You don’t need me to tell you that times are tough.  Everywhere you hear terms like the “new normal,” “double-dip recession” and the like.  Look no further than the farmer to see the reality that is our changed landscape.  In this case, I visited Thomson Vineyards in Los Carneros, an American Viticultural Area (AVA) that spans the southern ends of both Sonoma and Napa counties.  Here, the Thomson family, which has farmed here since 1938, is having to adjust to the new normal and doing it in innovative ways using the latest in social media technologies, but still relying on the tried-and-true foundation of building personal relationships.

Los Carneros

As already mentioned, Carneros is on the south end of Sonoma and Napa and has a much cooler climate than its neighbors to the North due to its closer proximity to the San Pablo Bay and the Petaluma Gap.  This allows for great growing conditions for Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, which are heavily sought after in this region.  Recently, Carneros has been growing more Merlot and Syrah as well.  Thomson Vineyards focuses mainly on Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Merlot.

The Farmer

The Farmer

George Thomson is the third generation farmer of this property and is often referred to in tweets as just “The Farmer” by his millenial daughter, Jennifer, now becoming the fourth generation “farmer.”  Electrician by day (working 6 10-hour shifts a week!), The Farmer has been solely responsible for the 30-acre vineyards off of Los Carneros Avenue since 2003 after about a 10 year hiatus from the business.  He is a firm believer in experience as I found out first hand after several questions about how young I look and to what extent my wine studies lent any significant level of experience.  That’s OK.  That’s what I would expect from my farmer if I was sourcing grapes from them.  I would want them to be the experienced ones and help me get a hold of the best fruit possible in order to make the best wine I could if I was a winemaker.  This the precisely the type of relationship they try to create with their winemakers, one that creates synergy utilizing the best and most experienced knowledge of both parties.  More on this below.

The Farmer's Daughter

The Farmer’s Daughter

As I mentioned above, The Farmer’s millenial daughter is now just hanging up her Marketing Communications hat working for the city of San Francisco to work for the family business.  A fourth generation farmer.  However, she has chosen to bring her education including an MBA and her skills in MarCom to change how farmer-winemaker relationships work and throwing in a little social media to help as well.  This is how I came to meet Jennifer.  These days you can easily find winemakers tweeting and Facebooking away.  But, how many winegrowers are doing it?  I am seeing a trend where the children of winemakers and winegrowers are coming back to the family business after forays in the “regular” business world and applying their innovative and technology-backed skills while bringing some fresh views and approaches to relationship-building.  See my upcoming post about how the same thing is happening with Bulmaro Montes’ daughters at Marita’s Vineyards.

Relationships

While developing relationships near the back-end of the winemaking supply chain are still dominated by phone calls, emails and face-to-face meetings, Jennifer explained how the newer and younger generation of winemakers are looking for more real-time communication and information and are keen to the new social media options.  While not necessarily making it rain with direct sales via Twitter, she has admitted to several block sales being procured via the micro channel and only expects it to grow as she continues to educate her winemakers in the value of social media for their individual brands.

Thomson prefers to build a close relationship with their winemakers such that they fill the role as mentor to help ensure the winemaker gets the best fruit possible representing Los Carneros.  More often, as I understand it, the winemaker tends to look for specific Brix and acid readings when the final call to pick is made.  The Farmer and Jennifer shared an incident where this occurred against The Farmer’s recommendations only to have the winemaker call back to say the grapes’ flavors were still “green.”  No shit?  You’d think with over 70 years combined family experience on this property, buyers might consider listening, especially if they want the true essence of Los Carneros to come through in their product.  Sadly, this is often not the goal of some winemakers.  Many of them have their own thoughts of what they want to make or what they think their market wants to drink.

But, this situation goes both ways.  Unfortunately, there are also growers who will sell fruit of any level of quality to unsuspecting winemakers who may not know any better or know the right questions to ask.  All the more reason to have a tight, TRUSTED relationship between the two roles, which is the basis of any successful social interaction or exchange.  If you have questions about Carneros or are looking for some fruit, you can reach Jennifer via Twitter @ThomsonVnyrds.

James Cagneyclaims he never actually said “Mmmm you dirty rat!” in his 1931 film Taxi!  But, I will claim it proudly come this harvest season in Sonoma as I get the pleasant opportunity to scrub tanks, clean barrels and help prepare and execute crush and fermentation at Holdredge Winesin Healdsburg, CA.  I owe a lot to John Holdredge for allowing me to work for him this Fall as I guess I am probably twice as old as most of his usual harvest interns.  The opportunity came as a surprise one day on Facebook when John noticed I was applying to win an opportunity to work with Lynn Penner-Ash in Oregon last November.  He reached out and said something to the effect of “If you don’t win this thing, you can come work for me.”

