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vineyard philosophy
harvest 08 update Our first harvest was of Viognier from McGinley and Vogelzang vineyards, both in Happy Canyon. We picked both the second week of September and enjoyed the wonderful flavors of the grapes - McGinley showed white peach, apricot and a little pineapple while Vogelzang was more towards mango and honeysuckle. A great combination and we managed to retain the flavors in the tanks through extended cold fermentation combined with no oak or malolactic fermentation. Our estate harvest started relatively late this year, with our first pinot noir picked on October 2. "Low crop, low crop" were the words in the valley this year. The frost in April, hot spell in late June and relatively cold summer was to blame. At Ampelos we don't have much reason to complain though, since our pinot noir crop load ended at 1.64 ton/acre - significantly above many of our neighbors. Our estate red rhone grapes Syrah and Grenache are always at least three weeks behind Pinot, and this year was no exception as we picked Syrah between October 16 and November 12. The question is always if we can get the Grenache done before Thanksgiving - well not this year. The fruit tasted good - but just not good enough. And since the leaves were still green we let the grapes hang out there until we finally decided to pick them on November 19 when the flavors had reached the optimum. The result was punch-downs for Thanksgiving! The spirit was high in the vineyards and many friends and filos wineclub members came by to give us a hand. Our 2008 cellar rat, Tanner, turned out to be a big help, worked very well with our crew and his loud laughter is still hanging in the vineyard. In the winery, we again had any friends involved in punch-downs, sugar testing, inoculation and other winery work - not to mention many big lunches between fermenters! Overall we are excited with the results from the harvest. Colors and tannins are great and the flavors intense. We did careful monitoring of the nutritional balance of the grapes harvested (ammonia and amino nitrogen) and found that they showed very healthy grapes - in several cases addition of vitamins for the yeast was not necessary! Considering that we have not used any conventional fertilizers since 2005 we believe this is a good sign of that our biodynamic farming is working well! All the wines are now racked into barrels where they will be staying for a half year before the first racking. It is getting quiet in the winery and Rebecca and I are excited to have completed one more successful harvest! summer 08 update After a cold spring with many frost threats we cruised through flowering and fruit set and now the bird nets are up and we are waiting to being harvest. As opposed to many other vineyards in our area we survived the frost with no noticeable damage. Overall the shoot and cluster counts are very good and we should have our standard yields this year. We've finished our regular rounds of shoot thinning, de-suckering, tucking, branch locking, leaf pulling and hand hoeing. In addition, we will clipped the wings of the clusters and eliminate whole clusters on short shoots - lots of manual work. We began to see the first signs of veraison (5%) in the Pinot on July 18th and the Syrah on August 7th. harvest 07 update Harvest is the most magical time of the year – this is when it all culminates. After all the rounds of work through the vineyard to take extra shoots away, fine tune the cluster levels, remove leaves, position the shoots to look like soldiers on parade, adjusting the irrigation, spraying the bio-dynamic preparations, and observing and analyzing – one morning when it is still dark and cold it all begins! The crew is anxious, clippers are ready, coffee still warm to compensate for the cold breeze, lights from the tractor guide the first efforts and then: Let’s go! Now it was time to harvest the crop and start working with the clusters. For us, harvest is 2 ½ months of non-stop, 7 days a week with hard physical work, good camaraderie, friends from near and far (always someone from Denmark) and every day ends with a good meal, great wines and tired eyes. The next morning it starts all over again. So how was the year? The 2007 harvest was in general light on yield. Pinot Noir came in at 1.58 ton/acre and Syrah at 2.39 ton/acre – not as much as we had hoped for but the quality fully compensated! Sugars were at a moderate level even though we gave the grapes time to hang on the wines. The colors and flavors were probably the best we have seen in the four years we have harvested! summer 07 update It was a nice, long summer! Not too warm and not too cold either. We had foggy mornings with the marine layer hanging over the valley followed by clear blue sky from 9-11 and again until sunset. After the vineyard had finished flowering and fruit set in early May we took several rounds through the vineyard to fine-tune the cluster levels and remove