Cary’s report:

It’s Tuesday morning, September 14th, in heavy fog at Baconbrook although I can see in the distance maybe a little sun on those hills over to the west [Spring Mountain]. The vineyard looks in great shape. The bunches and berries are very firm. I just did a sugar and actually, it’s dropped a little bit. We’re at about 21.8 [degrees Brix]. I tested the vineyard on the east side. Vines look in great shape; bunches are really tight; berries are tight; seeds are just starting to turn brown.

I’ve also taken some photos which I will forward to you also.

So all-in-all it’s certainly an interesting year. We’re supposed to get in to the 80s today but there’s actually a chance of rain over the weekend. So, right now Baconbrook looks excellent for producing great wine, let’s just hope the weather stays with us.

Here’s the actual lab numbers from 9/14:

Location            Brix      Ph        TA

East Block        21.1      3.30      7.1

West Block       20.7      3.33      6.7

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Winemaker Cary Gott walked our Butterdragon Hill vineyard yesterday. Here is a transcript of his recorded memo:

It’s Monday morning about 10 o’clock. The drippers are on in the 337 Cabernet. The grapes are starting to get some very nice flavors to them. Later this week I’ll do some sugars but it’s amazing that there’s just virtually no sunburn. The grapes just look in great shape. Obviously were a long ways away from harvest but they’re healthy and happy. So, Butterdragon from a winemaker’s point of view looks great.

I am working on the release letter for our 2007 Baconbrook Cab now and it should start hitting your mailboxes in the next week or so.

This shows just how small our Baconbrook vineyard is AND that I still remember how to handcode HTML tables. Amazing.

From winemaker Cary Gott:

All is OK, and for Baconbrook things look normal except we are up to 2 weeks behind the usual harvest dates.  That is great for that vineyard.

Seeds are green and a simple field test has the brix about 20.5º brix on the east block.

On the west side we are about 21.5º brix.

Cary Gott did some walking yesterday:

I walked Butterdragon this am to see how the vines did over the hot weekend.

There still is very little sunburn.  Green seeds.  Grapes is great shape.

A simple sugar test in the [clone] 337 got a 19.5º brix.

We still have a long way to go.

Lets hope the weather stays normal, whatever that means in an odd year like this.

What is it like to ride around with a winemaker? After racking our 2009 wines, Cary Gott recorded the following comments on his iPhone.

On Wednesday of last week we racked all of the barrels of the 2009 Match Butterdragon Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon. This was the pre-harvest racking. It would be the third time the wine has been racked since we fermented the 2009 last September and October.

The reason we rack just before harvest is to basically harmonize all of the different barrel flavors that we’ve derived over the last few months. [W]e buy a multiple collection of barrels from different coopers so that we have some particular barrels, flavors, and styles that blend well with other ones when they are all homogeneously put back together in a blend. [We used] six different barrel manufacturers.

We bull-dogged racked the wine which means that we used a device in each barrel that basically pressurizes the barrel with nitrogen gas thereby forcing the wine out through hoses to a tank that had been gassed also with nitrogen. That would just really eliminate basically all of the potential oxygen pickup. A little bit of oxygen pickup at this time is not bad but we don’t want very much.

Once in the tank, we checked the free SO2 and added a small amount of SO2 to bring the free SO2 back up to around 35 PPM. The wine was pumped back to barrel and topped and back in the stacks on their racks… a good, successful racking.

We also racked the Baconbrook Cabernet Sauvignon, basically utilizing the same techniques we used for the Butterdragon. [We] bull-dog racked using nitrogen gas to a tank. The barrels were cleaned and then allowed to drain. The free SO2 was checked. A little bit of free SO2 was added to the wine and then the wine was pumped back to barrels.

Both wines show a very nice set of flavors that really are the style of the vineyards. The hilltop Baconbrook vineyard has a little bit more Cabernet style to it. It’s a little bit more aggressive and because of its extra tannin that it has, it will age for an extra 5 or 6 months in barrel before we bottle it as compared to the Butterdragon which is a softer, more luscious style of Cabernet, a little bit darker in color, but not quite as dramatic and forceful as Baconbrook.

Is there anything specific you’d like Cary to discuss? Let us know.

Cary Gott and I walked Baconbrook this morning to see how it fared after last week’s heat spike.

The eastern block showed almost no sunburn.  The western block was in good shape overall but did show more sunburn and stressed vines than in the eastern block  (or in all of Butterdragon which was relatively unaffected).  Why the difference in the western block?  The obvious answer is the rows on the western block get more intense afternoon sun but that doesn’t tell the whole story. As I’ve mentioned before, we don’t have access to as much water as we would like up at Baconbrook. (We’re currently buying two truckloads of water a week.)  There isn’t enough water to irrigate the whole vineyard in one day. The eastern block was irrigated the couple of days before the heat wave. The western was irrigated during the heat wave. The irrigation before the heat storm prepared the eastern vines for the coming heat.

Check out the image gallery below to see the good, the bad, and the ugly.

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By the way, it’s hot again in Napa and the forecast is for it to be in the high 90s for a couple of days followed by an extended mild period.

Tomorrow Cary Gott and I will taste through all the 2009 barrels. Afterwards the wines will be racked. For those unfamiliar with the term, “racking” means the wine will be transferred out of the barrels in to steel tanks. The barrels will be cleaned thoroughly and then the wine returned to barrel. We do this 2-3 times through the course of the barrel aging process.

Winemaker, Cary Gott, walked our Butterdragon Hill vineyard this morning.

After this week’s heat spike, a lot of Napa Valley vineyards experienced significant sunburn of their fruit.

It looks like we came through relatively unscathed.  Quoting Cary:

Just walked Butterdragon and there is almost NO sunburn. This is as bad as it gets. This is less than 1%.

Great.

Lots of vineyards have plenty of burn.