Harvest 2013: The red wines are in and looking good!
11/14/2013
No, Drew is not using a big straw to taste wine out of the barrel!
Having just about completed my first harvest here at R2 Wine Co., I am happy to report that we brought in some amazing fruit from our vineyard sources up and down the California Coast.
With the wines now all in and in various stages of fermentation, I thought this would be a good opportunity to recap how harvest went at a small snapshot of our various vineyards. The four vineyards here are the primary sources for several of our Pinot and Rhone varietal bottlings.
Sanford & Benedict Vineyard
Fruit from the iconic Sanford & Benedict Vineyard in the Santa Rita Hills AVA in Santa Barbara County was the first in the door. I kept the two clones of Pinot Noir separate in part because we didn't have the tank space, and also because I had never worked with this vineyard before and wanted to see how the two lots developed.
The 777 clone was bright and brimming with flavors of pomegranate and cranberry. The mysterious 35-year-old “Old Clone” from this first-planted Pinot vineyard in the Santa Rita Hills was a little riper but still swinging far to the fresh side of the pendulum with a little more blue fruit and spice flavors apparent from fruit to barrel. Both lots cold soaked in the refrigerated barrel room for five days and then slowly came up to ambient temperature on their own. Native fermentation began and from then on each lot two to three cap manipulations per day.
Once the sugar had all been metabolized and the wine was dry, I considered letting it macerate on the skins for a couple days to add some richer mid-palate feel, but opted instead to press the skins to maintain that vibrant, fresh, nearly electric energy of this wine. It's now nearly done with secondary malolactic fermentation and will soon be ready to rest until bottling next summer.
Hein Vineyard
This lot from the Hein Vineyard in Anderson Valley is showing to be every bit as impressive and interesting as the S&B, but things didn't run quite as smoothly. If you want to hear a long story, ask me about trucking this fruit sometime (it's a doozy!). Nonetheless, the fruit got to us at the winery clean, juicy and delicious.
The Pinot from Hein exhibits more earthy forest floor “funk” for lack of a better term. While that might not be the most poetic descriptor, it's about the best I have right now. The stems on this lot of fruit were a little more lignified (light tan in color as opposed to neon green) in comparison to the S&B so decided to do a 30% whole cluster fermentation. This process ensures that the fermentation starts a bit slower and is generally a little colder. It also imparts a good dose of carbon dioxide into the wine which can act as both a livening agent on the palate and a natural method of protecting the wine from oxidization.
The 115 clone lot had been picked the day before the Pommard and the 777 clones and as a result it was warmer and starting smelling a little odd as it was cold soaking. When a wine starts to get a little funky, sort of nail-polish smell when it's cold soaking, you need to take some action. I was faced with two choices: some winemakers will use a somewhat harsh enzyme to essentially kill everything living in that wine, finish the normal cold soak and then inoculate the fruit with commercial yeast and proceed with the fermentation. Although this sounds drastic, there's nothing wrong with this approach. I prefer the second option, which was to cut the cold soak a little short and then let the native yeasts in the fruit from the vineyard take over. This was the route I went and all three clonal lots are moving right along and tasting great.
Day Ranch
The sorting process for the fruit from the Day Ranch in Anderson Valley seemed to take all night (as I'm sure Roger recalls), but aside from this, this 10-ton lot came in beautifully. While the Day Ranch is near the Hein Vineyard, this fruit is much darker and more brooding than the Hein fruit, moving into the riper end of the spectrum and away from the lighter red/fresh end. I had heard from many people that the resulting wine could be really dark and purple as opposed to lighter and garnet. I thought these people must be kidding me until about day 12 when just as the wine was almost dry and WhammO! it suddenly darkened up beautifully. Like the other Pinots, this wine received three cap manipulations per day. Because it was in a closed top tank, I didn't have the ability to punch it down, and was a little worried it might be a little light. My fears were unfounded as the wine came out very nicely and is now in barrel.
Camp 4 Vineyard
I've worked with Grenache from all over the state but the Camp 4 Vineyard in Santa Ynez Valley is definitely the best site for Grenache I've ever taken fruit from. The wine is a very deep but translucent purple. There’s a fine tannin structure developing but will mellow out after a few months in barrel.
The Carignane is much like the Grenache. It came in cold and very pretty -- not a bit of mold or raisins. The sort was quick and with Richard's help, things were taken care of very easily. Having never worked with this grape before, I talked with Byron Kosuge, my predecessor here, and he gave me some pointers on how to handle it. Sure enough, it loves whole cluster fermentation, so I went with close to 40%. The lot has received mostly pump overs as opposed to punch downs as color wasn't an issue with this inky gem. This wine is tasting really great and I look forward to seeing it develop.
Cheers!
Drew Huffine
Winemaker
Post By:
Drew Huffine