We’re in the home stretch now, and it will be a race to ripen the grapes before cool and wet weather ensues.  We had a little more heat than expected last week, followed by another nice blast of autumn, and only moderate heat is forecast in the coming week.  We would be surprised if it suddenly got warm now; the pattern of an overall cool year seems likely to continue.  Fortunately, our location above the fog but at the lower end of the altitude range (~1500′) for our viticultural area should put us in an enviable position for ripening our fruit in what has been reported to be a challenging year for grape growing in coastal areas of the state.

Grape chemistry readings, which we started last week for our earliest ripening varieties, give us a pretty good idea of where we stand on harvest. We were a bit surprised by the acid levels last week in the primitivo, but they’ve come down nicely this week, brix are rising, and pH confirms the ripening trend.  We think that we’re still 2-3 weeks out for the primitivo, depending on where specific clients like their fruit.  Our nets on about 40% of this crop have birds concentrating their grazing in the un-netted rows, which not coincidentally is where we have been sending our golden retriever for entertainment.

For barbera, we focused our sampling on our earliest ripening and lowest yielding block to get a fix on where the barbera stands.  Brix in the barbera are farthest along of any of our varietals, the pH is above 3 (we’ll take it–often our first reading of the year for barbera is not!), and TA is still characteristically high.  On the basis of brix alone this block will be in a range that some like within 2 weeks, but the TA will likely require another 3 weeks to get in a reasonable range. Other blocks would be slightly behind and are looking like mid-October harvests.

The tempranillo made somewhat disappointing progress on brix this week, but showed evidence of ripening in the drop in TA and rise in pH.  This is  a characteristically low acid grape, and in port-style blends brings tannin rather than acid to the table.  It looks like we’ve still got a couple weeks to go on the tempranillo, and as we’ve been very successful keeping the birds off it, may be able to hang it for three weeks if needed for the brix.

The touriga nacional, whose juice already has particularly nice flavors, is looking like its normal well-balanced self at this point, with probably 3-4 weeks to go.  We’ve cropped this mainstay grape of the “Quinta” at low levels, and we’re very optimistic on the quality of this fruit.

It’s been a wild ride this week, with temperatures in the vineyard reaching north of 105 F for a couple days mid-week, to absolutely autumn-like conditions with highs only in the 70’s this weekend.  Beyond these aberrations, we’re expected to settle back into the same pattern we’ve enjoyed most of the summer, which has been highs near 90 during the day and upper 50s to 60 at night.  These conditions should continue to provide outstanding conditions for grape ripening; we’re quite optimistic about the vintage despite its overall lateness.

Harvest finally begins to come in to focus, with veraison now complete in the tempranillo and primitivo, and almost there in the touriga and barbera.  We’ve updated our projections of harvest in our “grape availability” chart and are expecting the tempranillo harvest in about 2 weeks, the primitivo harvest in about 3 weeks, and the touriga and barbera in October. We expect to begin posting chemistries for our early-ripening varieties next weekend.

Our vines are beginning to show a little late season wear-and-tear, but are generally holding up well and certainly better than last year.  We watered aggressively before and during the recent heat spike, and we seem to be at a nice steady-state now with water demands of the vines, increasingly shorter days, and moderate temperatures expected ahead. 

In terms of vineyard operations, our bird defenses are fully deployed and fairly effective to date.  We noted with glee that a couple birds who managed to get into our full overhead netting in the port vineyard attracted the attention of a hawk–only the second time we’ve gotten aerial support–who made several swoops toward what became a mini-aviary, but couldn’t get on the other side of the netting to nab his prey.  Fortunately, mop up action was completed by our middle-aged golden retriever, picked up at the pound this winter, who–true to his breed–turns out to be an outstanding and enthusiastic bird chaser.  Otherwise, we’ve deployed netting directly to about 40% of the primitivo, and have two “bird boxes” loudly broadcasting distress calls from dawn till dusk.  The latter make us feel like we’re doing something, even if the birds ignore them.

It’s last call for the “Quinta”, from which we will be harvesting the tempranillo–earliest of our Portugese/Iberian varietals–in mid-September.  We have benefited from a couple of years of practice with these varietals, and can say without hesitation that this should be our best year ever with these:  we’ve stayed on top of shoot thinning, and the crop load has been severely limited (typically one bunch per cane) and should be close to our production targets.  The proprietors look forward to making some outstanding estate wine if we have no takers…

Finally, we are pleased to note that a reserve barbera made from our 2008 vintage is now on sale at Oakstone Winery in Fair Play, the 2007 vintage having recently sold out.

