July Reckoning

By: Kelby Russell, Winemaking Team Member

There is no denying it, we are definitely into the month of July.  As much as we might like to close our eyes and pretend that it is still June, Independence Day is now behind us and the dog days of summer are beckoning.  Don't get me wrong, we absolutely adore the glorious sunny days that summer in the Finger Lakes means - especially as those sunny days transform into molten twilights that seem to last forever.  You will notice, however, that I did not employ the normal cliché of "carefree summer days," and that is precisely the point.

Our daily calendar for the month of July is a complete mess.

Update From The Deep South: Harvest is Over!

By:  Kelby Russell, Winemaking Team Member from afar

Greetings once again from the Down Under's Down Under, Tasmania!  Home of wallabies, platypuses (platypi?), freakishly large moths, and birds that only sound quaint in name until their screeching calls awaken you before sunrise.  If kookaburras do congregate around 'the old gum tree,' as the sing-song rhyme would benignly have us believe, then I would seriously consider supporting the otherwise destructive logging industry here.

Update from the Southern Hemisphere: College Is In Session?

By:  Kelby Russell, Winemaking Team Member from afar

Vintages are a rite of passage in the wine industry; each one survived is another notch on the belt of the winemaker.  Most of the time these notches are accumulated one at a time as each fall approaches, but for those entering the industry it is now common to "chase" the vintage from hemisphere to hemisphere to get in two per calendar year.  Chasing vintages is certainly far easier than the hobby of those who can be found chasing tornados any evening on cable TV, but it often feels just as wild and tiring by the end of it.

A Mental Vacation From Winter

We live in such a visually beautiful area...so much to be exploited by photos! I've been planning for the arrival of Spring and Summer of 2011 here at the winery, which made me go back and organize some photos from a shoot earlier this year.  This first photo is an absolute magazine cover taken by Glen Sanders, a photographer who has done lots of work for Wine Spectator. 

Winter in the Finger Lakes!

If only! How nice to remember the vineyards from only a few short (warm) months ago.

It was quite a chore leading the photographer around for 4 or 5 hours, but in the end we think it was worth every penny for these photos - especially in helping us escape the winter for a moment!  Take a look for yourself: 

Peter Bell and Tricia Renshaw

I had to make sure and “style” my subjects, although this one is pretty natural!

Winemaker and Assistant Winemaker

The last time we did this Peter and Tricia wore BRIGHT blue and
BRIGHT red t-shirts.  This works much better in our natural surroundings

Scott Osborn, President

Scott also makes a great subject (we styled him too).

What is this about?

Here, Scott is explaining how turkeys cling to the trellis and flap their wings
so that the grapes fall.  Before you know it two or three rows are stripped. 

Here Comes the Sun

What more could he ask for...

Ruth Osborn, Comptroller

...other than his beautiful wife, Ruth!

 John Kaiser, Vineyard Manager Extraordinaire

Our vineyard manager, however, was not entirely helpful…
he just does not want his picture taken.

 Peter Howe, Winery/Vineyard Wunderkind

Pete Howe is always moving so you have to get him on the fly.

Winemaker, or wine glass holder?

Peter, frankly, would be the first to admit he can be a difficult subject.

 Taking a sample in the Winery

Glen, however, did an amazing job capturing what
I think are some totally natural expressions from Peter.

 10,000 Watt Smile

And then there is always lovely Tricia...

 Tasting in the Winery

...never a bad photo of our Assistant Winemaker!

Finger Lakes or French Countryside?

All in all…a good day.

Of course there are the traditional vineyard photos – but what’s not to love? This property is stunning and certainly makes for a great subject.


By: Leslie Kroeger, Marketing Manager

Aftermath: “And How Does That Make You Feel?”

Long ago I used to volunteer at a large annual music event in Toronto called the Mariposa Folk Festival. For folk music lovers – there seemed to be so many more of them back then – it was the highlight of the year, and attracted the likes of Bob Dylan, Gordon Lightfoot, Taj Mahal and Steve Goodman, along with performers in newly-rediscovered old genres like Zydeco, Old-Timey and even Clogging.

My tiny part in the planning and execution of this event involved making sure that performers got from the airport to their hotel and thence to the performance venue, and a few days later doing it all in reverse.

As soon as the last performer had been packed off to the airport late on Sunday afternoon, the festival was abruptly over for me. I was always struck with a “now what?” ennui for a few days afterward, a feeling that something really big and all-consuming had come and gone and now there was nothing to fill the void.

Not so with the phenomenon we have been blogging about so much lately, Vintage. Yes, vintage is over, but this is when the work begins. Work, that is, that feels more like normal winemaking and less like a concerted, giddy frenzy.

Here are some of the post-vintage tasks that are keeping us busy and engaged:

• Giving the crusher, must pump and press a final, thorough cleaning, and hanging up Son of Bertha, our trusty 4” must hose

• Inoculating about 80 barrels and tanks with the bacteria that will conduct the malolactic fermentation in the wines

 Fourth Floor Walkup

Tricia adds freeze dried bacteria to a barrel of Chardonnay

• Beginning the task of deciding which tanks of Riesling will play well with others, and introducing them to each other in a larger tank

• Vacuuming up the approximately 4 quadrillion fruit fly carcasses littering the lab

• Pumping last year’s red wines out of barrels and filling the barrels with this year’s reds

• Figuring out how we’re going to come up with the 400 cases of 2010 Arctic Fox wine that our marketing department needs in less than a month

• Trying to convince a defiant tank of Chardonnay to hurry up and ferment to dryness

• Tasting, spitting, tasting, spitting…

Overall it’s a thrilling time of year. No ennui to be found here.

