A Snapshot in Time
Wine is a snapshot in time. That’s the one truly unique thing about wine that perhaps draws so many into the wine business. Every vintage is unique, framed in large part by the weather patterns throughout the growing season. In a difficult vintage like 2008 this becomes glaringly obvious. Difficult because it was a vintage framed by early season and late season frost, with mostly cool weather interrupted by significant heat spikes, and even a dash of rain. As you can see, Mother Nature threw nearly every twist at us. No one understands the profound effect the weather has better than the grower and winemaker.
One great example of this can be seen from a wine created during another difficult vintage, our 2005 Sangiovese. The 'issues' we dealt with that year were a very cool overcast spring, and similar conditions throughout September and October. The cool spring caused the flowering stage of the vine cycle to proceed very slowly over several weeks, rather than uniformly over 10-14 days. This set the stage for great variability on the timing of berry set (conversion of flower to fruit), verasion (berry change from green to purple, and softening of the skin), and ripening (the conversion of organic acids to sugar). This variability meant that if you walked the vineyard with me prior to harvest you could stop to taste berries that looked and tasted, unripe (low color development and very tart), ripe (good color development and great fruit flavors, and over ripe (berry shrivel, reducing available color to wine and raisiny flavors). given modern farming methods this is a very unusual situation to see within a vineyard, let alone within single cluster! While we can blame Mother Nature for this problem, she also provided our best solution for dealing with it, and that was the cool weather around harvest. We grew anxious and impatient waiting for the fruit to be ready we could not afford one multi day heat spike. that would have quickly pushed the ripe fruit to over-ripe, while not doing enough to ripen the lagging fruit think of heating water on low heat, turn up the heat early it will still take a good while to get boiling, but if it is close to boiling and you turn up the heat it will quickly start to boil.
How we overcame this challenge was to spend a lot of time in the vineyard assessing what percentage of the crop was behind and what percentage was overripe. The key was to pick at just the right time. Merely pulling samples and analyzing them scientifically could have misrepresented what the entire block would give us. For all the time we spent I was still pretty uneasy about how the final wine would turn out. When I tasted the wine in barrel, and after bottling I could taste the under- and over-ripe aspects of the wine. When staff and customers began tasting the wine in the tasting room it was our most popular vintage to date! Was I being overcritical in my analysis of the wine? In the end I realized I had tasted the wine looking for fault as that is what winemakers do.
Once I got some positive feedback on the wine I began to look at it differently and realize it didn’t taste green or under-ripe, nor over-ripe and port like (a character I enjoy in vintage port but not vintage wine!) It possessed a great deal of fruity aroma and flavor, and great complexity of flavors aided by the variability in ripeness. Some of the best and most complex wines in the world come from hillside blocks for that very reason. Grapes don’t ever ripen uniformly, and have greater variability in ripeness from hillsides. The great vineyards and vintages produce grapes that produce wonderful flavors at varying levels of sugar ripeness.
So can I reproduce that wine every year? No, I’ll have to wait until Mother Nature decides to give us the right combinations of weather throughout the growing season. Our current release the 2006 is from a warmer year and possesses much more concentration of flavor. While different it has also been well received, actually being offered by the glass or bottle at 5 local restaurants. I can do what I can to achieve extraction and balance from the grapes but ultimately the seasons form the framework or foundation of what the wine can become. This time of year (winter) is always very interesting because we are just beginning to see how the previous vintage is turning out. And since the vines are still sleeping, we still have everything to learn about next year’s vintage. Only time will tell.
For a video tour of our Sangiovese Vineyard click on the following link:
http://www.ortmanwinelounge.com/video/2225796:Video:860
One great example of this can be seen from a wine created during another difficult vintage, our 2005 Sangiovese. The 'issues' we dealt with that year were a very cool overcast spring, and similar conditions throughout September and October. The cool spring caused the flowering stage of the vine cycle to proceed very slowly over several weeks, rather than uniformly over 10-14 days. This set the stage for great variability on the timing of berry set (conversion of flower to fruit), verasion (berry change from green to purple, and softening of the skin), and ripening (the conversion of organic acids to sugar). This variability meant that if you walked the vineyard with me prior to harvest you could stop to taste berries that looked and tasted, unripe (low color development and very tart), ripe (good color development and great fruit flavors, and over ripe (berry shrivel, reducing available color to wine and raisiny flavors). given modern farming methods this is a very unusual situation to see within a vineyard, let alone within single cluster! While we can blame Mother Nature for this problem, she also provided our best solution for dealing with it, and that was the cool weather around harvest. We grew anxious and impatient waiting for the fruit to be ready we could not afford one multi day heat spike. that would have quickly pushed the ripe fruit to over-ripe, while not doing enough to ripen the lagging fruit think of heating water on low heat, turn up the heat early it will still take a good while to get boiling, but if it is close to boiling and you turn up the heat it will quickly start to boil.
How we overcame this challenge was to spend a lot of time in the vineyard assessing what percentage of the crop was behind and what percentage was overripe. The key was to pick at just the right time. Merely pulling samples and analyzing them scientifically could have misrepresented what the entire block would give us. For all the time we spent I was still pretty uneasy about how the final wine would turn out. When I tasted the wine in barrel, and after bottling I could taste the under- and over-ripe aspects of the wine. When staff and customers began tasting the wine in the tasting room it was our most popular vintage to date! Was I being overcritical in my analysis of the wine? In the end I realized I had tasted the wine looking for fault as that is what winemakers do.
Once I got some positive feedback on the wine I began to look at it differently and realize it didn’t taste green or under-ripe, nor over-ripe and port like (a character I enjoy in vintage port but not vintage wine!) It possessed a great deal of fruity aroma and flavor, and great complexity of flavors aided by the variability in ripeness. Some of the best and most complex wines in the world come from hillside blocks for that very reason. Grapes don’t ever ripen uniformly, and have greater variability in ripeness from hillsides. The great vineyards and vintages produce grapes that produce wonderful flavors at varying levels of sugar ripeness.
So can I reproduce that wine every year? No, I’ll have to wait until Mother Nature decides to give us the right combinations of weather throughout the growing season. Our current release the 2006 is from a warmer year and possesses much more concentration of flavor. While different it has also been well received, actually being offered by the glass or bottle at 5 local restaurants. I can do what I can to achieve extraction and balance from the grapes but ultimately the seasons form the framework or foundation of what the wine can become. This time of year (winter) is always very interesting because we are just beginning to see how the previous vintage is turning out. And since the vines are still sleeping, we still have everything to learn about next year’s vintage. Only time will tell.
For a video tour of our Sangiovese Vineyard click on the following link:
http://www.ortmanwinelounge.com/video/2225796:Video:860
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