July 22, 2008
Veraison is the word of the day. I stopped by the Beau Terroir vineyard on my way to the winery this morning, and saw, finally, some berries starting to turn pink. This Pinot Noir block is usually our first to ripen, so I expect to see color here before Wildcat (which was still all green as of Saturday). Here in California we tend to pronounce this French word as if it were spelled “verasion,” but however you say it, it means that red grapes are changing color, and white grapes are beginning to soften. As a general rule,harvest follows about six weeks after veraison is complete.
We’re a week or two behind normal (whatever that means these days), even though our heat accumulation numbers for the summer are ahead of normal. The likely culprit is smoke. The sky has been clear recently, thanks to cool breezes off the Pacific and the valiant efforts of our firefighters, but for several weeks when the fires were at their worst we had a pervasive smoke pall over the entire area. This diffused the otherwise strong sunlight and apparently slowed the vines’ photosynthetic activity down quite a bit. If they can’t make sugar, they can’t put it in the grapes.
I continue to make preparations for harvest as I wait for the vines to get back up to speed. At the beginning of next week we will be getting the 2007 Carneros Pinot Noir, the 2007 Wildcat Pinot Noir, and the 2007 Wildcat Syrah out of barrel to prepare them for bottling the following week. We will also bottle the 2007 Wildcat Chardonnay, which is already up in tank. As soon as we’re done bottling, our brave 2008 crush interns will start work, and soon after that we’ll have grapes knocking at the door—or so I hope!
-Kevin Holt