The beginning of grape ripening–veraison–is finally upon us for our main varietals. Veraison is well-advanced in the tempranillo, present in the vast majority of primitivo clusters, apparent in many barbera clusters, and barely starting in the touriga nacional. Considering that it’s already mid-August, we remain on track for a notably, perhaps historically, late harvest. It should be an interesting home stretch.

Temperatures in the last two weeks have been only moderately hot (low 90’s)–not blistering–but our typical arid summer conditions, coupled with drying afternoon winds, have caused some water stress in vines throughout the vineyard, which we are combatting with around-the-clock rotations of irrigation of different blocks.

Chewing of our drip lines, probably by squirrels, continues to vex us (seemingly earlier every season), though we’re fighting back with some strategically-placed temporary fencing. In addition, by the end of the weekend, we expect to have the port vineyard 100% enclosed in overhead bird netting, which we’ve found to be absolutely essential if we want to harvest any of the grapes. Because tempranillo ripens so early and is a particular favorite for the birds, this overhead netting must be rolled out and hole-free before most of the port grapes are sweet. If there is a hole, the birds will find it (though if they get tangled in the net, our cats find THEM). Finally, we are fighting classic late season weeds, including our nemesis the horse weed, mainly to prevent their robbing of water and nutrients intended for the grapes.

We still have some grapes available for sale including significant quantities of barbera, limited quantities of some touriga grafted over last year, and the total output of our 2005 port vineyard (“Buy the Quinta”). As this is our first year of production from the grafted touriga field, and we have no track record with the fruit of these vines (though we think it’s the same clone as one of our 3 touriga nacional clones in the Quinta), and also our first try with a vertical cordon for this varietal, we’re going to offer a substantial discount on this fruit. If you mention this blog, we’ll offer these grapes for $0.65/lb for half a ton or more, or $0.70/lb for smaller quantities (minimum 250 lbs). If you haven’t tried touriga yet, you’re missing some wonderful, dark, fragrant wine.

Summer has certainly arrived in the Sierra Foothills, with lots of warm temperatures and cloudless skies ever since the official kickoff in late June. We didn’t need to step outside to know the heat has arrived; we needed only check our faucet. In keeping with a now 3-year tradition, our well went out of commission exactly when we needed it the most. This time, it was the expensive news that we didn’t want to hear: the pump was dead, requiring replacement. Still, this was far better than the worst news, which would be no more water in the well! As it was, we only had 3 days of inconvenience as we started, relatively late given the wet spring, regular irrigation rotations in early July. The heat has actually been seasonable and not excessive, with few days reaching the triple-digit mark, which should allow for good fruit development.

The vines look very healthy as of this point in the season. It is a solid sea of green right now, and the vines are in good balance. The primitivo crop is rather light, so much so that there is clearly no need to drop fruit in that vineyard, which is unusual for us. The primitivo bunches had a lot of “shatter” this spring–loss of small berries after bloom–leaving relatively small, loose clusters. This should be good news for those buying our primitivo, as we anticipate particularly ripe, concentrated fruit to be the net result. Until last year, we grew a little zinfandel adjacent to our primitivo, and the primitivo consistently produced smaller, looser clusters than our zinfandel clone. In fact, the appearance of the clusters was the only way we were able to visually distinguish the primitivo and zinfandel vines, apart from consulting our planting map. So relatively loose clusters are normal for us in the primitivo, but it’s more pronounced this season. We don’t anticipate any surplus crop.

The barbera also looks very good, as we were able to beat back, thanks to a new mechanized acquisition (our most recent “last” capital purchase for the vineyard!), aggressive weed growth adjacent to the rows that benefited from the unusually high soil moisture into late spring. We think we saw some benefit from our experimental “kicker canes” in the barbera, as the shoot growth was slightly more restrained than last year despite the greater soil moisture this year. Unlike the primitivo, the crop was moderate to heavy in the barbera, so we have just today completed one good round of fruit dropping in the barbera, removing 0-40% of the main fruit clusters, with the degree of fruit drop adjusted by vigor of the different barbera blocks and clones. We left seconds this year, reasoning that removing primary fruit clusters gives us the most “bang for the buck”. We are pleased to have been able to complete fruit dropping ahead of veraison, as we should enjoy the full benefit of limiting the crop load and concentrating flavors. “Dropping fruit” can be a painful operation for farmers trying to make a living (as it simultaneously costs money and decreases yield) and, if vineyard help from visiting family is any indication, unfathomable to the non-farmer. However, as we don’t rely on our vineyard to put bread on the table and want our grapes to produce outstanding wines, we much prefer it to the alternative: mediocre fruit.

