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Newsletter # 02 |
1998 WINES -- Confessions of a Novice Winemaker Well, the 1998’s are now safely in the bottle and I have just one thing to say, "Whew!" I feel like I just graduated from the "Flying by the Seat of Your Pants Winemaking Academy." See, it was only a little more than a year ago that we decided to make wine for a living and not just as a hobby. It’s a daunting task to those of us who lack technological or scientific winemaking backgrounds. I left my sales/marketing job at Kendall-Jackson last September and enrolled at the FSYP Winemaking Academy. My first semester I worked the ‘98 harvest at Quivira (good choice of training ground as our wines are crushed there.) Meanwhile, Dad and Linda, though perfectly content as grape growers, began to add winery projects to their daily routines. (At least every other project was transferring money from their savings into the winery checking account.) It’s been a long year. We had a Darwinian learning curve with respect to cellar operations. We’ve now learned how to drive a fork-lift; gas barrels; operate a wine pump, racking wand and topping gun; clean tanks; clean barrels, oh, hell, clean everything; perform blending trials; and maintain appropriate SO2 levels in the wine. Of course we are five times slower in performing these routine tasks than the average cellar rat, but its amazing how careful you can be when your name is on the label. Fortunately, Nature and Dad did most of the real work of winemaking before the grapes were picked. A long cool growing season and Dad’s attention to detail in the vineyard compensate for any of our winemaking inexperience, allowing us to make good wines with little or no manipulation. Our motto is the same as what all decent winemakers say when they get good fruit, "Just don’t goof it up." (We have to
add in our thanks to Grady and his crew for taking care of things
while our wines were at Quivira, and for guiding us along the road.) Many of us were
comparing the ’99 growing season to its predecessor since both vintages
ripened late after a cool spring and summer. However there were some
striking differences. Crop levels for most of our vineyards were down
approximately 20% from last year, even more with Zinfandel. Harvest
weather was dryer and much warmer than last year, which is a generally
a good thing. The only problem with 1999 was the mad dash to pick
grapes before sugars rose too high during the mid-September heat blast.
Zin and Sangiovese seem better than average in quality. Syrah is hard
to tell, since our vineyard produces dark, grapey wine in the tank
almost every year. We’ll just have to wait and see. I’ll at least
pretend to know more by the Spring when we release our 1998 Syrah. We still have some of our inaugural vintage Syrah left. Despite our long-winded sales rep, it has been remarkably well received by some of the best restaurants and wine shops in Northern California, particularly those who fancy Rhone wines. A few of our customers feel this is the most Northern Rhone-like California Syrah available. I don’t know about that, but I do think our Syrah possesses something that I look for in great wine — vineyard distinction. There is an intense blackberry and smoked meat character that has not been diluted by other varietals or new oak, atypical of most California versions. This weighty Syrah is still on the young side and really begins to show its stuff after a good spanking, er, decanting. In fact, much like my favorite music, movies or people, it gets better the second night. See the order form for a special offer to mailing list customers. Syrah makes a unique gift idea. ("Hmmmm, Syrah or fruitcake, I just can’t decide..") 1998 Zinfandel A "Farmer‘s Vintage" or Tell Me Again, Why We Planted This Grape? Growing Zinfandel in 1998 was a bit like playing poker with nature. In mid-August it looked like we had been dealt a lousy hand. Many of the bunches were still green. Time for some difficult decisions, which to a Zin grower means crop thinning. Dad and his crew first went through the vineyard removing wings. (The classic Zinfandel grape bunch has a cute little wing of grapes at the top. This wing can inhibit skin development for the rest of the bunch and it’s the ideal spot for rot to develop.) By early September we were still seeing some pink berries and the sugars were barely reaching 18° brix, so, off with more crop. Unusually cool weather later in the month kept things from moving along. We were then faced with a mid-October harvest—tantamount to letting my two year old climb on the railing of our deck. Sure enough, a couple wet systems blew through, forcing us to drop crop two more times before harvesting our Zin at 23.5° brix on October 21st. We’d be lying if we told you we weren’t considering picking a week earlier in fear of losing the crop. But that’s the fun of growing Zin. I like to call this wine the Tim Hudson of our 1998 line up. Like the Oakland A’s star rookie pitcher our Zinfandel arrived mid season in All Star form. The ‘98 always had more weight than our first vintage, but the fruit seemed to be buried underneath a sea of oak. In June we blended in 5 barrels of Syrah and whammo, the wine was lush, textured and tasted like blueberry jam. I heard a Tom Cruise-like voice coming from one of the Zin barrels saying "you complete me," to the Syrah. This is classic, fruity Dry Creek Zinfandel. The ‘98 has a little more oak than the ’97, but because it’s a bigger wine, it wears it well. Okay, I guess it’s worth the trouble after all. But I don’t know if my Dad is convinced. 1210 cases produced.
1998 Sangiovese When Dad planted this vineyard in 1992, we knew it was a "Holy Grail". We were chasing our dream of making a wine like modern Chianti Classico. The 1998 vintage is our first commercial release, though we’ve been making what some would call Sangiovese for four years. Aggressive pruning combined with a limited crop set drastically reduced our tonnage in ‘98 (8 pounds per vine versus 19 pounds in previous years), and gave us dark, thick skinned grapes. The wine is much bigger than standard fare from this grape, or anything we’ve made previously. Some would call it a fruit bomb, but its deep color, structure and alcohol (14.5) give it a more serious note. This is 100% Sangiovese aged in primarily older French oak barrels. Unlike Mark McGuire the wine did not rely on supplements (Cab or Merlot) for bulk, body or strength. Those of you who have tasted this wine have been waiting for its release. It is unfined, unfiltered and unavailable outside the winery. 340 cases produced.
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| 4 2 0 2 D r y C r e e k R o a d - H e a l d s b u r g C A 9 5 4 4 8 - t e l 7 0 7 - 4 3 3 - 5 5 9 0 / f a x 7 0 7 - 4 3 3 - 5 5 9 1 Copyright ã 1997-2006 Unti Vineyards. All rights reserved. |
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