February 3 - 17, 2007

The season has begun in the vineyard as we have started the spring rituals of vineyard work. Ramon and I have taken advantage of the dry weather to repair fences, the trellis system and start the spring pruning. Our burn pile has grown to gigantic proportions and we need some rain before we light it. I don't think the neighbors would like us burning the hill down. It would be nice to get some more rain. We have had about 20 inches so far and our pond is not quite full yet (normal is 43 inches). We have had a series of frosts, but the vines are fast asleep and don't seem to have suffered any damage so far. Frost can reduce crop yields if it occurs after "bud break," but that is still a ways off. Still it's nice to be working in this beautiful weather.

Pruning is one of the true pleasures of making wine. It's like Spring Training is to baseball. First, if you're pruning it means you have survived another winter and at my age that's reason enough to celebrate.

Secondly, as in baseball, everyone's in first place, the 2007 vintage still has a chance to be the best ever. But most importantly to me it is a chance to reconnect to the earth, to walk on the new green grass and literally connect to the vines. Everything is coming alive. The work is done at a leisurely pace and by the end of the day Ramon and I have solved most of the world's major problems. It takes a few weeks to finish the pruning.

February 18 - March 2, 2007

Well the rains have shown up, I guess you do have to be careful of what you ask for. Of course, it gets pretty hard to start the burn pile in the rain (Catch 22). If the rain keeps up I will have to turn my attention to selling some wine (not as much fun as making the wine).

In the winery, we are getting set for the bottling of our 2005 Pinot Noirs, sometime in April. We order bottles, corks, labels, foils, and make final decisions on blending.

The 15 day forecast calls for warming and drying. We have to finish pruning.

March 3 - 17, 2007

Spring's pace is picking up and one of the great joys of living in Anderson Valley is the Valley Variety Show. Forty local acts over two nights' performances range from incredible to…incredible, if you know what I mean. Four hundred people packed into the Grange Hall, a real celebration of Valley life. Raye and I will be operating the popcorn machine during the intermissions.

We are three rows from finishing the pruning, the first of many trips through the vineyard each season. I ran into Larry Londer at the post office, he owns Londer Vineyards. We were talking about farmer stuff like what are the prospects for this years crop yield, prices, weather…. Larry has had an examination of his vines buds under a high powered microscope and this year's crop is starting out with a maximum potential of an average yield. Any bad weather, early frosts, rain during pollination, heat during pollination, mold, mildew, late rains, late frosts, etc., would reduce yield from average to below (ain't farming fun?). I knew that the bud contains all the shoots and grape clusters fully formed, but this is the first time someone had given me this detailed information. Larry said they are able to examine the grape clusters and count the number of berries.

This makes a lot of sense especially in light of last year's very large crop. The vines, as do many other plants, tend to alternate heavy and light years. Not being a plant, I seem to alternate heavy and heavier years.

The perfect storm of increased recognition of Anderson Valley Pinot Noir, and very limited supply without much additional supply coming on line have driven grape prices steadily higher. Last year the average valley price came very close to $3000 a ton. That's good news for the farmer but it makes it harder and harder to produce reasonably priced wine.

March 18 - 31, 2007

Pruning finished and just in time as bud break started on the first day of spring, March 21st. It takes about 2 weeks for all the buds to open. With bud break comes the danger of frost, until the buds open up they are pretty much protected but once open are very susceptible to damage when temperatures drop below 32 degrees for even a few hours.

Various methods are used to protect against frost. Some vintners spray water on the plants to build a coating of ice on the vines which then acts as insulation. Other vineyards use wind machines to stir the air and keep all the coldest (heavier) air from settling in the lowest areas. One operation used to tow a propane burner the size of a jet engine around their place. On the nights where low temperatures are predicted my neighbor sits in his truck at the bottom of their vineyard waiting to turn the equipment on if he spots frost starting to form on the ground. All in all its quite a racket when everybody gets going.

We at Raye's Hill out of necessity have had to devise a much more passive method. We don't have enough water to spray and don't want to add to the racket our neighbors have to put up with. So we rely on our location, several hundred feet above the valley floor and our vine rows go up and down the hill so the colder air is allowed to run down the hill and for the same reason we keep the grass cut short. Our orientation slightly east of south means the morning sunrise brings welcome warmth to our location. We hope all the stuff the neighboring vineyards do may help us, too.

Over our 10 years we have lost 30% of our crop once and 20% another time to frost. So while there isn't much we can actually do about frosts they occupy our thoughts.

April 1 - 15, 2007

Off we go to Chicago to attend the birth of our second grandchild. And sure enough on April 5th our first granddaughter, Rebecca Karen Sokolow, arrived safe and sound and ready to begin life's great adventure. Her parents Charlie and Laura and her brother Sam all seem to be enjoying her. Since Rebecca was a bit pokey, being born a week late we only had a few hours with her. We will be back in July for a lot more "face" time. All this regeneration going on in our family and fields offers such great hope for the future.

April 16 - 30, 2007

We seem to have escaped the spring frost season untouched. There were several occasions when we could see frost on the ground down on the valley floor and could hear the symphony of the pumps and windmills, but the frost line stayed below our vineyard. Now we can start worrying about what the weather will be during pollination time.

