The Art of Winemaking in Monterey County
Drinking a vintner’s finished product is a sheer pleasure, but the process of winemaking is a complex combination of art and science. Few wine lovers know what exactly goes into producing a bottle of wine. Between the vineyard and the bottle, Monterey County’s award-winning grapes go through a journey and transformation process that is a needless to say a labor of love. Here’s an insider’s look at what winemakers deal with during harvest, typically from September to November in Monterey.
The Fruit is Ready
Chateau Julien has a beautiful tasting room in Carmel Valley, with easy access right off of Carmel Valley Road. Bill Anderson, who is about to begin his 29th harvest at the winery, is preparing for truckloads of fruit to arrive, often carrying up to 10 tons of grapes. Harvest moves fast, and some of these trucks arrive with almost no notice.
Bill says three factors combine to make great wines: great grapes, great equipment, and great people. They’re three simple variables, but the added element of quality means they can combine in potentially infinite combinations, leading to an end product that can be anywhere from horrid to magnificent.
Even before harvest time begins, it’s time for the production team to get ‘pumped up’ for long days, crazy weeks and a lot of adrenaline. Tanks are sterilized, barrels cleaned, and all mechanical parts are inspected thoroughly on the crucial crusher, pump and press machines as the team preps to receive grapes. Yeast is ordered for fermentation and grape grower calls occur by the minute.
For a winemaker, here’s a typical harvest day: The grapes arrive in perfect condition with a sugar Brix reading of 23.5, a pH of 3.30, and a Total Acid of 0.81%. The berries are tiny and bursting with flavor. Three grape trucks are lined up, waiting for processing. The crusher-stemmer and press are running at full capacity. Three pumps are transferring the juice from tank to tank at 180 gallons per minute. The compressors on the ice machine hum as they produce the vital ice for the chilling unit. While one truck is loaded with finished product from the working bottling line, another truck is unloading empty bottles for the next day’s bottling run. The vineyard manager has just called, wanting to know when he can send the next load of grapes; and the cellar supervisor tells the winemaker a batch of barrels is ready to be filled with fermenting Chardonnay juice.
Comments Bill, “If, in the middle of all this, you’re laughing at a joke one of your fellow workers just told you; and you know it’s a great day to be alive, then you’re on your way to making a great bottle of wine.”
The 2011 Harvest
Monterey County has nine unique American Viticultural Areas (AVAs), which often makes it difficult to generalize about the growing conditions for the whole region, but most vineyard managers and winemakers throughout the county indicate that the cool spring and summer and unusual late rain is definitely contributing to a later crush. In many cases, the crush is a good three weeks to a month behind schedule. In addition to the late crush, many winegrowers are anticipating lighter yields.
Rich Smith at Paraiso Vineyards, who is getting ready for his thirty-fifth harvest in the Santa Lucia Highlands AVA of Monterey County, says, "We hope to be begin picking our estate Pinot Noir the first week of October. The spring was cold, the bloom-time was cold, and the growing season was cold. It will be a late harvest of a small crop of small berries that will likely exhibit very intense Pinot Noir characters. Given adequate heat over the next couple weeks to finish up ripening, it should be a stellar year, quality-wise."
Jack Galante of Galante Vineyards says, “Harvest is coming in about a week or two later than “normal” (if anything is normal in agriculture!). We had a pretty cool season overall but we are blessed with being in an area that gets a lot of sunny days so we are not terribly behind. When the frost hit in early summer we only lost some of our Sauvignon Blanc grapes as those had flowered the earliest. Sad to see those go but we are happy that the rest of the crop is in good shape. The last week has been exceptionally warm which has pushed the grapes along as we are playing catch up. However, it’s not over until the last grapes are harvested and the wine is resting comfortably in barrels. All in all, we are looking forward to a great year.”
See It For Yourself!
Monterey boasts over 35 tasting rooms. The Monterey County Vintners and Growers Association, MCVGA, makes traveling the wine region easy with a suggested itinerary of “Three Perfect Days in Monterey Wine Country”, a great printed map, and a handy (and free!) mobile application.
An amazing 42 varietals are grown in Monterey County, with Chardonnay and Pinot Noir being the grapes planted in most abundance. The region’s grapes and wines are heavily influenced by the Monterey Bay, deemed by winemakers of the region as The Blue Grand Canyon™ for the depth that it has in similarity to the Grand Canyon. The cool water, depth, and other maritime factors have an impact on the winegrowing area like no other viticulture region.
The maritime influence will be on display at the post-harvest wine event of the year, where visitors can taste over 200 wines from Monterey. The Best of the Blue occurs on Saturday, November 12th from 1-4 at the private Del Monte Aviation Hangar in Monterey. Tickets are only $60, inclusive of wine and food, and can be purchased at www.MontereyWines.org.
Rhonda Motil is the Executive Director of the Monterey County Vintners and Growers Association. Learn more about Monterey County wines at the MCVGA website, http://www.MontereyWines.org.
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