Cerro Prieto...The "Money Bush"...no, not the vines... and an awkward summer.

During my four decades as a dermatologist, we had a running joke amongst ourselves about one of the more common ailments we saw in patients: Poison Oak. In a big year we would see miserable patients with horrid poison oak allergic contact dermatitis on a daily basis...many times several patients per day. We began calling it the "Money Bush", in that we could many times pay our monthly rent just from treating patients with poison oak.

Years later, who would have guessed that on our 73 acres of deer fenced property surrounding our vineyard, we would have upwards of 10 acres covered in poison oak. Before we put our vineyard in we had poison oak on our entire 20 acres of about to be planted vineyard. We ripped it, disked it, hoed it, we burned massive piles of it...heck we did everything we could to get rid of it. Sixteen years later we were successful, but in the heavily forested areas, surrounding each bloc of grapes, we still have acres of it...most of it is under the heavy forest canopy, and in the fall it is beautiful as massive plots of it go thru the autumnal colors....from bright green (leaves of three, let them be) to yellow, orange, and then a lovely red. At times you can see a complete carpet of red under the tall live oak trees, and the color may remain for weeks at times. Actually, it is quite beautiful, and is the reason some unsuspecting city folks stop and pick a beautiful bouquet of it. Of course, those were the people we would see next day in the office, miserable and itching from head to toe.

Several years ago with the recognition of el nino currents, beginning off the coast of Chile (usually during Christmas time...el Nino, the Christmas child), then moving up the South American continent, past Central America, up the Baja coast , and then moving the length of California...the warmer than normal water, 56 degrees instead of the usual cooler 52 degrees, brought with it the climatic conditions favoring big rainy years. In 2010 and again in 2011, el Nino brought us 52 and 54 inches of rain...and that was welcome news in the face of a 6" rain in 2009. Now we are headed once again towards an el Nino year, with predictions that the 3 years of terrible drought will finally come to an end. With the drought we have had some unprecedented hot years, 2012-2014. We here in Central Coastal California, Paso Robles in particular, have seen a 15 month summer, beginning in April of 2013. True we had an anomaly Dec 6th-12th of 7 days of mid teens, but that was just a bump...it was not sustained, and immediately thereafter, we were back in summer mode...where we have remained to date. What has been extraordinary is our poison oak...the harbinger of fall, but behaving in a manner that has been inexplicable. The first photo below shows one of our massive patches of poison oak on May 15th. Yes, May 15th, and the poison oak has already gone thru the yellow-orange  changes, and appears all red, except for a handful of green leaves still thinking about going thru color change..

 

 

May 15th

 

The next photo is two weeks later, May 29th, and there is little if any foliage remaining on the field of poison oak.

 

May 29th

 

Here you see only twigs of poison oak plants, and virtually all but a few leaves have lost their brite red color, instead laying on the ground as dead, brown leaves. In the foreground a Toyon bush remains with three leaves also, but these leaves are serrated and definitely not poison oak.

So what, exactly, does the poison oak think is happening? Surely the drought has played a part, as has the excessive heat... some days in the 108 degree range, which probably has some effect, too. But overall we are seeing here a picture not unlike our last two drought years, 2012 and 2013, with poison oak leaves turning early, dropping, and for all the world, making it look like this is late fall...say late October. Yet these photos were taken while it was still springtime, so somebody, somewhere is playing tricks on our flora. The oppressive heat, during this time frame included 12 days over 105, and then another half dozen days in the 103 range. Just when I thought I was going to melt, I was at home eating breakfast outside overlooking the Syrah and Cab vines, and this is what I saw to the SW.

 

 

 

A massive fog bank had moved in during the nite and instead of it being 78 degrees in the morning, it was a brisk 52. The Westerlies had finally come again, blowing the damp, maritime air (la brisa) down into and through the Templeton Gap. For the entire time of the blistering heat, we had had not one whisper of wind...most unusual for this area. But after almost two and a half weeks of hot, deathly humid weather, our normal weather had returned. It got hot again for a few days, and then reverted to our usual 105 in the daytime and then dropping into the low 40s or high 30s at nite.

 

True this is a vineyard blog, not a weather one...but the consequences of the above can be seen in some of our grape clusters...the Syrah, in particular. For Pinot Noir, we have virtually all clusters the same size, averaging .17 to .2 lbs per cluster. They are all notably uniform size-wise. The Cab is beautiful, all small berry clusters, all looking to be in the .20 to .25 lb. range. Merlot is likewise all pretty much uniform, their tapered clusters with the two shoulders weighing in at .35 to .40 lbs. per cluster. Sauvignon Blanc is likewise uniformly all of similar size and cluster weights are typically .25 lbs on average. That leaves the Syrah, usually uniform in size and weight with an occasional cluster going to 3/4 lb., but most in the 1/2 lb. range. There will be several clusters on each vine with some .25 lb. clusters, but that is normal. But not this year, however. The Syrah, which is planted in the S/SW facing semi-circular half an amphitheater bowl of solid limestone, is one of our premier blocs. But the clusters in the Syrah look like unmatched pairs of socks. We have a few 1 lb. clusters, some 3/4 lb. clusters, mostly 1/2 lb. clusters, and as usual, a few 1/4 and 1/8 lb. clusters. We have had years of mostly medium size clusters, some years with smaller size clusters, but never have we had a year with clusters ranging all over the board in size. A photo below shows the vast differences in cluster weights.

