Vintage 2010 - Fin.

Today, Friday October 29, we end what we began almost exactly 2 months ago:  our 2010 vintage has come to a close.  

It’s easy to determine when vintage starts.  This year it began on August 30^th as our euphoric little band stood on the crushpad and hand-loaded Chardonnay grapes into the press while watching the sun rise over steel-blue Seneca Lake.  It was a fabulous morning; we were filled with anticipation and a sense of urgency.  We were not sure what challenges lay ahead, but we could not wait to meet them.

In the ensuing weeks, we crushed and pressed over 255 tons of fruit.  We analyzed all the incoming juices for ºBrix, titratable acidity and pH. We racked thousands of gallons of juices, inoculated 47 fermentations, monitored fermentation status via assay and taste, controlled fermentation temperatures, punched down red ferments, fed yeast their required nutrients, and pressed the reds to tanks.  We’re emptying barrels of last year’s reds in order to wash and refill the barrels with 2010 reds.  We’re evaluating the 09 reds as we’re wrapping up this year’s vintage.  

Phew.  We did a lot, and mainly, it was done without sleep.  Peter Bell did not miss a single day of vintage—in fact, he has worked every day since mid-August.  Kelby might have stayed home one of the days, and Peter Howe was here for all but an occasional Saturday.    Those days usually ranged from 12-16 hours in length—what a marathon.  I’m a Mom—I had a later start and, quite often, an earlier quitting time than the fellas.   These guys always understood my need to spend some time at with my girls and tend at least a little bit to our home—no matter how tired Peter, Kelby and Peter were, they never minded my leaving when I had to go—what a great crew to work with!!!  Fatigue could not erode their passion or their vision or their good humor.  

There is still a lot of work to do.  There is a monumental amount of clean-up which has to happen next week.  We have fermentations still ticking along in tanks.  We have loads of barrel work left to do.  We have to inoculate about half of our reds and all of our Chardonnay barrels with malolactic bacteria.  We have critical decisions to make regarding the residual sweetness we desire in our aromatic white varieties.  We have to push our Rieslings into various styles, and make those blends. 

So, with all this left to do, how can I say that vintage is over? 

We pressed our last red fermentations into tanks today.  The crusher-destemmer and must pump have been cleaned, and so has the press.  We will not be getting any more fruit this year.  All of the grapes which we picked have been processed, i.e., they  have been crushed and pressed and are now wine.  The yeast haven’t finished all of their work yet, but we do not have any juice left in the winery.  

There is no formal or industry-wide end to vintage, though we’re not alone in choosing this end of pressing to signify the end of this season.  The phone starts ringing around the end of October as winemakers re-emerge from vintage.  Everyone wants to know if we are done pressing, if we like what we are seeing, and most important, if we are all safe after this long period of hard, and potentially accident-causing, phase of winemaking.  

Here’s hoping that all of our comrades are safe and well, and that, as our friend Johannes Reinhardt of Anthony Road says, all the babies (new wines) are happy.

-Tricia

Music of the Day:

• Billie Holiday; "I'll Get By (As Long As I Have You)":

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Harvest Time, and the Living Is Easy

Among the many questions we get asked by visitors and reporters during vintage is how we decide when it is time to pick our grapes.  Given that the flavor of grapes has a murky connection at best to the flavors we perceive in a finished wine made from them, it is a question I often wondered about when I first came into the winery as well.  Failing an unexpected and catastrophic weather event (early frost, hurricane, biblical flood, locusts, frogs, etc.), there are a few factors that come into play:

• Visual:  No surprise that most of the decision-making is based on going out into the vineyards and looking at the vines and grapes.  What surprised me most was that with Pinot Noir, one indicator of sugar and flavor potential (i.e. whether it will accumulate or mature any further) is the appearance of the grapes.  If they have the matte appearance you see below, as opposed to a bright sheen, they are not going to ripen any further and we’ll plan on harvesting.

 I Like This Matte Finish

Pinot Noir grapes that have completed ripening.

• Health:  Depending on the growing season and the weather during harvest, there are a number of health concerns we look for in tasting the grapes and making harvesting decision.  A visual inspection might reveal presence of botrytis, a mold that dries the grapes out and contributes very distinct flavors.  Some wines are made in a style that benefits from botrytis, so long as the infection concentrates sugars and flavors without opening the clusters to sour (think vinegar) rot.  We are often hoping to keep our fruit as clean as possible, however, and try to avoid any botrytis influence.

