Now that they’ve sanitized everything in sight, the 2009 Harvest Interns are ready for the real thing.  We’re getting the first grapes today to make the base wine for a client’s fabulous sparkler, and thanks to the interns, the place is glistening.

Interns Emilee Coomes, Bret Jenkins, and David DeLuca are all transplants from The Big Apple. Why drop everything in New York City and move to Sonoma County to work at MacRostie? After talking with them, the real question seems to be, “Why not?” Their main duties thus far have been cleaning the tanks and crush equipment- but next week’s deluge of grapes will be something quite different.

From left to right: Emilee, Bret, and David.

Day after day in a Manhattan office at a Public Relations firm, Emilee found herself daydreaming about the wine business. She secured her intern position at MacRostie, and promptly headed west with her sister and started her work in the winery. In Emilee’s case, promptly means that she arrived at midnight on a Sunday, and started work at 7 a.m. the next day.

Bret Jenkins gives at least some of the credit for his interest in wine to his girlfriend, Heather, who writes the Wine & Dine section of The Boulevard, a Long Island publication. Bret worked in NYC as a Chiropractor before tackling the 2009 harvest at MacRostie.

And last but certainly not least, David DeLuca comes to MacRostie on the heels of earning an M.A. in Media & Arts Management. David’s interest in wine was piqued at Blanc & Rouge, a wine outpost in Brooklyn’s Dumbo neighborhood.

In preparation for the descent of a virtual mountain of grapes into the winery, the interns were taken through a tasting of MacRostie wines by winemaker Kevin Holt, including the limited production Pinot Noir Rose and the Cabernet Sauvignon. Cellar master Esteban Fuentes is surely happy to have a few extra hands on deck. The interns are ready to toss everything they thought they knew about wine into the spittoon, and get the hands-on experience only a harvest can provide. We’ll check back with them later this week, once they’ve set aside the sanitizer and gotten their hands dirty.

“Perfection is attained by slow degrees; it requires the hand of time.”  – Voltaire

As we approach harvest and the rocky stretch above San Francisco starts to hum with anticipation, time seems to speed up dramatically.  The last week of August is that crucial time when these slow degrees of perfection come into play.  The grapes at this stage are starting to reflect the season’s nature, nurture and overall surroundings.  Of all the widely varying topography Sonoma County provides, Wildcat Mountain is on the demanding side of the spectrum at 700 feet in elevation.  Positioned on the border of the Sonoma Coast and Carneros regions, Wildcat spends many lengthy mornings nestling the grapes in a blanket of fog.

Emma, our assistant winemaker, came back from Wildcat Mountain last week with an armload of unevenly ripened fruit, a reflection of the bloom (flowering) and set (fertilization).  Looking back over the growing season, mid-May provided a memorable heat spike of 2+ days of 95 degree weather, prompting early bloom.  Parts of the clusters had calyptras (flower caps) that fell off early, succumbing to the warm weather.   

 We’ve green-thinned twice. The first round was a few weeks after fruit set to prevent crowding, provide even sun exposure, and trim each shoot’s contribution to two clusters. The second green-thin took place at about 90% veraison (color change in the berries) to remove any additional clusters that were lagging behind in color development. 

After our May heat spike, temperatures crept back down to the low 70’s, and our berries spent a while bathing in the cool coastal fog.  After a relatively cool August, we’re hitting temperatures in the 90’s, which will push things along, but we’re looking at a 1-2 week delay in harvest compared to last year.

While the grapes are busy getting sun, the winemakers shift their focus toward the lab.  Kevin and Emma have spent the last few days honing in on the colors of the juices.  The Chardonnays are still in a bright green state, while the Pinot Noirs are a pale-pink grapefruit color.  Of the blocks that are to be harvested first, some brown seeds are showing—great evidence of the beginning of seed maturation.  We’re interested to see what happens with the current heat spike, and if the last couple of years are any indication, we’re headed for another major one in September. 

Winemaking is part art and part science, and in both of those fields, maybe you’re not moving toward perfection.  On Wildcat Mountain and here in the winery, we’re working on absolute precision and a whole lot of heart.  And the occasional favor from Mother Nature doesn’t hurt, either.

Stir It Up

Not a creature was stirring in the MacRostie cellar over the holidays, but that’s all changed now.  Esteban and Bernie are busily stirring all of our hundreds of barrels of chardonnay as I write this.  For anyone unfamiliar with “sur lies” ageing, chardonnay, as with most white wines that are barrel-fermented and barrel-aged, is kept on its fermentation lees until it goes to bottle.  This means that at the bottom of every 60-gallon barrel of clear white wine there’s about 2 gallons worth of yellow-brown glop, which is mostly the remains of spent yeasts.