 

 

 

From left to right, these clusters of Syrah, all from the same vine, came off at 1 lb., 3/4 lbs., 1/2 lb., 1/4 lb, and 1/8 lb.(or 2oz.) Quite a variation for one vine but all clusters look fine. The problem is, the far right 2 oz. cluster is going to ripen well ahead of the 1 lb. cluster on far left. So the question is, just exactly how are we going to handle harvesting the Syrah. Recall as noted above, all other varietals are uniform in size of clusters, but obviously something happened here to delay maturation of the smaller cluster to the right. Also something really juiced up the growth of the far left cluster, weighing in at an incredible 1 lb. The grapes themselves are fine. The problem for us is, at harvest, when the clusters on the right are going to be ripe, the much larger cluster on the far left are not going to be ripened thru and thru. Possibilities could be to do several picks, taking off the 1/4 and 1/8 clusters first time thru, and then picking the larger clusters at a later date. Only problem with that is every pick costs more, and one pick should be sufficient. In effect if we did a twice thru pick, we are doubling what it costs to harvest these grapes. A bigger problem tho, is teaching the pickers to just pick the smaller clusters. The other solution might be to just let the smaller clusters turn to raisins, and wait for the larger clusters to ripen. It is not a catastrophy, nor is it unsolvable. We have frequently done several picks of one bloc, but never have we done partial picks of individual vines. Whatever we end up doing, the Syrah will be sensational, in that it will have a longer hang time this year than ever before. Look for this harvest to produce some Syrah equal or better than our 2010 crop which produced the la Terraza bloc 94 Platinum Medal San Diego Intl winner, and the Syrah el Bordo  Gold Medal Winner from SF Chronicle... actually the 2010 el Bordo Syrah also won another Gold Medal at SD Intl. also. So even though we have plenty of our 2010s left, plan on a knockout Syrah from 2014.

 

The 15 consecutive months of summer, followed by severe heat spells in May, June, July ...and then follow those with late morning fog banks lasting until 10 a.m., and you have what could easily be called an awkward summer. Why other of  our varietals don't show this kind of dissimilarity of  cluster size, due to the weird heat spells followed by 10 days in the 70s, is beyond me. I do know when we were having these weird gyrations of hot and cold during fruit set, the Syrah was the varietal undergoing fruit set that was subjected to these alternating days of high heats followed by 10-14 days of temps in the 70s and lows in the mid 30s. As they say, if you don't like the weather, then just stick around for a day. The poor poison oak has no idea what time of year it is. Usually a pretty good predictor of when it will turn cold, the poison oak thinks it is late fall at present, and that is still 3 months off...I hope.

Cerro Prieto Vineyard... Grapes & Leaves ...all you ever wanted to know, and what it means

Ok, already in June and it looks from the vines, leaves and grapes that it is mid July. The effect of the unending summer of 2013 extending all the way thru and into March of 2014, still is being discussed , measured and quantified. What we have at the moment is a drastically moved up schedule from the norm, with huge canopies already and leaves and grapes looking like it is mid July. Below is a picture much like that taken 6 weeks ago, except now we are looking at the "million dollar" Syrah bloc (la Terraza) to wine club members, that has produced such huge wines year in and yr out.

 La Terraza(Syrah bloc)

 

 

La Terraza (Syrah bloc) is a striking thing of beauty, winding from due south, all the way around to SSW , giving you the feeling of being surrounded by a sea of  constantly moving magnificent vines. At top you can also see the La Teresa Cab bloc, angling off toward the SE. A look at the clusters of all the blocs will be shown just to let you know not just what the vineyard, but what the vines, leaves and clusters have to tell.  Recall that this bloc, La Terraza, produced our SD Intl 94 pt Platinum Syrah this year, plus was the main varietal in our Syrah el Bordo (with 7% '09 Cab) in it. The Syrah el Bordo won both the SF Chronicle Gold Medal and the San Diego Intl Gold Medal for Syrah. I love both, which came from the above.

 

Below are both clusters and leaves from this bloc and they are far from normal.

 

Cluster 7.5 inches long, leaf 7"x 8"

 

When fully mature, this cluster, huge for this time of year, will be some 10-11" in length, and could easily go 3/4 - 1 lb in cluster weight. Last year at this time, clusters were only half this well developed and way fewer in number. I misspoke in last blog when I mentioned we would have fewer and smaller clusters this year. We now are waist deep into our 3rd year of severe drought, with 6", 7", and now 6" of rain, three years running. To say we are in drought status would be a gross understatement. Just like oak trees (and others), when into a multiple year drought situation, the acorns are much bigger and  more plentiful, a genetic trait seen in virtually all plants when threatened with repeated droughts. In a way, the vine is making more and bigger seeds and grape to provide for survival of the species. Same is happening here in not just Syrah blocs, but others too.

 

Next in cluster size if Cabernet Sauvignon, which again has elongated clusters, but nowhere near as large as the Syrah. Cab is elongate, nicely tapered, and of smaller berry size. Below: clusters & leaves

 

 

The brite shiny leaf of Cab is forest green and the cluster, 6" long will end up 7.5 inches when mature. First all red varietals have to go thru veraison, when green grapes turn to red. Leaf size is 5"x 6" and will stay the same from here on out. Not shown, but the canopies of both Syrah and Cab are thick, massive and full...not what I expected with the drought, but we did have all our rain come in March with 4" in 2 hours and then another 2" in 2 hours. Both were deluges, preceded by 2 days of heavy misting, which set the ground up to soak up any and all rain that fell. 

 

To round out the Big Reds, is our Merlot, always last to go thru bud break, bloom, veraison and harvest. Leaves here are bigger than Cab, but not quite as large as Syrah. Clusters are typically elongated, and have "shoulders", which are mini-clusters extending out from the top of each cluster.

 

 

Keep in mind this cluster is what the others should have looked like right now, but our Merlot is about 10 feet below our Cab and is in an entirely different (cooler) microclimate. The leaves are a touch smaller than Syrah but a bit larger than Cab. Size here is 6"x 6.5", and cluster length is right at 6.5 inches. Note the two tiny "shoulders" sticking out at right angles to the main elongated cluster, a common finding in the Merlot rachus (stem and array). Last year the drought and no late rains resulted in the clusters all being about 4" and typically we had 3 or 4 "shoulder" clusters with no dominant elongated cluster as shown here. That is what late rains will do, even tho only 6" in total.

 

Dropping down to our mountain valley vineyard are the Pinot Noir and the Sauv Blanc. Both varietals are well below the Big Reds in altitude, and both lie in a narrow valley that is subjected to 30 degree lows thruout the summer and fall, with daytime temps 75-85 degrees, some 18-20 degrees lower than the big Red's highs.. We'll stay in keeping with the huge leaf grapes, so below are cluster and leaf samples of our Sauvignon Blanc.

