Harvest 2006

     The most exciting, tiring, and rewarding time of year in Napa wine country is here.  Harvest 2006 has begun.  Otherwise known as the "crush", this is the climax of the growing season and the sights, sounds, and smells of the harvest are evident wherever one travels in Napa Valley.

     Working at Laird Family Estate Winery gives me opportunites not found at other wineries.  Since Laird is a custom crush facility serving many clients, I can observe many different philosophies and winemaking practices.  For example, most winemakers simply dump the red wine grapes into the hopper of the de-stemmer/crusher prior to fermentation.  White wine grapes are dumped into a bladder press to extract the juice.  Some winemakers, however, take some extreme measures to insure only the very best grapes are used.

     K.T. Winery, a very exclusive, high-end Laird custom crush client, uses very time consuming and costly methods to select only very best grapes for their wines.  Instead of bringing the grapes to the winery in 1000 lb. bins, KT uses small, ventilated, 25 lb. tubs.  The grapes have less chance to be smashed in the bin and much less chance to become oxidized.  The boxes are hand emptied, gently, into a small de-stemmer and the grapes drop onto a conveyor belt.  A crew of eight workers hand sort the grapes and extract any twigs or foreign matter..

     The sorted grapes are kept cool using dry ice.  The gleaming fermenting tanks used by KT are small and open at the top, so that punchdowns can be performed gently and evenly.

The result is a very soft wine with very little tannin.  It is amazing to watch, and it gives me an understanding of why some wines are becoming close to perfection.  Today they were processing their 2006 Merlot.   Heidi Barrett is the KT winemaker while David Abreu is the vineyard manager.

     For most Laird clients the traditional crushing techniques just fine.  The grapes are usually picked early in the morning, loaded into 1000 lb bins and transported to the winery aboard flat bed trucks.  After being weighed the grapes are then crushed or pressed.  The white wine grapes are dumped into the bladder press and the red wine grapes go into the de-stemmer/ crusher.

     Fermentation takes about a month for the whites and a couple of weeks for the reds.  Then the majority of the wines are placed in new or nearly new French Oak barrels.  Because last years crop was record setting and huge there is a scarcity of barrels.  We are seeing many brand new barrels being unloaded at Laird these days.  Because fermentation is finishing up for some of the early grapes arrivals, the production crew has been filling these new barrels to be placed into the underground man-made caves at the winery.

     Last years record setting harvest is good news for the consumer.  Prices should drop and quality should increase.  Several wineries had more excellent grapes last year and ended up selling off some of their average grapes as bulk wine.  There is another factor this year and in the years to come.  With worker documentation becoming such a nationwide issue there is some thought that the work force may dwindle.  I think our politicians are too politically astute to let that become an issue during harvest.  At some point though,  labor costs will increase.

     I asked one of Laird's most talented winemaking clients, Mia Klein, what she thought of the harvest so far.  She said, "So far, so good!".  Mia indicated the grapes looked good and tonnage was closer to normal than last year.

     To review the year weatherwise, we had a very wet Spring that was also cool.  We had a monster heatwave in July, and even ripening since then.  The workers have been in the vineyards all Summer, adjusting to Mother Nature.  Before harvest started we saw some grape bunches being thinned out and shoots and leaves being cut to let the sunshine in.

    As I write this, some rain is predicted for next week.  If it is typical, the rain will be a teaser, without doing any damage. The vineyard managers have done great work so this year, so I am not worried.  The more harvests I experience, the greater respect I have for the beauty in my glass of wine.