While it may sound a bit unappealing, this is actually magical stuff.  It does so many wonderful things for the wine it’s hard to know where to begin.  It scavenges oxygen, thereby keeping the wine bright and fresh.  It also adds depth and dimension to the wine, enriching the flavor and “mouthfeel.”  By stirring it up periodically, we can enhance this effect, as well as promote the absorption of any excessive buttery flavors that may be left over from the post-fermentation conversion of malic acid into lactic acid.

It’s an arduous task, but essential to the production of great chardonnay in the classic MacRostie style.  Post-stirring, the barrels are topped up and left to settle.  They’ll be clear again in a few weeks, at which point we’ll probably go around and do it again.  I like to get 3 or 4 stirs in within the first few months after ML is complete, and then we usually leave the wines alone and start working on the blends.  Our first blind tastings of all the 2008 lots as a pre-cursor to blending begin later this week, and I’ll report on those after they’re done.

MacRostie Harvest 2008—The Roller Coaster

Some harvests are remembered for heat, some for cold, and some for rain, but this year we got all three—in rapid succession.  It’s been a wild ride, but I think we’ve come to the end of it with some pretty thrilling wines.  We started, as usual, with Pinot Noir, which is the first variety to mature, and the first to show stress in hot weather—and that’s how September began—hot.  By the 6th sugars had risen to the point where we could no longer wait in a few vineyards, including some of the Wildcat blocks, and so the picking began.  Flavors and color looked really good in these early lots, so we were prepared to keep going…but then it cooled off.

While we waited for the rest of the Pinot, we got into the Chardonnay.  In a highly unusual twist, we began with some of the older blocks at Sangiacomo—traditionally one of the last vineyards to come in.  Here the culprit was lower than average crop levels, which hastens maturity, and usually is a hallmark of high quality as well.  By the time we got back to Wildcat for the rest of the Pinot, the flavors were exceptional, and it was almost time to start on the Chardonnay there, which we began picking on the 15th.

Toward the end of September, after all the Pinot was in, the heat came back, pushing our remaining Chardonnay blocks to full maturity.  We were picking and pressing at close to full speed when the weather report, which I check at least three times a day, began to hint at the prospect of an early rain.  Once it became clear that there was at least a decent prospect for real rain on October 3, I decided to not only finish out the remaining Chardonnay, but to bring in the Merlot, Cabernet, and Syrah as well.  Again this choice was simplified by lower than normal yields on these varieties, allowing them to be fully ripe despite the early date on the calendar.

So as I listened to the rain come down last Friday night, it felt good to know that all our grapes were safely inside the winery.  As I write this, all the Pinots are in barrel, the other reds are bubbling away in tank, and the Chardonnays are at various stages, some fermenting and some complete.  Quality so far looks very good, especially on theWildcat Pinots, which are as dark and rich as always.  Too soon to tell on the other varieties, but I am more than optimistic—I think we’ve got another winner on our hands.

      -Kevin W. Holt, Winemaker

July 30, 2008

Our bulldogs don’t bite.  They don’t even bark.  What they do is allow us to get wine cleanly out of barrels with out exposing it to oxygen.  In this picture, Bernie is using one of our four “pups” to transfer the barrels I designated for the 2007 Carneros Pinot Noir into tank.  This process is quite a bit slower than using a conventional pump, but it’s much more gentle on the wine.  Compressed nitrogen flows into the top of the barrel via the smaller hose and pushes the wine out through the bottom of the metal “wand” that’s inserted into the bunghole, and from there it flows all the way to the tank.

It took Esteban and Bernie (with Emma washing the barrels after they were emptied) all day on Monday to complete this movement, and the wine ended up in two of our large tanks, because we don’t have a single tank big enough to hold the entire lot.  The next day—yesterday as I write this—while the guys repeated this process for the 2007 Wildcat Pinot Noir and 2007 Wildcat Syrah, Emma and I did a “measure move” involving the two original tanks and a third tank to make the Carneros blend totally uniform.  The Wildcat wines didn’t require this, as they’re not so large and can easily fit in a single tank.

Bottling begins on Friday with the Wildcat Chardonnay.  Next week we’ll bottle the two Wildcat reds, and then move on to finish out the week with the Carneros Pinot Noir.  As soon as bottling is complete, Emma will be out (during the week of August 11) to collect our first set of maturity samples for the upcoming harvest.  While I don’t think we’ll have grapes anywhere near ready by then, it’s always good to have baseline numbers so that we can watch things progress.  She should thereafter be getting new numbers every week, so I’ll keep you posted.

