Winegrower's Log 2007

November 5, 2007 
Harvest is complete in the Edna and Arroyo Grande Valleys, but we’ve still got cabernet sauvignon and cabernet franc to harvest in Paso Robles. My hope is that we will harvest these grapes later this week, or early the following week. The flavors are developing very nicely—we’re just waiting for sugars to reach the ideal level and the warm days we’re experiencing now are helping with that.

We celebrated the end of harvest in the south county with a harvest party at the winery on Friday, November 2nd. The highlight of the party this year was a raffle for our vineyard and cellar crews with our very own Nacho Zarate (Talley Vineyards Cellar Master) serving as the MC. It was fun and everyone won something, ranging from lunch boxes, portable radios, and wine to gift certificates from Best Buy and Home Depot.

Another highlight of the harvest party was the debut of this year’s “crush crew” t-shirt. The crush crew t-shirt is a tradition that dates back to 1992. Every year we create a special t-shirt that we hope captures the mood of harvest and distribute the shirt to all of our employees. This year’s version, with the slogan “Make Wine Not War” is widely regarded as one of our best ever. We will probably have the shirt available for sale in the tasting room. If you want one, contact Tasting Room Manager Lucy Parkin at lucy@talleyvineyards.com.

Just because harvest is over in most parts of our vineyards doesn’t mean the work is done. In fact, our tractor drivers are working overtime to get all of the post harvest tillage and soils work done. We’ll have cover crops planted throughout our vineyards by the end of November. The rest of the vineyard crew is focused on our redevelopment program. We’re removing 10 acres of vines in the East and West Rincon Vineyards that are no longer financially viable to farm. These will be replanted in 2009. Meanwhile, we’re preparing to plant new vines at Rosemary’s Vineyard this next spring as well as in our brand new Las Ventanas vineyard, directly across Lopez Drive from the winery. These will be our first vineyards planted at a six foot spacing (which increases the number of plants per acre, allowing us to optimize our land use) and I eagerly await the wines we produce from the vines.

October 4, 2007 
We shifted into a new phase of harvest this week. We started harvesting chardonnay in the East Rincon Vineyard on Tuesday. As with pinot noir, yields are down, but the flavors are concentrated and ripe and the acidity is good. Meanwhile we’ve only got about 5 more tons of pinot noir to harvest with small sections remaining in every vineyard except Rosemary’s Vineyard, where all of the pinot noir harvest was completed as of Monday, October 1.

This afternoon, we’ll receive our first grapes for the year from Hazel’s Vineyard, which will consist of 20 tons of syrah. I anticipate yields in this vineyard to be better than last year, though most people in Paso Robles are reporting smaller crops than 2006. I attribute our success to the hard work that Vineyard Manager Kevin Wilkinson and foreman Juan Silva have put in this year.

The next three weeks will be exciting and busy here at the winery as I anticipate the majority of our crop will be harvested before the first of November. The only things I think we’ll still have on the vine after that time are cabernet sauvignon and cabernet franc from Paso Robles and syrah from the Edna Valley.

September 18, 2007 
As we enter the second week of harvest I see a couple of important themes emerging. First, the crop is down from last year. To date, yields are running about 20% below 2006. Yields vary by vineyard with Rosemary’s and Stone Corral being very similar to last year, West Rincon running about 50% and East Rincon just slightly higher. The chardonnay crop looks better, but it’s been my experience that we will see similar trends once we start harvesting those grapes. Overall quality looks good with balanced sugar/acid ratios and concentrated flavors.

What’s the other key theme of harvest 2007? Patience is a virtue. After the record breaking heat of Labor Day (we measured 110 degrees at one weather station), many winemakers rushed to harvest grapes because sugars raced to very high brix levels due to dehydration. Our Winemaker, Leslie Mead, counseled caution and patience. We looked at those areas where the fruit didn’t recover and picked very selectively. Everything else we left to continue to ripen. As has been the case in the past, the vines recovered, the grapes rehydrated and the resulting wines will have better flavors because we left them on the vine.