Veraison is just beginning in our tempranillo which, true to its name in Spanish, is one of the earliest ripening reds. There is no indication yet of veraison in the barbera, primitivo, or touriga, consistent with our expectation of a late harvest. We have several more weeks and probably one more preventative treatment for powdery mildew ahead of us, and then we begin playing defense in earnest against birds and squirrels.

The rain has stayed away in June, and it has been sunny and pleasant in the Sierra Foothills with temperatures on the cool side of normal–very much like last June.  We haven’t seen any days with temperatures in the 100’s yet this year, and no one here is complaining.  All of the varietals have now been through bloom, and the berries are visible and beginning their period of rapid growth, while shoot growth slows.  Petiole samples from bloom have been sent off for nutrient analysis, with results expected soon.  Weeds are having a field day with the moisture left by the late spring rains, but nothing that a mower and a few dozen hours can’t fix. 

This year in the barbera, our most vigorous-growing varietal, we experimented with a “kicker cane”—a cane from the prior season that is not pruned off like it would normally be in the off-season.  This single cane pushes all of its buds, forming an unwieldy, multi-branched structure which draws a lot of the vegetative energy of the plant for its growth, presumably at the expense of some growth in other shoots.  The cane is then cut off like it normally would have been months earlier.  While it added significant work to make an additional pass through the vineyard to remove the kicker cane, we think it may have been worth the effort to reign in shoot growth.

On the fair circuit, we are pleased to announce that our 2008 estate primitivo took a gold medal and “Best of Class” designation at the 2010 Amador County Fair Home Winemaker’s competition.

The 2010 growing season has been marked by an unusually cool and wet spring, following on a cool winter.  After another inch of rain on Friday, May 28–quite late for these parts–it appears that we may finally get into a dry and warm seasonable weather pattern.  Consistent weekly rainstorms in late spring like we have experienced would normally wreak havoc on our powdery mildew prevention program, but it’s been so unseasonably cool that even powdery mildew didn’t like growing, and we remain in great shape on that front.  The cool weather also caused vines to push very late this season and then kept growth in check until recently.  The net result of this has been to give us an extended period of pleasant temperatures to catch up with or even (perish the thought) get ahead of needed vineyard operations.  Though it’s bloom time and not budburst that approximately sets the time of harvest, bloom has not yet come, so it’s pretty clear that it will be a later-than-average harvest.  We have accordingly pushed back the estimated harvest dates. 

On the competition front, fair season is getting underway with submissions and judging.  Among the early returns, we are pleased to announce that Obscurity Cellars of Fair Play, CA earned a gold medal and “Best of Class” designation for their 2009 Primitivo Rosato in the El Dorado Fair commercial wine competition using early harvest primitivo grapes from Shaker Ridge. Winemaker John Smith successfully navigated several unexpected turns in both the grapes and winemaking to create a delicious best-in-class blush style wine.  Oakstone Winery additionally took a silver medal for their 2007 primitivo and a bronze medal for their 2007 barbera, both made with Shaker Ridge grapes.  All three wines are currently available for tasting and purchase at Oakstone’s tasting room in Fair Play.

Harvest Update

Grape chemistries taken on 8/30/09 show incremental progress in ripening across all varietals. 

Acid has come down but remains quite high in the barbera, while sugar begins to creep up.  We continue to anticipate a late September harvest.  The fruit is generally in excellent condition; we see some wrinkling suggestive of  dehydration in a very small minority of clusters.  We continue to irrigate the barbera proactively in light of the hangtime that will be required, and Mother Nature–at least per current weather forecasts–is actually cooperating this year by providing moderate temperatures (low 90’s) into the foreseeable future.  Seconds have been dropped in all of block 1 and most of block 2, and the plan is to drop as many of the remaining seconds as possible in the coming 2 weeks.

The primitivo vines look especially tired early this year for reasons unclear, so we called an audible and conducted a second round of cluster thinning this past week to ease the burden of ripening, dropping clusters that were visibly behind the ripening curve.  The fruit is generally in excellent condition, with no signs of dehydration at this point.  It would appear from the chemistries as well as the relatively light color of juice in samples that we are still approximately 2, or at most 3, weeks from optimal harvest time. 

