From the start we knew that you need fabulous grapes to make fabulous wine. So after a few years of making wine, we decided that we wanted to upgrade the quality of the fruit from the Sacrashe vineyards.
From working her family’s vineyard all those years, Kathryn knew that the flavors and quality of a grape depend on a multitude of factors. Viticulture basics range from sun exposure to water and everything in between. You need to plant so that the sun hits—and ripens—the grapes evenly. Otherwise, at harvest you wind up with ready-to-pick grapes on one side of the vine while the others are still green. You want vines to have the right orientation to the sun, to have just the right amount of shade from the leaves, and for the rows of vines to be just the right distance apart. While our Sacrashe vineyard had proven itself over the years, it needed some upgrading.
Oddly enough, when you’re looking to produce fine wine, you don’t want vigorous vineyards that produce tons of fruit. A big yield is great if you’re trying to make as much juice as possible for a bulk wine. But as Craig discovered when we walked through the grapevines at Kathryn’s family vineyard, the flavors in a grape come from the skin and seed. The higher your skin-to-juice ratio, the more complexity you have to work with in terms of flavors and tannins. So we knew we wanted to produce low yields of small, concentrated fruit. Harvesting less than four to five pounds of grapes off of a vine rather than eight obviously raises the cost of the grapes, but those four to five pounds of grapes are going to be loaded with deep flavor.
Since tighter spacing forces the vines to battle each other for the nutrients in the soil, that’s going to correlate to a higher quality berry, just as it does when vines fight for water and nutrients on a rocky hillside. Could we improve our grapes if we used the more modern, closer, denser spacing of vines? It was a risk, but we needed to find out. So we ripped out perfectly splendid vines. We had to if we were to up our game and intended to maximize our vineyard.
We could have waited. That would have been the prudent thing to do, especially since replanting meant that we wouldn’t have useable grapes for four years. But we wanted to make the best possible wines out of that vineyard as soon as possible.
We would discover that redoing a vineyard like this is part science, part art, and a lot luck.
We needed an expert to ensure that the vineyard we replanted could reach its highest potential. In 2002, we hired viticulturist Phil Freese, Ph.D., who had designed the vineyards for the legendary Opus One. Phil arranged to bring a backhoe out to the vineyard to dig many soil pits so he could look at the structure of the soil, the soil depth, the chemical composition, and the variability within the vineyard site. In addition, we took infrared aerial photography that would help us figure out the vigor (growth) patterns of the vineyard, which keys us into how to farm the various sections of the vineyard in order to maximize quality. The satellite overview comes up in red and black—the redder the swirl, the higher vigor potential you have. All this information was then brought together to make recommendations for our upcoming planting.
A vine is often made up of two different types of plant material. The rootstock grows below ground and doesn’t necessarily produce good grapes, but it is resistant to soil-borne pests and diseases. The aboveground scion, the chosen varietal for the planting such as Cabernet Sauvignon or Chardonnay, is more susceptible to those soil-borne pests and diseases when planted on its own. However, graft the scion, which grows tastier fruit, onto the sturdier rootstock and you get the best of both worlds.
You don’t, however, want to use just any disease-resistant rootstock. And you don’t necessarily want to use a single type of rootstock. A vineyard has a number of different areas that require different plants and different care if it is to produce up to its potential. So each vineyard is divided into blocks—parcels of land with uniform characteristics. Often a vineyard will be planted to a variety of rootstocks due to the variability in the vineyard. So to optimize our vineyard we needed to be certain to match the right rootstock with the different makeup of soil types in the vineyard.
To our amazement, Phil told us that in the 19½-acre area we had decided to replant we had 22 different blocks—some of which were long, narrow, and jagged, others of which were tiny, and still others which looked to be good-sized squares—each with a unique set of growing conditions. His analysis of the blocks determined which exact rootstock would fare the best in each parcel and which Cabernet Sauvignon scion should be grafted onto that particular rootstock. The goal was to make sure that each individual block has the opportunity to make the best wine grapes possible.
To accomplish this, we learned that we had to farm each of the 22 blocks separately in terms of irrigation, nutrients, harvest dates, etc. Grapes just 50 feet apart can require different farming due to the varying growing conditions. Remember that the average size of these blocks is less than one acre, which makes farming inherently inefficient. However, since our goal was to make the best wine possible, we went ahead.
Phil also suggested that we plant the vines in a much tighter configuration than had been planted before. When grape cultivation was introduced to Napa Valley in the mid-1800s, vine rows were planted 12 feet apart to allow horse-drawn equipment to pass through. Over the years that had changed, with most growers planting rows 10 feet apart and dropping in plants every 8 feet. Research revealed that by putting the vines even closer together, you wind up with a better quality grape. So through the 1980s, most Napa Valley vineyards were planted at a row spacing of 8 feet with 6 feet between vines (or 960 vines per acre). More recently, in an effort to grow smaller plants and, in combination with devigorating rootstock, to allow those plants to focus on the production of grape clusters rather than leaves or shoots, vineyard rows were planted even closer together.