Things are running smoothly in the winery with our first pinot noirs pressed off yesterday. The winery has the wonderful smell of fermentation and yeast. Most sections of pinot noir are right on the verge of being perfectly ripe, but there’s a chance of rain later this week, so we’ll pick selectively over the next couple of days to hedge our bets. All of this reminds me why harvest is my favorite time of year.

September 5, 2007 
Today we started harvest in Arroyo Grande, Paso Robles and Los Alamos. Our mini Labor Day heat wave moved the harvest schedule ahead a few days, and we began with a tiny quantity of pinot noir from the West Rincon Vineyard here in Arroyo Grande. Simultaneously, we harvested pinot gris from a vineyard managed by Tavo Acosta in Los Alamos as well as pinot noir from a vineyard on the Westside of Paso Robles.

The next thing to come in will be more pinot noir, this time from the Orchid Hill Vineyard in Paso Robles, on Friday. I don’t think we’ll pick anymore pinot noir from Arroyo Grande until next week. It was a great first day of harvest!

August 31, 2007 
Yesterday we experienced the most spectacular lightening storm that I can remember here on the central coast. A rare tropical storm moved into the area very quickly the day before. Intense thunder and lightening began just before midnight and proceeded through the morning, resulting in a loss of power throughout the Arroyo Grande Valley after lightening struck a PG&E transformer. Talley Vineyards experienced only a brief loss of electricity and operations at the winery were normal for the day. Talley Farms, just 1/3 of a mile to the west, had no power until noon. Rainfall was scant in most areas.

Since we are right on the verge of beginning our harvest, rain is the last thing we’re looking for. Rain at this stage, especially followed by the humid conditions we experienced yesterday, has the potential to cause the growth of Botrytis cinerea. While botrytis is highly desirable for the production of dessert wines, it is extremely undesirable for chardonnay and pinot noir because it results in off flavors and aromas and dramatically shrinks the crop. It also adversely affects color. We plan to monitor our vineyards very closely over the next few days and weeks to find any active botrytis and remove it before it can spread.

Speaking of harvest, I anticipate that it will start in Arroyo Grande next Wednesday. We will likely start in a section in the West Rincon Vineyard that is historically one of the first blocks we harvest. The rainstorm not withstanding, quality looks excellent. Flavors are intense and acidity is good. I expect the crop to be larger than last year, though smaller than in 2005.

Everything in the winery is now in order for the harvest. We’re just finishing the racking of our 2006 pinot noirs, which look to be very good. Earlier this year, we purchased a brand new press which arrived a week ago. This state-of-the art 10,000 liter Europress will dramatically increase our productivity because we will be able to whole cluster press chardonnay much more efficiently than in the past. All in all, it’s shaping up to be an excellent harvest. I can’t wait for it to start!

July 17, 2007 
This past weekend, a number of our employees and a couple of other dedicated folks volunteered their time to bottle our second vintage of Mano Tinta. Mano Tinta, which means "Red Hand" in Spanish, is a blend of syrah, tempranillo and petite sirah made from donated grapes, materials and labor. All of the proceeds from the sale of Mano Tinta wines benefit The Fund for Vineyard and Farm Workers , an endowment that supports the farm worker community in San Luis Obispo County.

We bottled nearly 500 cases of the 2005 Mano Tinta Syrah on Saturday, and even though it was hard work, everyone felt very good about the effort when we were done. The 2005 Mano Tinta, along with a very limited edition 2005 East Rincon Pinot Noir, will be released at a special party on Saturday August 4 here at Talley Vineyards. For more information about this event, contact patricia@talleyvineyards.com.

The first signs of veraison are occurring in parts of the East and West Rincon now. Pinot noir berries are beginning to soften and turn pink. Within a few weeks, all of the clusters will be black. Any remaining green clusters will be removed in our “green drop.” My general sense is that the harvest will begin in late September and that we will have a relatively small crop. Quality looks good now with very little mildew or botrytis affecting the grapes. Our focus over the next few weeks is to finish the last leaf and lateral removal, complete any canopy management operations and install the bird netting. After that, we wait for the grapes to get ripe and for our 24th harvest to begin!

