2005 Crush
As I sit here in mid-November reflecting on our 2005 harvest, I am again reminded of how much we take for granted when we pop a cork and pour ourselves a great glass of wine. There is no question that a great glass of wine begins in the vineyard. We spend seven months, from bud-break in April to harvest in the fall, nurturing and babying the vines and trying to protect them from all the calamities that can befall a crop before harvest takes place. We were determined to stay alert and try to prevent the problems that befell our vineyards in 2004, but we had no idea what was down the road.

In 2004 we lost one half of our petit verdot crop to a deer that made it past our deer fence at bloom. This year we made it a point to be extra vigilant. When Jake and I made our morning trip to the mailbox to get the newspaper, I would walk the rows of the petit verdot checking for any damage. As bloom approached I noticed one small bloom clipped off at the end of our first row. To my disbelief once again we had a deer inside, but where was it?

I had our golf cart so I decided to drive over to our pond to check an area of heavy brush where deer could hide. When I got about fifty yards away, Jake growled and took off like a bullet into the thicket. That great old black Labrador nose saved the day again and in a flash out raced a young buck with Jake right on its heels. The deer raced along our Lakeview Vineyard, tried to leap the fence and missed. He then ran past our vineyard walls down to Jake’s Creek and disappeared into the brush. Jake and I drove around hoping to open a gate to get it out when Treva called to us that it had run past our house and was heading back down the fence line toward the pond. Jake and I raced back down the road by the Victorian cottage and met the deer coming our way. Jake picked it up chasing it up and down the hill and finally with Jake right on its heels it leaped over a seven foot fence and escaped into the slopes of the mountain. We had saved our petit verdot - or so we thought.

It was now June and the weather was unseasonably cold. Around the second week in June we had a powerful rain storm and even some hail. Half of the blooms on our petit verdot were knocked loose and lost. The cabernet was past bloom and suffered no damage.

The effects on Napa and Sonoma Valleys was devastating. The chardonnay suffered serious damage from mildew and many areas lost almost all the pinot noir crop. The cold weather continued and many vineyards were spraying sulfur every week to control the mildew. We had very little mildew problems but because of all the moisture the canopy took off like a jungle resulting in vines very hard to control.

The crops were massive but very uneven. We heavily leafed the vines to allow for better air circulation and dropped lots of fruit to control the amount per cane. Then we waited for verasion to set in. We waited and waited and waited some more. We kept hedging the vines and hoped we would get some of our classic Calistoga heat to ripen the grapes. We had one of the most wonderful summers. Every day was in the mid to high eighties, just wonderful for picnics, baseball games, eating outside but not enough to get those grapes going. Verasion came at least three weeks late and as September neared it end we started to wonder "When will all this fruit get ripe?"

The last two years we harvested Treva’s Vineyard on September 22 and 23, but October approached and we were still waiting on the fruit. In our Lakeview Vineyard, what was left of our petit verdot and our Clone 6 cabernet was ripening fast when on October 10? Mark decided we should harvest. We harvested 3 _ tons of fruit and Crush 2005 had begun. A week later Mark decided the sunny side of the hillside was ready and we pulled 3 _ tons of unbelievable fruit with 27 Brix, 3.8 ph and great acidity. Wow! Two down!

For the last month we have been taking samples for the sugar, ph and acid. Mark has been here every week tasting the grapes, looking at the seeds and recommending more dropping of fruit that was not quite there. Another few days pass and Mark says it’s time to pick the rest of Treva’s Vineyard. We got 3 _ more tons of unbelievable fruit. We cannot believe that this finicky harvest is turning out so great, but we still have our Lakeview 337 clone to pick and all of Jake’s Creek, which is always late.

Two weeks earlier Mark decided we needed to drop more fruit in Lakeview so we made one last pass dropping more of our beautiful fruit on the ground. The result was a great harvest of 3.2 tons of our French Bordeaux clone, the best fruit ever from our Lakeview and now all eyes and prayers turned to Jake’s Creek.

November came and we still have a full vineyard to harvest. We aren’t alone. There are grapes hanging all over the valley. Unbelievable, I even saw a semi loaded with chardonnay grapes.

The end of October brought a heavy rain increasing our fears of losing our last fruit. Cabernet has thick tough skins so Mark assured me we must keep them hanging and wait for a little more maturing. The grapes may not be aging fast enough but I sure aged waiting for them.

We made another pass through the vineyard dropping any fruit not absolutely ideal, and on November 3 we had another heavy rain. The weather was cold with more rain predicted for Monday the 7th. So, Mark said let’s go pick on Sunday the 6th.

It was drizzling on Sunday and we started loading our bins with beautiful 337 Clone grapes. We picked while it rained lightly and about three hours later we had loaded 4 _ tons of grapes on our truck and trailer. We were finally done with our harvest but we had one last hurdle to overcome - our tough Ford 250 loaded with a ton of grapes and pulling 3 more tons on our trailer could not get up the slippery dirt road to get out of the vineyard. It took a back hoe pushing and our Kubota tractor pulling and we finally hit hard pavement and off our grapes went to our winery.

The 2005 wines are going to be amazing. It was a year like many of us have never seen, but that’s farming and with hard work and close attention to the fruit it resulted in a harvest that is really special.