• Sugar/Acid Balance:  In growing regions where ripening is all but assured, harvest decisions are sometimes made solely based on reaching a certain sugar level.  In the Finger Lakes sugar accumulation is always a bit of a challenge in vinifera grapes, especially given that it takes a surprisingly large amount of sugar for fermentation to produce a wine with normal alcoholic strength (when we harvest grapes they are nearly candy-sweet).  Even in a year such as 2010, where we did not have to worry about sugar ripeness in the grapes, we were still out tasting frequently to account for how the sugar was being balanced out by the acid left in the grapes.

• Taste:  What may seem most obvious, but actually comes near the end in making harvest decisions, is how the grapes taste.  Tricia already wrote of the flavors we are seeking in gewürztraminer grapes, but every grape has characteristics we taste for and green flavors we hope we can wait out before harvesting.  Regardless of sugar level, ripeness of flavors can lag or speed ahead of what we might expect and we have to be prepared for that.  We notice whether the seeds pop out of the grape or are still covered in a gelatinous material.  With red grapes, we even taste the seeds to see if they are bitter and unripe or nutty and chocolate.

• Harvesting Crew:  Securing a harvesting crew or a harvesting machine and operators is oftentimes the greatest challenge we are faced with in making harvest decisions.  Especially if a day of rain is imminent, securing a harvesting group right before can be akin to a political miracle given all the competition from other vineyards for the same crew.

Even barring a catastrophic weather event, everything mentioned above might end up going out the window.  If a long spell of rain settles in and pushes up disease pressure on our vines that can force our hand regardless of flavor.  If cold weather and/or a standard-issue frost shuts down sugar accumulation and takes off the leaves, that can also end up bringing in our grapes early.  Ultimately, this is what keep us humble as winemakers… but also makes the job so interesting time and time again.

By: Kelby Russell, Winemaking Team

Music of the Day:

• Brian Eno - Small Craft on a Milk Sea; "2 Forms of Anger" (album release on November 2nd):

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The Light at the End of the Tunnel Comes into Sight

There comes a time during the end stages of vintage when a gentle elation sets in, tempered by the remnants of exhaustion that linger after several months of very demanding work. Right now at Fox Run, we may just be at that point. Kelby reports that he got eleven hours of sleep last night, having woken only once worrying about an imminent nutrient addition to one of our Merlots.

  Riesling fermentations are coasting toward completion. Here’s what they look like from above.

Solving problems, real or imagined, in the middle of the night is one of the inevitable consequences of being a winemaker. Sleep researchers have confirmed that our brains never actually shut down. Like, that’s something that winemakers knew all along! The chunks of rest we grab are more for the body than the mind.

My recurring quasi-nightmare, cold sweat and noisy distress and all, always involves an overflowing tank of some wine or other, most often one of our treasured Rieslings. After one of those episodes, I have to coax myself back to sleep with a few hundred mantra-like repetitions of  “It was only a dream…”

Okay, I will never approach the soaring rhetoric of Martin Luther King. This is more about self-palliation.

Back to the elation thing. No winemaker I’ve ever met can be described as smug, but this year we carry around a satisfying conviction that we are entitled to quietly revel in a job well done. The 2010 vintage – my twenty-first in the Finger Lakes – never careened out of control the way vintage can when grapes-coming-in exceed the staff’s ability to properly look after them. My deep gratitude goes out to Fox Run veteran, the indispensable Peter Howe; to treasured, immensely talented assistant winemaker Tricia Renshaw, and to brainiac, multitalented intern winemaker Kelby Russell.

Music of the Day:

• Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band - Lick My Details Off, Baby; "Peon" (This strange, captivating guitar-and-bass duet from Frank Zappa’s colleague Captain Beefheart  somehow manages to capture the mood around here this week.):

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Gewürztraminer Is Trying To Break My Heart

Gewurztraminer is a heartbreaker.  In fact, it’s the biggest heartbreak grape.  There, I’ve said it, at risk of starting a squabble. 

Many of my colleagues would argue that Pinot noir is the more nefarious heartbreaker—and they’d have good reason.  Like no other grape, it’s delicate and fussy—no, really.  Pinot carefully raised in the vineyard, gently processed, lovingly tended in the winery, and aged in posh French barrels, can unexpectedly turn on you without a backward glance.   It can sail along for months, cheerfully exuding aromas of cherries and violets with just a hint of forest floor, then throw a hissy fit after a racking or a filtration it didn’t appreciate.  Suddenly, this Pinot, which was once an ethereal beauty, becomes a thin and weedy hag of a wine. 

