TRAVESSIA Winery Blog

Harvest 2009 is over

Last week I picked up Riesling juice from Westport Rivers for what I hope will be the first Travessia Riesling bottling.  So how do we describe the 2009 growing season?  Bill Russel, winemaker at Westport Rivers summarized it perfectly “It’s a miraculous year”.  Indeed it is.  If in the middle of August someone had told us that the region’s vineyards would be harvesting Chardonnay at 21+ brix of sugar with ripe flavors and great acid balance, I would have said that they were crazy.  In the end, the quality of the fruit is in some cases superior to 2008, a year that weather wise was not nearly has challenging as 2009.  The credit goes to the vineyard managers who put in the extra effort needed to keep their vineyards healthy and for their courage to let the fruit hang on the vine pretty much until there were no leaves left.  Credit also goes to mother nature that after beating us with above average rain throughout the year, gave us a little hand with a very decent October. Now, it’s up to the winemakers to make the best possible wine with this miraculous year.

Though I’ve been fairly quite on the “internets”, a lot has been happening at Travessia. I’m taking steps to position Travessia as an healthy business as we’ll soon enter the second year of having our winery open to the public.   Some steps will be “visible” soon, some later in 2010.  Stay tuned… really exciting things ahead.

2009 grape growing update

Many people have asked me about the effects of this year’s weather conditions on the vineyards and grapes here in Massachusetts.  New Englanders don’t expect weather consistency.  Neither do we expect week after week of hot days, cool evenings and low humidity.  But rain/humidity every other day, and what seems to be a constant cloud cover is a bit too much.  The report: it SUCKS.  I would be lying if I didn’t say so.  The impact on the grapes and eventually the wine?  Well, a lot remains to be seen since it’s just early August and we have at least two months ahead of us before harvest is normally underway, but here is what we know thus far.

1. Due to temperatures a bit lower than normal and more clouds than sun, the vines are running about two weeks behind schedule.  This could result in difficulty ripening the grapes this year especially if Fall’s cool temperatures arrive early.  Think lots of Rosé and Sparkling wine if things don’t improve.

2. We’ll have less than normal crop size this year.  The reason is that we had poor fruit set and as a result there are less clusters on the vine.  Meaning?  Less grapes to make wine with.  This isn’t necessarily a bad thing for quality since the vines will have less grapes to ripen.  I’m eager to see what will be the actual impact of poor fruit set in the final quality of the grape crop.  From a business perspective, poor fruit set is a terrible thing since there will be less grapes to harvest and make wine with and therefore, a loss in revenue.

A couple of images to illustrate poor fruit set…

Here is what a normal Chardonnay cluster looks like:

 

 Here is what a Chardonnay cluster with poor fruit set looks like:

By the way… word “on the street” is that all the cloudiness in the Northeast this Summer is directly related to the eruption of the Redoubt volcano in Alaska back in March of this year.

The inevitable Veraison blog post

Any winery or winemaker who has a blog always takes the opportunity to show off what is one of the most exciting times in the yearly cycle of grape growing.  I’m going to copy everyone else and do the same with this week’s post.
 
It’s called Veraison and it signifies the color change in the grape berries.  More importantly, it represents the change from berry growth to berry ripening.  At this point in the growing season berries begin to soften and change color from green to either red or yellow depending on the grape variety.
 
At the St.Jorge vineyard this past Saturday, August 16th, I walked the vineyard as I do often when I looked down row 48 and realized that the Pinot Noir had just started to turn color.  It happened fairly quickly since I had been there just 3 days before and there was no veraison to be seen. 
 
I had been waiting for this to happen for a few days now and the erratic weather we experienced the first two weeks of August had started to make me a bit concerned.  I have been reading about Varaison from everyone else in the world and it seemed as if the Veraison Gods had forgotten about us.  On July 28, Morgan at Bedrock Wine Co. declared Veraison at some of the vineyards he sources fruit from.  Kristy Charles followed the next day.  Jason at Tablas Creek on July 30.  The Benchland Blog on August 6.  Even if you don’t have the time to read through their blog posts, I highly recommend you click on through just for their pictures which are much prettier than mine.

