Author Archives: Doug Williams

Drought Update and our Well Status

If you have been watching the news you should have heard that California is in a severe drought. We had about 20% of our normal rainfall last year and the previous years were OK, but not to normal.

Last week (2/6/14-2/9/14) we had our first real winter rain storm of the season and we got 10.7″ of rain. Unlike where I grew up in Olympia, WA where it rains 1/4″ a day all winter, we get our rain in downpours and then it clears up. So this was bigger than a normal storm but not unwelcome. Since we normally get 40″ a year, and this storm put us to 15″, we still have a ways to go to refill our aquifers and get the ground fully saturated.

The other thing you may have heard is that some towns in California will run out of water. True…depending on where they get their water. Here in Sebastopol we have a good aquifer that so far has not been affected by the drought. We use this aquifer for Turtle Vines. Even though we are a new vineyard we are striving to use as little water as possible. I probably went to far last year as we did not get enough renewal spurs, but that is for the next post.

We tested our well last week. It is drilled to 170′ and right now we are at 61′ to the water table. Later in the year when we begin watering, we will test it again and also find out how fast it recharges after use. Just FYI…When we purchased our home 6 years ago they said the well was good for 20 gallons/min. We set up 4 sections in the vineyard and they only draw around 7 gal/min.

This is the map of the recent storm. We are near the Graton station.

2013 Wine Update

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Our 2013 Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Noir are enjoying the cold temperatures here at Turtle Vines. Not like the rest of the country, but cold enough for wine!

A lot of people ask…”What do you do in the winter?” Well, you need to rack off the dead yeast (lees), check pH and acidity, determine if secondary fermentation is complete, sulfur the wine so it does not go bad…and of course taste the wine and make sure something “funky” is not going on while you weren’t watching. Right now we don’t have all the equipment for testing, so we are sending it to a lab…here are the results and the actions we took.

By the way, did a blind tasting of our 2013 Sauvignon Blanc vs 2011 Matanzas Creek Sauvignon Blanc and even as ours is only 3 months old 3 of 4 people preferred it!

Sauvignon Blanc
Alcohol – 12.7%
TA – .375 … sulfured to 0.6 g/100ml
pH – 4.1 … will come down to around 3.9 after acid addition
Sulfured to 60ppm
Malolactic Complete

Pinot Noir
Alcohol – 13.9%
TA – 0.465 … adjusted to 0.55 g/100ml
pH – 3.95 … will come down to around 3.85 after acid addition
Sulfured to 75ppm
Malolactic Complete

3,700 Year Old Wine Cellar

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I had to repost this…a recent discovery of a 3700 year old wine cellar. I sure hope the wine we are growing and making now at Turtle Vines is cellar worthy for several years but fruit forward enough to drink now! Will see in a few months when we bottle our 2012 Pinot Noir.

A group of archaeologists have discovered one of the oldest wine cellars ever in a ruined palace in northern Israel. The palace once sat in the ancient Canaanite city of Tel Kabri. Interestingly, the ancient city isn’t far from the modern wineries in the country. The scientists discovered 40 3-feet tall jars in an ancient storage room.

No liquid could have survived thousands of years in storage. The scientists determined that the storage vessels held wine by analyzing organic residue left in the pores of the jar. The analysis reveled that they had contained wine made from grapes.

The researchers say that the ancient wine would have been sweet, strong, and likely medicinal. The team believed they were digging outside the ancient palace walls when they discovered the ancient wine containers. Another ancient wine cellar holding about 700 jars was found in the tomb of the Egyptian Pharaoh Scorpion I in Egypt dating to about 3000 BC.

Since grapes didn’t grow in the wild in Egypt, scientists had long believed the wine was imported form Canaanites. The finding of the ancient wine cellar in the Canaanite palace supports that theory. The scientists believe that if they can gather enough data about the ancient wine, they may be able to recreate the flavor.

So You Want to Buy a Vineyard – WSJ Article

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I was reading a Dec 7th Wall Street Journal Article entitled “So You Want to Buy a Vineyard. It was about Manuel Pires, a self made Connecticut millionaire, who had a dream of owning a vineyard and winery. Apparently the most sought after land is in Napa County followed closely by Sonoma County (yeah). What was interesting is no matter how much money you have, the process of finding land and getting permits is the same as when we did it without the millions to spend.