June 9, 2007 
This is the end of a strange weather week. Earlier this week, we were affected by extreme winds and unseasonably cold morning weather—it dropped to less than 38 degrees at Oliver’s Vineyard yesterday morning. It’s too early to see any adverse effects from these conditions.

On Tuesday afternoon, the first of the extremely windy days, we hosted a large group of parents and kids from Branch Elementary, who came out the plant the school’s pumpkin patch. This is an annual fundraising project supported by my family, as well as the Ikeda and Hayashi families. All proceeds from the sales of pumpkins and gourds benefit the school. Keep this in mind next Halloween when you’re shopping for pumpkins!

May 26, 2007 
We’re now seeing the effects of the extremely cold weather we experienced in January. Many people asked me at that time what affect the weather would have on our grapevines, and I told them that the cold weather was good for the vines-- that it would probably result in a larger than average crop for 2007. It turns out that I was only partly right. The season started well with the most even budbreak I’ve ever seen, but we are now seeing that the cold apparently affected our cane pruned chardonnay vines very dramatically. Most of our chardonnay is cane pruned. Cluster counts are high and cluster sizes are large, but shoot growth has been erratic and many shoots are two small to support the large clusters. We are now thinning all of our cane pruned chardonnay blocks to achieve a vine balance that will allow the crop to ripen properly. This is a time consuming process, at a time when we have lots of other things to do in the vineyard, most notably leaf and lateral shoot removal, which started earlier this week. Because of our hectic schedule, we decided to work Memorial Day to try and keep up.

Things are more relaxed in the winery. We’ve spent most of May racking Bishop’s Peak red wines and preparing the Bishop’s Peak Chardonnay for bottling in early June. We’ve tasted through all of our lots of chardonnay and nearly half of the pinot noir from the last harvest, and I’m extremely pleased with the quality of the 2006 vintage. Across the board, the wines are concentrated, but not heavy. Flavors and aromas are clean, elegant and precise - exactly the kinds of wines I love to produce. Hats off to everyone on our vineyard and wine production teams for a job well done with these wines!

April 5, 2007 
It’s springtime and everything is growing like crazy. The ladies crew is focused on shoot thinning, one of our most important vineyard operations. They are removing all excess shoots from the vine to open up the canopy to air and sunlight and to concentrate energy in the remaining shoots. Most shoots have two clusters, indicating the potential for a good crop, though we’ll have a much better idea after flowering and fruit set later next month.

Things are chilly inside the winery as we’ve turned down the temperature to 40 degrees in the barrel room. We are cold stabilizing our wines so that any tartrate crystals form in our barrels as opposed to your bottles when you put the wines in the refrigerator. Leslie Mead picked this time to take a trip to Chile where she has spent the past couple of weeks making pinot noir with the Kingston Family in Casablanca. She’ll be back on Monday in time for the bottling of our first ever Bishop’s Peak Pinot Gris as well as the 2005 cabernet sauvignon.

We released two pinot noirs, the 2005 Estate and 2005 Edna Valley Pinot Noir, four days ago and they’re flying out the door. Please come visit us to taste these wines. Springtime is beautiful in the Arroyo Grande Valley, and even though it hasn’t rained much this year, the grass is green, shoots are growing and fresh new wines have been released.

March 17, 2007 
It’s just five days before the vernal equinox, but it looks like spring has already arrived in the Arroyo Grande Valley. Buds are pushing in just about every one of our vineyard blocks in the Arroyo Grande and Edna Valleys. This is the most even budbreak I can remember, which bodes well for the 2007 growing season because consistent growth is one of our primary objectives, leading to even maturity of the grapes. In Paso Robles, the buds are swelling, and we will likely see budbreak at the Hazel Talley Vineyard within the next 7-10 days.

My chief concern now is the extremely dry winter we’ve experienced. To date, we have received about 7 inches of rain, or about 1/3 of our average rainfall in the Arroyo Grande Valley. Consequently, we anticipate that we will need to begin irrigating our vines earlier than normal. I am most concerned about some of our outlying vegetable farming ranches. Some of these ranches have small wells that will become even less productive because of the lack of rainfall. We will likely need to leave some land fallow during the summer and fall in these areas.

