Harvest 2021 - Learning
The story of Wei, back to school
Life is the art of drawing without an eraser. —John Gardner
The small picks, continued — The Story of Wei
After all the fire and brimstone of last year’s harvest I was determined to pick my grapes this season in temperatures much lower than those approaching triple digits, and air quality hopefully better than that of a chain-smoker’s car. It’s not like I had any real control over these, if the temperatures spike and the fires come—as they have the last four years in a row—well, as a seasoned field worker might say, así es la vida.
But there was a lot more riding on this year’s harvests, what with making my first commercial wine and throwing down some real bucks to do so. I was committed to mitigating problems before they happened. In order to beat the heat, and begin our winemaking process with nice cool fruit, we would drive to each vineyard we harvested in pre-dawn darkness and begin picking as soon as the light allowed.
Only trouble was just two days before, when Deb and I picked the Hoeslys’ vineyard, we discovered—while driving on the notorious Stage Gulch Road between Sonoma and Petaluma on our way up to Windsor—that my trusty Suburu had a burnt-out headlight on the driver’s side. This made the already dangerously narrow canyon all the more difficult to maneuver, as not only was I night-blinded by the halogen headlights of mad California drivers hurrying to work and semi-truck operators hypnotic with white-line fever and amped on their own maleficent hulk and power, but I couldn’t adequately illuminate the space in front of me in order to reflect back the center and side lines, and hence the margins of the road.
I hung in there—barely—grasping the steering wheel in silent white-knuckled terror punctuated with repeated heart-stuttering surges of adrenaline, all the while trying to appear calm so as not to alarm Deb. By the time we merged onto Highway 101 North and the light of dawn was finally enough to define proximity, I was sweating in my light fleece and could smell the feral musk of my own fear. Okay, so this sounds a bit dramatic, but it’s truly how I felt that morning and I vowed never again would I drive in the dark without all of my car’s headlamps fully operational.
But here we were, two days later, with another harvest schedule for early tomorrow somewhere up near Cloverdale. And, of course, the headlamp had yet not been repaired. There had simply not been a moment, or a repair shop available.
I had cajoled our friend and fellow oenophile Jerry Byers to help us pick. Fortunately he had little interest in leaving so early that it was still dark outside. So we compromised, sort of, and agreed to meet at 6:30 a.m. in the Home Depot parking lot. Sunrise was predicted for 6:45 and I rationalized that by the time we had driven north through the city streets of Sonoma, Fetters Hot Springs, and Agua Caliente on Highway 12, the light would be fine.
Jerry was there as promised, sporting his brand-new Tesla Model Y. Hell of a vehicle to take to a grape harvest, I thought, as I looked over my own dust-coated, grape-juice-stained Outback “truck” with sticky armrests and door latches, and dozens (hundreds?) of mummified grapes rolling around on the mud-crusted floor. It was an observation of pure envy and admiration of Jerry’s joie de vivre.
We were headed to the old vineyards of Al King, a classic Northern California wine-country character, who had made a local name for himself as a writer, organic-farming pioneer, and pretty damn good winemaker. Al had passed away a few years back and a recently retired Chinese-American computer programer named Wei Zhou, who had worked for Intuit on Quicken and QuickBooks for 21 years, had purchased Al’s ranch and vineyards as a future family retreat.
Wei was an absolute newbie when it came to viticulture, or any type of farming for that matter, but he threw himself into it with what I would come to learn was his typical zeal for things. I had discovered Wei and his grapes while perusing the winebusiness.com classifieds looking for interesting grape sales, and I had come across his listing for Merlot for $1.50 a pound. Since that was a varietal I had never made before I sent him an email offering $1 a pound for 500 pounds. He replied that we had a deal as long as we picked it ourselves with his help.
Unbeknownst to me, we had already crossed paths at Magnolia Wine Service’s custom crush, of all places. It was just before I had brought in my first one-ton lot of grapes when Coral Wang, who worked on the crew at Magnolia but was also making her first batch of commercial wine there, pulled up at the grape-receiving door in a large pickup truck carrying a one-ton picking bin filled with Zinfandel, Grenache, Syrah and Mourvèdre—and being driven by Wei Zhou. It was already late afternoon and Coral was visibly disturbed that her harvest, which had begun early that morning, was only just now reaching the crush facility at around 4 p.m.
Seems there had been an incident with a trailer…
So, Al King’s old vineyard—Wei’s new ranch—was located high in the hills above Cloverdale. We climbed through heavy fog, negotiating the tight turns on Hot Springs Road and occasionally breaking through the cold cotton candy to spectacular glimpses of hilltops floating like islands in a sea of white. A vineyard suddenly appeared on the side of a steep hill as the fog began to lift. That was it!