They also posted recommendations from the real estate agents that I thought I would share. I have bolded the ones I thought were especially relevant and added one to the end.

But before I list these, I have to tell you something funny. We run a Vacation Rental (Dufranc Vacation Rental) and almost everyone who stays says we are “Living the Dream” when they show up. After I tell them all the work needed to work the farm…almost everyone says they just want to live in wine country!!!

Dos and Don’ts

Few fantasies are readily realized, and becoming a producer of great wine is especially hard. The following are a few tips compiled from conversations with Napa Valley real-estate agents Katie Somple and Holly Shackford.

Do decide how much you can spend. If all you have is the purchase price, then you shouldn’t get into the wine business.

Don’t think the wine business is about making money. It’s (almost) never about making money. It’s about not losing money.

Do understand that it will take time to find the right property. Many properties are privately listed with an individual agent. Very few appear on multiple listings. Wineries often do not want their names mentioned at all; a winery that is for sale risks losing its winemaker or distributor.

Do work with local consultants—engineers, planners and lawyers, once you’ve found the property that you want. It will save money and time. But make sure the local is a popular local.

Don’t believe an agent who tells you that a piece of land is ‘plantable’ without an ECP (Erosion Control Plan). Plantable land means a vineyard already has an ECP. Planting ‘potential’ means it does not have an ECP. Buyers should verify the difference.

Do start with the best vineyard that you can buy. A good winemaker or a good vineyard manager won’t work with a bad vineyard.

Do figure out what kind of wine lifestyle you want. Is your heart set on an actual working winery? Or maybe you just want a vineyard view?

Ours – If you decide to make wine, realize that to market and sell wine is a full time job.

No Rain for 2013 !

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As farmers we live and die by the weather, in fact I get a wine industry weather report sent to me every day via email so I can plan my week. Grapevines need moisture in the winter and fall to replenish the soil. They need to be warm in the spring and hot, but not to hot, in the summer and fall. Pinot Noir likes the range of temperatures in the days and nights to be large to develop wonderful flavors.

This brings me to this post on rainfall. Sebastopol (in Sonoma County) for 2013 has had only 8.1 inches of rain as of mid-December (I hope it rains during the holidays). Normally we get 36.3 inches of rain, with most of it coming in the winter and spring to recharge the soil and fill the aquifers. . If we don’t get much rain this winter I think the vines will suffer and we will get a smaller crop for 2014. Global climate change, El Nino, who knows…I know I may regret saying this as I need time to get ready for the growing season and prune in the spring…but I sure wish it would rain a lot this winter. Sure we can irrigate, but it is not the same.

When and How Much to Sulfur?

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When is it time to sulfur your wine and how much?

First, sulfur has been used since the days of the Roman Empire to purify wine containers to control microorganisms. I know there is a push for Natural Wines without sulfur, but I’m not convinced you can reliably make sulfur-less wine. There are things you can do to reduce the need for sulfur, such as: adjust the pH of the wine must lower, making sure the vineyard does not have mold when you pick, being very clean as you make the wine, minimizing the oxygen during winemaking and using a screw top at bottling.

I normally sulfur as soon as I pick the grapes to control any mold in the vineyard to around 30ppm. This will get bound during fermentation and most will fall out at the press. For red wine you sulfur at the end of malolactic fermentation to preserve the wine for aging and then sulfur until bottling to keep the sulfur level high enough to control antibacterial growth. Some people claim it is much better to add a larger amount of sulfur at the end of malolactic fermentation to stop any growth immediately and then only sulfur at bottling. This is what I will do this year.

The table below shows the amount of molecular sulfur needed to protect the wine. Red Wine needs less molecular sulfur since it has tannins. These levels in the table will result in about 0.5 ppm free sulfur, which is what protects the wine. For White Wine you need about 0.8 ppm free sulfur since it does not have tannins. One big item you should notice in the table is that as the pH of the wine increases, the sulfur needed goes up dramatically. Most Pinot’s are around 3.5 to 3.6 pH, but ours is 3.8 due to the age of the vineyard.

