June 2
Northern California has survived a hard spring. First we experienced one of the toughest frost seasons in years. Then we were hit with record high temperatures of 100F, followed by days of 45 mile an hour winds and then finally rain. Thankfully, Memorial Day heralded the beginning of the summer growing season.
With the temperatures warming up and the grounds well saturated with water from the frost season, the vineyards are in full growth. The Merlot at Soda Canyon Ranch, the Sauvignon Blanc at our Calistoga estate and the Pinot Noir vineyards throughout California are going into a powerful growth period wherein the shoots have grown up to three feet long. At the same time, all the vineyards are in full bloom. This is an exciting time for us. Once the flowers have set fruit the vineyard team can come in to drop excess shoots and remove lateral ones in order to open up the canopy. Meanwhile our team is continuously removing suckers so that the plants can start to focus their growth on the shoots that will give energy to the fruit.
In the winery, the team has almost completed the first soutirage of the 2007 Merlot. In the end it will have taken five weeks to rack 500 barrels. Soutirage traditional is a 19th Century method we use to gently move the wine from one barrel to another. This is also known as barrel-to-barrel racking. Once a barrel has been emptied it is cleaned and restacked to await the wine from the next barrel. As you can imagine this labor of love is very time consuming, but produces a highly concentrated, yet elegant wine. During soutirage we were able to taste the 2007 Merlot for the first time and it is showing itself as a very rich, fruity and powerful vintage.
As we await the exciting July 1st release of the 2006 Russian River Pinot Noir we are starting to prepare 2007 Pinots. First they will all be tasted again to see which lots will be blended and then we will consider which lots need racking. The 2007 will then rest in barrel until December while the 2006 enjoys its debut.
~ Daniel Baron