Getting ready for the bottling of our 2005 Pinot Noirs, ordering bottles, corks, labels, and foils. We're aiming for the middle of May.

We ended the month in New York by participating in the Pinot Days events. There was a winemaker's dinner at The Tasting Room on Friday night, a panel discussion on Anderson Valley, Russian River Valley and Sonoma Coast wines on Saturday and the Grand Tasting on Sunday. Monday we met with our New York distributor's sale staff and finally had a few hours for Raye and I to stroll through Central Park on a beautiful day.

May 1 - 15, 2007

Vineyard work slows a bit, however, we do start a sulfuring program to protect against mildew. Since we have had mostly dry days and not much early morning fog this year we will sulfur sparingly.

We are preparing to bottle our 2005 Pinot Noirs. We do our bottling at our winery using equipment that we share with our next door neighbor, Claudia Springs Winery.

Bottling is quite a ballet and can also be very nerve wracking. Six separate machines are used; a sparger to clean dust and fill the bottles with argon gas, a filler, a corker, a pump to create a vacuum in the bottle as the cork is inserted, a foil spinner and finally the labeler. Each machine has an operator plus a couple of more people to unpack empty bottles and seal up the finished cases. If any of the machines decides to have a bad day (the labeler is notoriously fickle) the whole things comes to a halt. My job on the line is to take the empty bottles set them on the sparger after a blast of argon gas replaces the oxygen then I load the bottle on the filler. I repeat this process several thousand times a day. It usually takes a week or so to do our yearly bottling.

May 16 - 31, 2007

One more trip through the vineyard, this time to remove suckers growing at the base of the vines. These are removed because they rob the productive parts of the vines. Oh my aching back!

The Anderson Valley Pinot Festival took place on the 18th and 19th, a gathering of 600 or so Pinot lovers to sample the offerings of the 30 or so wineries that make Pinot Noir with fruit from Anderson Valley. The grand tasting took place under a very large tent in the middle of Goldeneye's vineyards. It provides us the opportunity to taste all the wonderful Pinots made in Anderson Valley and check out the competition.

June 1 - 30, 2007

Our vineyard is laid out on the side of our hill. The rows go up and down, about a 60-foot difference between the top and bottom. There are 37 rows, so one round trip is like walking up and down a 222-story building. I'm not quite sure if it keeps me young or makes me old, but we did make a couple of tours to tuck the rapidly growing shoots into the trellis system. This helps the clusters to be exposed to some direct light and air circulation, which controls mildew. We also spent several days getting our drip irrigation ready for our first watering of the year. Drips have to be positioned and some need to be replaced, and the lines need to be flushed out.

As our vines matured and their roots penetrated deeper into the soil we have reduced the amount of irrigation water. For the last few years we have only watered five times. Starting in early July we water three hours every two weeks until the end of August. This is well below the standard five hours every week from July to September.

I think this "water deprivation" has two benefits, it limits the yield which is important in intensifying aroma and flavors in the finished wine, and it hastens maturing making it less likely that an early rain could damage the crop.

Weather has been warm and wonderful, the end of June is going to be busy. Raye won a three-day trip to Lake Tahoe in a school raffle, from there we go to San Francisco to participate in the Pinot Days event at Fort Mason. Then off to Chicago for three weeks with grandkids, kids, relative and friends and to be tourists in our hometown.

July 1 - 23, 2007

We are able to spend this time away from the business because our one employee, Ramon Jimenez, is so damn good at what he does.

Contrary to the old saying regarding not being able to return home we think you can. It's so nice to be able to touch and be touched by family and old friends and to see our hometown with new eyes. Even though we talk frequently, "face time" is better, especially with our grandchildren. We went to all the museums, favorite restaurants, the parks and even got to see our beloved, but beleaguered White Sox win a ball game. The weather was warm and we were able to watch several mighty thunder storms sweep through the city. And if that wasn't enough excitement the trash dumpster in the basement of the building we were staying in caught on fire and building was evacuated. Raye and I ran down from the 53rd floor. The fire caused no real damage and it was fun to see all the fire fighting equipment. Raye and I could hardly walk the next day. Should you get a chance to visit Chicago some day (we recommend April thru October) give us a call we'll tell you about "the bean" the coolest thing in town.

July 24 - August 15, 2007

Just as I had expected, Ramon had seen to the watering, tucking the vines up in the trellis system, sulfuring, and fertilizing. Now is the time that we go through the vineyard after "verazion" (that is the process where the grapes change color from green to purple). It takes about ten days and at the end we go through the vineyard cutting off the clusters that have not turned color yet. These green clusters (second growth) stand a great chance of not ripening with the rest of the crop.

