One of the weirdest things about becoming a farmer later in life is that you have to start considering the weather in things beyond the question of whether or not to carry an umbrella. When it’s this close to harvest, watching the weather and tasting the grapes is a daily thing. Decisions are made, harvest dates are set and reset. It’s all a gamble. Harvest now? Avoid the different risks of heat or rain. Wait? Perhaps get even more ripeness but heat will dehydrate the grapes and cause the sugars to shoot up beyond manageable levels. Rain could spoil everything. Eventually, if you do nothing, the vines will shut down and stop ripening the grapes anyway. Good thing I have some great partners who better understand these things. Cary Gott, Barbour Vineyards, and Pina Vineyard Management increase our odds come harvest time.
We always try at least “pencil in” harvest a couple of weeks out. This gives Barbour, Pina, and Rombauer (where we crush our grapes) a heads up in scheduling their workload. However, this year, like last year, has been very mild. With the exception of July’s heat, the season has been long and mild with no late season heat storms to dehydrate grapes and cause a rush to harvest. Basically we’ve just been waiting, keeping one eye on the weather to make sure there are no big swings in the forecast. Harvests have been predicted, set, and set back.
What will this mean? Of course, it’s too early to tell much about the wine we’ll make, but we’re encouraged that with long hang time, the grapes will be wonderful with as much ripeness as possible. Also, no excessive heat means we won’t end up with overripeness. The mild temps also mean that crops will be pretty big as we’ve lost little due to dehydration. In fact, Cary commented the other day that the clusters as Baconbrook look just perfect.
Harvest dates are set.
Baconbrook will be Saturday 10/21.
Butterdragon will be Tuesday 10/24.
‘Course, all that can change.

There are still a lot of grapes out there in Napa. Just a few scattered tons have been harvested and in fact, most of the chardonnay and other early ripening varietals are still out.
Tomorrow we’re expecting a significant amount of rain. What had been earlier predicted as a slight chance of a shower has now grown to “the first significant rain event” of the season. Santa Cruz mountains and down towards Monterey possibly as much as an inch. Napa Valley may get 1/2 to 3/4 inch. Nerves of steel needed in this business. Few have been ready to harvest and now there’s some risk. Everyone should be okay — especially thicker skinned varieties — but I’m sure we’ll all be holding our breath. Especially important is what happens AFTER the rain. We’ll need some sun and warmth to dry things out.
Are things going to be late? Baconbrook’s and Butterdragon’s harvest dates still haven’t even been penciled in. We usually try to do that 2 weeks out.

As of this morning…
Baconbrook
Block 1 – 24.3
Block 2 – 23.5
Butterdragon
Cab Sauv Clone 15 – 25.4
Clone 7 – 24.6
Clone 337 – 26.0
Merlot – 25.0
Although we’re starting to get into “harvest” numbers, the flavors aren’t there yet. So we wait.

Hot dry winds in the Napa Valley today. Not a good thing, but the forecast is for a return to mild weather. If that is true, we’re still probably close to two weeks from harvest.
Brix readings
Baconbrook (9/21/06 AM)
Block 1 – 23
Block 2 – 22.4
Butterdragon (9/20/06 AM)
Cab clone 337 – 24
clone 7 – 23
clone 15 – 23.6
Merlot – 23.8

Cary and I walked the vineyards today. It appears that the vineyards weathered the July heat wave really well.
Butterdragon Hill is a 7 acre vineyard that sits on a hillside above Highway 29. It is located between St. Helena and Calistoga near the Old Bale Mill. If you’re familiar with the Valley, imagine the position and orientation of St. Clement, Grace, and Vineyard 29. Tha’s what Butterdragon Hill is like.
The crop looks lighter than last year (a really big year). Bunches are well formed but berries are more widely spaced and smaller. This is usually a good sign for flavors.
Cab clone 337 – Veraison complete
Cab clone 7 – Veraison almost complete
Cab clone 15 – Veraison complete
Merlot – Veraison complete. Looks in good shape which is good news especially considering some vineyards have had trouble with their Merlot this year.
Bacobrook is less than 3 acres and sits in a saddle of a ridge on the west side of the Napa Valley. Part of the vineyard overlooks the town of St. Helena, part overlooks the small valley through which White Sulphur creek runs.
Napa Valley side block – Veraison complete. Looks absolutely awesome.
White Sulphur Springs side block – Veraison complete. Lighter crop, a bit more uneven.

Well, we’ve now done it 3 times…
Yesterday we bottled 650 cases of the 2004 Butterdragon Hill. That’s 630 12 pack cases + the rest in equivalent of mags and 375’s. The bottling went well. The wine was trucked over to Frank Family from Rombauer on Monday, underwent a light filtration, and the line was set up and ran quickly on Wednesday.
As those of you who had the chance to taste it out of the barrel know, the 04 is great. We are very excited about this vintage. Although we like both 02 and 03, the additional maturity of the vines makes us suspect that the 04 will be our “out-of-the-ballpark” wine.
The 2004 Butterdragon will be released next Spring. We’ve decided to keep the 2004 Baconbrook in the barrel longer so it won’t be bottled until next January. That wine will be released in the Fall of 2007.