By: Peter, Winemaker

Music of the Day:

• Iggy Pop - Brick by Brick; "Candy" (featuring Katy Pierson):

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Reviewing Vintage 2010 (No Grades, New York Times Style)

2010 will go down as an unique growing season and vintage in the Finger Lakes.  While our colleagues in California were dealing with difficulty ripening grapes (!), I remember calling my parents in early April as I was working in New Zealand - only to be told the temperatures were in the 80s.  From a frighteningly early bud-break, given the threat of frost, to extremely warm and wet conditions throughout the summer, I do not think anyone has a clear idea of what this vintage will look like a few years from now.

Despite that, we have finished pressing out all our grapes now and I love to prognosticate.  Based on what we are tasting and hearing from others around the lakes, here is a first stab at deciphering vintage 2010 now that we have enough information to try:

• Hybrid and Native Grape Wines (Cayuga, Concord, Niagara): This is a huge category to try and lump together, but the fact of the matter is that these grapes tend to ripen early and in the same timeframe.  This vintage that meant we heard of people harvesting these grapes in early and mid-August at entirely normal sugar levels.  Considering they came in so early, before the rain and storms that proved troublesome come September/October, it is a safe bet that 2010 wines made of these grapes will be just fine.  Certainly the fruit was ripe, the only question that may vary from producer to producer is whether there was enough acid to back up the wine.

• Chardonnay and Pinot Noir:  Both came in for most around Seneca Lake in early to mid-September, in that nice balmy stretch that finished out our summer.  Dry skies and warm temperatures means that the harvest conditions were ideal, the warmth during the growing season resulted in some jaw-dropping sugar measurements on these two grapes.  Never will the Finger Lakes turn into a producer of the bland, jammy, international style of red wine that some other New World pinot noir regions have traded on; but certainly this is a year for some of the richest fruit aromas and flavors we could hope for.  Chardonnay were also rich and dense, so it looks like a great year across the region for wines made from either grape.

• Pinot Gris/Grigio and Gewürztraminer:  Hard to summarize for these two Alsatian grapes, folks pulled them in at markedly different times across the region.  At Fox Run we kept ours hanging for three weeks more than many down in the Seneca Lake Banana Belt were, but in the end I think everyone is happy with the ripeness of the grapes both in sugar and flavor.  You’ve already heard Tricia’s take on our Gewürz, but I think the thing we were most amazed by was the fact that Pinot Gris grapes actually had distinct flavors.  As popular a wine as it is, Pinot Gris grapes are not usually so striking in their aromatics and flavors.  All in all, these were generally the last grapes to make it in before the series of rain events hit the Finger Lakes harvest and consistent high quality for 2010 seem likely.

• Riesling:  There is never a bad year for riesling in the Finger Lakes, as Fox Run’s owner/president Scott Osborn often points out.  2010 is no exception, and has the potential to be a truly great year for the right growers and producers.  By consensus, 2006 was one of the best years in recent memory for riesling in the Finger Lakes due to a nice balance of sugar with a clean acidity that did not disappear.  The concern with 2010 is that the warmth and accumulated sugar levels would come at the expense of acid levels in the grapes and, subsequently, the grapes.  So far that doesn’t appear to be a problem, and instead we are left with fantastically ripe fruit with tropical flavors we rarely attain.  The bigger concern for 2010 riesling in the Finger Lakes will be variability due to harvest conditions.  Riesling did not start being harvested until the brunt of the rain started to hit (as well as reports of ladybug outbreaks), leading to extreme disease pressure for growers that were not ready for the poor weather.  Dreams of noble rot and late-harvest wines were shot by the reality of sour rot and disintegrating grape-skins forcing the hand of some growers to harvest everything and quickly.  Having not had a chance to taste much, all we can say is a huge THANK YOU to John Kaiser and our vineyard team.  Despite the rain, at Fox Run we had the luxury to pick our riesling when we felt they were ready - even leaving one special block hanging to pick up noble rot.  John kept our fruit clean of disease and we are ecstatic with the 12 tanks of riesling now in our cellar.

• Bordeaux Reds (Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot):  It is no secret that Finger Lakes reds can have a difficult time achieving ripeness levels we would consider ideal.  Regardless of that, we can say something in general about the bordeaux reds of 2010 that would normally sound delusional; quality is likely as variable as with riesling.  Great ripeness levels were almost a given this year for these grapes; high Brix levels, great flavor ripeness, even the seeds tasted densely chocolaty and nutty without a hint of bitterness.  Unfortunately, due to how long they take to ripen, they had to survive the battering of cooler weather, rain, and wind that threatened later rieslings in October.  We have high hopes for quite a few of our blocks, especially those we put into our Ruby Port and Tawny Port programs, but nothing firm will be known for another year when they start to come out of barrels.

2010 is not even fully in the books yet - and won’t be for quite some time if a winery is doing a late harvest or icewine - but there is a first attempt at summing up what we think we’re seeing.  For the earlier ripening grapes 2010 looks to be fantastic across the Finger Lakes, for the later ripening grapes it comes down to knowing your producer.  There will be nothing bad out there and the potential for greatness absolutely exists if a winery was able to seize it.

By: Kelby, Winemaking Team

Music of the Day:

• Thomas Tallis; Spem in Alium (as performed by the Tallis Scholars on The Tallis Scholars Sing Thomas Tallis):

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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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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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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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