12th Newsletter -- November 2010
The Return of the Big Post-Harvest Sale!
Long time, no ramble. I'm sure the extended gap between newsletters has been hard on
you all. I just haven't had many pearls of wit or wisdom to impart. I still don't, but I do
come bearing a gift. It's the answer to all your holiday problems. "How am I going to
endure cousin Bob at Thanksgiving?" "How to get that secretary to smooch me under the
mistletoe at the office party?" "How will I get my hyped out kids to sleep on Christmas
Eve?" "How am I going to kill the week the office closes between Christmas and New
Years?" The answer to these and other quandaries is, as always, booze. And remember,
nothing says "Here, I got you an all purpose gift because I really don't know you very
well" like a bottle of wine. So, I've got all your bases covered.
Yes, just in time, I'm heroically riding to the rescue with Kendric Vineyards’ second
iteration of the “never to be repeated,” “Damn, that’s a staggering crush bill on my desk,”
wholesale-to-the-public wine sale. OK, so it's not entirely an act of altruism, but it's still a
sweet deal. And timely. Last year’s post-harvest sale was a major success, as savvy wine
vultures swooped on the deepest discount I’ve ever offered. As it turns out, the picking
crew, coopers and assorted landlords want to get paid again this year as well. Go figure.
So, I’m swallowing hard and doing it again, doubling the normal full case discount -bringing the price to the wholesale level -- for the next 2 weeks or so. Half cases are
bumped up to the normal case discount level. That’s right, the $34 ’07 pinot is now just
$22.66 a bottle when you score a case. Heck, you can afford to open it for even your most
cretinous friends and relations at that price. So go ahead and load up. While you’re at it,
become a hero to your more discerning friends by turning them on to this sale.
The key thing to know, when ordering from the website, is that you will need to enter
discount code sale to get 33.33% off on 12 bottle cases and six to get 17% off six packs.
I'm not really trying to make the sale exclusive or difficult by using discount codes, it's
just that I already catch flak from retailers who take umbrage at the normal case discounts
they see on the website. With this pricing, I can't offer the normal discount on shipping,
but for those of you in the Bay Area, I'll deliver for free anyway (check the Hold for
Pickup box). Most out-of-state customers will have to contact me directly to arrange
shipping, and the sale pricing will apply automatically without having to worry about
discount codes. Mix and match vintages and varietals at will to reach the discount
thresholds. Here is the link to order
http://www.kendricvineyards.com/scripts/wineList.cfm
“So, what gives with the sale? I thought you said the market was looking up in the
Spring.” Well, it was. And then came Summer, which abruptly came to seem like 2009
all over again. I like a retro craze as well as the next hipster, but, as kitschy fun goes, the
"buying freeze" trend that swept the nation in 2009 doesn't really rank up there with
porkpie hat wearing. Really, despite the slow market, the main problem is that I have
been too busy in the vineyard and winery to devote any time to hawking my wares for the
last several months. Now that I've finally gotten the vintage into barrel this week, it's time
to hit the sales warpath again, starting with this offer.
“You’re sure it’s not just a crap vintage that you are trying to pawn off on us?” Pretty
sure. The October Wine Enthusiast review calls the ’07 “Kendric’s best Pinot yet, from
this magnificent vintage” and the PinotFile review in the Spring calls the ’07 “…the best
yet from this small producer.” So put that in your pipe and smoke it, to quote my Dad.
I've got to say that, until very recently, I wouldn't have put the '07 pinot atop the other
vintages. I generally think it's best days are ahead of it (it's still better after being open for
a day), but it has opened up enough that I recently, for the first time, preferred it to the '06
on a pop and pour basis at a tasting. Speaking of the '06 pinot, it is down to a handful of
cases, and this is last call for the vintage. The '07 syrah is more clearly the best vintage
I've made.
“Maybe you just got too big for your britches price-wise.” My britches fit just fine, thank
you; I’ll have you know they are wearing them like this in Paris this year. Granted, I
wouldn't be the first winemaker to become delusional about his place in the wine world.