 

 Note huge 7"x 7" leaf

 

First thing you note in the Sauv Blanc cluster is how tiny it is compared to the Big Reds. Cluster length here is only 4" and that is just an inch shorter than cluster size at harvest. Since whites don't go thru red green/ veraison, you have to watch for a slight yellowish brown color, first seen on the grapes most exposed to sunlight in the cluster. These are harvested typically shortly after the Sept 15th Pinot Noir harvest(virtually the same day every year, in that on the 16th, it typically freezes hard in the Pinot mountain valley vineyard. Just exactly how the grapes know that is an amazement to me, but they do. Without a calendar in Sept,  I could always tell you when Sept 15th was , in that the full flavor and bouquets(yes, cherry bouquets of grapes, but for one day only) comes in. The Sauv Blanc, while in the mountain valley is a bit uphill from the Pinot and comes in shortly thereafter, due to being  in an entirely different thermocline. In all, we have 13 different major thermoclines, and our Cab in La Teresa bloc has 3 separate minor thermoclines, all based on relative altitudes. You know you are in the mountains when a bloc ripens in thirds.

 

Last but not least, is our mountain valley Pinot Noir, whose grapes produced the Gold Medal winning San Francisco Chronicle Cerro Prieto Pinot Noir 2009 vintage.  This is the vintage that when the SF Gold Medal was awarded, sold out all 127 cases the very next morning.

 

 

The leaf is easily identifiable, being tiny comparatively, at 4"x 4" and almost round. The average clusters are the two on the right hand side, both abut 3" in length, and when fully grown, at about 4", will nicely fit into your open hand and look just like a tiny hand grenade. Also note the leaf doesn't show the segmentation shown in the previous larger leaves. Since this is a smaller leaf, there was room to show what cluster variation many of the other varietals had. They were not all perfect as noted above, but on the far left there is a double cluster, one of which we take off. If not, at harvest, the two sister clusters will be kissing one another, and that part not exposed to sun and air will not ripen with the remainder of the cluster.

 

The middle cluster came from the same vine as the two on the right, but note how far behind it is. These clusters we remove also, in that they will always be just that far behind, even though they have turned to red during veraison.  In fact, going thru the entire vineyard, we have multiple examples of vastly different rachi than normal...a testament I believe to the incredible stress of a prolonged summer thru Nov until end of March, that usually had highs in the low 90s and lows in the 40s. Never have we had heat like that all through winter and  spring, nor have we ever had three consecutive years with only 6" of rain, another awkward stress for the setting of the fruit in the rachus. Does this means anything with respect to quality of grapes at harvest? My guess is not, in that with low yields that we have, the quality of grapes will be determined by one rachus not touching another, and thinning to 2-2.5 tons/acre.

 

Since a good part of the grapes we harvest for your wines comes from the periphery of the blocs, which have yet another stress....competition from the nearby Live Oaks for nutrients (N,P,K) and water...we generally get only 1 ton/acre off those vines, even tho they are pruned to 2.0 tons/acre.

Hence, I don't see any appreciable signs of lesser quality grapes this year, assuming the vineyard is pruned, thinned, and cropped to our usual low crop yields. Adequate light, air, and keeping on  mildew sprays as needed, plus checking for a myriad of other bugs, varmints, etc, will determine how the crop does. Again, we don't measure a great crop on the massive number of tons we produce, but rather on the low tonnage, exquisite individual clusters hanging free of any clusters around them, ripening through and through come harvest time. This is where our fabulous bouquets and flavors come from. You know, the ones you all have enjoyed the last 5 yrs,

 

You want to bet on 2014? If betting on Cerro Prieto, bet once again on a spectacular (flavor-wise) crop, with plenty of stresses... and then some, to produce yet again, a world class harvest with  mouth watering blackberry, cherry, plum, raspberry, strawberry, blueberry and gooseberry flavors...amongst others.    

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cerro Prieto...the Long, Thin, Green Lines

First off, for those of you that prayed for your dousing rains in to be sent here, thank you. We sincerely appreciate your good thoughts and prayers. We finally got a heavy London mist, in mid March, followed by a 2" downpour that lasted 5 minutes. The earth had gotten good and damp from the several days of London fog, so the 2" mostly went into the ground. Two days later, more blowing London fog, and another 4", this time in 20 minutes. The 4" in 20 minutes business, cut huge ruts in our roads, down steep vineyard rows, and vastly widened the runoff areas at the sides of roads. Since then we have had another 1" and that is it for this yr...7" grand total. Wow! Three droughts in a row, and the last two were 6" and 7". The local papers noted this to be the driest winter ever, yet across most of the U.S., most folks got drenched. Go figure. I know the scientific explanation: high pressure area sits over California most of winter, keeping the wet low pressure areas away from us. In all, it was dry, here...bone dry.

Now as to the Long Thin Green Lines: In a typical year we have rain in Jan, Feb, March, and that is it. This year we just had 7" of late rains, and the rows and hillsides were all brown. When the bud break finally occurred, neither the grass nor weeds were up and the vines had just sprouted their tiny shoots. When one looked at the vineyard, all that was noticeable were the long winding thin green lines, straight up and straight down, growing in a semi-circular pattern in our Syrah terraces, and forming line after line of thin green, no matter where one looked. The pictures below tell the story, but truly, it was a spectacular sight I have not seen before.

Note the thin slivers of green in the semi-circular Syrah terraces, and at top, the thin slivers of newly sprouted Cabernet disappearing down a steep dropoff. Also, you can see why in a regular rainfall year, that everything would have been green, all the soil, what little there is in a solid limestone mountain. There are other long thin green lines, most just linear in the Pinot Noir, the Merlot and the Sauv Blanc. Several examples will be in the text below.