some of the base leaves to allow more sunlight and wind to reach the clusters. It was then time for Peter, Rebecca, Lindsay, and Don to take a journey to our place in Greece for a few weeks and get some rest before the storm. Well relaxed from the Mediterranean climate, food and wine, we returned in time to watch the veraison, where the grapes turn color and the flavors begin to develop. The first signs of color change were on July 16 for Pinot Noir and August 8 for Syrah. We now knew that harvest would start towards the end of September. It was time to remove clusters that were either ahead of or behind the gang – a financial disaster but a requirement to create the ultimate Pinot Noir - Consistency! We then started checking sugar, pH, acid and most important: Flavors! biodynamics While to some bio-dynamics may seem like voodoo viticulture, to us not only has it changed the way we grow our grapes but it has gotten us to think more about the importance of balance between nature, the land and our farming practices. When you do something good for the land it also streams through to other aspects; like our every day life. There are several different farming options available to grape growers (or any farmer, for that matter). The four most prominent growing methods are conventional, sustainable, organic and biodynamic. Conventional uses whatever method is necessary to produce a good crop. If the plants need nutrition, then fertilizers, either natural or synthetic, are administered. If a critter is devouring the grapes it is zapped with a pesticide. Encroaching flora are eliminated with an herbicide. Sustainable is more gentle. It uses the least amount of these products as possible and only when absolutely necessary. It also encourages biodiversity in the vineyard with cover crops and the introduction of insect predators. Sustainability also focuses on other aspects of farming such as employee practices, waste management practices, irrigation practices, economic viability and community. This is why we believe in Sustainable as well as Bio-Dynamic approaches. Organic uses only natural substances -- no synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides or fungicides -- and it encourages biodiversity. Biodynamics embraces all aspects of organic but takes the notion further by holistically treating the entire vineyard as a living organism. Additionally it uses "forces" to determine when to apply its unique substances or preparations to the vineyard as well as when to plant, prune, water and harvest. It is as much a philosophy of life as it is a farming method, which is why it has influenced the thinking of so many who initially explored the concept only because they wanted to grow better grapes. Biodynamics was the brainchild of Austrian scientist and philosopher Rudolf Steiner, who in 1924 gave a series of eight lectures that introduced the agricultural concept. At the time Steiner believed that the introduction of chemical farming was a major problem. Steiner was convinced that the quality of food in his time was degraded, and he believed the source of the problem were artificial fertilizers and pesticides. However, he did not believe this was only because of the chemicals but also due to spiritual shortcomings in the whole chemical approach to farming. Steiner believed that living matter was different from dead matter and therefore the farm should be seen as a closed self-nourishing system. There have been some attempts to scientifically compare organic and biodynamic farming, and others comparing biodynamic and conventional farming. The differences with organic farming are generally small, those with conventional farming more significant. An April 16, 1993 research article in Science magazine compared soil quality and financial performance of biodynamic and conventional farms in New Zealand. The article reported that; “The Biodynamic farms proved in most enterprises to have soils of higher biological and physical quality: significantly greater in organic matter, content and microbial activity, more earthworms, better soil structure, lower bulk density, easier penetrability, and thicker topsoil.” For us, the jury may be out in regards to biodynamic versus organic, but in the end we believe that treating the land and nature with sound farming practices brings everything into balance and can only help us make the best possible quality of wine. |
We
employ biodynamic farming practices, with rich cover crops, our
own compost, elimination of herbicides and in general good, environmentally
conscientious farming. We strive for our vineyard to be in balance
with nature's principles. We are using French and Italian tools,
hand hoeing to avoid spraying pesticides for weed management, and
are implementing an annual composting cycle to provide nutrients
to the vineyard. As a way to provide nitrogen to the vines in the
early part of the growing season, we plant fava beans, sweet peas,
vetch, barley and clover between the rows.