As many of you know, we make and store our wine at Rombauer, located on the Silverado Trail between St. Helena and Calistoga. Following crush, fermentation, and extended maceration, the wine goes into around 90% new French oak barrels, undergoes malolactic fermentation and then spends the next two years aging in Rombauer’s approximate one mile of caves. Over the course of those two years, the wine will be racked a few times, barrels topped off, and tasted regularly by myself, my winemaker, and our mailing list members who come by.

Barrel tasting is fun. It’s also a bit of a gamble for several reasons. Wine in the barrel is a very dynamic thing and I’ve seen it be really unimpressive one week and knock your socks off the next. Also, not owning our own facility means we are sometimes subject to Rombauer’s schedule. I remember one time setting up a tasting with some mailing list members at 3:30 PM, only to discover that the Rombauer cellar staff had taken off at 3:00 that day. Not a problem normally — we aren’t escorted there — but they had turned off all the lights in the caves and neither I nor anyone in the Rombauer tasting room knew where the lights were. Plan B, implemented quickly, was I invited this couple back to our house, gave them a tour and opened a bottle of the 2002, the only wine we had in the bottle at the time. I thought it went pretty well for an off-the-cuff endeavour, but I guess they didn’t. They never bought any wine. Oh well. This post is about barrel tasting.

Last Friday I checked out our 2004’s and 2005’s in barrel.

2005 Butterdragon – Already tasty, but still showing signs of the recently finished malolactic fermentation. For lack of a better descriptor, it makes the wine seem a bit “fizzy” in the mouth.

2005 Butterdragon (Skins Lot) – All our wines go through extended maceration but with about 1/2 of Butterdragon we provided an additional 5 days on the skins. This wine seems further along than the other lot showing more floral nose and rounder mouthfeel.

2005 Baconbrook – Monster lurking in the barrel. Tight.

2004 Butterdragon – Scheduled to be bottled in June. Lovely round mouthfeel, dark color, fruit forward with chocolate.

2004 Baconbrook – Also very tight but exhibiting exotic spice aromas, dark fruits, and a touch of eucalyptus. Although this wine is also scheduled for June bottling, we may keep in the barrel for a few more months.

Want to come barrel taste with me? Let me know and I’ll do my best to meet up with you at Rombauer. Also, as tastings are scheduled, I’ll post here if there are additional slots.

The next scheduled barrel tasting is Tuesday, March 14th at 10:30 AM at Rombauer. Let me know if you’d like to attend.

We’ve decided to change the trellis system at Baconbrook. Right now we have a simple vertical trellis but will be installing a “Y” trellis to provide better canopy management and protect the fruit from sunburn during September heat waves. And that’s how you spend $5000 on what seems like scrap metal.

I had a really good night on Saturday. Sasha was in The City with an old friend so I took Alec (my son) to Pizzaiola, a great pizza and pasta place at Telegraph and 51st in Oakland. It’s fun to have a “guys'” night out. I also took along a 375 of the 2003 Butterdragon Hill. It was a good chance for me to sip on our upcoming release.

Just a few informal thoughts…

Elegance and restraint. It is not as fruit forward or primary as the 2002 was at this stage. The wine is regaining some heft as we put some time between it and the bottling last September. The fruit is really nice, but there’s complexity showing through that differentiates it from the 02. Oak, spice box, anise, tea, mocha… it’s not as big and lush as the 02, but probably a more complete and definitely more complex wine. Probably will age longer. Definitely more sophisticated. Definitely better than the 2002 with a meal. I like the color — a medium ruby with lovely luster. Doesn’t look “big” in the glass… yet. Charming cassis and raspberry ribbon of fruit. Some will like it a lot better than the 2002, some will not. While it also displays the candy aroma in the finished glass that seems to be the M.O. of Butterdragon, it’s currently not the “fun” party wine that the 2002 was/is… also lower in alcohol than the 02. I like it. How cool is it to get to know this vineyard.

This week we racked our 2005 wines. The process was started Monday and completed today.

For those that don’t know, racking is the process where the wines are pumped from barrel to tanks and then the barrels are cleaned out and sterilized with ozone removing all the dead yeast and other solids that have settled to the bottom of the barrel. The wine is then returned to the barrel.

In our short history at Match, we’ve been racking 3 or so times per vintage over the course of the 22-24 months the wine spends in the barrel. There’s no hard or fast rule… the winemaker decides when its needed based usually on smell. This was the first racking of our 2005’s.

On the farming front… Tomorrow we start pruning Butterdragon.