickers were picking in the light cast. There were tractors behind those that held bins the pickers were picking into. Behind the pickers were some guys with torches checking the rows to make sure no fruit was missed. That's hard core. I was talking to some people at the winery here and I asked them why. Their response was to get the fruit as cold as possible. Overkill if you ask me and totally unnecessary. I bet the pickers love it though. Those guys would pick 24 hours a day if you let them. Photos below.

Night hand harvest

Night hand pick 2

I was unable to get to San Francisco this weekend as I worked all night Friday night and again Sunday night so Pete and I drove over to the coast through the Sonoma Valley. The road was long and winding and went forever over a couple of small mountain ranges. We saw some good country though (photos below). We came out at the coast and headed south. The coast line was similar to the coast I drove along last weekend around Big Sur. The coastline in northern California is rugged, made up of sheer drops and small, hard to reach beaches composed of darkish sand. Some cool scenery though. We stopped at a place called Bodega Bay and had lunch. Pete bought some Oysters and we headed home. A 200 mile trip that filled in a day. Photos below.