Would love to hear what you feel your “best” wine to date is…and the story behind it. What was the vintage like? Did you do something differently with vineyard management or vinification? When did you realize you had something special? Did you get the positive feedback from your customers that you expected?
I realize many may not have a single favorite/best wine…mostly I’m looking for success stories with some more back story/detail than the consumer normally receives.
The offer from Goodfellow for BD is what got me thinking about this - he mentioned his Heritage #4 was one of the best produced from the Whistling Ridge site.
I know that this question is aimed at the professional wine makers here but I wanted to answer anyway because its always fun when something good comes out of no where. The 2016 vintage was looking really good until the rains hit. I don’t recall the numbers now but it rained something like 15 days over a three week period which was multiple inches. When it finally stopped, brix were lower than before the rains and rot was setting in as well. Most of the harvest was lost so I had no other choice but to let things hang, dry out, and see what happened. After a few weeks, it was obvious that only a little of the reds were sufficiently rot free as to be usable but the brix were still way low. Not wanting to lose everything and having never made a sparkling wine before, I thought that the only thing to do was to pick now and make a “practice” batch to understand the process. The wine has been under crown cap for about 10 months now and I opened one just to see how bad it was and was shocked to find that its actually really good. So good that given my area’s tendencies for late season rains, I am thinking that I am going to give up on making reds at all and focus on rose and sparkling.
Nice! Where are you at Bryan, and how much wine do you make each year?
Well the wine is still in barrel but it’s an interesting story.
Starting in 2015 we got access to a vineyard on the coast of southern Humboldt called Lost Coast. We’ve been eyeing this vineyard ever since they asked me to consult on what and how to plant it back in 1998. At the time I thought they were crazy because it’s such a cold, wind swept site, very close(3 miles) to the ocean. They ended up planting 3 separate blocks of Pinot Noir totally just 2.5 acres and another 5 or so to Chard, Sauv Blanc, Vio, Pinot Gris, and Semillion. After building a beautiful home, winery and making and selling the wine for over 15 years, the owners gave up(getting too old)and offered to sell me a good percentage of the fruit from the vineyard in 2015.
So this last year, we get the call from the vineyard manager that the Pinot is tracking at 22 brix, with a 3.3 pH. After a trip out there with Aida to check the fruit we knew were set to go. The weather was warm(mid 80’s) that day but the forecast was for highs in low/mid 70’s for the following week so we knew there was no rush. We scheduled a pick for three days after figuring we’d give it a few more days. Aida and I showed up with our 8 picking bins expecting the crew could pick out three tons in a short day. We get there and they had already starting picking. I was stunned when I saw there were only four guys out there… the 40 yr old vineyard manager, his assistant, and two guys that were 72 and 81, picking as slow as mollasses. I looked at Aida and said… no way! We knew we were in for a long day or two. The fruit zone was not deleafed(per our request) so you had to pull the leaves by hand before harvesting what we’re these 2-3 oz clusters(most of them just bigger than the size of a golf ball). As more people showed up I knew I had to do something or we would never get these 2.5 acres finished. So I started deleafing by hand in front of the crew. It started out slow and I was easily able to stay ahead of everyone, even getting to do a good bit of picking myself. As the day went on more “trimmers” from other cannabis farms started showing up to help. I jumped into action and was a leafing machine, pulling leaves as fast as I could to speed up the process. The beauty of this was the fact that I literally saw every bunch in the block and I have to say, it was the nicest, cleanest fruit I’ve seen in the 20 years. There was not one bit of rot, no powdery mildew and not a single shriveled berry(due to the cool temperatures and leaf covered fruit zone). We finally finished filling all the bins and drove it 5 hrs back to our winery in the cool evening, with a wonderful sense of satisfaction. Aida and I worked our asses off that day and that made it all the better feeling.
We destemmed, fermented, and pressed the wines into Neutral French oak barrels, doing 1 out of the three fermentors whole cluster. The resulting wines in the barrel are haunting. I get all these notes of spicy Or. Pinot, wet, earthy Burgundy, and some bright Cali fruit. I literally started crying when I stuck my nose in one of the whole cluster barrels after it finished fermentation. I couldn’t be more excited about the wine.
Being in this business is extremely trying at times, but It’s moments and memories like these that keep me going.
John - awesome story. That’s one of those felicitous things that makes wine great!
Awesome story, John. Very cool indeed, and undoubtedly immensely satisfying. Thanks for sharing.
Great story. Looking forward to trying one of those when you release it.
It will be fun to put these wines together for sure!