This ugliness doesn’t last forever, thankfully, but while your Pinot takes its time deciding whether or not it’s ready to forgive you, a lot of hand-wringing and hair-graying happens.  As winemakers, we strive for an impossible balance in Pinot noir.  We try to create a wine which is flavorful yet subtle, pure yet earthy, muscular yet delicate.  It’s this balance that makes great Pinot noir spectacular.  When making Pinot, we glimpse perfection and then it slips away, it reappears, and then may or may not stay.  Eventually, the wine declares itself on one side of the line or the other:  the ideal attained, or just missed. 

Chasing Pinot Perfection can make a winemaker fear losing his nerve, or maybe his mind.  And yet, we are really talking about a difference of degrees.  En fin de compte, in the case of Pinot noir, we’re talking about the difference between delicious and sublime.  While it’s a cruel thing to attain near perfection, with Gewurztraminer, it’s a far graver situation.  In the case of Gewurz, it’s all or nothing.  

Gewurztraminer plays the same psychotic game of hide-and-seek with us that Pinot noir does, but it starts doing so in the vineyard.  Early on, the grapes turn rosy pink and look delicious long before they taste like anything.  We start asking, “Will we have Gewurz this year?” And we will ask that question a few dozen times over the course of the growing season.

In case you don’t know, we don’t release a Gewurztraminer every year.  Sometimes we go for a period of several years without producing a Gewurz.  Why?  Well, we make our Gewurz in a high-alcohol, low-acid style.  The texture is supple and the flavors are sumptuous.  This style is somewhat outré, but it works magnificently because of its onslaught of lychee and rose petal aromas.  Occasionally, there is a bit of nectarine, and there’s always some sort of hydrocarbon aroma (my mom calls it Kerosene wine).  If we were making an easy, breezy white quaffer, we could use any old Gewurztraminer grapes, but to achieve what we crave, we can’t get away with using grapes that are less than extremely ripe. Wispy suggestions of melon and citrus just wouldn’t do in a wine made in this style—this wine only makes sense when driven by an overload of fruit and floral aromas.  It’s meant to be a heady, hedonistic indulgence.   Trying to decide whether or not our grapes can produce the aromas we need in our wine is a torment. 

Please understand that the winemaking staff here at Fox Run has an abnormal love of Gewurztraminer.  We extol it.  We lust after it.  We stroll in the vineyard and dream of making and drinking the stuff.  We taste the grapes and debate whether or not we’re seeing Lychee.   Most wines synthesize their flavors during fermentation.  In the case of Gewurz, we get a preview of the flavor profile in the grapes.   Flavors in the grape skins will be in the finished wine, but if the flavors aren’t there to start with, guess what….  Insipid Gewurz is out of the question.  So, we walk, and taste, and hope and deliberate. 

“Will we have Gewurz this year?” 

“Definitely—I’m already seeing Lychee!”

“Afraid not, we’re not getting enough flavor.”

“Wait, maybe—let’s not make our minds up just yet.”

“Will we have Gewurz this year?”

“We’ll have to see.”

Patience is a virtue I’m hoping to acquire one day. 

           

In the event that the grapes do acquire enough flavor to merit being picked separately and treated to the ensuing laborious process of crushing, chilling, skin-contacting (you remember where all those flavors lie, right?), then finally pressing, racking, and inoculating, we find out that other hungry critters have been waiting and watching, too.  The deer and the turkeys quickly eat the ripening grapes off the vines as they reach peak maturity.  Now we battle whether or not we’ll have enough ripe grapes to make a reasonable volume of wine. 

            “Hmmm, doesn’t look good.  We’ll have to see.”

In the event that sufficient ripe grapes are picked to make a reasonable volume of wine, we have demonic flavor fluctuations ahead.  All wines go through phases—pleasant and not-so-pleasant on their way to completion, but none so volatile as Gewurz.  One day it’s full of lychee and apricot, the next day it’s nothing but silage.  Up and down, we ride            the sigmoid curve, praying we’ll land on an upturn and cursing the descents. 

           

“Wow, that’s gorgeous!”

            “Where has all the flavor gone?”

            “Will we have Gewurz this year?”

The misery continues through the winter, through the spring, time finally resolving the question around May or June.

                        “Do we have Gewurz?  Do we have to blend it away?”

Unlike Pinot noir, Gewurz is spectacular or bland.  In the latter case, it is a fine though innocuous addition to any number of blends, but can’t be its own wine.  When it’s spectacular, however, wow - what a wine.