We’ve bottled lots of wine during the last 6 weeks, including the single vineyard chardonnays and pinot noirs from the 2005 vintage. Last night, Johnine and my mother and I enjoyed a bottle of our 2005 Edna Valley Pinot Noir. The more I taste the wines of this vintage, the happier I am. The elegance and balance of the 2005 vintage makes the wines very appealing early on, but I think they will also age nicely.

Finally, we’ve begun tasting through the various lots of 2006 wines. The wines from this smaller harvest are intense, concentrated and very showy. Over time, I hope they develop the refinement that makes the 2005s so special.

February 3, 2007 
As we start a new month, we’ve got plenty of work to do in the vineyard and in the winery. We are in the full swing of pruning in our vineyards in the Arroyo Grande and Edna valleys and Vineyard Manager Kevin Wilkinson believes that we will finish this operation by the middle of the month. We’ve pruned the cabernet franc at Hazel’s Vineyard in Paso Robles, but because of the much colder winter weather there, we have held off on the syrah and cabernet sauvignon. We plan to start up again late next week.

Meanwhile, the first buds are pushing in parts of the East Rincon Vineyard. The forecast is for warm weather this weekend, which means that we should see lots more budbreak next week.

Our other key focus in the vineyard is the redevelopment of one of the original blocks of Rosemary’s Vineyard. This project began immediately after this past harvest when we began removing the vines. We are now preparing to add soil amendments and to plant a cover crop. In the summer, the site will be deep ripped, the irrigation and the first part of the trellis system installed. Pinot noir vines will be planted in the spring of 2008. I anticipate producing our first wine from the block in 2011. I look forward to this new planting taking its place as the backbone of the Rosemary’s Vineyard Pinot Noir bottling.

In the winery we are bottling. Yesterday we bottled the 2005 Edna Valley Pinot Noir. This is the second year of production of this wine from our new Stone Corral Vineyard. On Monday we will bottle the 2005 Rincon Vineyard Chardonnay, closely followed by the ’05 Rosemary’s. Both wines are exceptional and capture the elegance and balance of the vintage.

Finally, I’ve got a brief update on the weather. We experienced a severe freeze in mid-January that was reminiscent of the two coldest periods in the last 20 years—1990 and 1998. The vines did just fine in this event, though we had plenty of broken water pipes at Hazel’s Vineyard and the Stone Corral Vineyard. Our avocado trees also fared well, even a tender young block that we planted last spring.

We are still waiting to assess the damage to our lemon orchard, where it dropped to 24 degrees on two nights. The young trees took the biggest hit, though it will still be a few more weeks before we really know what the extent of the damage. The larger concern now is the extremely dry winter. To date, we’ve received just over 4 inches of rain. All of us are hoping for a wet spring to bring up to our average of 19 inches.

January 17, 2007 
I am pleased to announce the appointment of Leslie Mead as the Winemaker at Talley Vineyards. I made the announcement to everyone here at Talley Vineyards during our company retreat. Leslie joined the company in January 2005 as our Enologist. She became Assistant Winemaker later that year and has handled day-to-day winemaking operations since that time. I appreciate the commitment, dedication and passion that she has brought to the job and I look forward to making the best wines we've ever produced with Leslie as our Winemaker.

January 14, 2007 
It’s been extremely cold here in Arroyo Grande over the past couple of nights and many people have asked how this will affect the vineyard. In fact, this cold weather is good for the vines which benefit from frost in the winter. I expect the buds on the vines to be more fruitful next year due to this frost. This means that we might have a potentially larger crop in 2008. This cold weather will also delay the onset of budbreak, which is a good thing.

The most significant affect on our farming operation was on our lemons and avocados, which do not tolerate frost. In our lemon orchard, we ran sprinklers and wind machines to protect the crop. For the avocados, we used sprinklers, and for the first time ever, hired a helicopter to fly around and stir up the air. The lowest temperatures we noted were 24 degrees in the lemons and 28 in the avocados. I won’t know for a few days how much damage we’ve got.

The best part of the whole adventure was riding in the helicopter with Vineyard Manager Kevin Wilkinson and his three year old son, Justin.