The Vintners Voice

“Gentle handling”, as a term, seems to be incessantly uttered by Pinot Noir producers from around the world.  Along with “low yields” it is used to differentiate Pinot Noir from nearly all other varietals.  The thin skin of Pinot makes it the black sheep of winemaking; it demands more sensitivity.  Considering that it is the only red grape I have any significant experience with I have a limited frame reference when one speaks of “gentle handling”.  I have often thought to myself that the lengths some winemakers go to too be more gentle are ridiculous.  Though I have always been an advocate of gentle handling I have also been practical and simply believed that there was a point where enough is enough; it simply doesn’t matter anymore.

Recently “gentle handling” has been on my mind a lot.  Part of the production model at Van Duzer has been handling grapes with augur feeds and must pumps.  These tools are highly efficient in terms of time and expense but aren’t typically associated with quality Pinot production.  Standard Operating Protocol for Bordeaux and Rhone varietals; most pinot producers shunned the augur and pump long ago and opted for sorting tables and forklifts; the poor man’s gravity.

As part of our initiative to improve quality at Van Duzer we are moving away from must pumps to hand sorting and filling fermentors with forklifts (gravity).  The move to gravity is expensive; it requires a lot of specialized machinery made of stainless steel (that only gets used for 1 month a year).

The sorting of fruit and use of gravity will greatly decrease the rate that fruit can be processed.  Instead of 12 tons an hour, through a pump, we will be lucky to move at 5 tons an hour with pristine and perfectly ripe fruit, and far less under challenging conditions.  This will require more of me and my team; more time, more energy and most of all, more attention.  The increased demand of attention from the winemaking team is, I believe, the unspoken benefit of sorting tables and gravity; they bring the team and the wine closer together.

Part of what drew me to winemaking was what seemed to be the possibility for infinite variety.  No two vintages, vineyards or barrels are the same.  The nature of the challenges a winemaker may face, when considered across an entire career, can keep someone on their toes for a lifetime.  I like staying on my toes, it improves my ability to out run boredom.

When I took the job at Patton Valley Vineyard the details of growing 24 acres of grapes and making the wine from them was the sort of test I was looking for.  I stepped out of my comfort zone and onto the steep part of the curve where I had to learn quickly.  I hit the ground running and for the past five years I’ve honed my skills producing wines that I am terribly proud of.  Each year I became a better winemaker, making better decisions, further refining my idea of what my craft was about.  Though each vine, vintage and barrel are always different, the learning curve became more and more flat each year.  I was starting to stand flat footed.

The 2009 vintage will be my last at Patton Valley Vineyard. 

Getting me back on my toes will be the nearly 90 acres and 15,000 thousand cases I will be making as Winemaker at Van Duzer Vineyard in Dallas Oregon.  It feels good being back on the steep part of the curve and running again.

This is what happens when I catch up with the 21st Century.  It is so much easier than writing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPwzFJvou1Q

Winemakers, like anyone else, are inspired by the work of others.   Sometimes it’s the efforts of another winemaker that serve to expose to us a possibility we may had not, as of yet, considered.    Though architecture, sculpture, painting, cooking and other art and crafts often inspire winemakers it is likely music that has the greatest impact.

During harvest blaring music in a cellar is nearly universal.   Nothing can, with perhaps the exception of coffee, better prepare one for the rigors of morning punch downs.    Nothing pumps a crew up during their eighteenth hour of work like loud music.  The stereo, or the iPod these days, you see is an essential winemaking tool.

Some winemakers believe that the music can exert an influence on the wine.  During the 2005 harvest, I woke ferments up each morning with John Coltrane’s “Ole”.  The piece is very dramatic with Spanish tones and an intensity that just keeps going on and on.  I figured at worst it couldn’t hurt and at best, well, it is John Coltrane.

What cannot be denied is that music has not only motivated winemakers but has also served as a standard or example.   How many times have we heard musical terms to describe wines, flavors that are “harmonious”, a “symphony”?  I’ve heard tasters break wines down into “bass notes” and “mid range”.  Infamous winemaking consultant Clark Smith takes these notions to an extreme and asserts that wine behaves like music.   What do you think “Opus One” refers to?

While many winemakers hope their wines embody the ‘intellect’ of a classical composition or the ‘technical proficiency’ and ‘spontaneous energy” of Jazz, I tend to be looking for something with a little more soul.  What I want a wine to do is break your heart.  Not the nasty,” bitter for the rest of your life”, type of heart break but the heart break that just a matter of timing that you look back on and, with a smile, wonder what if? 