We followed Wei’s directions to where he had promised to meet us at the top of a unmarked, steep, rutted road leading into the property. My Subaru had no problem, a faithful mountain goat, but Jerry’s new Tesla was scraping bottom—one of the world’s more expensive batteries in communion with some of the worlds most expensive dirt. Jerry was not happy, and had that “just got a dent in my brand-new car” kind of look as he parked next to Wei’s tractor barn. We all piled into my car and followed Wei on his ATV to the top of the vineyard, which was once again cloaked in fog.
And that’s the way it went for the next hour or so. The fog rolling in, the sun breaking through, the fog rolling in, the sun breaking through—a natural stagecraft of fire and water that left us gasping in pleasure and trying to figure out how to record it all on our iPhones. Finally the sun broke through for good and the last wisps of fog disappeared into thin air. Ha!
If you ask a Massai warrior in East Africa how far away a certain destination is, he is as likely as not to answer you with the irrefutable quip, “It is not too far but it is still a distance.” It’s a response I loved using on my kids. Well, 500 pounds of grapes is not that much, but it’s still a lot. Figure that with a grape variety like Merlot you can fit about 25 pounds in a 5-gallon bucket if you press them down a little as you pick. So 500 pounds is 20 buckets, the exact amount I can fit in the back of my Subaru if I lay the seats down.
Wei’s Merlot vines were planted in rows heading straight down a steep hill, so Deb and Jerry and I each took a row and started picking from the top down. That’s really about all I could do with a bum ankle, and I worried if I would be able to climb back up once we reached the bottom. As we filled each bucket we would leave it for Wei, who would hump them back to the top and transport them down to his barn in the back of his ATV. I wondered if maybe using a tractor and a larger picking bin might have been easier but didn’t think much of it since Wei was doing the hard stuff.
As he waited for buckets to be filled Wei kept up a constant chatter that sounded at first like someone trying to exhibit how much they knew about grape growing and making wine, and then like someone genuinely hungry for that knowledge. He had a naturally gregarious personality and when I asked him about what other winemakers had responded to his ad and who was buying grapes from him, I got an earful. Someone had already picked much of the Merlot and I could tell he was a little nervous that we’d get enough. He also spoke excitedly about a young woman winemaker of Asian descent who had picked his Zinfandel and some of his GSM block. He was happy to see her out there among the majority of white males that still dominate the profession, as he wanted to do anything he could to promote gender and racial diversity in the industry.
Our pick went smoothly although I thought the fruit varied a bit in ripeness, and Wei complained good-naturedly that I was cherry-picking the vines. I was a little. My fault really, as I hadn’t checked out the vineyard personally before picking and had instead relied on Wei’s first-time grape sampling and Brix reporting. Well, we shall see. We bade Wei goodbye and headed back to Sonoma and to my little winery in Bobbie’s backyard, and quickly crushed the 500 pounds of Wei’s Merlot. If not perfectly ripe, at least it was wonderfully cool, which was a major improvement over last year.
A few days later I was at Magnolia punching down my Zinfandel/Petite Sirah field blend, which we had picked a couple of days before picking Wei’s Merlot. I ran into Coral Wang, who asked me, in an almost accusatory tone, if I had picked grapes from Wei Zhou’s vineyards.
“Yes,” I replied. “How did you know?”
“I spoke with Wei on the phone and he told me you were there,” she replied. And then more suspiciously, “How did you find out about him?”
“I saw his ad on winebusiness.com,” I offered. “But how do you know him?”
“That’s where my grapes came from!” she exclaimed.
“Oh my gosh!” I exclaimed right back. “You’re the woman he told us about.”
It took a few moments for Coral to convince herself that I hadn't found out about her “secret” vineyard in any unscrupulous manner, and then we started riffing on Wei. We both liked him immensely so this was a more of a worry session than anything else. She told me the story of what had happened with the tractor and why she was so distraught—and so late—delivering her grapes to Magnolia a couple of weeks before.
Apparently Wei had been driving a tractor with a one-ton bin mounted on a fork lift in the front. Coral and her gang of besties emptied their full harvest lugs of grapes into the bin as they picked each row with Wei following along. When they were finished picking Wei drove the now very full bin down a short field road towards the truck they would use to transport the bin to Sonoma. Unfortunately there was one short section in the road that proved too steep for the weight distribution between the bin and the tractor, and the whole rig flipped forward, lifting the tractor off it’s back wheels and dislodged the bin forward onto the road—and spilling over a ton of grapes onto the dusty ground! It was a miracle no one was hurt and after the initial shock had worn off it took the women hours to pick up all the grapes and clean them off.