A vine is a living creature. It only has so much energy. It can take that energy and spread it among 20 clusters or it can spread among 50 clusters. If all its effort is focused on 20 clusters instead of 50, those 20 clusters are going to have more depth, more complexity, and more flavors.
Phil suggested a planting density of 6 feet between rows and 4 feet between vines, or approximately 1,800 vines per acre. This would clearly increase our costs to plant and to farm, while not measurably increasing our yield since we were deliberately discouraging the production of a lot of big fruit.
After careful consideration, we decided to move forward and planted the vineyard in 2002. Although our planting project was state-of-the-art at its time, we continue to monitor and use technology to make sure that our practices are on the cutting edge, as well as being able to incorporate that technology into the next vineyard that we plant.
Since we want to have access to the best possible fruit for all of our wines, we’re continually looking for the very best vineyard properties. If the owner wants to keep ownership of the vineyard, we’ll buy the grapes. If the owner is open to selling, we’ll consider buying the property. So on a pretty regular basis, we wind up adding to our own vineyard properties. While in recent years a lot of our vineyard purchases have been Pinot Noir and Chardonnay for our WALT Wines brand, we are constantly looking for any great vineyard opportunity for both HALL and WALT.
Some of the best vineyards are never going to be for sale. Families pass down vineyards from generation to generation. Some of these vineyards are so well respected that the owners or vineyard managers can literally pick and choose whom they sell to. As you will read about later, acquiring a Pinot Noir brand really helped us develop relationships with some of the best growers.
On the Cabernet side, Don Munk—our talented and experienced director of vineyard operations since 2008—has also helped in that department. Not only is he an expert in his field and able to identify great vineyards, he has long-standing ties in the Valley that have helped us gain access to—and relationships with—key properties.
Add to that our gifted director of winemaking, Steve Leveque, and our president, Mike Reynolds—the first a Napa native and the second a longtime Napa resident—and the fact that vineyard owners want their grapes to go into great wines, and you have a winning formula that enables us to acquire grapes from some terrific people and some terrific vineyards. In fact, as we are writing this book, we are now buying from more than 140 different properties.
We don’t just buy from these vineyard owners. Don and his team work in tandem with them to ensure that they farm the grapes in the manner that works for the high-end wines we produce.
Having access to the best grapes for our wines is really a critical part of our winemaking. We feel very lucky that we can work so closely with such a wonderful group of properties. We also feel lucky that we can tap into some of the latest and greatest technology, which can be a very helpful tool in the vineyard.
Science is rapidly changing the world of viticulture. We use weather stations to send us information over the Internet about the weather in any given part of our vineyard. If the temperatures are dipping too much in the spring during the critical stages, after bud break for example, we can immediately get frost protection out to the vineyards and save the vines.
During a visit to UC Davis in 2015, we learned that viticulturists are experimenting with a way of watering each root separately, based purely on satellite photos. Today we water by block based on our analysis of the microclimate in that particular section. So our approach is fairly scientific. The fact that you can take a satellite picture and look at the leaves on one vine that’s 4 feet away from another vine and decide to treat it differently is just amazing. Once in place, this new irrigation approach—the ultimate in customization—will save water, increase efficiency, and improve the quality of the grapes.
We also understand that the science will only take us so far. One of the sayings in the farming world is, “The best fertilizer is the farmer’s shadow.” Despite the technological advancements, producing wine remains an art shaped by everyone who touches the grape, from the grower to the winemaker, and dictated by instinct as much as knowledge. To illustrate, after taking all those satellite infrared photographs of the vineyard to measure vine vigor, we shared the findings with Doug Hill, who had overseen the farming on this vineyard for more than a decade before we bought it. “Well, I knew that,” he said with a smile and a nod.
As we farm the vineyard today, we focus not only on the health of each block, but on the health of individual vines, as well as that of the shoots and clusters on those vines. We want to make sure that we are not allowing too much fruit to grow on any single shoot, so that every shoot can appropriately ripen each cluster to full maturity. We also tie each shoot to one of the trellis wires so that it’s perfectly vertical, until all the shoots are lined up like little soldiers standing at attention rather than growing in their natural crisscross pattern. This process is very labor intensive and very costly, but it allows for the optimum amount of sunlight penetration and airflow. Hopefully, all this translates into great wine.
Oddly enough, instead of watering liberally and providing the soil with tons of nutrients, we also stress each vine so it has to work really hard. That practice funnels even more energy into the clusters of grapes left on the shoots. On the other hand, we don’t want to overstress the vine either. So we spend a lot of the growing season managing the stress of the vineyard. Depending on the end goal, at certain times we’ll apply more or less stress to the vine.
Since we’re after quality rather than quantity, we farm each vineyard to attain perfectly ripened individual clusters. This approach usually restricts yields to three tons per acre or less. To achieve that we not only water less, but once the vines are dormant we’ll prune to anywhere between 24 and 30 buds per vine. Those buds that we leave on, which look like rose buds or little bumps on the vine’s arms, become the growing points for the shoots (known as canes once they harden after a year), which typically hold the clusters of grapes.
But grapevines are more difficult than other crops. You can prune to create two shoots per bud, for example, but invariably three or four or even five shoots might come out. So after bud break in the spring, when the new leaves just begin to grow on the vines that have been dormant, we go back into the vineyard and lop off those extras so that an excess of fruit doesn’t compromise the flavor of all the grapes the vine produces that year.
