Easy Sunday: Pick Pinot Noirs tomorrow

The Pinot Noir grapes are ready to pick. 

They are the right kind of ripe and the right kind of sweet. 

Thursday, October 3 report

The seeds inside the grapes have turned dark. The juice has gone from pale-amber to darker-amber. 

The October 3 report described the sweetness -- Brix -- of the grapes. The first number was for the self-rooted Pinot Noir  grapes, with a brix of 24 and an acidity of measure of 3.67. The second number is for a different clone of the Pinot Noirs, ones on grafted-root stock, planted in a section adjacent to the others. They look identical to my eye, but they measure as a bit less sweet, with a brix of 22.7.

This is the third time I have taken random grapes from the field to test for a baseline for that variety. On September 11 I brought them to Valley View Vineyards, the oldest vineyard and winery in the region, the pioneer of the modern wine industry in Southern Oregon. Their wines have been getting 90, 92, and 94 point ratings from Wine Enthusiast Magazine. They will be taking this year's grapes. Their winemaker, Michael Brunson, pressed the grapes inside the zip-lock bag to examine the contents; then he measured it for sweetness and acidity. 

We knew it was early but wanted a baseline: Brix of 20.9.

Brunson examined the color. We tasted the juice. It was delicious -- semi sweet. But it was nowhere near ready for harvest.

We tested again on September 24. The grapes were ripening on track. We made plans to test again and then perhaps pick the earliest variety, the Pinot Noirs, this weekend. The juice tasted much sweeter. It was delicious.

My vines look healthy and lush -- possibly too healthy and lush. The ground is very fertile, and it tests naturally high in potassium. Our goal in pruning this year was primarily to establish stronger vines in better preparation for larger harvests of better grapes in future years. We did not prune toward the goal of a significant harvest this year. so the crop is light, and canes with clusters cover only about a third of the six-foot spaces between plants. We estimate a harvest of about three bins, each holding a ton of grapes. I have four acres of Pinot Noirs. 

Pumice is a rare soil for wine grapes. It produces wines with unusual complexity because the soil is so fine-grained that the micronutrients in the soil are accessible to the fine capillary roots of the plants. Wine grapes grow on pumice soil on the volcanic island of Santorini in the southern Aegean Sea, and on the sides of Mount Vesuvius in Italy. There is substantial wine industry and wine tourism activity at both those places. The pumice on my farm was blown here when Mount Mazama exploded 7,200 years ago. The pumice layer is about 30-feet thick, based upon the report when we drilled the well for my farmhouse. Even though we are adjacent to the Rogue River, the pumice survives being washed away because it is on ground slightly higher than the hundred-year and thousand-year floods.

We will pick the Malbecs soon.

[Note: To get daily delivery of this blog to your email go to: https://petersage.substack.com. Subscribe. Don't pay. The blog is free and always will be.]