I hadn’t recognized the guy who delivered Coral and her grapes to Magnolia as the same person who had sold us the Merlot.
I called Wei the next day to tell him that his grapes were fermenting nicely and their overall Brix had turned out to be 24—which was perfectly ripe—and then I told him about the coincidence with Coral Wang. He was amazed and confirmed that she was indeed the young winemaker he had championed. I then asked him about the tractor incident, which elicited… a moment of dead silence. Then, “Oh no, if I tell you about that then I have to tell you about another tractor accident I had and you’ll know what a terrible tractor driver I really am. I’m trying to learn all this farming stuff, but so much of it I’ve never done before.”
We had a good laugh, and I told him I thought he was doing an amazing job, all things considered, and if his grapes turned out to make as good of wine as I thought they would I’d be the first guy in line next year to buy more. “But,” I cautioned. "you’d better learn how to drive that tractor because you’re picking.”
Don't know much about history / Don't know much biology / Don't know much about a science book…
Yeah, well I’d better start figuring it out ‘cause it’s one hell of a science book. It’s 1,030 pages long, 8.75 X 11.25 inches in size, 2.13 inches thick, and weighs 6.44 pounds. It cost $123 from Amazon and it’s required reading for Wine Production, our next class in the U.C. Davis Winemaking Certificate Course.
Just as I was getting over my PTSD from the Chemistry for Winemakers course, here comes the next one. Actually, the timing of the course was a little skewed, in more ways than one. Beginning in the third week of September, it’s been all about the very wine-production processes many of us have just gone through in real time during this year’s harvest. It would definitely have been helpful to learn the latest theory and application of grape sampling, ripeness criteria and how to decide when to pick, best practices for harvest and grape handling, destemming and crushing options, fermentation and extraction techniques, etc., while we were actually doing it and not a few weeks later.
Of course, based on the multiple lectures each week, and the extensive reading and writing assignments, there’s probably no way you could take the course and even function during harvest. We’re just a month into the class and I’m already a week behind on the reading. But I really like the format, and the fact that our entire grade is based on writing fifteen essays—five large ones and ten smaller ones—about winemaking philosophy and application, and solving hypothetical problems that are based on true situations that have occurred in a vineyard or winery.
For those of you interested in the technical side of all of this, here was a recent assignment for one of the small essays: Since most of the flavor and color compounds in red wine have their origin in the skins, it is not surprising that red wine cap management has a dramatic impact on the resulting wine. Use this forum to post your thoughts on how the various techniques mentioned in your notes influence red wine styles.
A quick glossary to help you follow along: The term "must" refers to the crushed grape skins, pulp, juice, seeds and stems that result after the grapes go through the crusher. It is this "must" that you inoculate with yeast and ferment into wine. The term "cap" refers to the thick accumulation of grape skins that rise to the top of the must due to the CO2 being produced by the yeast’s metabolic activity. This “cap” is pushed up above the juice and must be repeatedly "punched" back down to keep it wet and in contact with the increasing alcohol, which acts as a solvent for the extraction of flavor and color, hence the term “punch down.” A manual punch down involves a simple metal or wood pole with a flat plate on the end that you use to manually break up the cap and push the skins back into the juice. This works great for small lots of wine, but once you get into a large commercial-sized operation all sort of different techniques and machinery become available to aid in cap management.
So, here was my essay:
I would like to reflect on cap management from a more personal and perhaps even lyrical point of view. As a beginning winemaker you're more likely to be dealing with small (<3 tons) lots of wine at first, and that means manual punch downs. While pour overs, pneumatic punch downs, delestage and submerged cap processes, rotary fermenters, and even thermovinification offer different levels and types of extraction, and are far easier to do—just dial in the parameters and flip a switch on the appropriate machinery—the very physical engagement of performing manual punch downs on several different one-ton fermenting bins two or threes times a day is the epitome of making handcrafted wine. Obviously, there will come a time when the sheer volume of wine being made prohibits the use of manual punch downs, but I would argue that at small scale, and if done conscientiously, manual punch downs can provide almost as much latitude in affecting different wine styles as many of the alternatives listed above.
They also provide meaning and awareness in the winemaking experience. The very up close and personal engagement of manual punch downs allows you to take stock of the must and see how it is evolving in a way that is simply more intimate—can't think of a different, or better word—than any of the more mechanized approaches. You quite literally become one with the must, and get to witness and partake in a transformation that has been a keystone of human civilization for thousands of years.
