Special Feature: Ted Osborne, Winemaker's Journal
Part 2 & 3, Roger King's Fields of Syrah, Picking Chardonnay
A multi-part series from winemaker Ted Osborne of Olabisi Vineyard sharing harvest notes from the grapefields of Napa Valley.
A Winemaker's Journal, Part 2
Friday, September 12, 2008
It's the morning of the Carneros Chardonnay pick at Ceja Vineyard. This crew had been on the job since 2 AM. They started picking our four tons at 8:30 AM. By lunchtime, these eight men will have picked twenty tons (40,000 pounds) of Chardonnay.
I'm always a bit uncomfortable around the picking crews. They're working like dogs while I walk up and down the vine rows tasting fruit, occasionally tossing bad fruit out of the bins that they've just picked into. "Hey, I know you just picked 40 pounds of fruit in to this box and lugged it a hundred yards on your head, but I don't think the quality is up to snuff so I'm tossing it all on the ground." But then again, it's my wine and we put the Ceja vineyard name on the label. If people like our wine, then they like the Ceja Vineyard and everyone benefits eventually. Just not these guys so much. The trickle down theory is definitely that, a trickle.
When I made wine for Piña Napa Valley, I spent a lot of time talking with the folks in their main line of business, vineyard management. Vineyard management companies take care of your vineyard for you. They decide how to farm your vineyard and supply the equipment, personnel, and knowhow to get it done. So if you're a gazillionaire who's bought a 20-acre Cabernet vineyard in Napa, you don't farm it yourself. You hire these guys. Then, if I want to buy your grapes and turn them into wine, I mostly deal with the vineyard management company. What I'm trying to get around to saying is that the guys on the vineyard management side refer to us behind our backs and sometimes to our faces as the f-ing winemakers. And I can see why.
We call the shots but we don't spend all our time out in the field like these guys. We say something seemingly simple like, "You need to drop some more fruit off this vineyard. It's still overcropped." Then, they have to actually walk through the vineyard in the hot sun and figure for each of the 50,000 vines, which fruit should stay and which fruit should go. That might take a crew of ten people two days to do. And in the end, no one can really say for sure if that vineyard, its fruit, and the resulting wine is all that much better for it. F-ing winemakers!
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