 
I see this as a wake-up call to what’s coming in just a few weeks… harvest.  It tells us winemakers that it’s time to start ordering fresh laboratory supplies, yeasts and additives if necessary, clean the dust off the destemmer-crusher and the press.  In just about two months the “madness” that is harvest and crush will begin once again.

Update:  I forgot to mention that on August 15, Jeff from Twisted Oak winery in California's Calaveras County posted a message on his blog... the first fruit of this year's harvest was arriving at the winery.  Is that amazing or what?

The Heat Factor

In the United States the definition of a "heat wave" varies by region; however, a heat wave is generally defined as a period of at least three consecutive days above 90°F (32.2°C).  The historical average high temperature for the month of June in the Southeastern New England region is 77°F (25°C).  So, it appears the Northeast part of the country has just had its first heat wave of the year.  But this is a small one… nothing compared for example to the heat wave that claimed an estimated 35,000 lives in Europe during the summer of 2003.  That year, temperatures reached as high as 104 Fahrenheit and remained extreme for about two weeks.

Heat wave or not, it certainly has been very hot for early June here in the Northeast.  So what effect did this short period of unusually high temperatures have on our vines?

Though most people tend to think that high temperatures are a good thing for vines, this is not always the case.  It depends on several factors such as how hot and humid it really gets, the duration of the heat spell, the present growth stage of the vine and more importantly, what happened previously during the growing season.

Temperatures in our region had been a bit lower than usual throughout the spring so the vines were at best running on schedule and in some cases a little behind.  So, am I happy for the heat?  You bet.

Vines “took off” over the last week with shoots growing very rapidly.  Inflorescence are now mostly fully formed (here's a picture of a Pinot Noir inflorescence).  I’m glad to say that the majority of the vines have now “caught up” to schedule and will begin flowering any day now.  The vines have a deadline to meet in November (it's called harvest), so they love it when weather conditions help them stay on schedule.

Thank You... and Bud Break

First a quick note to thank everyone who left comments on my last post and also those who sent me emails directly.  I honestly did not expect to receive so many messages of encouragement and support.  ALL of your messages truly mean a lot to me.  THANK YOU!  I’ll keep everyone posted on what’s happening with TRAVESSIA as things develop.  Right now it’s mostly a lot of paperwork being filled so that I can apply for the winery permits.  Meanwhile, a new wine growing season is just beginning and I want to tell you a bit about it...

Most people are familiar with harvest but few really know much about a special time in the wine growing season that we call “bud break”.  After winter pruning and when the temperature increases, like most plants, grape vines wake-up from their winter-long deserved rest.  You know how you feel on January 1st?  I feel pretty much like January 1st when I see these buds swelling and expanding.

This signals the beginning of a new wine growing season.  The result will be the 2008 vintage wines which will not be ready for consumption until a year from now for most white wines, two or more years from now for most red wines.

So much happens between bud break and the time the wine is actually poured into a glass for someone to drink.  This journey is a major aspect of what makes wine so unique and special… it’s just a beverage if that is all you need or want from it, but it can also be so much more.  Often you just want to drink the stuff and not think much about it… if it’s good, it’s all that matters.  But once in a while if you choose to take the time to appreciate what you are drinking, I guarantee that you will be a richer person and live a better life.

Last year I shared the growth of the entire vineyard by taking pictures along the growing season and posting them here on the blog.  No sense in repeating the same again this year.  So instead I’m going to try to follow a couple of buds from bud break to harvest, the same buds every time.  Here is the first image of the Chardonnay bud that I’ve chosen:

Chardonnay bud swelling; doeskin stage with brownish wool clearly visible.

This is the first image in the new photo album I've created.  I'll contiue to add pictures to the album as the bud develops.