Here my top 10 list of songs I would turn into wine:

1. Sweep out the Ashes in the Morning; sung by Gram Parsons and Emmy Lou Harris off of the live album Gram Parsons and The Fallen Angels ’73.
2. 200 more miles; off of the Cowboy Junkies The Trinity Sessions.
3. It’s all over now Baby Blue; from Bob Dylan’s Bringing it all back home.
4. Do Right Woman, Do Right Man; off of Aretha Franklin’s  I never loved a man the way I loved you.
5. Haitian Fight Song;  off of Thirteen Pictures: The Charles Mingus Anthology.
6. Wayfaring Stranger; performed by Johnny Cash from his Unearthed collection.
7. Broken Butterflies; from Lucinda Williams’ album Essence.
8. Aurora En Pekin;  from Marc Ribot &  Los Cubanos Postizos (The Prosthetic Cubans).
9. Brother Flower; from Townes Van Zandt’s  Rear View Mirror.
10. Anywhere I Lay My Head;  by Tom Waits on the album Rain Dogs.



Budbreak marks the beginning the of the growing season for the winegrower.  As the vines lay dormant during the winter months the grower has an opportunity to breathe and contemplate.  Once the leaf tips penetrate the woolly cocoon that has shrouded them the time for anything but action is over.  The growing season is like a train.  An astute grower, that understands the importance of timing, will keep it under control.  The sloppy grower, one who is reactive instead of proactive, will have a runaway on their hands. 

Budbreak can also serve as the winegrower’s annual review and report card.  The grower is provided with few opportunities to more clearly assess vine balance than the one offered by a visual examination of shoot growth in the days and weeks after budbreak.

A Balanced Vine is one where the fruiting and vegetative energies of the vine are in equilibrium.  The grape is the reproductive organ of the vine which has two strategies to reproduce.  The first, and least desirable (for the winegrower), is the Vegetative Strategy.  The Vegetative Strategy is the result of conditions conducive to growth; more than ample nutrients and water.  Given these conditions the vine will increase the mass of its woody tissues and leaf surface area and produce a small amount of fruit relative to its mass.  This increase in leaf surface area then increases the production of energy for the vine and shades the portions of the vine where next year’s clusters are developing.  This lack of sunlight on the reproductive structure of the vine and the large amount of energy available stimulate further vegetative growth.  The result is an ongoing positive feedback cycle where the vine continually stimulates itself to focus its energy on increasing its woody tissues.

The second reproductive strategy is a fruiting strategy.  Conditions that do not favor vegetative growth; limited nutrients and water encourage the vine to focus energy on producing fruit and do so at a high level relative to its mass.  This vine has less energy available, invests less of it in woody tissues thus decreasing leaf surface area.  This decrease in leaf surface area, in addition to reducing energy production by the vine, increases the amount of sunlight the developing reproductive structures are exposed to, further encouraging the vine to invest its energy in fruit and not woody mass.  This is the fruiting cycle.  If one carefully considers most of the elements of Vineyard Management it becomes clear that most of the actions taken in the vineyard are to maintain the balance of the vine on the side of fruiting.

The energy produced by a vine is proportional to its leaf surface area.  This energy is used to power the physiological activities of the vine as well as make the grape more attractive to animals (the function of the grape in reproduction).  The amount of energy produced, determined by leaf surface area,  is fixed and must be spread out over all physiological functions as well as the mass of fruit.  The greater the mass of fruit, the greater the portion of the vines energy dedicated to it.  

The growth of the vine early in the season is not powered by photosynthesis taking place in the young, developing leaves.   Carbohydrates stored in the vine’s woody portions; cane, trunk and roots serve as the fuel for early vine growth.

The growth of the young shoots, indicative of the amount of energy left in the vine from the previous year, serves to inform the grower as to how the vine has allocated its energy produced the previous season.

Excessive or advanced growth on the ends of the cane or end point dominance suggests a vine with excess energy and did not allocate enough of it previous season’s energy to fruit.  The take home story is that this vine is under cropped and out of balance and leaning towards the vegetative cycle.

Apical Dominance, where the shoots near the trunk of the vine grow faster than those near the end, is suggestive of a vine that allocated too much of the previous season’s energy to fruit.  This vine is over cropped and it is out of balance by being too much into the fruiting cycle.

The Balanced Vine, one that has produced and allocated the proper amounts of energy to fruiting and vegetative growth, will display even and uniform shoot growth along the length of the cane.

Too often growers base their crop levels on “rules of thumb”; in Oregon this is typically the “2 tons per acre or less” mentality.   If each vineyard site is unique and has its own inherent tendency to be fruiting or vegetative then how can a uniform application of crop load be appropriate?

By paying attention to early season shoot growth a grower can assess the balance of the vine.  This information should be used to further refine their approach to crop load.  Maximizing fruit quality AND quantity will the reward for those who heed the Lessons of Budbreak.