April 25, 2008
With the red wines assembled last month, our attention this month has turned to the 2007 Chardonnay blends. After looking at many different combinations over the course of several weeks, we’ve settled on a blend of four clonal blocks for the Wildcat Chardonnay. From the older (1998) section, we’ve included the Wente, with its distinctive floral perfume and mineral notes, and the clone 15, which adds a spicy, tropical quality. From the newer (2000) blocks, we’ve used the Dijon 95 for its richness and structure, and the classic UCD 4 gives us lots of full-on baked apple and pear. The resulting wine is, as usual, greater than the sum of its parts.
2007 was such a terrific vintage for Chardonnay that none of the remaining lots had to be left out of the Carneros blend, so not only is it excellent, but there’s a little more than usual to go around. We’re going to begin the assembly of the Carneros wine bright and early on Monday. This is a somewhat complicated project, since we don’t have a single tank that’s anywhere near large enough to hold it all, and it requires the full participation of the entire production staff for the whole week.
This is how it works: because the eventual blend will require all of our large tanks, we choose two smaller ones to use as the “mother” tanks. Esteban and Bernie use devices called “bulldog pups” (I’m not making this up) to push the wine with nitrogen from the barrels to one of these tanks until it is full. Then they move to the second tank. While they fill it, Emma and I fire up the big pump and empty the first one, carefully measuring out an appropriate quantity into each of fifteen other tanks. I’ve already done the calculations to determine the right amount for each destination tank, because they’re not all the same size.
By the time we’re done, the second tank is full, so we switch off, emptying the second while the first is getting filled again. This process is repeated, hour after hour, day after day, until all 1000 or so barrels are empty and all the tanks are full. If we’ve done the math and the transfers correctly, all the tanks will contain a uniform blend, regardless of the order in which the barrels were emptied. Of course all those barrels now have to be washed as well, and then we’ll turn our attention to the barrels that were set aside for the Wildcat Chardonnay blend, but I’ll save that for my next entry.
-Kevin Holt
