2011 Blog Archive                         

                   2010 Blog Archive                          

2009 Bog Archive Pt. 2                     

2009 Blog Archive                         

2008 Blog Archive Pt. 2                       

2008 Blog Archive Pt.1                            

2007 Blog Archive                            

2006 Blog Archive                           

In the Vineyard:

           At Iron Horse "Estate Bottled" means that the winemaking begins in the vineyard. Our location in Green Valley represents the very best soil, climate and aspects for Pinot Noir and Chardonnay (for both sparkling and still). Our goal is to grow the best winegrapes we should be growing and we do that through what we call "precision winegrowing." All pruning, canopy management, irrigation, cover crop and even harvesting decisions are determined on a block-by-block (and sometimes even vine-by-vine) basis, considering both the vintage at hand and the long term needs of the land. In both our older vineyards and new plantings we use the best tools technology can give us and up to date viticulture - balanced by our 30 years of experience and passion. 

Please note that everything before 2012 has been archived.

January 12, 2012

I realize that it has been some time since my last post.  It’s not that nothing has been happening it’s just that nothing ‘novel’ has happened – granted, no appreciable rain in December with morning temperatures below 30F and afternoon temperatures over 65F is novel, even scary, but too hard to quantify at this time, after all, it may start raining like crazy next week. And, truth be told, after so many years of posts, writing about pruning can be a bit boring, even for me.  So in between checking on the pruning and tying - the guys are doing great – taking the occasional artsy photos like the one’s scattered through this posting, I’ve been catching up on my reading, in particular re-learning chemistry (it has been awhile, it turns out there’s a lot more to it than what I was taught in the early seventies) and learning all about soil science (specifically "Soil for Fine Wines" by Robert E. White, Oxford Press, 2003) with the idea of trying to understand what is happening underground, in the plant and in the wine. 

Take malolactic fermentation; simply put, it raises the pH and lowers perceived acidity, and while we prefer not to use ML in our Sparklings and Chardonnays, we definitely use it in our Pinots.  Physically, all what is happening is that lactic acid bacteria are decomposing the malic acid present in the berries at harvest, causing a limited release of CO2, which changes the malic acid to lactic acid, this would explain the change in perceived acidity, but even more is going on, all sorts of substrates are metabolized and by-products are produced, and to make things harder, the substrates and byproducts will vary depending upon which lactic acid bacteria are involved and numerous other factors, including pH and free SO2.  (Note also, the higher the pH the more a wine is microbially unstable.)

What I haven’t been reading (although perhaps I should - nah) are two relatively new books, “Authentic Wines” by Jamie Goode and Sam Harrup, MS, and Alice Fieiring’s book, “Naked Wine.”

Both are proponents of  ‘natural winemaking,’ in effect a continuation of a movement which I see as an effort to return winemaking and wine growing back to the early 19th Century (as is the case with biodynamics) - as in alchemy as opposed to chemistry, and who needs GPS when you’ve got astrology.  The problem is that, certain influential people such as wine writers, critics, sommeliers, retailers and winery owners pay attention and often buy into the story.  For example this is what Eric Azimov wrote on December 13, 2011 in the New York Times:

“The rise of natural wines over the last five years has provoked one of the most contentious and useful debates in recent wine history. Though it is a fringe movement, with little organization or no goal other than producing and enjoying its own wines with as little winemaking intervention as possible, the power of its ideas has proved highly influential in the fine-wine industry.”

So why do people do it? Devorah Lauter, writing for the Los Angeles Times last December, quoted one French ‘natural winemaker’ as saying, "when you make something naturally, it has a magic to it."

Luckily Ms. Lauter, a special correspondent and not solely a wine writer, realized that ‘magic’ is not without cost:

“The phrase ‘natural wines’ is widely criticized as being vague, but it roughly refers to wines that include very low doses, or none, of the hundreds of chemicals and natural additives permitted in conventional French grape-growing and winemaking. The additives correct mistakes and kill bacteria, necessary for mass consumption… The difference between "natural" and conventional wines can at times be startling to unfamiliar taste buds. Natural wines are generally considered more fruity, and a lot riskier (and more expensive) to produce. They can easily turn to vinegar, and no chemical pesticides or fertilizers are permitted to save struggling crops from disease or bad weather.”

I’ve said this before and I’m saying it again, growing grapes in Green Valley is neither native nor natural.  The Vitis Vinifera Sylvestris cultivars we are growing (as in Pinot Noir and Chardonnay) are hermaphroditic, heterozygous, hybrids (at least in the case of Chardonnay which is a cross of Pinot Noir and Gouais), self pollinating, easily propagated plants with transposons (selfish jumping genes, particularly so with Pinot Noir), planted on hybrid rootstock originally from North America (Vitis Vinifera Sylvestris is from Western Europe), i.e., the results of millennia of human, and not natural, selection.  Nor were they developed to grow in Green Valley.  Pinot Noir and Chardonnay were not bred to be resistant to frost (a problem in Green Valley), nor are they resistant to mildew and phylloxera, because they didn’t have to be, at least not until the 19th Century when, sadly, the two were brought inadvertently to Europe from North America.

Magic may seem better, but we are judged not by how we make our wines but by how they taste.  By way of analogy, to get to our barrel storage cellars from our fermentation cellar you have to go down a steep hill.  Let’s say we decided to improve our carbon footprint by rolling the barrels down the hill.  Chances are we’d lose many barrels and the surviving wines wouldn’t taste any better - which means we can’t charge more for the ones that did survive the drop.  Same problem exists with ‘natural winemaking.’  I may not be a winemaker, but I do know that, as Prof. Ronald S. Jackson so succintly noted: “In-bottle malolactic fermentation is undesirable.  It can generate clouding, petillance (from the released carbon dioxide trapped in the bottle), and be the source of off odors.”  A little SO2 added at just the right times and perhaps a rough filtration can go a long way to make sure that every bottle of Iron Horse you open hasn’t gone bad, and while that may not be ‘natural,’ to me that’s good.