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 From Temecula and Santa Barbara to Paso Robles and Napa Valley, vineyards this time of year are hanging low with grapes – some big and juicy, others small yet packed with concentrated flavors. This can mean only one thing: It is harvest time for the wine industry.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared September to be California Wine Month. It’s a way to draw attention to California’s wine community and thank them for strengthening the state’s economy, which makes sense. Every year, nearly 20 million tourists visit wine regions throughout California, which is now the fourth-largest wine producer in the world (around 90% of all American wine is produced in California). Wine is the No. 1 finished agricultural product in California, creating more than $51 billion in annual economic impact.
Harvest – or “crush” as it’s more commonly known in the industry – starts in September, and can last into November depending on the grape varietal grown and the style of wine a vintner intends to make. Crush is an exciting time for winemakers, because it’s when they finally see the fruits of their yearlong labors.
The long road from vine to wine
According to Lance Silver, co-owner of Tobin James Cellars in Paso Robles, harvest is not just about the crush, it’s the culmination of a 12-month process of growing and tending vineyards, although crush is considered a critical stage in the winemaking process.
“You have maybe an eight-week period to make an entire year’s worth of wine,” says Silver. “The only thing a winemaker can do is ruin the grapes. You can’t make them better. You can’t take mediocre grapes and make a great wine, but you can take great grapes and make a mediocre wine. We like to say that there are 20 steps to making wine, and for each of those steps there are 20 different ways to do it, so there is an infinite combination of how a grape becomes wine.”
“It’s a stylistic decision,” agrees Steve Pepe of Clos Pepe Vineyards in Lompoc. “You have to decide when to pick, how long to ferment, what kind of yeast to use, what kind of barrels to put the wine in, how much new wood versus old wood. All those decision affect the style of the wine.”
So does the tending of the vineyards.
“The most important thing a winemaker can put in a vineyard is his footprint,” says Silver, who sources his grapes from 89 vineyards, which are tended to various degrees by Tobin James Cellars. “Some we check once a month, others we are out there twice a week analyzing soil, checking moisture, determining what nutrients are needed and how much pruning needs to be done.”
Once the grapes are finally ready, it takes a team of dedicated people to bring the grapes from vine to wine, including field hands and the winery crew. One thing they all seem to have in common: a love for beer.
“It sounds like sacrilege, but during harvest the most-consumed beverage is beer,” says Rick Foster, winemaker and general manager for Roblar Winery in Santa Ynez Valley. “That’s a big part of harvest. You smell like wine, so all you want to drink is a cold beer. As they say, the road to great wine is littered with empty beer bottles.”
“Beer, pizza, country music and cigars,” adds Tobin James, co-owner of Tobin James Cellars.
Crush 101
According to the California Agricultural Statistics Service, 3.1 million tons of wine grapes were crushed in California during 2006, a decrease of about 16% over a record 2005 crush but still the third-largest wine grape crush to date. Projections for 2007 are not yet available, but they are likely to be consistent with recent crushes.
A crush can be broken into several stages.
First, a vintner determines that the grapes are ready to pick. This is a complicated process that includes measuring the pH, acidity and Brix (sugar content), as well as examining the grape’s skin color, berry texture, seed color, and taste.
Next comes the physical activity of picking the grapes. Hand harvesting is the traditional method, and is still used by the majority of smaller producers. Clusters are sliced from the vines by picking crews using small hook-bladed knives and placed in baskets, which in turn are generally moved to half-ton bins and brought by tractor or truck to the winery for pressing. Machine harvesting – in which the fruit is beaten from the vine and caught on large conveyor belts – is often used in large, flat vineyards.
“We use a farming company that goes from vineyard to vineyard picking grapes for wineries,” says Foster. “There will be anywhere from 12 to 20 people out there picking. The idea is to get it picked early in the day, because we don’t want the fruit coming in warm. As soon as it’s the slightest bit light out, they’re out there picking.”
Once the grapes are at the winery, they are usually de-stemmed and checked for consistency (under-ripe or dried, shriveled grapes are a no-no).
Now it’s time to press the grapes. White wines are usually pressed before fermentation, either in whole clusters or in berries. The resulting juice is transferred to barrels or tanks to ferment. Red wines are usually pressed after fermentation and maceration have leached color and flavor from the skins (the skins contain most of the flavor and character of a red wine grape).
What exactly is fermentation? Basically, it’s an anaerobic chemical reaction conducted by yeasts in the appropriate environment, resulting in the conversion of sugar to ethanol, carbon dioxide and heat.
Fermentation takes one to three weeks depending on the type of wine. As wine ferments on its skins and seeds, small carbon-dioxide bubbles form inside fermenting berries, which float to the top and form a “cap” which, if left on its own, would dry out and become a home for vinegar bacteria. To avoid the cap, procedures such as pump over (pumping juice from the bottom of a tank to the top), punch-down (punching down the wine in open-top tanks), rack and return (transferring juice from the bottom of one tank to another empty tank) and other techniques can be used for cap management.
Once fermentation is complete, the wines are put to sleep in barrels or tanks until they’re ready to bottle.
Crush activities are very labor-intensive. Depending on the volume of grapes coming in and the number of varietals being produced, crush can often mean long days – and nights – tending to the wine.
“You know the term golf widow? The wife of every winemaker is a harvest widow,” says Silver. “When we first started this winery, Toby [co-owner Tobin James] slept on a cot in the cellar during crush, although he only got three to four hours of sleep every night because he had to get up every 20 minutes and take care of a tank of wine. Now we have a crew and share responsibilities, but it still has to be done.”
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