Napa Harvest is Beginning

Firelings

The last three vintages in Northern California were born in fire and left smoldering in valleys filled with smoke. This year the wildfires are burning again. This year, the smoke is fickle. The fate of the 2021 vintage is still uncertain.

In about two weeks, the harvests will be in full swing.

This year’s vintage is literally hanging in the balance this week, so I went up to Napa to see where the harvest stands and to try to guess where it might be going. In the end, that turns out to be harder than I hoped.

Each year’s vintage is the delivery on a promise made in winter. Every August, despite whatever is happening in the rest of the world, the new vintage is a reminder of the past year’s transformations and the wonder that wine can be.

I’m headed for Carneros at the Southern end of Napa Valley. These vineyards are the farthest from the wildfires burning in the forests north of here. Highway 37 runs in a long flat line across the marshlands around the Petaluma River and by sunken fields that flood and turn into shallow lakes in winter. The Bay is off to the right, and we cross the Petaluma River by an old drawbridge and a marina left largely abandoned now.

Then, as we start up the hill we see the first signs that the vineyards are in motion. A handful of starlings are swarming in small tight clouds over the grapes—the first I’ve seen this year. There are not a lot of them yet, but they are there. Starlings are a sure sign the grapes are getting ripe and the harvest is near.

By the end of September, the sky will be black with starlings rolling over and over in huge clouds rising up from the vines and into the sky. But today the sky is blue and empty and bright with sunlight.

The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do.—Galileo Galilei

Carneros

The vintage is looking good now in the southern end of the Valley in spite of the record heat this summer. The vines are thick with black grapes swaying slightly in the wind, where a month ago they were green and hard and unyielding. Bright green nets cover some of the rows to keep the crop from getting sunburned.

The summer is buzzing and clicking all around us. Mylar strips snap in the wind. Bright silver and red strips are tied to the metal stakes all across the vineyards to keep those starlings we saw from stealing the crop.

Also, chicken manure. Lots of chicken manure. In fact, when you drive by it smells like you just ran through a wall of chicken manure. Vineyards are very big on chicken manure and these piles are higher than my head. There must be a lot of chickens hiding around here someplace.

As we approach Domaine Carneros at the top of a knoll, I start to see vineyard after vineyard that are young vines. Really young. What’s going on here? Some of them are only a year old, some within the last 3-5 years, but it looks like large parts of this part of Carneros have been replanted recently.

Domaine Carneros

Domaine Carneros is a spectacular place (see the photo at the top of the page) which features a huge Chateau inspired by Chateau de la Marquetterie in Champagne, France. Both places are owned by Champagne Taittinger, one of the greatest champagnes in the world. The entire production is made from the vineyards surrounding the grounds.

After walking up—and up—and then up some more following the curving grand staircase and through the formal gardens, you can sit under a white tent on the terrace, sip sparkling wines and watch the egrets wading under the willows on the edges of a property’s small pond.

You can see the dramatic transformation in the grapes that has happened over the last 5 weeks by comparing the two photos above.

The second one was taken at Gloria Ferrer just 5 weeks ago in Sonoma—-the grapes in my hand are destined for Gloria Ferrer Sparkling Wine for the 2021 Vintage. As you can see, in June the grapes haven’t even begun to change color, but look what’s happened by this week.

Visit Domaine Carneros website

Cuvaison

Tasting

If I mention a wine here it’s because I really liked it. If a wine is average or bad, I just don’t talk about. Average wines are easy enough to find. And, they are important. But, you don’t need me for that. When I find something really good, or even great, like these two wines, I’ll bring it up.

Remember, in this case I’m tasting the wines at the winery in the middle of the vineyards, 20 feet from where they were grown and made. Once they are shipped somewhere all bets are off. Especially if it’s Miami or New York. I try not to think about Fargo or Minneapolis.

Critics and amateur experts, just like music and theatre critics, revel in clever put downs—usually saying something alliterative that has nothing to do with the wine and certainly nothing to do with helping you find the joy in great wines.

The world has sorrow enough of its own, I don’t need to add to it. If a writer’s only way to feel like an expert is to insult products they didn’t make, then he or she is a sorry human being indeed.