First thing folks ask is, "What does this mean to your harvest?" Well, quite simply, this will be a banner year here for anything that survives the late spring into early June frosts. Virtually all mountain varietals (Cab, Syrah, Merlot) will make it through the late frosts, but the Pinot and Sauv Blanc will be dicey. As to quality, well, mark it down now. On top of two drought years we now have a more severe third...and that means lower yields, but out of sight superior flavors. Basically less fruit, smaller fruit, and wholesale fantastic flavors. This is a year to load up on. 2014 will be as memorable as any to date. As an aside, the weather forecast for this coming winter is for an el Nino, or most likely, very heavy rains. Already, the currents that begin down in Chile are headed up this way and are way warmer than usual, at least 4 degrees in some samplings. Doesn't sound like much, but to a farmer, that is water heaven.

 For those of you who have been here, you know that our vineyard has some blocs at right angles to another, and in between is a higher bloc at a 45 degree angle to both of the above. It makes for some spectacular geometric designs, long thin green lines running diagonal to one another, straight up a 250 foot mountain/hill. And then to see two blocs of rows, again running not parallel, but at 90 degrees to one another...well, it is quite a sight. It occurs every year, but with the early and heavier rains, one cannot actually see the long thin green lines because of the verdant green background. It took a series of droughts to get these pictures, but this is a rare phenomenon, and if you don't see the beauty in it, it is gone quickly once the rains bring out the grasses, weeds, and flowers.

Just a note on last year, 2013 vintages have now been in the barrel for 5 months, going on 6. The wines at this early stage are pretty rough to drink, but the smell of the fermentation in our vats early on told us what our 2013s would taste like. Heaven. Just pure heaven. So now you know that 2012, 2013, and now 2014 will all be vintages you will want to acquire. Note: this is vineyard specific, and low yield vineyards, grown out of limestone will be the best ones of the bunch. Most of you all know I just described Cerro Prieto to a tee. Our wines the last two years plus this one will be stellar.

Most already know that in late February we found out about our 3 entries into the SF Chronicle Wine Competition. Our 2010 Syrahs won the Gold and Silver and the 2009 Cabernet (Paso Bordo) won the Silver medal. We will have all three available thruout the year, and about the time they are gone, our 2012 Syrah and Cab will be ready. Ah, almost forgot the 2011 Pinot Noir from the cold, dark , wet year, and we bottle that within the month. By bottling time, it will be 2 1/2 yrs old, and then will lay down another 6 months. After that, it will be ready, about 7 months from now.

 In closing is a picture well after harvest last year, of my lovely wife, Teresa, without whom, nothing works, nor ever gets done. Many of you have met her, and those of you haven't...well, you have missed out. Be sure to meet her next time here. These leaves were the last of the Mohicans, and Teresa was out to enjoy them with me. I couldn't pass up this photo, however, as she is indispensable in both the vineyard and winery. That's it from here, and we hope you enjoy the wines you received recently.  

Cerro Prieto .... and the Eternal Summer

37 years here, and never have I seen an eternal summer. OK, to be fair, Teresa and I were gone the first 10 days of December, when the Easterlies blow over the smoky air from the burning of massive piles of stone fruit and nut tree prunings in the San Joaquin Valley. The smoky, smoggy air seeps into the Salinas River valley, and within 2 days we are covered up in stinky, smelly smoke. One would think some politician from the San Joaquin Valley would pass legislation requiring wood chippers to dispose of their unimaginably massive piles of prunings, but no such luck. Anyway we missed the first 10 worst days of smoke by getting a tiny cabin in Santa Barbara....normally nice, tropically warm, and wonderful air. Oddly, Dec 6th and 7th got unseasonably cold and altho I noted it, forgot it until we returned home a  week later. First thing I checked on the bright sunny days were the hi-lo thermometers...of which 6 of the 7 read Dec 6 and 7th, 1 degree and 2 degrees. The highs were all mid 70s to 80s, but the lows...one and two degrees...that concerned me.

The air had cleared perceptibly, and the days were, well....like summer. I checked vines from all segments of our vineyard, peeling off the bark, and removing down to cambium. Good news was that all appeared fine. Still, the 1 degree bothered me, and I had no idea how long that 31 degrees below freezing had lasted. If it froze hard for 48 hrs, then we were going to lose some vines. Then I checked for other telltale signs, and found none. Having been thru this once before, the next order of business was to sit tight for 3 weeks and then check the most likely choices for damage...blue gum and ironwood eucalyptus plus certain wild sages and lavenders.

Sure enough, 3 weeks later virtually all the 60-80 foot tall blue gums and Ironwood eucalyptus leaves died, and checking our wild lavenders and sages, they did also. So it had gotten to 1 degree, and it had maintained that at least a day...maybe two. Rechecking the vines again, I found just a handful of fully exposed vines showing signs of freeze burn, but the vines looked fine.

Several posts back I mentioned our "lack of water" situation, thruout Paso and much of S. California, and that remains intact...or rather, without water. We began watering our vineyard in early Jan, to try an catch up for the last yr of drought (6") and this year's rainfall.... 1/6 of one inch to date. For farmers around here, one has to go back decades, long before we arrived to find a drier year than this. Nonetheless, I look outside the living room window and see tulips, mums, narcissus, and crocus all peeking thru the dirt. If that isn't amazing....well, nothing is.

Back to the unending summer, minus those two days of severe freeze we missed, the days have all been in the 70s or 80s in the afternoons...altho mornings are somewhere in the 20s to low teens at nite. There was one other fake out hint of winter last week when they got torrential rains in Sacramento and Bay area, we got our 1/6" of drizzle. Actually it was much more like a London mist than anything else. Some would call it a gentle farmer's rain, which almost always is then followed by a good 4-6 " of drenching rains, virtually all just sucked up by the soil. Nope, not so here. We got our 1/6" drizzle and that was it. NOTE: Rains here are ALWAYS in the winter, so the rain could have been a winter marker, but no way.

So now we have pruned, extremely wary of early budding out which if pruning hasn't been finished, results in most buds being broken off during the pruning. We actually had the cottony like fluffs in many places, right now, the 15th of February, with another month of really cold weather expected. But with the afternoons sitting in the 70s and 80s, I will have to be honest, I flat out have NO idea of what is in our immediate future. Bad thoughts would be late freezes, wiping out the early bud breaks, or worse, I guess, later freezes in mid May to mid June, would wipe out the bloom entirely. Unnnhhh....without saying, that would scotch our crop for this year.

