Category Archives: Wine Growing

So You Want to Buy a Vineyard – WSJ Article

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.

Is Winemaking like making Chocolate?

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We had the good fortune to be in Kona, HI last week with family. It was a great trip!

When Joanne and I vacation we love to visit small farms to learn from them and hopefully bottle some of their enthusiasm to bring home. We ended up at Original Hawaiin Chocolate Factory (OHCF) . What a great story and a wonderful tour of how a family moved from North Carolina 15 years ago, bought a 5 acre farm and started making chocolate. They are the only bean to bar maker of chocolate in the industrialized world!

So, what did I learn and is it like making hand-crafted Pinot Noir in Russian River Valley? Let’s see.

Cacao is grown 15-20 degrees from the equator in 3 major varieties…Forastero, Criollo and Trinitario. Cacao trees are pruned to 10-15 feet and blossom 5 months of the year. The fruit takes about 6-7 months to ripen. You can tell they are ripe when they brighten in color. They say when they look like Easter Eggs, they are ready to pick! Since the blossoms take 5 months and they fruit take 6-8 months to ripen, you can’t harvest cacao all at once. They do it every 2 weeks to ensure optimal flavor. Wow, a labor of love.

Next they cut open the pods (top picture) and take out the white seed/beans. These are then fermented to remove the white outer material for 6-8 days.

Then they are dried in the sun for 22-28 days to lower the moisture content to <7%. At this point they can be stored almost indefinitely.

Then the fun part begins. The beans are now roasted. It took them a lot of experimentation to find the right time and temperature to give the correct flavor profile. The bean are now winnowed to remove the outer shell and crushed into nibs. Next the nibs are ground down into a thick liquid mass and vanilla and lecithin are added to make dark chocolate. This process takes up to 18 hours to get a velvety texture. The liquid is then cooled from 120 F to 86 F and then poured into molds.

And then you have chocolate!

We loved the Criollo Dark Chocolate…tastes very smooth but has 70% cacao without any milk.

What did I learn…Just like growing and making wine, a tremendous amount of effort and passion is needed to make a good final product. For chocolate I think the skill is in the correct harvest time and in processing. For wine, I think more time is spent in growing the produce. In both cases…grow a wonderful grape/bean and then don’t mess it up in how you process it!

Organic Epson Salts

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If you have been reading the blog, you will know that the Pinot Noir harvest has been a little high in pH. This was due to 3 reasons: young vineyards normally have high pH’s; watering between set and veraison will cause the vines to pull up potassium from the soil; if the soil does not have the correct ratio of Calcium/potassium/magnesium of around 6/1/1 with more potassium than magnesium, the potassium will be pulled into the berries and raise the pH.

Our 2012 Pinot Noir harvest resulted in a pH of 3.9 and potassium level of 2100 ppm.

Our 2013 harvest resulted in a pH of 3.76 and potassium level of 1700 ppm with 1 year of growing and limiting the water from set to veraison.

For 2014 we are adding 1/2 pound of Organic Epson Salt per vine. The Epson Salt will add magnesium level close to the potassium level. Hopefully this should reduce the uptake of potassium. In addition, we are installing an extra drip hose for those vines that need water. This will alleviate the need to water an entire row until it needs it. This should help the potassium level as well as enhance the flavor of the grapes.

So…how is this done. We purchased 1600 pounds of Epson Salt and will sprinkle this along the vine row. When it rains this will quickly dissolve into the soil.

Let’s hope it works well! Only have to wait a year to find out…I’m hoping to get a pH of 3.55 for 2014, which would be perfect for my style of Pinot!

Cover Crops and Native Insectary Wildflowers

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To enhance the soil and limit water uptake, typically cover crops are planted.

Next week, I’ll spread 30-40 pounds of clover on the entire vineyard and 5 pounds of Native Wildflowers on select rows. The Wildflowers will add beauty, but more importantly, be an insectary for bees and good insects to protect the vines. BTW…clover is about $3/pound but the Wildflowers were $22/pound. I had better not mow them down in the spring!!!

What is in the Wildflower Mix? Blue Eyed Grass, California Ble Bell, Chinese Houses, Goldfields, Baby Blue Eyes, Tidy Tips, Birds Eye, Blue Flax, Lupine, Farewell-to-Spring, California Poppy, Arroyo Blue Lupine, Yarrow, Five Spot and Globe Gilia.