On day one, with the new must in the fermentation bin just a sopping pile from the crusher and hemorrhaging grape juice that has turned grey from the small dose of potassium metabisulfite you have added, the whole mess appears cold and lifeless. I like to try and spread it flat and submerge all the berries at this point, but it's difficult. The grapes are still very heavy with sweet, fresh juice and resist movement with the weight of their collective mass.
The following day you inoculate, pouring a small bucket of rapidly replicating life onto thousands of pounds of inert fuel. You almost expect an instant and dramatic response—a gnashing of teeth and tearing of flesh perhaps?—but there is nothing. In fact the billowing foam of "yeast at the feast" subsides, as if shocked by the very scale of the task at hand. The next day it seems as though your inoculation has failed. The trails on the surface of the must where you poured the yeast are now discolored and outlined in a bruised yellowish stain. There is an inevitable moment of apprehension, but if you've done this before you look for active bubbles where the yeast was poured, and you rely on your experience—and faith—that there are colonies of yeast growing just below the surface. On this day I like to apply a very gentle punch down to further disperse those colonies. If the must is still too difficult to move by hand, a foot tread does the trick and certainly adds to the "immersive quality" of the experience!
On day four you sense a change. Is the surface level of the must higher in the bin? Does it look more uniform? Has the color changed? You put your ear down close to the must and listen carefully. For those folks in this class old enough to have eaten Rice Krispies as a child, the faint snap, crackle, pop you hear coming from your fermentation is all you need to know that the game is on. So is your punch down labor, with two-a-days beginning immediately. No need to be gentle anymore; it's time for a population explosion with your yeast.
Over the next few days the cap grows exponentially and the sometimes thrice-daily punch down regime becomes a test of strength. I measured a couple of record caps this year at well over two feet thick and seemingly hard enough that I almost believed you could walk on them. I even thought about trying, but I was too scared that I would break through and disappear into the juice below! There were times when I literally couldn't push through the cap with the punch down tool when standing at floor level. That was when the two women on the cellar crew took mercy on me and decided to let me in on the secret of the "bridge," a simple platform that spanned the fermentation bin and allowed you to leverage your strength from above.
With the cap fully reforming within hours after punch down the need for continually re-immersing it into the alcoholic solvent below becomes obvious. It is easy to become obsessed with the process, envisioning the extraction of powerful flavors and deep, rich color every time the cap is dunked. I created a method of carving back the cap in small sections that I could spend time with, ensuring they were handled properly. It was much like you might do snacking on a partially eaten pumpkin pie left in the refrigerator after Thanksgiving. Eventually you're going to eat the whole pie, but in the process you've paid particular and joyous attention to every bite!
I love coming into the winery in the morning and taking the cover off a fermentation bin to commence punch down. Once I dodge the mind-bending blast of CO2 my head fills with the sweet aroma of grapes under siege from billions of yeast cells. It is one of the most hopeful smells on earth and the perfect way to start your day. Then I bug whoever is taking "Brix and Temps” for an update, which is just that, a daily measurement of what degree Brix (how much sugar) your must is at, and how warm it is (an indication of yeast activity). These daily readings are the social media news stream of winemaking and are as addictive as Facebook.
As the fermentation progresses the aromas increase and become your litmus test for how everything is doing. Eventually, with sugars decreasing into the single digits and more and more alcohol being created, the cap softens and the must becomes soupy. I then tend to scale back the frequency of punch downs and I start to taste my way through the final days. I want to experience the decline of sweetness and the spritz of fermentation as it gives way to dryness. I know then, even without taking a reading, that we're in negative numbers. I'll bite into any whole berries I can find to see if I can discern any residual sweetness, and if so maybe let the maceration go another day or two before going to press.
In that case I have to gas it, which is… a gas! Since the sugars are basically nonexistent the yeast have nothing more to feed on and are dying off in their alcohol-rich environment. That means they are no longer producing a protective layer of carbon dioxide as a byproduct of their metabolism, so I have to add a shot of it myself a couple of times a day to protect the must from oxidation and possible spoilage bacteria. Applying it from the big CO2 tank we have at Magnolia is a little scary the first time you do it. It’s loud, and freezing cold, and it feels like it could blow up at any minute. But what a hoot! (Watch video below to see Coral taking Brix and Temps, and me punching down with the bridge, and gassing the must!)
I'm sure this romanticized ideal of something as mundane as punch downs fades quickly once you start making wine at any larger scale, but for me, making my first commercial wines this year, it provided reassurance that everything was okay. I really needed a daily sensory connection with these wines as they went through fermentation, and manually taking their measure provided that.