The old farmer's axiom that I learned when first farming barley some 37 yrs ago was pretty close to spot on. If you want to farm, make it easy on yourself and go to Vegas and gamble all your money on one roll of the dice. You would get better odds there than farming for a living. There's a lot of truth in that, but then we farmers, whether grapes, hay, beans, wheat, or nuts....somehow, we all feel that we will survive, we will have light years, heavy years, poor yrs and great yrs. But somehow, the farming bug is ingrained in us all and regardless of the circumstances, all farmers have positive outlooks, and always seem to come back for more.

As for Cerro Prieto this year, if we can continue to keep putting water onto the vines, rain or not, we will survive. Thank God we are on the W side of Hiway 101, because those poor folks depending on the massive underground Paso Robles Aquifer, have seen their wells drop 80, 120, 200 feet. Here we continue to remain fine, as we don't have thousands of acres of grapes competing for our precious water. The E side has 8000 acres of new vines this past year alone, and the damage and well wrecking has already been chronicled. My view for this coming year will be a short year tonnage wise, but a fantastic year for flavor and bigness, boldness. We continue to keep our fingers crossed but the massive well we have in the vineyard is what will ultimately save our bacon. I have many friends, former patients, fellow farmers on the E. side of Paso that will not be so lucky.

And please, those clubmembers that have been inundated by record rains and snows, I pray you wish all that watery abundance our way.  That's it from here, but one reminder:

March 17 is our wine club shipment date, which this time will be a familiar wines to you all. We call it the SF Chronicle Gold and Silver basket. Our intent is to ship the 3 winners of the SF Chronicle wine competition :

SF Chronicle Gold      2010 Syrah El Bordo
SF Chronicle Silver    2010 Syrah (la Terraza bloc)
SF Chronicle Silver    2009 Cabernet (Paso Bordo)

Price for these 3 winners from the largest American wine completion in the world is $126 for wine(not including tax or shipping)

and 20% less for a 2nd identical 3 pak, (cost of wine only $100).  For those wanting both paks(6 btls) the total would come to $226 for these  SF Chronicle award winners(plus S & H).

We have to have our order into our shipper by March 3rd, so we will be billing credit cards a week earlier. If you have any special requests, please let me know well in advance, but we assume most will stick to the 3 or 6 btl orders of wines that competed primarily with similar wines from Napa. Only difference is about $100/btl. ( note: we have blind tasted against similar Napa wines and come up with spectacular wines chosen by SF Chronicle as truly remarkable).

My best to you all,
Larry, Teresa, and Sombra...and again, please pray for rain for us. We are in need.

Cerro Prieto....water, water, everywhere...

With apologies to the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner which most will remember from high school,

                       Water, water, everywhere,
                       and all the boards did shrink,
                       Water, water, everywhere,
                       yet not a drop to drink.

This poem was about a sailing ship, becalmed somewhere just south of the equator, with water, salt water, around them, but no drinking(sweet) water onboard, hence, not a drop to drink. Well, here in Paso Robles we don't have the salt water as an issue, but we do have an issue of "not a drop to drink" on our East side. This past year, 4 large wineries planted 8000 new acres of vines on the E. side of Paso (there is nowhere near that kind of acreage on the W. side, and if available, it is in tiny chunks, and probably straight up and straight down). The Paso Robles aquifer is famous as a massive underground body of water that has been there for millions of years, and has sustained the city, residents on E. side of Paso, plus hundreds of acres of winegrapes on the E. side. The 4 large wineries must have known what each of the others were doing, in that most of the 8000 acres went in pretty much at the same time. The drain on the PR aquifer was too much, and those 8000 acres were the final straw that took water from long time residents, many of whom are retired, and left them with dry wells.

Even tho the water table on the E. side dropped as much as 100 to120 feet in some areas, many of the longtime residents had wells drilled to no more than 120 feet , or in some cases less. For them new wells were necessitated, but retired and on fixed income, a deep well, maybe 450 to 500 feet or more, was just not in the budget for many of these long time residents. Some have already moved, others looking for buyers of their now devalued property, since they were without water. This all brings to a head something that has been inevitable for some time now: just how much water can winegrape growers and huge wineries consume before it put enormous strain on the water basin's ability to supply residents...as well as wineries/ grape growers? The question has now been answered, and the county supervisors of  San Luis Obispo, have now put a moratorium on drilling on Paso's E. side....one well in, and one comes out.

I have a number of friends and former patients living on the E. side, and they have been blindsided by this acute lack of water...altho the discussion of "what if" has been ongoing for quite some time. But it isn't just the people living there...it is other wineries and vineyards that also have been impacted on this obvious overload of the Paso Robles aquifer. The zero sum "one in and one out" re: water wells is fine for the people who still have water. For others, they have had to scramble to drill deeper and deeper yet. We have, in a nutshell, reached an impass.

There is the other side of Paso, however, our W. side...and that is where Cerro Prieto resides, as you all know. We have precious little to scarce water here on the westside, completely independent of anything that goes on in the E. side. Here, if you can find a nook or cranny that holds water, you are by rights extremely fortunate. For example, our house well produces 7 gallons/minute, but only for short periods of time, and then has to recharge. Having a holding tank for house use was a must. The vineyard well, however, is HUGE...producing 450 gallons/minute with a compression airlift(ie, air forced under great pressure down the well casing). Our water is from 100 to 215 feet, and our pump is set at 120 feet. With a tiny 20 hp. pump, it produces 120 gal/min. With a 40 hp pump, it produces 240 gal/min, and so on. Without doubt, we have one of the largest wells I know of on the W. side.

Putting Cerro Prieto vineyard in was subject to finding an adequate water source. It was fate, good luck or what have you that we found water, and that was the final linchpin  to putting in a vineyard. Actually, we have planted all but another terraced mountainside (~ 6 acres) and a 7 acre valley which would only accommodate cold weather whites. So, altho the E. side troubles do not affect us directly, indirectly they do in that whatever water we have and vines we have planted are basically most of  those that will be planted on the W. side, other than 20 acres, here, maybe 30 acres there, and so on. Before the 8000 acre plantings, Paso Robles expansion of vineyards seemed limitless. Now we know where the limit is... and it has been surpassed. In time this will be worked out, but there never is an unlimited supply of anything...time, money, good health, and in this case, unfortunately, water.

