What’s the most important thing you have learned about grape-growing and/or winemaking this year?
Matt Donaldson, Pegasus Bay Winery (Waipara, New Zealand). I think we learned that if the season is totally awesome you can get away with carrying a higher crop level than would be ideal in an average year. The problem, of course, is that you can’t predict how the end of season is going to turn out at the time you need to do the green harvest, unless you have a crystal ball. READ MORE »
What’s the most important thing you have learned about grape-growing and/or winemaking this year?
Joel Peterson, Ravenswood Winery (Sonoma, California). I learned that the cleanest fruit doesn’t always make the best wine. This year, because of the timing of the early fall rains, we had more fungal damage in some of our vineyards than normal. Certainly more damage than I have seen since 1989. We spent a lot of time sorting fruit. The question of how clean was clean arose. To answer the question we performed different levels of sorting on the same fruit and fermented each batch separately. Not surprisingly we found the least sorted fruit to make fairly bad wine. But, surprisingly, we like the moderately sorted fruit more than the clean sort. It tasted more interesting and somewhat riper. Up to 10% damaged fruit did not seem to affect the taste of the resulting wine adversely in this test. READ MORE »
As a winemaker, which type of growing season would you prefer to deal with: a significantly warmer-than-average year, or one that’s significantly cooler than normal? And why? For the sake of this discussion, let’s focus only on sunshine and temperatures; let’s assume that damaging precipitation and rotten grapes are not a factor. Also, which type of vintage, cool or warm, is able to produce classic a expressions of your region, if not your specific terroir?
Marc Hugel, Hugel et Fils (Alsace, France). Having had four ultra-precocious harvests in the past ten years (2003, 2007, 2009 and 2011), which is more than during the 50 years before, the discussion about the benefit or inconvenience of a significantly warmer than average growing season becomes more relevant. By the way, it is curious to note than since 2002, each early harvest is always followed by a quite late harvest, and then very early again, and this ten times in a row! Of course, at the end, the result in the bottle differs considerably in style: rich, broad, supple, early-drinking for warmer-than-average vintages, and austere, sharp, nervous and closed wines for the opposite. READ MORE »
As a winemaker, which type of growing season would you prefer to deal with: a significantly warmer-than-average year, or one that’s significantly cooler than normal? And why? Also, which type of vintage, cool or warm, is able to produce classic a expressions of your region, if not your specific terroir?
Abrie Beeslaar, Kanonkop (Stellenbosch, South Africa). Definitely cooler seasons for the Simonsberg area. Normally our ripening is too quick and we are left with some herbaceous character that is not very positive. In cooler vintages the fruit expression on our cabernets is more classic. READ MORE »