The Portugese varietal grapes are looking very good.  We have managed to largely keep the birds away from their favorite grape, tempranillo, which is on track for harvest in 1 to 2 weeks.  In the past 10 days, we cluster thinned both the tinto cao and touriga nacional grapes, which it became obvious (with full veraision) were carrying more fruit than we thought they should. 

Where Do the Grape Chemistry Data Come From?

If you think that the grape chemistry data at Shaker Ridge are delivered by a stork or left by the grape chemistry fairy, think again!  About once a week as harvest time approaches, we attempt to get a snapshot of ripening in our vineyard by gathering objective data.   One of the first things the co-proprietor at Shaker Ridge learned in graduate school laboratory is that one can either do an experiment right the first time, or spend a bunch of time trouble-shooting why it didn’t go right, then repeat it.  It quickly became obvious that it was more efficient to do it the right first time.  And doing it right the first time in scientific endeavors often comes down to careful attention to detail and following a set protocol.  Our grape chemistry data is accordingly gathered in 3 systematic steps:  sampling of the vineyard, processing of the samples, and testing of the samples. 

Grape sampling is arguably the hardest and most important step.  For sampling, we walk up and down vine rows the entire length of a given vineyard being sampled, alternately taking bunches of grapes from the top, middle, and bottom of plants chosen at random.  We try to visually identify the bunch to be sampled while still some distance from the plant so that we end up getting a representative sample of what’s out there, rather than what we’d LIKE to be out there.  Unless a bunch is so visibly unripe or overripe (shriveled) that it wouldn’t reasonably be taken by a crew in a real harvest, we take it.   We sample entire bunches, rather than individual berries, since it’s ultimately the whole bunch that would be harvested, and picking individual berrries would open us up to many potential sources of bias.  We end up with 10-15 pounds of grape samples, which when carried around in a bucket up and down hills on the typical 100-degree late summer Foothills day turns into a decent workout….This is repeated separately for each varietal being sampled.

The next step is sample preparation, and for this we use a stainless steel fermentation punchdown tool to crush and squeeze the grapes in the same buckets in which they are collected.  The tool is cleaned between each sample.  Once the grapes are well crushed and juice is abundant, we pour about a cup of juice through a stainless steel wire mesh filter (to catch pulp, seeds, etc.)  into labelled plastic containers, one for each variety or block sampled. 

In the third step, the juice samples are tested, typically immediately after their preparation, or at most a few hours later.  The samples are first tested for sugar using a hydrometer.  The raw values are manually corrected for juice temperature, which is collected simultaneously with the brix reading.  Using a digital pH meter that we calibrate with appropriate standards immediately before each session, we then record the pH of each sample in turn.  Finally, we perform a a manual acid titration, fastidiously cleaning syringes and vessels between samples, to determine the total acid content.  Tests aren’t repeated unless a  known technical error is made, or an overt inconsistency is noted. 

While we reserve the right to root for particular outcomes (!), we record and report the data that we get.   Besides the objective measures of brix, pH, and total acidity, which we post on this website, we also record more subjective but valuable information about taste and color of the juice samples that help confirm that we are testing the varietals that we think we are, and provides a useful cross-check/sense check against the numeric data.

The entire process of sampling, processing, and testing takes upwards of 2.5 hours, depending on the number of samples, which hopefully explains why we don’t provide daily updates!  We hope that our attention to detail in the generation of the grape chemistry data translates into better harvest decisions for our clients.

 Hopes for a farmer’s miracle of sorts with a very late budburst and normal harvest time (=short growing season)  have now officially been dashed with the collection of our first grape chemistry readings of the year, as posted earlier today.  While we would gag to call this a “cool” summer by the common understanding of the term, it has been a summer of moderate heat by Foothills standards that got off to an unseasonably cool start in June.  Perhaps this is the reason that, despite veraision at a fairly normal time in July, ripening has taken its own sweet time.   We are now looking for harvest of our primitivo in mid-September and barbera in late September.  The Portugese varietal grapes should reach optimal ripeness in a range spanning from early September (tempranillo) to mid-October (souzao).

Earlier this month, we did a round of fruit dropping in the primitivo that we may supplement with some fine-tuning given the extra time till ripening and vines that are beginning to look tired.  We have dropped seconds in a portion of Block 1 of the barbera and will likely do more of this, as the abundant green seconds stand out readily against the blue-purple main fruit. 