Well that is the news. Now for the good news. Another great year for quality for our westside vineyard and wines appears to be in the offing. We are in the teeth of a 15  month drought, and have started to irrigate our vines 12 hours at a time. Last year was an excellent year but the crop load was greatly decreased. Instead of the 2.5 to 3 tons/acre of grapes we produce for selling, we got only in the 1.7 tons/acre last yr. Those were a fantastic 1.7 tons/acre, but there just wasn't much of it. Hence we have begun watering, something we generally haven't done since planting in 1999 and 3 yrs thereafter. Once the vines were into production we cut back to essentially dry farming, unless high temperatures exceeding 110 degrees required some several gallons of water per vine. As you all may recall, last year we had a 6 day course of 117 degrees, cooling off to a mere 60 degrees at nite. So yes we did irrigate last year but they were truly remarkable exceptions.

Last remnants of fall.

Now, however, vine status appears desperately in need of water, so we are irrigating. This has no effect on quality of wines, unless we were to water from August on. Usually by that time the rains from the previous year have given our vines all the water they needed.  This year we very well may water right up to that time, tho not on a daily basis. We are initially just trying to play catch up...and are in hopes that we may yet get some much needed rain. Right now the high pressure areas sitting over the top of us do not allow the low pressure fronts containing that much needed water to visit. In sum, barring a hurricane, or 70 knot winds in March/ April, or 117 degree heat in June, we are in great shape to have a superb year. One never likes to say that emphatically, so note that I said "we are in great shape to have"...I did not make a guarantee. We should have our usual hot summer, but won't know about rainfall until the high pressure areas leave us.

Basically our vineyard is as dry as a bone, and definitely needs an assist. Thank the good Lord for by chance happening being on this side of hiway 101 than the E.side. My heart goes out to all those good folks on the E. side impacted by this drought + new 8000 acres, but it had to happen sometime, I suppose.  Our wines are doing fine, and I need to bottle some 2011 Pinot Noir from an incredibly cold year, which means that it will be exquisite. Also a tad of Syrah, but it always is sensational. Syrah as a varietal has proven to be the most ubiquitous grape in the Paso Robles AVA. It seems to do well in rich black earth, solid limestone(like ours), in the mountains or on the plains. It likes it hot, or cold...doesn't seem to matter, tho I thought it would. The remainder of our grapes were spectacular last year, and the Cab and Syrah in barrel from 2012 are already showing signs of a great year. 2013 Merlot and Syrah are right on target for great wines also.

One new addition which some of you have met is Sombra, who is taking over for our best friend Cazadora, who passed away on Christmas eve, 2012. She will never be forgotten, but we have another heart stealer now,  Sombra, who is guarding the vineyard and is queen of our home. She is still a bit shy, but welcomes people easily, and is a great companion. When you visit she will come introduce herself.

That is it from here, and thank you all for making another great year for us. As you have heard before, "We don't make much, but what little we do make is, well...drinkable."


  

Cerro Prieto Harvest....WOW!.

What can you say when the early harvest Pinot Noir and Sauv Blanc go like clockwork and the grapes were dead center perfect...as in sweet, perfectly ripened, and harvested on flavor. One of our buyers held back picking some of the Sauv Blanc, instead returning when the Brix (sugar content) was way over 30.  Asuncion Ridge B&B and winery, is making a desert wine out of half of his portion of our Sauv Blanc. Wanted to do it myself but he beat me to it. Pinot, meantime, had about twice as many clusters of fruit on each vine, half of which we dropped, leaving wonderful flavors of dark cherry, lite cherry, some spicey fruit from our Pomard 4/5 clones, and so on. A lot of wild sage, wild lavender, and a whole host of other flowering shrubs surrounding the pinot, left their impression in the grapes from adjacent vines. Pinot Noir, hot as it was for 6 days, is still going to be spectacular...maybe as good as our 2009 Pinot which won the SF Chronicle Gold medal this April.  Part of this, however, is that the Pinot is in our mountain valley vineyard, is 20 degrees cooler than the mountain varietals, Cab, Merlot and Syrah. So during the 117 degrees for six days, the mountain valley vineyard was 99 daytime, and then 60 at nite. Typically, thruout the 8 month growing season, the mountain valley vineyard drops into the 30s, even on days in the 110 degree range.

I am continually amazed at the  climate terroir we have, which matches our solid limestone plantings, making the soil terroir perfect also. That's right. All Cab, Syrah, and Merlot were planted into solid limestone, which means we  painstakingly dug out 2 gallons of rock and replaced it with 2 gallons of dirt. THEN we planted. Sure, there is some minimal amount of topsoil in our Merlot, but 2 inches max. Then limestone. Planting my favorite bloc, Cerro Teresa, was a mammoth job...it is a 45 degree incline in parts, steeper in others....and all solid rock. Like I said, it has world class terroir for both climate and soil, plus we have a southern exposure, the third and final part of terroir. Facing south is the easy part. The other two....well, Cerro Prieto has the two items that create world class terroir....incredibly great soil(solid limestone) and monstrous 70-80 degree temp swings, day/nite. Both soil and climate put huge stresses on our mountain vineyard Cab, Merlot and Syrah, creating the fascinating flavors and bouquets we get from all three.

Back to harvest, the Syrah came off next and was awesome to say the least. Yummy plummy raspberry, some dark cherry and blackberry...all those flavors in the fruit.  Naturally we harvested on flavor,  based on daily samplings of fruit. Additionally, the Syrah came off at a high Brix, 28.9, which will translate into a higher alcohol wine, with tons of flavors and aromas accompanying it. Once crushed, the sugar content went to 29.8  Brix, so we had to add some reverse osmosis water to dilute what we had. With a Brix of 29.8(pretty close to Port range), the alcohol level is so high that it will kill most yeasts(18 % alcohol and change). Hence you add water to bring the brix back down, and therefore the alcohol level drops back down  into the 17.8 to 17.4% range. Most yeasts work well in the 16% and below alcohol range, but D-254 (just one of many hundreds of yeasts out there) will ferment anything under 18%, altho that is not what the label says. I believe we have used D-254 on almost all our Cab/Syrah/Merlot fermentations.