Then, in February, I called him on his proposal as I had just learned that my company was about to embark on a radical organizational change that was going to reduce everyone’s level of job security.  John is a witty and bold individual and gave me what I suspect is the usual schpeal about the overwhelming work involved and how only those entirely devoted to the wine industry should apply.  Of course, I am a devoted wine geek and just completed a winemaker certificate program from UC-Davis, so I was adamant about putting that book-learnin’ to actual use.  He and I came to agreement.

So, here I am.  Two months from being let go from said re-organization and about 3 weeks away from what I can only assume to be synonomous with the hell week I experienced as a neophyte in my college fraternity (only to have John state that it will be more like a month, than a mere week) and I cannot be more excited.  As many already know, the weather in the North Coast has delayed harvest an estimated 2-3 weeks, so early September will most likely be spent cleaning tanks and preparing the facility for the harvest activity.  But fear not, as it has been said more than once that it takes a lot of good beer to make great wine and I intend to uphold that legend.

John Holdredge

If you are not already familiar with Holdredge Winesthen you are truly missing out on some fantastic Russian River Pinot Noir.  If you are familiar with me at all, you know I love this grape and just recently coordinated a global Pinot Noir tasting via Twitter.  My wife and I met John (and have yet to meet his better half, Carri) last summer.  Though we caught him early when he was about to send some barrel samples to the lab, he was gracious and courteous to commence a tasting and give us some insight as to the bike route we should take that afternoon as we were going on a bike ride later.  He came highly recommended from Michael Bryan, owner of the Atlanta Wine School, and Atlanta is a market John visits regularly.

As a part of my journey, it is my desire to bring to you the behind-the-scenes look at harvest in a winery including the personalities that abound in such a hectic yet passionate environment.  If you are in the area, you must visit.  If you have any questions about the process, please ask.  It’s a dirty job, but someone has to do it!

Lately, there has been discussion and worry about the cool temperatures being experienced in Northern California, particularly from grape growers in Sonoma and Russian River Valley.  At this time of year grapes should be well into veraison, the ripening stage of the development cycle where grapes begin to change color, sugars and berry size increase and acids begin to decline.  However, due to cooler weather, many vineyards are yet to see the onset of veraison or have only just begun to see changes.  It is well understood that cooler climates lead to improved color, higher acid and more varietal flavors all resulting in a higher quality wine.  However, the harvest window becomes much tighter for growers when determining the right time to pick as they wait for optimal sugars, acid levels and flavors to develop before the October rains arrive.

Jennifer Thomson, of Thomson Vineyards in Carneros, has this take on the 2010 season:

“We agree with what many are saying:

1. It will either be an epic season or the variables we can’t control will come into play and create the perfect storm and
2. Winemakers need to get comfortable with picking at lower Brix to get fruit in at the crush pad this year and miss the late October rains

We are recommending, and are fortunate to be working with several winemakers who have already requested, to pick at lower Brix in 2010.  This leads to less alcohol in the wine and getting back to the elegant and refined wines California became known for in the 80s and early 90s. Three winemakers we work with are on deck to pick at 23.5 brix: Bravium Wines, Kelham Winery and Black Sheep Finds.  The former two picked at 24+ last year. The latter at 23.1 brix (which resulted in a 13.5% alcohol in 2009 Hocus Pocus Thomson Vineyard Carneros Pinot Noir bottled yesterday). While all are happy with their respective wines, as growers, we award the 2009 Thomson Vineyards Gold Star to winemaker Peter Hunken of Black Sheep Finds for making the pick call three weeks prior to anyone else in 2009 leading to damn fine wine! We’re looking forward to picking early for him again this year!”

According to the Press Democrat, the average maximum temperature for July was 75.1 degrees F, more than 7 degrees below the 50-year average.  It was also the second lowest temperature average for July since 1960.  A quick look at the Growing Degree Days measurement for 2010 compared to 2009 shows the impact.  The degree day concept and calculation was developed by Dr. Winkler and Amerine in the 1930′s as a way to classify the different growing regions of California and is used as an indicator of ripening in a particular region.  Degree days is an accumulated value using the following daily calculation throughout the growing season (often from April 1 to October 31, but dependent upon the region):

(( high temp + low temp) / 2) – 50

Basically, it is the average temperature for the day subtracted by 50F, which is the point below which little to no photosynthesis occurs in the grapevine and therefore has no effect on ripening.  There are some shortcomings to this equation that I won’t go into here and it is still used as the standard.  WineBusiness.com has a page devoted to this type of information and can be found here.  Interestingly, the data they retrieved for Bennett Valley shows a much larger discrepency between this year and last year than my data below even though I retrieved it from the same source (http://ipm.ucdavis.edu – UC Davis Integrated Pest Management).  There could be some minor variations in the formula used accounting for the difference.  Instead, I decided to collect degree day data from another CIMIS (#103) station in Windsor, CA for the illustration below, which shows 2010 well below 2009 values throughout the entire season so far.