We have deployed bird netting on the bookends of the primitivo vineyard that are closest to trees and ever-hungry, marauding birds, as well as in Block 4 of the barbera.  The port vineyard is completely enclosed in permanent overhead netting that is keeping all but a few enterprising birds off the fruit.  Birds have already done a number, via daylight attacks, on our back hilltop primitivo grapes that ripen earlier than the rest and are closest to trees.  Thirsty rodents, meanwhile, have begun eating holes in distant driplines by night in the same section.  We often get the latter late in the season, but apparently the rodents missed the memo about the later harvest, and they have chowed down already.  On the positive side, temperatures have moderated after a recent heat spell and are expected to remain that way for another week, which should promote ripening without dehyration in the near-term.

We’ve recently endured a brutal, though very much seasonable, heat wave that brought 100+ F temperatures for about 2 weeks. Temperatures have moderated, under cloudless sunshine, to highs in the low 90s and lows in the upper 50s. Such conditions are perfect for ripening as we enter the homestretch for the growing season, and are forecast to remain so for at least a week. Verasion was first noted in the tempranillo around July 17, and has now spread to other varietals, including barbera and primitivo. Most clusters are green in the latter varietals, but we would expect widespread verasion within the next week. Crop loads continue to appear moderate, and this has been achieved without active fruit dropping, except in the port varietals. Crop load will come into better focus, literally, with full verasion. Timing of harvest remains anyone’s guess, but we are looking for a “normal” year at this point…neither early nor late.

Our experimental hedging of barbera in certain blocks was implemented in mid-July ahead of verasion (see Vineyard Gallery photo), though the intense heat, which caused some scattered sunburn in the barbera in the absence of any leaf-thinning, made additional leaf thinning unadvisable. The hedged vines have a neat appearance, though the impact on ripening remains to be assessed. The goal is to help the vines decrease water loss through transpiration. Overall, the barbera appear to be handling the heat well with the help of irrigation, and we are hopeful that we will be successful in moderating late season sugar accumulation. On the primitivo side, the leaves have begun a yellowing process that we see annually as part of leaf senesence, though the vines have adequate leaf area for ripening and are in good balance. Berry size and grape clusters are on the small side, which we think bodes well for quality.

A cool and cloudy early-mid June gave way to seasonable temperatures, clear skies, and abundant sunshine later in the month. The extended period of mild weather should have provided ideal conditions for powdery mildew, but we’re pleased to report that we have seen no sign of it. We anticipate that regular spraying to prevent mildew will come to an end soon…one of our favorite milestones of the season.

The hot period in late June corresponded exactly with the time that our well (due to electrical and not water problems, thankfully) decided to give us spotty service, and this allowed all of our varietals to show the first sure signs of water stress, and to signal to us that they’ve exhausted the ground water from the winter. We have accordingly begun a more aggressive period of irrigation for the barbera and younger port varietals, and are only beginning to provide some irrigation to our more draught-hardy primitivo vines. Grape clusters are hanging on all the varietals at this point, and the period of major shoot growth is long past. The flexibility afforded by the mild May-June period to withhold water from the vines, coupled with well-timed mowing, has made weeds a non-issue at this point. There is no sign of verasion, and we would not expect to see it for a couple more weeks. The quantity of fruit looks modest–neither low nor high–though verasion will bring yield into better focus.

We have planned our first formal experiment to assess the impact of certain leaf and shoot thinning practices near verasion on fruit outcomes in our barbera. The barbera have proven to be water hogs and have traditionally given us a hard time late in the season keeping them adequately hydrated and with reasonable brix levels while waiting for the characteristically high acid levels to fall. While we are doing what we can proactively on the irrigation side, we’ve planned a controlled experiment to see if removal of some of the foliage from barbera can effectively slow the rate of water loss and sugar accumulation, while still allowing the fruit to ripen successfully. Selected rows within watering blocks 1 and 3 will have foliage thinned, while other rows in the same watering blocks will serve as controls. We will monitor sugar, titratable acid, and pH levels of the test and control groups through harvest.

We are looking forward to the release, we expect in the fall, of 2007 vintage primitivo and barbera wines made with Shaker Ridge grapes by the Oakstone Winery in Fairplay, CA. The 2007 primitivo scored silver medals at the El Dorado and Amador County Fairs despite being only recently bottled, whereas the barbera was not bottled in time for the competition season.

Limited quantities of primitivo grapes and our Portugese varietal grapes remain available for the 2009 harvest season.