Home | Wine Vintage | 2005
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2005 HARVEST REPORT After 16 years, the challenge of defining a vintage in a few short paragraphs is as great as ever. Everyone wants to know how the vintage was. However, their real question is, “Was it great?”. What constitutes a great growing season is a very different question than determining if that vintage will produce great wines. One describes the health of plants, the other describes the end product of the winemaker's art using the fruit of those plants. Healthy plants do not necessarily make great wine. I find it more, not less, difficult to make predictions as my experience grows. My goal is to produce balanced wines that reflect the nuances of their terroir and the uniqueness of the vintage. I believe that great wines should develop with age. Some vintages are easy, others provide substantial challenges. I find the difficult years to be particularly rewarding. Because Pinot noir styles vary so much from one terroir to another, vintage variations merely add another variable of flavor and texture, rather than creating better or worse wines. I believe that the key to making great wine is: 1) sound fruit, 2) good balance of sugar and acid, and 3) a reasonable degree of ripeness. Vintages with big obvious fruit often show themselves in their youth. When the fruit is more subtle and elegant, the wines reveal their beauty with some age. I believe that great wines can be made from both. The best example of these points was illustrated by a major tasting for wine professionals I chaired this past summer. I selected three vintages in a row. The first was a very ripe, early vintage that produced very fruit forward wines. When released, wine writers loved these wines because they were obvious. They had attractive bright fruit flavors and were framed by soft acidity. The wines were drinkable at release and promptly sold out amidst great reviews. These three wines were tasted at about 12 years of age. Wines from the first vintage (by now you real wine junkies have figured out that it was 1992) were all “over the hill”. The fruit was largely gone and none of the professionals were very interested in them except as curiosities. Wines from the last vintage (1994) were a mixed bag. Those made from grapes picked earlier with more acidity and less obvious fruit were still alive while the rest were fading like the '92's. The surprise was how lovely every single one of the 1993 wines tasted. None were “old”, none were oxidized. In fact every one of them was alive, full of fruit and were beautiful expressions of Pinot noir. Each of the professionals wished for more. In comparison, 2004 reminds me very much of 1993 and I believe the '04's will age just as beautifully. There is a lesson in this anecdote. Big, ripe vintages produce obvious wines, especially in their youth. Some of the best vintages to age are not all that exciting when they are young. My job is to capture what Mother Nature gives me and make the best wine possible. A grape's life begins at bloom, so let's start there. Bloom was very late in 2005 and occurred in two periods, separated by cool rainy weather. This meant that harvest would also be late - probably beginning in October. It also meant that some of the vineyards bloomed during the rain. Fertilization is poor in rainy conditions and the result is a very low crop. The fruit from Maresh Vineyard yielded only 0.7 tons per acre. Most of the rest of our vineyards had normal yields of 1.8-2.4 tons per acre. Another dry, warm summer followed but without excessive heat. This is important because when the canopy temperature gets into the mid-90's the vines shut down and the fruit stops developing. Weeks in the high 90's can delay harvest significantly. This did not happen in '05, which was a good thing since harvest was already going to be late. September passed with moderate temperatures and, unfortunately, with almost no rain. The grapes continued to ripen, but flavors seemed to stall out towards the end of the month. I believe that adequate moisture is needed to obtain ripe flavors and the lack of rain was making it difficult for the vines to complete their job. We needed rain. I should be careful of what I wish for! On September 30 it dumped and continued to rain for three days. I finally had moisture but the question was “How much is too much?”. It had never rained like this so close to harvest. The biggest risk from rain is splitting of the fruit. Ruptured berries become breeding grounds for disease which, in turn, causes rampant rot. Thankfully Baccus was smiling on us and this did not happen! The fruit skins had ripened enough to be pliable and were able to stretch instead of breaking. The plants became waterlogged, but that resolved with three to five days of dry weather. We waited four days for things to dry out and then picked the Chardonnay from Freedom Hill. It was lovely, sound fruit. Three days later, all of our vineyards had made major leaps in flavor development. Everything had ripened, seemingly all at once. Rain increases the potential for rot. Since we now had all of the flavor I had been waiting for, we needed to pick everything ASAP! On October 10 we picked five lots of fruit totaling 39.5 tons. That was the single biggest day ever, representing 40% of our production. We picked all of the remaining fruit over the next five days making this our shortest, most compacted harvest on record! Whew! With fully ripened flavors, moderate alcohols, a nice backbone of acidity and no rot, 2005 culminated in very balanced fruit. This is exactly what I hope for. Now, it is my job to make really lovely wines. It is a job I love and I look forward to sharing them with you. Thanks, Mark Vlossak, Winemaker |