We realize that as much as wine-related science can help us in our quest to produce better and better wine, the tender loving care of the people who work the vineyard and who make the wine will always be critical. Having organic vineyards like ours doesn’t implicitly mean that the grapes are better. It does mean, however, that we have to spend more time in the vineyard working on the vines just to make sure they’re healthy, and that additional oversight leads to better vineyards and therefore better grapes.
Being in the vineyard all the time allows us to watch it more closely. We can’t affect how quickly grapes ripen, for example, but we can manage the quality of that ripening. If the grape clusters are shaded, we know to come back and manipulate the canopy to increase sunlight and airflow by pulling off some of the leaves so more sun can hit the grapes. We’re looking for direct sunlight for a short period of time, followed by speckled light that touches the cluster all day long as the sun moves through the sky and the angle of the light changes.
Director of Vineyards Don Monk leads this effort with our winemaking team. Each time our crews pass through the vineyard, we are making an adjustment in the vines. During green drop, for example, which takes place as the grapes are beginning to soften and change color, the vineyard crew will go through the vineyard and drop, or cut off, the grape clusters that are still green, leaving behind the clusters with darker berries. This helps even the ripeness of all the clusters in a vineyard by removing the less ripe clusters that may have green flavors or unripe tannins. In some high years, a green drop can comprise as much as 20 to 25 percent of your crop (half to one ton per acre) and all those clusters are simply dropped in the rows between the vines. The first time Craig saw this, he nearly had a heart attack because of all of the lost fruit on the ground and the financial implications of that. Now, he understands that this is simply a step along the way to make great wine.
All the while, we’re manipulating stress through irrigation, canopy management, and more. We want the vines to shut down and stop putting energy into growing leaves and canopy, and to transition into using energy to ripen the fruit. At this point we hit what we hope is cruise control. If the weather cooperates, we just stay out in the vineyard to assess its overall health and stress, and eventually to determine when we want to harvest.
That’s a big if.
As recently as 10 to 15 years ago in Napa, there was a formula for wine growing that specified when you pruned, when you lopped off the shoots, etc… But vines don’t behave according to a formula. They do what they want to do, especially depending on environmental influences. If it’s a dry year they’re going to respond differently than if it’s a wet year. Ditto if it’s a hot year, a windy year, or if there’s a lot of fog. So there is no substitute for being out in the vineyard to see the evolution of things. You can’t script how you’re going to farm the vineyard. You have to react.
In our vineyards, beginning with pruning and ending with harvest, somebody touches the vines at least eight times every year, as opposed to the more typical four or five passes. Many operations will go through and do a single canopy management pass, for example, and call it good. Not us. Throughout the season we go through the vineyard again and again.
As the grapes approach maturity, different pieces of equipment help us decide when we’re going to harvest various blocks within a vineyard. However, winemakers at the very highest end of the wine-quality spectrum who work at the best vineyards don’t pick strictly by analysis or a measurement from a machine, because that tells them nothing about the potential quality. If you want to follow a recipe, then you pick according to the sugar percentage or the titratable acidity or the pH of a grape. But human taste and human intuition are the best equipment available when it comes to deciding when to harvest. So Don and Steve walk through each vineyard and each block before making the call to harvest. They pick a grape and taste it, testing ripening patterns, flavors, sweetness, thickness of the skin, maturity of the seed, and, perhaps most importantly, tannins. Then they move and taste another, then another and another after that.
Rain or shine, we handpick our grapes to be sure that every cluster going into the picking basket is ripe. A perfect cluster of Cabernet Sauvignon is going to have the same dark blue color all the way through. A machine can’t yet judge that, just as it can’t judge whether the cluster has mold inside it due to untimely rain. By handpicking each cluster, we ensure that each berry arrives at the winery in the best condition possible. According to UC Davis, robots with the ability to discern the fruit’s characteristics and uniformity may wind up being able to delicately pick grapes in the near future, carefully cutting them off and depositing them in the picking bin. For now, since that’s all still conjecture, we rely on humans to deliver intact, unblemished grapes to our crush pad as quickly as possible.
The most impressive Napa Cabernet Sauvignons have texture, concentration, density, and richness; all of which are derived from tannins—that compound in the grape skins and seeds. Steve and Don focus on the quality, maturation, and ripeness of tannin. Some winemakers try to minimize the amount of tannin in their wine to avoid hardness and astringency (a mouth-puckering dryness in some wines), but Steve believes if you harvest grapes with mature tannins then you can’t have too much of a good thing—and we agree. The key is to farm the vineyard to produce grapes with mature tannins in both the skins and the seeds. Which brings us back to vineyard site, rootstock selection, scion, irrigation, crop levels, and attention to detail in farming. Everything matters.
Therein lies so much of the skill of working a vineyard. This is not done by rote, it’s done by feel and experience. Technology can help fine-tune that, but at the end of the day, the dedication of the team working with the grapevines impacts the quality of the fruit the most. That’s what counts because in the end, it’s all about that grape.