Now you, dear reader, can join in the torment.  This lovely warm summer produced truly ripe fruit, at least in terms of sugar accumulation.  Flavor development in the Gewurz, for some evil reason, was lagging.  We debated and despaired, and finally, we found a sliver of hope:  lychee at last appeared in the past few weeks.  Would it be enough?  Did it come early enough to perfume the wine?  Would there be enough grapes left if we let them hang for just a bit longer?  After suffering all summer long, we have picked our small quantity of Gewurztraminer.  We crushed it yesterday afternoon.  Peter Bell, Peter Howe and Kelby are pressing it as I write this.  Today, there is plenty of flavor, but don’t get too comfortable yet—the question is nowhere near settled.  Now the nail-biting really begins.   We’ll keep you apprised.   Will there be Gewurz this year?  Please let the answer be “Yes”!

Hoping and wishing,

--Tricia, Assistant Winemaker

Music of the Day:

•   Janis Joplin - Cheap Thrills; "Piece of My Heart":

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Wine Please, Hold the Eggs

With how much we've mentioned the huge time commitment and work schedule of vintage, it would be natural to wonder exactly what there is left to do in the winery after we harvest, crush, (punch down), and press the grapes.  Obviously there is nothing quite as urgent and time consuming in the coming weeks, but there is a lot that goes into making sure our new wine is staying happy and healthy.  Primarily this means we will all be checking sugar levels, temperatures, and looking/tasting for overall health in our wines every day at least until the fermentation process is complete and the yeast frozen out. 

In the immediate future, however, we are preparing to feed our yeast so they keep working without complaint.  After the yeast has fermented about 1/3 the available sugar into alcohol in wine ferments they begin to run out of necessary nutrients other than sugar that they are unable to make for themselves.  As they enter this period they start "stressing;" a unique piece of jargon which has nothing to do with a teenager cramming for an exam the night before... unless that teenager also starts to emit hard boiled egg aromas as they get more stressed out.  When we smell the beginning of these stressed aromas (variously described as hard boiled egg, scrambled egg, or sulfurous), or the fermentation has went through a third of the total sugar, we know it is time to feed our yeast the nutrients they need.

With white wines, those where the fermentation is occurring after pressing and therefor without skin contact, we feed our yeast a mixture of diammonium phosphate and a mixture known as Fermaid-K.  The former is to provide the crucial missing ingredient of nitrogen back to the yeast, the latter provides much smaller amounts of various other pieces the yeast and juice lack.  With red wines, where the fermentation is occurring with skin contact, we only worry about adding diammonium phosphate for nitrogen; as the skins and stems often provide the other components the yeast desire.  The result of this is, to an extent, distinctly new world insofar as our aim is to produce wines that are immediately "clean" (filled with aromas and flavors of fruit) and easier to control (not smelling of eggs).

All in all it is a straightforward process that is easy to predict the start of and even easier to carry out.  The only trick is making sure to be careful when adding anything to a white fermentation.  Since the fermentation is occurring in a large, stainless steel tank without interference, there is a large amount of dissolved CO2 that is ready to burst out of solution if given the opportunity.  Many are the stories of someone adding a granular slurry of diammonium phosphate or Fermaid-K to a white fermentation too quickly, only to end up covered in wine a few moments later.  No such luck this year at Fox Run, but we'll make sure to grab a photo of it if it happens.

By: Kelby Russell, Winemaking Team


Music of the Day:

• Phoenix - Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix; "Liztomania" (Great group, great album, great sold-out concert in Ithaca this past Sunday):

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Insects, Holy Days and the Origins of Winemaking

The little-known Middle Eastern Enolonite tribe has recently been credited by historians and archaeologists with inventing the art of winemaking. This is their story.

Descendants of the prophet Gary, the ancient Enolonites wandered for years in a remote corner of Egypt, now the location of Hajid’s Used Camel and Mini Golf Emporium, trying to fulfill a prophecy that was written on a heavily smudged and greasy fragment of papyrus. A long series of droughts and crop failures made for a miserable quality of life.

In or about the year 883 BC, the date crop was, at long last, sweet and abundant. Just as tribe members prepared to sit down to a joyous feast, a swarm of ravenous, tiny flies blackened the sky. Modern day scientists have confirmed that these were members of Drosophila melanogaster.

The Common Fruit Fly:

An electron microscope image of the head of a fruit fly.

The swarming plague of fruit flies seemed to have come out of the north, and tribal elders came to see that there was nothing to be lost by following their cloud, despite bitter complaints by those without handkerchiefs to cover their faces.