Lunchtime at Libby's Cafe in "downtown" Philo is packed with wine people and everyone has their guess as to the crop size. It is starting to look like Larry Londer, the man with the electron microscope, was right. This year's yield will be below average, which could produce a very good vintage, maybe the elusive "best ever." Raye thinks I use those two words too frequently. We are all starting to get excited. The sparking wine producers will start harvesting three weeks before everybody else since they require much lower sugar levels, 18% vs. 24-25% for Pinot Noir. We think we will be harvesting very early this year, maybe the 5th plus or minus a few days. The weather is very important for the next month or so. We vote for warm days and cool nights with not to much fog. We stop sulfuring three weeks before harvest to insure no residual is present by harvest time, so we become more vulnerable to mildew should we receive an early rain.

August 16 - 31, 2007

Its almost time to shed farmer mode and proceed into our winemaker mode. It's beginning to get really close to ShowTime. First we clean our de-stemer-crusher (the machine that removes the berries from the stems). We do "whole berry" fermentation so we only "crush" 10% of the berries to provide juice to help disperse the enzymes that are added during the de-stemming process. The enzymes aid in the extraction of flavors and color. The next machine that must work during crush is our forklift truck. We have to change the front forks with a "bin turner" which is used to lift the picking bins and rotates to unload the grapes into the top of the de-stemer. Finally our 1988 GMC truck, the one that just passed the 180 thousand miles needs new tires. It is a real act of faith to put new tires on our "classic."

We start testing sugar levels in the vineyard late in the month. We are checking to see if all areas are maturing at the same rate and track the sugar levels to help determine harvest date.

September 1 - 11, 2007

With harvest coming on we make several trips to Napa and Windsor for mops, buckets (they seem to disappear over the summer), yeast and testing chemicals. My prediction of an early harvest has disappeared in the morning fog's return.

We cleaned all the picking bins and fermentation bins. We have made room in the winery. We are ready, the grapes are not.

One last trip through the vineyard looking for any spoiled fruit to remove so it doesn't wind up being harvested. We keep testing, getting close. Sugars are rising, seeds have turned from pale green to mahogany, the juice tingles at the back of the tongue. It's time!

September 12 - October 24, 2007

Harvest day has arrived. We use a picking crew from Steve William's company. We pay the workers by the hour, not by the ton. This way they can be more selective and make sure all the leaves have been removed from the stems. We hate leaves! We start to pick at dawn. From our vineyard the grapes go down the hill to be weighed at Handley Cellars Winery then back up the hill to our winery. The whole round trip takes about 15 minutes. We immediately run the grapes through the de-stemmer into the fermentation bins. We check the temperature of the "must" (grapes being fermented). Fifty degrees is our goal, that is low enough to prevent fermentation, it's called cold soaking. Here is our routine:

1. Get the must temperature to 50 degrees.
2. Start punching down three times daily.
3. After 48 hours bring the temperature of the must up to 64 degrees and inoculate with yeast.
4. Keep punching down 3 times daily, since Ramon doesn't live on the property I get the late night punch down. Walking back to the house in the dark I think it would be nice to have a big dog.
5. Keep punching down 3 times daily tracking the sugar level. When the sugar is all gone the must is wine. We pressed the wine into French Oak Barrels.
6. Get ready for the grapes coming from Henneberg Vineyard down the hill from us.
7. Repeat steps 1-5.
8. Get ready for the grapes from the Jenks Vineyard down the hill from Henneberg.
9. Repeat steps 1-5.

The last wine was put in barrels on October 23rd. No more punch downs! Yea!

Things missed during the crush:

1. Any semblance of social life
2. Relatives and old friends who have visited during crush before
3. Bocce ball on Sunday mornings

Things time was made for:

1. The County Fair in Boonville
1. Sheep Dog Trials
2. Parade
2. The White Sox winning the World Series, this of course did not occur saving me countless hours to devote to more productive things.

A Brief Essay on Punching Down

Punching down is like steeping tea. As the must begins fermenting it produces large amounts of carbon dioxide which lifts the skins to the top of the bin. The skins form a cap on top of the must, which must be punched, down using a hand held paddle. The cap can get one foot thick and it takes quite some effort to push down. As much as I complain about the work it is really important. The down stroke breaks up and submerges the cap, it also puts my nose within inches of the must, if something is going wrong we can smell it. Care must be taken not to crush any seeds that have settled. The up stroke is done with quick jerks up to mix any skins and yeast cells that settle on the bottom and helps even out the temperatures in the bin. The punch down is the most important act in the whole process.

October 25 - December 15, 2007

We found another excuse to visit Chicago. We attended the Chicago Pinot Day's event in early November. Several other Anderson Valley Wineries participated in the event and Raye and I got to show them our favorite rib joint and the "bean."

Back at the winery we are racking the 2006 Pinots into tanks in preparation of bottling early in February 2008. Cleaning empty barrels is quite a workout. Ramon and I are sure they must be making heavier barrels every year. We clean and cover all the crush equipment.

Reflecting on this year's crush: we harvested our estate grape on September 12th just before a period of early fall rains struck, morning fog and no sun. We still have grapes coming for two neighboring vineyards. Just in time and saved by the sun and ocean breezes we harvested the Henneberg Vineyard September 29th and the Jenks on October 8th. Yields were 2/3 of last year's, but the wine seems to be wonderful.

Email me at dan@rayeshill.com