With this in mind, as a bit of a reality check, when I look at reviews, I try to take stock of
where my prices stand in relation to others in my neighborhood. (Mostly, though, I
wallow in the shadenfreude of noting the more famous producers scoring below me.) Far
be it from me to suggest that any reviewer’s ranking/scoring should be taken as gospel,
but even using them as a rough indicator of the league in which I compete, my regular
retail prices look like a steal. A few examples:
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In the October Wine Enthusiast, the other pinots at my level (91 points) average
$52, and the average of all pinots between 87 and 91 points was $45;
In the year-end PinotFile listing of the top 100+ pinots of 2009, my ’06 was the
very lowest priced – in most cases, by a good margin; and
In last Fall’s Burghound roundup of domestic pinots, the average of all wines with
my score (91) was $50, and no higher scoring wine was less than $48. (This Fall,
the '07 again scored well, but the prices of the other rated wines were generally
omitted.)
So, the point of this little rant is that I'm really a genius of a winemaker and
extraordinarly generous with my pricing, and it's all those other guys whose egos have
run amok.
Vineyard recap-It was an odd year. The wet Spring led to vigorous canopy growth that took a lot of effort
to rein in. Then we had the Summer that wasn't. While the fact that we seldom topped 80
degrees had the cabernet growers wringing their hands, I was thrilled. The downside of
the mild weather was that the berries were not acclimated when the end of August heat
spike occurred. Lots of scorched, raisined berries resulted all over the North Coast. I got
hit also, but to a lesser extent than most because I hadn't pulled leaves to fully expose the
fruit zone to the sun during cooler days. Then, September returned to cool days and a
very slow crawl toward maturation -- all to the good. At the end of September, just as
most of the clones were reaching ripeness at a nice low (22.5-23.0) brix (sugar) level we
got another big heat spike. This set off a sprint to get everything picked as fast as possible
before the brix rocketed too high. In this, I was only partly successful. One clone (my
least favorite, 667) never got picked. It was lagging the others in terms of maturity, but
still raisined up before anything else. I'm not sure there was ever a moment that I could
have picked when it was ripe but unraisined. Still, it's painful to see that fruit still out
there on the vine. The grapes I did bring in were in good shape, but the brix had gotten
higher than I would have liked.
Cellar recap-Left alone, this vintage would have yielded something like 14.5% alcohol, which is a bit
outside my comfort zone. Instead, I bled off some juice immediately after crushing
(before the juice has taken on much of the flavor and color from the skins) and
substituted back an equivalent amount of water. The idea is to bring the brix down
without diluting flavors. In hindsight, in a year like this, when the last few brix come as a
result of dehydration more than photosynthesis, it might have been more appropriate to
forget the bleed and just add water. As it was, I ended up with a very low yield in terms
of gallons/ton, so I'm not too worried about the concentration of this vintage. Still, it is
generally taboo to publicly discuss "watering back" the vintage in any way, shape or
form. But we're all friends here, right?
Incidentally, last year I bled off juice because, unlike this year, I had felt that the berries
had gotten a little plump. My efforts to turn that saignee into rose suffered from neglect
(again), and eventually was sent down the gutter (again). Among the various demands on
my time, I just never managed to make rose the priority it would need to be in order to
make it turn out well. This year, I didn't even kid myself that I was a rose producer and
gave the juice away to someone who could put it to better use.
This was the third year in a row of pretty good stem maturity in my vineyard, which is
not surprising given the extra hang-time afforded by the mostly cool conditions. I went
with about 60% of the harvest as whole clusters (meaning the stems were included)
loaded into the bottom of the fermenters. I treaded these grapes to release some of the
juice, and then added the remaining 40% of the destemmed harvest on top. I'm a big fan
of whole cluster fermentations because I feel that it yields a more elegant, earthier and
otherwise more nuanced nose. The '08 was probably 75% whole cluster, and it is
beautiful. This MO is not for everyone, however, and those who favor a more pure,
primary fruit profile would balk at this level of stem inclusion. To each their own.
(Fools!)