Preparing for Fruit Flies:

During Rosh Drosophila, Enolonite tribeswomen don waterproof yellow prayer shawls, eschew mascara, and carry a ceremonial branch from the sacred Preshawasha Tree.

Successive generations of the pesky insects led them ever northward, until at last they reached the fertile plains of Mesopotamia. No seas parted or anything, which is why their story never made into any holy book, but it was nevertheless a dramatic and arduous journey. The average tribe member went through six to seven pairs of sandals.

It was in Mesopotamia that the Enolonites found freedom from persecution PLUS a bunch of really great things growing in the ground, including grapes. Winemaking soon followed, and before long this talented tribe began cranking out some seriously high-scoring reds and whites.

And it was all thanks to Drosophila!

Today, the descendants of the Enolonites are found in mostly rural regions throughout the temperate world: a remarkably successful Diaspora. In the tradition of their forebears, tribe members continue to practice the ancient art of winemaking, and their highest of Holy Days, occurring each year in early October, is known as Rosh Drosophila.

 A Feast Fit for Kings:

The traditional meal during Rosh Drosophila includes nuts, fruits, some bitter crunchy stuff, and partially leavened grape juice. Following a hearty round of chanting, the first to be asked to partake are always the Drosophila themselves: their six-day lifespan means that they are often on a tight schedule. 

Music of the Day:

• Desmond Dekker and the Aces; "Israelites": 

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A Different Kind of Winery Meal

As the days undeniably begin to grow shorter now, there is a distinct benefit to the hours we’re working during vintage.  Some winemakers are naturally night owls (or regressive teenagers) and work until the wee hours of the morning before starting the next day around noon, a schedule that suits their sleep habits and the massive quantity of work to be completed.  With Peter as the head honcho at Fox Run, however, there is no doubt that every day during vintage is likely to begin between 6:00am and 7:00am so we can finish before 10:00pm even on our busiest days.  Early to be sure, but it does result in my seeing the sunrise and sunset every day.

Morning Has Broken

Cutting past the cliches, sunrises are stunning.

Another treat during vintage that is easier to appreciate, however, are our evening meals together.  The vintage dinner has been mentioned a few times already, but it probably deserves its own post given how much attention we actually pay to it here.  The solution for this has become a highly-anticipated institution during vintage; all of us come together in the winery for a sit-down meal and fine wine as a break in the action. 

The dinner certainly fulfills a very functional role for all of us working. During those long 12+ hour days the thought of having to drive home and still prepare dinner is daunting - let alone getting ready for bed, which is the only thing on anyone’s mind at that point.  Moreover, for Pete and myself, there is a distinct need for calories come dinner time after we’ve spent the day running around the winery and lifting.  I think the calorie need is so that we can keep up physical work for a few more hours, though my mom would be the first to note the real problem is that, “You’ve always been cranky when you’re hungry, even since you were a small baby we knew!”

More than the need for the meal, however, is the pleasure we take in having one period of the year where we can eat together, talk about new ideas, and laugh about any mishaps during the day.  In this regard the vintage dinner helps solidify the feel of the winery as a surrogate family for us all during harvest, when we spend 90% of our waking hours in the winery and away from home.  It also gives us an excuse to break out special bottles of wine that we’ve been waiting for the right company to try with; sometimes aged bottles of Fox Run wine, sometimes fine beers, I even brought in a few wines from my travels in New Zealand back in April that I had specifically chosen with vintage in mind.

Then there is the food aspect of the dinner, no small detail given how much all of us enjoy cooking (I would say “enjoy eating,” but that only applies to the A-game appetite Pete and I bring to the table).  For the most part we are privileged to go down to the café in the tasting room and get a selection of soups, salads, and sandwiches for our dinner.  On rare occasions the chef has something special to send our way, such as a rack of lamb he had specially marinated for us.  Sometimes a friendly staff member from the tasting room or café volunteers to bring us dinner, such as the fantastic stuffed shells, salad, and applesauce Jackie and Dan brought to us last week or the wonderful vegetable lasagna that Ruth provided us an earlier evening.  For a few weeks we even dabbled with grilling some of our own food, an excellent option when there is enough time to justify one person manning the grill.

Life Isn't So Bad...

...Especially for Max, who would manage to snag one of the lamb pieces when we weren't looking.

After our nice meal, wine, and company it is quickly back to work most nights.  But with good music put on for the occasion and a full belly, the nip in the air doesn’t phase us.

By: Kelby Russell, Winery Team


Music of the Day:

• Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavillion; "My Girls":

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