 La Terraza, the terraced limestone Syrah bloc

As for the almost catastrophic heat spell, it seems the only thing it did to our Cab, Merlot, and Syrah, was to cause some canes to get to only 12-18 inches in height, which usually isn't enough to ripen a cluster. 12" won't , 18" may. In any event, we dropped fruit on the short canes, leaving only fruit on canes of 30-36" or more. There are guidelines all over but for our vineyard, it requires 18" inches to ripen one cluster/cane , or 36" to ripen two clusters. Generally our vineyard, year in and year out, produces 1/3 of shoots with 2 clusters, and 2/3 of the shoots with 1 cluster. If we do any dropping of fruit, it almost always comes from the 2 cluster/shoot.  Just for clarification, each spur is pruned to two shoots/cain and each spur  is approximately 5-6" from the next spur. Usually in the big reds, this gives us approximately 2.5 tons/acre. If pruned to higher density, then the yield/acre goes up. We shoot for 2-2.5 tons/acre. This yr our Merlot was pruned to 1.7 tons/acre, and the harvested fruit was alive with cherry, strawberry, touch of blackberry and a bit of cassis(currents....usually when some fruit starts to desiccate). The yield was down due to the hard hit during the late June hot spell.

That is about it for now, but a quick reminder. We plan to ship our wine club shipment on Nov 4th, so if you have a credit card that has changed or expired(as mine just did), please contact me by phone with your new cc #. My phone is 805 226 8448, and call anytime. If not home leave a brief message and I will return your call. Fantastic harvest folks and the 3 wines you are getting are a really massive blackberry Cab, plus the two best wines I have made to date(and that is saying something), 2010 Syrah El Bordo(with 7% 2009 Cab in it) and 2010 Syrah Reserve( La Terraza bloc). Both came from our half amphitheatre of solid rock, terraced into a stair-step fashion by a narrow gauge Kamatsu tractor with a 10 foot blade. It is an amazing sight and I hope you all get to see it during your next trip to Paso.

Oh, yes. By request, every yr we do a special valu pak for wine club members, and this yr  with the three wines noted above, you can order a 2nd or 3rd pak for half price each. The regular shipment will be $120, and each valu pak will be $60. If you have liked our wines in the past, these will not disappoint. $60 for a valu pak puts each bottle at $20, which is just a dollar more than our cost of production. Please, no more than 2 valu paks/family, even tho I get bombarded for more requests. That is our max. Incidentally, shipping 3 bottles to LA area(for example) costs $17. Shipping 3 more bottles is just $3 more. And shipping 6 bottles is just another $3 more. So the valu pak lives up to its name.

Time to go finish harvest.

Cerro Prieto Summer 2013...The Heater

Good Lord almighty, it is hot. "Hot, damn hot", as Roosvelt T. Roosvelt said in response to Robin Williams question of "How the weather was up in DaNang?" in Good Morning, Vietnam. Well, that pretty well sums it up here, too, in that the week of June 25 thru July 1 almost wiped us out. The 24th started out warm, a tolerable 106. Next day was 112, followed by nites no cooler than 60 and 5 days of 116. You all already know we basically dry farm our vineyard, except for when we fertigate thru the lines in spring. We run 2 hours of water first, then inject N, P, K or rarely one of the minor elements....as needed(according to petiole analysis...a stem of the leaf we use just for this task). Then we run another 3 hours of water per vine to wash out the lines and dilute the Nitrogen, Phosphorous, or Potassium. That's it. No more water after, unless...well, 116 degrees qualifies. We ended up watering every vine with 5-8 gallons of water every other day until the temps dropped into tolerable range.

In baseball, the "heater" is usually the high hard one, travelling somewhere between 95-100 mph. It is known by hitters as something to be dreaded. Well, we had the "heater" here, and we dreaded it, but it was no fastball. It was sheer misery. The third day of the "heater", I was out changing valves in our top Cab bloc, Cerro Teresa. In no more than 5 minutes I was done; I figured I was just getting old. My early days, I was an unrepentant desert rat , camping, hiking, hunting and fishing thruout Baja's 1000 mile desert. I have hunted doves along the Rio Colorado, sitting in the water and shooting birds while in the river. Temperatures were 120 degrees, according to our truck thermometers. It was hot but I could stand it...and being in  the river sure helped. But this heat last week....it just melted me. Anyway, to finish the story, I came back to the house in the ATV, drank a Gatorade and then took another with me just for good luck. As an afterthought, I threw the L.L. Bean thermometer in the back of the ATV...just for grins. When I got back to the valve, I finished cleaning it, turned it on and barely was able to get out of the vineyard. I was whipped. A quick look at the thermometer stunned me...129 degrees. Right where the valve in that bloc 5 Cabernet is, happens to be the apex of Cerro Teresa. There is no topsoil there, only hard, bright white limestone. It turns out the top of the bloc cooks up much like a cement road and in addition to the heat, radiates up another dose of "the heater" at 12 degrees more than the temps off the mountain top...a mere 117.