Using the WineBusiness.com site and cycling through previous vintages, I noticed that for Napa, 2010 is looking very similar to 1998 in terms of the degree days accumulation to-date.  In 1998, Napa had weather and disease pressure including late rains in May and June and unusually cool weather due to El Nino.  This caused delays in budbreak, early vine development and bloom.  However, the vintage “recovered” due to a warm and dry “Indian Summer” in October allowing the fruit to completely ripen with excellent flavor development.  In Sonoma, for the 2010 vintage to reach the same total degree days accumulated in 2009 (2673), the average daily temperature will need to be 64.8F between now and October 31st.

So, while the 2010 harvest is certainly delayed by a few weeks based on current information, there is still time for warmer weather to arrive and allow the fruit to mature as expected.  Furthermore, let’s hope the climate-induced slower ripening process combined with winemaker acceptance to possibly pick earlier than usuual results in maximum flavor development and quality.  Then again, I haven’t seen a negative vintage report yet so maybe another miracle is in order.  All I know is that it may extend my harvest internship much to John Holdredge’s dismay, but I will do my best to bring the heatwave with me from the South.

2009 is almost over and many of us are still waiting for the signs of the economy to begin turning around.  The 52-week low for the Dow back in March was wallowing near 6,440 then we recently hit a 52-week High just 2 weeks ago topping 10,158 only to slump again now to 9,800 as of today’s close.  During the same period, retail sales for wine have been in a slow decline with some recent hope as sales were up for the second consecutive month at 7% better than September, with October sales up 4% over the same period last year.  Good news, right?

Not so fast my friend…  many California winegrowers have had a rough harvest as rains interrupted the season causing many to either pick early, risking non-optimal sugar and acid levels or keep the grapes on the vine risking damage and rot.  Furthermore, many of those growers never had buyers waiting on the other side for that fruit or if they did prices were at huge discounts.  As a result, fruit is being left rotting on the vine, being given away or being made into wine by the growers themselves.  I don’t know how many wineries have closed down due to this economy… it’s much easier to find that information for banks, though   But, I am sure there will be some casualties unfortunately.  Even for those who make it through the year, just imagine the frustration of cultivating that vineyard all year long waiting for that one moment at harvest only for it not to arrive and having to watch, literally, the fruits of your labor, dwindling, dying, rotting on the vine.  A very sad story indeed.

Furthermore, Amazon pulled out of the online wine selling business for good before they even really go started, which is a buzzkill for many hoping such a model would help pave the way for more DTC and eCommerce opportunities for wineries in this country and apply some pressure against the archaic 3-tier distribution system.

Maybe not all was lost, though, as 2009 fruit quality in California sounds fairly good, if not great.  A cooler growing season allowed for slower maturation of the grapes which can result in more distinct varietal characteristics to develop before the grapes become too ripe, so I’ll wait in anticipation for this vintage and the bitter-sweet accomplishment it represents.  Please, help your friendly, small-to-medium sized winery by buying their wines and visiting their wineries… you never know when they might disappear.

Cheers!

As I mentioned in a previous post about needing a little change, you know that I have aspirations of becoming a winemaker or work in the wine industry in some capacity.  In that post I also mentioned a contest TravelOregon is promoting where one winner will get to work with Lynn Penner-Ash of the winery’s namesake.  At first I wasn’t sure if I’d have the time to put together something presentable as you have to make a 2 minute video as your application.   But, I put in a submission just under the deadline… do you have visions of Murphy-Goode dancing in your heads? 

Don’t worry no voting really needed here as the video and a “tweet” stating why I should win the opportunity to work with Lynn for a week next harvest will be judged by none other than the fabulously spectacular Jeff Lefevre of the Good Grape wine blog.  However, a “prize” may also be awarded to the video with the most views according to the YouTube view counter, so a quick view of the video by you and your peeps wouldn’t hurt…   so, pssst… pass it on!

Here it is (also in the right sidebar)… laugh, cry, let it move you… or laugh hysterically…  whatever… Cheers!