When you harvest the grapes in your vineyard, do not go over the vines again. Leave what remains for the alien, the fatherless and the widow.—Deuteronomy 24:21

For the diehard among you, both the wines below have been rated over 90-95 by— well now, it doesn’t really matter, does it? I don’t personally give wines numbers. Somebody around here has got to at least try to set an example.

If you really have to have numbers, try here: https://www.winespectator.com/ They have numbers even God hasn’t thought of.

Cuvaison (Carneros Region, Napa Valley, California)

Cuvaison is across a dirt road on the same hill as Domaine Carneros. Visually it’s the anti-French Chateau. Just two nondescript, metal buildings. This location has been a production facility since the winery was founded but the tasting room was up near Calistoga. Only now are they building a new tasting room and entertaining visitors here.

Cuvaison is owned by a Swiss company which tries to embody the values of European style wines— the kinds where the alcohol doesn’t leap out of the glass and grab you by the throat. No fruit bombs here. Not even fruit forward and I for one, am glad of it.

Of course they still have California alcohol levels to deal with. They are probably 1-2 degrees higher in alcohol than their French counterparts.

2020 Estate Sauvignon Blanc—$24/bottle (winery price)

Honey and grapefruit—hopefully you remember our discussion of descriptors from previous newsletter about wine tasting. This wine is clean, tight and about as perfectly structured as you will ever taste.

That’s possible at least partly because we’re tasting about 30 feet from where the wine was grown, made and stored. Shipping, wholesale warehouses, retail storage and extreme weather all throw wines off balance and age them unnaturally.

What it will taste like when you have it is dependent on where you live and who handled it before it got to you.

2018 Estate Small Lot Spire Pinot Noir, $60/Bottle (Winery Price)

Still young with a dark brick red center, the nose is amazing and full of cherries and black violets. It has the finesse and the balance which are valued more in Europe than in California. It’s expensive but in the world of completely unreasonable wine prices, it’s more than worth it.

It sounds stupid to say it, I know, but you won’t find very many $60 wines this good.

Like the Sauvignon Blanc above, what it tastes like when it gets to you will depend on how it’s handled and where it’s been.

Special thanks to Paul who took care of us.

Two Days Later

Two days later the wind shifted.

I was in Sonoma north of Santa Rosa and light ash was falling gently from the sky. The air quality had gone from 32 to 85 overnight. In the area around the Dixie Fire near the Nevada border it was over 500.

When the air quality passes 300 it starts to become dangerous to life. Thousands of people are being evacuated as I write this. For practical purposes, the entire town of Greenville has burned to the ground.

The smoke has already settled over the vineyards in Napa and Sonoma both, even though the fire is far away. If it lingers the harvest may be ruined. Maybe it will clear off tomorrow, but that’s not the forecast.

Maybe it will clear off the next day too, but the Dixie Fire is now the largest single fire in California history and the largest currently burning in the United States. It’s not predicted to be under control until August 21, two weeks from now.

It all depends on which way the wind blows.

The winds (and the fog) in Carneros usually come off San Pablo Bay so their vineyards may not be affected much, or at all. The Cuvaison 2020 Sauvignon Blanc I had was great even though a lot of wineries up valley lost part or all of the crop to smoke in 2020.

Up until the last couple of days, the wind and the towering cumulonimbus clouds that create their own winds and dry lightening over the wildfires have been blowing North and then swooping down over the Western United States leaving the vineyards untouched.

But, today that changed. The harvest may come in ahead of the smoke even if the wind doesn’t change, or it may be too late for the smoke to matter but no one can be sure. Each plot of land is different.

So, now the vintage begins. The promise still hangs on the vines. Ignore it if you will, stay bound to the cynicism of politics and business —no one can tell you that you’re wrong. Certainly not me.

In fact, I’m pretty sure the earth is starting to shake us off its back like my great Uncle’s 24 year old cutting horse back in Texas used to shake off flies in the summer heat.

I know it’s not easy to see, I have to work at it myself. But if you squint and look closely, right now there’s a miracle happening and the fields out there are full of wonder.