 Great weather for blue Agave

It was a lesson well learned, but one I had never thought about before. I inherently knew that bloc 5, as well as all our other mountain blocs are solid limestone. But I never realized that in the "BIG HEAT", it acted much as cement does, and just radiates more heat upwards. I had been half in panic mode anyway, looking at that 117 degrees. But until that day, I had no idea that inside the vineyard in melting heat, that the temperature was indeed, another 12 degrees higher. The good news is we (the vines and I) survived it. But I don't know if a 7th day of over 116 would have torched our vineyard or not. I did reflect on those poor guys who truly dry farm. They have no drip lines to their vines, instead carrying water by cart to the vines in the first two yrs. After that they truly do dry farm. I wouldn't want to know what heat like this did to those true dry farmed vineyards, that had no auxiliary water available.  Someone asked me if our grapes were okay and I laughed. "Grapes? Hell, I wasn't worried about our grapes, I was worried about losing our vines." Back 4 years ago, we had a day in May that touched 119. It was a one day affair preceded by half a dozen days in the 110-112 range. We again had watered before the heat hit and managed to do well. Three weeks later, I happened to be doing gopher control in bloc 5 and came upon a mature Cab vine, 4" in diameter, that had burst apart...much like if you heated up a balloon, and it just popped. The pictures are unbelievable. I guess this time we got enough water on prior to the worst heat so that the vine temps didn't exceed the point where they literally burst apart. A final note and that is that the nites during this period only got down to 60 degrees, so there literally was little cooling off at nite. You will recall that one of the mind-blowing things about our vineyard is the day/nite temperature differential, usually 70 to 80 degrees. Typically when it is 105 in the daytime, it gets down to 35 at nite...and sometimes lower. That cooling makes for terrific stresses on our grapes, one of the reasons they are so jam packed with flavor. But unquestionably, that didn't happen this past week.

 Vine split apart at 117 degrees

Vineyard notes all bring good news. The fruit set was spectacular, with only a bit of shatter in the Merlot( that means some clusters have spaces where the fruit didn't set due to high winds, rain, or some other etiology). We will still have our marvelous Merlot, just not quite as much. All other varietals did splendidly thru bloom and set. If we have a problem it is too much fruit, which has to be thinned down to 2.5 tons/acre or about 5 lbs/vine, and that job is currently underway...and that is a really good problem to have, especially after 3 previous yrs of 40% decrease in grape tonnage production. Remember, we WANT to keep our yields low....roughly 1.5 to 2.5 tons/acre. The last 4 yrs we have been working with 3/4 ton/acre to 1.5 tons/acre. Not enough to make a vineyard worthwhile running. Anyway, this year is a different story and all grape farmers, vintners and anyone else connected with the wine industry....well, it makes us all happy. Much more important than quantity, however, is the quality...and that is absolutely superb. Again, I don't want to get ahead of myself and jinx us with a 120 knot wind whipping thru the vineyard. But so far, all things point to an outstanding harvest, probably as good or maybe even better than 2006...an all time supreme year.

 Caza taking advantage of one of our guests

Outside the vineyard the poison oak has not only turned red, it has lost 95% of its leaves....something that normally happens in the fall. Here, though, the poison oak has turned AND lost its leaves. Some say that portends an early harvest but my money is on this dad-burned heat. Unfortunately, we have added some "unwanteds " to the vineyard periphery, ground squirrels. We have a bad enough time with the gophers which eat up lots of time in trapping. Now we have ground squirrels that make massive burrows under the vines and it necessitates more time taken out to trap or kill them. I had some snares out, all around the squirrels' main entry hole but... ended up snaring a skunk. The story is a disaster, my snare is lost forever, and one of my buddies took a picture of me dragging the dead skunk on a 20 foot rope behind my pickup thru the vineyard, up and over vineyard roads, and depositing the carcass in the burn pile in the valley below our home.  I thought about trying to salvage the snare, but the road I dragged skunk and snare across smelled like  skunk forever. I kinda gave up on the snare after that. But there was a silver lining in all this fiasco, when our friends, the turkey vultures sat down below and had a fine meal of dragged skunk with dust and dirt mixed in. Our two home birds(born 10 yrs ago just below our home on the forest's edge) were joined for dinner by no less than 15-20 other vultures. Man, you talk about halitosis....that must have one been rough meal to get down.

There are more pleasant things, however, and they have to do with wine. Just a synopsis of what our wines have garnered over the past several years. We really have released just 9 wines, of which 8 have been rated. Altho you can find this list under the header "Boutique wines", here is a quick summary to date:

2006 Merlot   San Diego Intl Gold medal (3300 entries); Critics Challenge Intl Gold medal

2006 Paso Bordo(85% Cab/15% Syrah)    92 pts Wine Enthusiast

2007 Merlot  91 pts Wine Enthusiast/ Chef Magazine "One of California's 10 marvelous  Merlots"/ 805 Living Magazine "One of California's 12 best wines under $50"

2007 Paso Bordo    LA Intl Gold Medal / 91 pts

2008 Merlot  Intl Bronze Medal NY Intl and SF Intl (5300 & 4500 entries)

2008 Paso Bordo  Intl Silver Medal   SF and San Diego Intl(4500 & 3300 entries)

2009 Syrah (85% Syrah/ 15% Cab)   90 pts Wine Enthusiast   " As rich and hedonistic as anything in California. Like drinking an elixir of milk chocolate & blackberry jam, sprinkled with cinnamon & black pepper and infused with vanilla bean" .  Wow, now there is a review to frame on the wall. I liked it, actually loved it, but would never have been able to come up with a review like that.

2009 Pinot Noir   SF Chronicle  Gold Medal  (Largest American wine competition in the world, and that is saying something).

 Don't know if this list of wines qualifies as  outstanding or superb or not, but my gut tells me it probably would. Now when we get reviewed (and it is favorable, of course), the wine flies off the shelf. We are now out of ,our have just a few bottles of both '06s, both 07s, both '08s, and both 09s. Our two 2010 Syrahs just officially released are superb (ok, awesome and huge), dark monster body, rich deep plum, blackberry, cherry, and a touch of strawberry. Our 2009 Cabernet (Paso Bordo) is big blackberry, hint of cherry, and touch of plum, with dusky oak. The few cases of our 2010 Sauv Blanc that remain are pear and green apple on the nose, pear, green apple and hint of citrus on the palate, and an extra late finish of white peach or apricot.

For our wine club members, probably the two 2010 Syrahs and the 2009 Paso Bordo will be sent this fall. Those who purchased the 2010 inexpensively 6 months ago got a great deal and folks, it is ready to drink. One caveat: as good and rich as this 2010 Syrah is, it is getting better by the week. I have been drinking it for awhile now, and it is ready. But trust me when I say it is getting better weekly. In barrel these were the best two wines I have made, and I will not be surprised to see these two Syrahs end up twice, maybe 3X as good as they are now, 6-12 months out. We are serving the '10 El Bordo Syrah tonite with ribeye. Yum.