This was my first vintage making wine at Carneros Vintners (Hwy 116/Stage Gulch Rd.,
between Sonoma and Petaluma). One upside of being in a big facility was that I had
access to glycol-cooled open top fermenters. Whereas I had always used my own small,
unjacketed 1-1.5 ton fermenters when I was at Starry Night Winery, this year I had the
luxury of loading the vintage into just three five ton fermenters, turning on the cooling
system and letting things cold soak as I dashed back to the vineyard to finish the harvest
at both my vineyard and my Mom's. The downside (apart from not having a dozen
different lots with which to experiment) was that I didn't yet have a great handle the
operation of the tanks' thermostats, and I ended up leaving the cooling jackets on a bit
longer than I had intended. The result was that the tanks' fermentation temperatures
peaked in the 84-89 degree range. This is pretty standard, but lower than I really like the
majority of the fermenters to reach. In general, I feel that higher temperatures yield more
secondary earth and spice characteristics and less primary fruit. Again, this is a "different
strokes for different folks" sort of winemaking choice. (But those other folks are
bastards!)
When active fermentation wrapped up after two weeks in the fermenter, I felt that the
wine was still on the fruity side and decided to send a higher percentage (80%) of the
vintage through extended maceration than I had initially planned. The '09 is 100%
extended maceration, and it is turning out to be pretty serious, minerally wine. At the two
week point, I felt that this vintage could also use a large dose of that sort of gravitas. I
drained off about 20% of the wine to barrel, and shut down the remainder in the
fermenters to sit on the skins for another 3 weeks. The earlier drained barrels are
definitely more primary fruit driven, and the extended maceration lots definitely have a
deeper, darker, more tannic character. I've kept a barrel of each lot separate in order to
follow their development out over time. If you visit the winery, we can taste them side by
side if you are interested/a big wine geek.
So, now I'm all in barrel and I'm ready to declare harvest over. I might even hoist a beer
to celebrate. It is still a little early to say what the outlook for this vintage will be. Despite
having a couple strikes against it, I'm cautiously optimistic, based on how things tasted
going into barrel. I try to reserve judgement, however, until the wine has been in barrel a
couple months and malolactic fermentation and lees contact have tamed the acidity a bit.
I'll report back later this Winter -- unless it's bad.
Back in the vineyard-Right now, the main project is fixing my leaky irrigation pond before the rains start in
earnest. This involves cleaning out tons of incredibly foul muck that has accumulated at
the bottom of the pond over the years. I've been so covered in this stuff that I can hardly
smell anything else at this point. This is probably why I haven't felt like drinking the
amount of wine that is required to churn out a newsletter for the last several weeks. So,
the fact that I've managed to put away enough to get this far in the newsletter is really just
a triumph of the will. I hope you are sufficiently inspired to follow my example.
Speaking of my agrarian heaven and its associated odors, here's another slice. One of my
pre-harvest raccoon trapping efforts yielded one lousy skunk. As you might imagine,
relocating these guys is one of the world’s least pleasant jobs, and I decided to give both
the skunk and myself a break and let him go with a stern warning because I was about to
leave for a wine tasting. Still, getting him out of the trap involves shuffling toward it
cowering behind a tarp to ward off the skunk’s spray. Of course, as I approach, the wind
kicks up, momentarily blowing the tarp out of position and leaving me staring at skunk
ass. Had I not shrieked like a girl as I ran, I probably had a shot at a clean getaway. Alas,
it was not to be, and I was bestenched.
I relate this vignette to point out, again, that life in this business is not quite as glamorous
as the glossy magazines would have you believe. Sure, I do spend a lot of my time with a
pastel sweater tied around my neck, suavely toasting my beautiful, admiring guests
assembled around a graciously appointed table on a veranda overlooking my vineyards.
It's part of the job description. On occasion, however, I have to actually venture into
those vineyards, and this is one of those times. Gotta go deal with pond muck before it
rains this weekend. Then, it's back to the veranda for more suaveness.
Cheers,
Stewart Johnson
Kendric Vineyards
www.kendricvineyards.com
stew@kendricvineyards.com
(415) 456-6942 ph/fx
(415) 806-4944 cell