We’ve done quite a bit of whole cluster. Mostly from Freedom Hill. We have 2 days left of Pinot picking. Brix variability is high. Some very nice stuff I think. Some oddball stuff too. Rest of our Estate tomorrow. Just can’t go any longer with softening clusters and botrytis threat. Time to act.
Any updates from the vines? I’m all in barrel and tank after picking most everything early. Super happy about the quality and style of the new wines. I brought in the last fruit - Pinot Blanc - this week and it was tart and flavory with some botrytis in a good way. Should make interesting wine. The Pinot Noir I’ve seen in the past two weeks has been a mixed bag - some stunning fruit including some Croft fruit that looked pristine even after all the rain. Other lots of grapes looked more appropriate for rose given the amount of rot. In all, there’s going to be a wide range of wine from this year but the most surprising thing is how, even after a warm summer, sugars aren’t high at all. The end of the season really makes the quality and character of a vintage more than any other part of the growing season.
Goodness the weather here is just so stunning and the 5-day forecast amazing!
Processed riesling over the weekend, it had some really awesome flavor and the good kind of botrytis, not the rotty, moist kind. The pinot is all in too, low yields but the fruit looked pretty good. Unfortunately birds got a fairly large share this year, around 20 percent or more in some blocks.
Helped process a friends pinot noir on Saturday and it was decent, I believe the dry and semi-warm temps really helped his vineyard stave off disaster. Still some acetic-smelling clusters and of course, rot rot rot, but less so than his other picks.
We have one section of one vineyard of Pinot Noir still hanging. It has been surprisingly clean throughout, though we have worked with the grower and had a pass made after each storm to make sure there wasn’t anything there we didn’t want. Planning on bringing it in over the weekend.
Other than that, all in…with decent though somewhat mixed results.
Adam Lee
Siduri Wines
Any rough correlation/similarities to previous vintages?
RT
Each year is its own thing. That said, '05 comes to mind. Just more heat in the summer and then more cold and way more rain late in the season. In '05 I remember more bloated but clean fruit after the rain. This year, there seemed to be more rotten fruit. Again, some vineyards held up extremely well, others not, so it’s all going to be about site. Let’s remember too that (wild guess) maybe 30% of the harvest was in before the real rain started. Like '05.
I think it’s far too early to tell. Might end up looking like several recent vintages, from what I understand.
As the set of post-typhoon wines begins to settle into fermentations my impression is that there is exceptionally sweet fruit in the red owned spectrum almost universally across all vineyards and blocks. Even sections I normally associate with being darker in tone are showing this sweet, red-fruited nature. This can certainly change with time and it will be interesting to see the Freedom Hill develop as it gets going, especially the high percentage whole cluster ferments. In general I am pleased and surprised by these wines and think there should be one nice and very lovely stuff coming from 2013.