Blog
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Although 2020 was one of the hardest years to live through in my life, if you were a grapevine it was actually pretty good.
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The image is from an antique Japanese scroll that has hung in my mother's house for at least fifty years. It is probably twice as old as that. Although I was born and raised in California to parents who were also born and raised in the US (and therefore very much American, culturally), my Japanese heritage seems to surface in unexpected ways. I've been pondering the ways it shapes the way I think about wine.
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2019 was an interesting year to be a grapevine. While it seemed like a pretty forgiving year--decent winter rainfall, relatively mild growing conditions--there were some unexpected challenges later in the growing season that impacted the vines and the wines in subtle and sometimes surprising ways.
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Whether a wine is from multiple vineyards or just one, blending is almost always part of the process between aging and bottling. Even a single vineyard or single block wine is usually from more than one barrel or one fermentation lot so inevitably you end up deciding what to include and what to leave out. Therein lies the art of blending.
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The 2019 growing season is off and running. One of the benefits of having been around the winemaking block a few times (OK, a LOT of times) is that you start to understand and anticipate the season and how it shapes the wines from pretty early in the year. Here are some of my observations so far...
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Vintage 2018 is now in the rear view mirror, with enough distance to begin to understand what happened. The wines are pretty much all finished with primary and secondary fermentation and put to bed. The story of the season is a lot less eventful than 2017, but not without a little drama. Read on...
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Friend, co-founder and long time guiding light of the Steamboat Pinot Noir Conference passed away in April of this year. I attended the conference many times over the last twenty plus years, and it was always one of the highlights of the wine related year. He will be missed, both as a friend and as the heart and soul of the conference.
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The humble cork stopper can make or break a wine. And it isn't always obvious exactly how and why.
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Most winemakers will tell you they are "hands on." Some are actually telling the truth. I am one of them.
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Harvest 2017 is winding down. It was not easy!
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Some musings on the question of ripeness and style.
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During harvest, we celebrate happy hour. Not so much to blow off steam, and not every day, but once in a while, and to remind ourselves why we like to make wine. And so it's usually something good, that we can reflect upon together, even if its just for a few minutes.
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More thoughts.
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I have a saying--you shouldn't call yourself a winemaker if you don't actually touch the wine. That might be a bit harsh but in my case, I can't fully understand what's going on with a wine during fermentation unless I spend some time with it in the cellar.
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No, it is not a latte. This is what Chardonnay juice looks like when it's being pressed, and no sulfur has been added.
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2016: the grapes are in, now to finish the wines.
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A few years ago, I had an epiphany: that I needed to open myself to the broadest possibilities in terms of how I made wine.
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Since 2003, I have been working two harvests a year: California, where most of my work is, and Casablanca Chile, where I work with Kingston Family Vineyard. This has put more than a couple of gray hairs on my head, but has also let me fast forward my enological education, by making wine twice a year instead of just once. Pinot Noir, in particular, has a very different expression in Casablanca Chile than it does elsewhere in the world, and dealing with this has made me a more thoughtful winemaker, in ways I would not have discovered had I not ventured outside of California.
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