      -Kevin Holt

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

June 9, 2008

Bottling of the 2007 Carneros Chardonnay is going well; we’ve been averaging 2200 cases a day, so we should be done a couple of days earlier than planned.  After that, we turn our attention back to red wine.  Sometime next week I’ll take a look at the Merlot, Syrah, and Cabernet and decide if they need another racking.  Chances are we will be racking all of them, but almost certainly we’ll rack the Syrah, as it generally needs the most air during the ageing process.

Racking is pretty basic:  we pump the wine out of its barrels and into a tank, wash the barrels, and then put the wine back in.  The wine gets clearer each time, as we leave the sediment that has settled out during ageing behind, but the main benefit is brief, limited exposure to air.  Unlike white wine, which we protect from significant air exposure all its life, reds actually need a little during their time in barrel in order for their flavors to develop properly.  Dark, tannic reds, like Cabernet and Syrah, generally need the most.

Once these wines are snugly back in barrel, it will be time to address ourselves to the final assembly of those barrels that were selected back in April to become the Wildcat Mountain Vineyard Chardonnay.  Stay tuned.

-Kevin W. Holt

May 29, 2008

The Carneros Chardonnay was successfully blended last month, and has been “on cold” for the last three weeks, during part of which I was on vacation.  After adding some bentonite (a fining agent, a type of clay) to help the wine settle clear, we chill it down to around 30°F and hold it there to ensure that it will remain stable when it subsequently goes into a store or restaurant cold box, or indeed into your very own refrigerator.

This week we’re filtering—Esteban has been flying through about 10,000 gallons a day, so by the end of the week it will all be the limpid, brilliant, pale straw gold we know and love.  Bottling commences on Monday, and will run through June 20.  On the first day we get the magnums and half bottles out of the way, and then it’s all 750ml from then on, about 2000 cases a day, or approximately one bottle coming off the line every second

After a significant hot spell a couple of weeks ago, it has cooled down quite dramatically around here, barely making it into the 70’s most days.  We even had an unusual late spring rain last Saturday.  The vines are mostly in flower now, but the rain doesn’t seem to have been hard enough to cause too much “shatter” in the new clusters, which would reduce eventual yield.

I’m also working on rounding up this year’s group of interns for the upcoming harvest.  These brave souls come from all over the country, and sometimes all over the world, to help us out during our busy season.  It’s long hours of hard physical work, but they are rewarded by learning a great deal about making wine, including a few things they probably didn’t want to know!
                                                                            -Kevin W. Holt

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

March 14, 2008

This is my first entry in what I plan to make a regular feature here on our website, a running commentary on what is happening throughout the year in the winemaking process here at MacRostie.  Stay tuned for regular updates; they will be more frequent when more is going on, so I should be making almost daily entries during harvest.  They may be somewhat more brief than this one, though—as you may know, harvest is a pretty busy time!

Late winter/early spring is blending time.  Steve, Emma, and I have spent much of the last two weeks looking at the myriad possibilities for putting our portfolio of wines together.  Blending trials are fun, but also taxing—young wines, particularly tannic reds, can quickly fatigue the palate.  We must return to look at the same blends multiple times to be sure we’re on the right track, and it also requires us to project a given blend’s future evolution from what it tastes like now.

We’ve decided on a 15% addition of Cabernet Sauvignon for our Napa Valley Merlot; this quantity, in this vintage, gives the 2007 Merlot just the right amount of structure without overpowering its varietal character.  As an added bonus, this leaves us four barrels of very solid Napa Valley Cabernet to bottle and sell direct from the winery.

On the Pinot Noir front, we’ve created what may be one of the best-ever Wildcat Mountain Vineyard blends from four blocks that excelled in what is already proving to be a stellar vintage for Pinot Noir.  The 2007 Wildcat Pinot will be assembled from roughly one-third each of clones 667, 115, and 777.  They have shown remarkable synergy this year, with the 667 providing powerful structure, the 115 showing lush, velvety body, and the 777 topping it off with exquisite aromatics.  The remaining Pinot in the cellar works well together as a top-notch Carneros blend; quality was so high across the board that no lot needs to be left out.

Physical assembly of these blends is already underway.  The Merlot was put together last week, and we’ll start working on the Pinot next week.  I just have to finalize the exact barrel selection for the Wildcat on Monday morning, and we’re on our way!

      -Kevin Holt