Molecular SO2 needed for Stability in ppm
pH White Wine Red Wine
3.0 13 8
3.1 16 10
3.2 21 13
3.3 26 16
3.4 32 20
3.5 40 25
3.6 50 31
3.7 63 39
3.8 79 49

Results from Lab on MLF Status and other Tests

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I wanted to test if our 2013 Turtle Vines Pinot Noir had finished malolactic fermentation, so I sent a sample to the lab on Dec 9th.. You can also just look/listen to the wine. If the wine is warm and you no longer have small bubbles coming to the surface or when you open the top and you don’t hear the fermentation…it is complete. However, I have the wine in the garage where it is cold, so instead of warming it up, I took a sample to the lab. In addition, I had them perform other needed tests so it seemed like a good time to get those done.

Alcohol 13.94 % Perfect for a pick at 24 brix
Glucose + Fructose 0.175 % Very dry, you can taste sugar at 0.2%
Malic Acid 5 mg/100ml <30 is considered complete
Volatile Acidity 0.071 g/100ml <0.075 is considered good for red wine
TA 0.465 g/100ml A little low, will see how it tastes later

Everything looks great! It is now time to sulfur.

Malolactic Fermentation…sequential or co-inoculation/fermentation?

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I have been reading a lot lately on the timing of malolactic fermentation for wines. Just so you know what I talking about…alcohol fermentation is when the yeast convert the sugar to alcohol and malolactic fermentation is when bacteria convert the harsher malic acid to softer lactic acid. Prior to having commercially available bacteria in 1996, the malolactic process happened on its own. Sometime after alcohol fermentation finished the wine still fizzed and bubbled for weeks, and in many time continued until the spring when the wine warmed up. When that stopped the wine was ready to sulfur. In order to control the process better, many wineries now introduce malolactic bacteria, then question is when…

Malolactic bacteria grow well when the pH is above 3.2 (the higher the better), when the temperature is above 55F and when the alcohol level is low. This would indicate to introduce the bacteria right after the alcohol fermentation has started. In addition, most people report a fruitier wine with co-fermentation. However, In some cases this will cause the primary fermentation to stall. The really big benefit is that the process completes very early and you can protect your wine with sulfur just a few weeks after primary fermentation has completed.

If you wait until after alcohol fermentation the temperature has dropped and the alcohol is at its peak, so the malolactic process will take around 30 days longer or more. In addition, for Pinot Noir, if you co-ferment you will probably lose color. But, sequential fermentation seems to produce a more structured, powerful wine, whereas co-fermentation may “round” things off to much.

So, what to do with my set up since I put the wine in a cool place after fermentation? Given my pH is high, I want good color for my Pinot, and I don’t want a stuck fermentation…I’m going with the sequential process. I just have to monitor the process closely and leave it on its lees for added protection before I sulfur.

It has Oaked Enough!

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Has it oaken enough? Always a difficult question but much more controllable since we use Flextanks and Oak Balls. If you were reading any of the September posts, we pressed on 9/23/13 and racked and oaked on 9/24/13. The vendor recommended that the oak go in during malolactic fermentation to smooth integration of oak to the wine. They said it should remain for approximately 8 weeks for maximum extraction. We took them out 12/3/13 so it was 10 weeks…I tasted the wine and it was very nice. It has not fully finished malolactic fermentation, but I think it will be a great vintage!

Frozen Pipes – Near Record Lows in Wine Country

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Yesterday I was out in the vineyard sowing insectary flowers every 10th row. I’m hoping this will help our organic vineyard attract beneficial insects in future years. As I started my day I heard running water near the back of the barn and you can see in the picture above what I found…our 1.5″ vineyard irrigation pipe had broken due to the cold weather and was gushing water!!! This could have been a disaster had I not been home when this happened as we are connected to a well.

I know it was only 27F, nothing compare to most parts of the country, but I’m guessing the PVC setup was causing stress on the system and the cold exacerbated the piping and it broke! Looks like another winter project around the vineyard to keep me busy.

FYI…normally in the winter the low temperature is around 35F, since we are only 20 minutes from the ocean. Record lows for most months are 22F, so this was pretty cold for us.