I hope that you all are having a wonderful St. Patty’s so far!

I love St. Patty’s, and can’t wait to have some corned beef and cabbage tonight with my family! We are thinking of dyeing some of the Cambria Pinot Gris green tonight and calling it “Pinot Green,” like they did at the Cambria Tasting Room for their St. Patrick’s Day party last year.

I put together this photo essay of green images in honor of St. Patrick’s day this morning. I hope that you enjoy them!

What are your plans this St. Patrick’s Day?

I hope you all had a wonderful Valentine’s Day weekend, and I wish all of you a very happy Valentine’s Day today!

A couple of weeks ago, I interviewed Cambria’s winemaker Denise about her experiences during this year’s harvest. In Part I of the interview, Denise talked about the weather, this year’s flavor profiles, and the blocks, clones and wines that she considers her favorites this harvest. In this part, she talked about her favorite part of winemaking, how to tell when grapes are ready to be harvested, and how Cambria’s new sustainability certification has changed operations in the winery!

What do you most enjoy about the winemaking process?

I especially enjoy the “agricultural” part of the winemaking process because that is what usually determines the character of the final wine product. Every block of grapes and each lot of wine has a life (or personality of its own) and evaluating the different stages of the wine and the decisions that are made during the winemaking process are always unique to each vintage. Each year, you build on your foundation of knowledge and experience different situations in the vineyards and with the wines, so it is a continual learning process – we will never know it all and that is pretty cool because there is always something new to learn about.   

How much time do you spend in the vineyards leading up to harvest? And how much time do you spend in the winery?

Leading up to harvest, I probably spend about 30% -50% of my time in the vineyard. Since the winery is located in the middle of the vineyard, it is very easy to run out to different blocks and run back to the winery for a bit and then return to the vineyard. As harvest gets further along, I am required to be at the winery more because of the amount of activities that are taking place, but by that time, we have a good handle on the state of the grapes, but still spend a good amount of time monitoring the progress of the grapes. 

What have you been experimenting with in the vineyards lately?

With the Pinot Noir vines, we have been experimenting more over the past three years with different degrees of leaf-pulling, cluster thinning, and shoot thinning. We have found that removing the lateral canes eliminates any second crop (second crop grows on the lateral canes) and exposing the clusters to sunlight earlier than later provides grapes with better color. Also, we have found that delaying the “green drop” a bit later, the clusters and berries stay small. When we “green drop” too early, the clusters and berries size up too much, and we lose a lot of color and flavor components. 

With the Chardonnay vines, we make sure that the winter pruning is performed in a way that the vines will not be over-cropped. The Chardonnay vines are not as sensitive as the Pinot Noir vines, but you have to make sure that they are watched closely – when are the leaves starting to senesce? Or are the leaves bright green and providing enough photosynthesis to further mature the grapes? In the Santa Maria Valley, the Chardonnay grapes don’t taste good and don’t have seed or skin maturity until the grapes start to have a golden color – they don’t taste as good or make as good of a wine if they are picture perfect and bright green! All of the lots (for all varieties) are kept separate by block and clone during fermentation and aging so that we can evaluate and learn about the wines produced from all areas and blocks of the vineyard.    

At what point do you really start to scrutinize the grapes for maturity?

Depending on how the weather was during the summer, we will usually start closely monitoring the grapes around the middle or end of August. If we have heat spells that accelerate the maturity, then the process is quick. If we have a long duration of cool weather, the process is long and drawn out. We will start tasting grapes and taking random Brix samples in the vineyard. When it looks like the maturity rate is progressing, we will start bringing juice samples into the lab for analyses and continue to taste the grapes and monitor the vine health.  

From a sensory perspective, how do you know when a block of grapes is ready to pick?

The block is usually ready to pick when we see/taste seed maturity (brown seeds; lower astringency), skin maturity (skins are not astringent or bitter); acids are in balance and the grapes display good varietal and fruit flavors. We also look at the vine health – are they in a state where they will continue to ripen the grapes or are they done (yellowing leaves, etc)?

I just heard about Cambria becoming certified by the CCSW for sustainable practices, which is really exciting! Did the sustainability certification process greatly change your winemaking processes this harvest? 

Not really, because we had already taken some huge steps towards performing sustainable practices a few years ago.  This had included water conservation in the cellars; decreased use of electricity; and using less harmful chemicals for cleaning.  It will be an ever-evolving process, but it is something that we have become accustomed to.

 I love fall.

Last Saturday, after having eaten too much turkey on Thanksgiving, and too many leftovers the day after, my mom and I went on a hike. As we walked past vineyards and trees bright with autumn colors, I was blown away by how beautiful everything was. 

I love the way that even though it is already December, the trees are still flaming with beautiful fall colors, the burnished reds and maroons, delicate, fragile pinks, fiery oranges, bright golds, and soft yellows of autumn, as well as the stray remnants of lime green. I love the way the green clings to the edges of the leaves, and the way that a little green always remains in most leaves, long after the rest of them has changed color.

I love fall because it is the only time of the year where you can see so many colors all at once. I love it for its beauty, but mostly because it is full of gorgeous, dramatic changes. And even though the transformation ends in the bare skeleton of every tree and of the landscape, it still feels uplifting to me, as though every thing is being stripped down to its essence, the core that remains when everything else is taken away.

But most of all, now that we are in December, I love being reminded by the bright reds and greens that Christmas is just a few weeks away!

Early childhood memories

Riding in the back of my dad’s bicycle:

Playing with Marvin the cat:

The Halloween that my brother dressed up as a duck:

First learning the difference between Chardonnay and Pinot Noir at a Cambria meeting:

I was around five years old, and we had flown down to Santa Maria for a couple of days. My mom and dad let me hang out by the hotel swimming pool the first day instead of taking me to their meeting, because they probably knew that I would be bored. However, the second day that we were there they brought me to the last meeting, which ended in a tasting of Cambria wines.

This is what I remember:

We were seated at a long, dark wooden table whose surface was above my head, and the people in the meeting were looking at thick stacks of paper with colorful charts on them and lots of indecipherable writing. The room was dimly lit by fluorescent lights which were making me feel sleepy, and as I sat in my chair waiting for the adults to finish, I became more and more bored. To entertain myself, I started picking out all the letters that I could recognize on the wine labels, because I’d just been learning the alphabet in school. I remember thinking that the cursive script on the label was really pretty.

After going through all of their charts and figures, everyone started pouring wines to be tasted. My mom brought me over to the chair next to hers and asked if I wanted to learn what Chardonnay and Pinot Noir were. I said yes, so she picked out the one that she had named after me, the Katherine’s Vineyard Chardonnay, and the one named after my sister, the Julia’s Vineyard Pinot Noir. She carefully let me smell both the Chardonnay and the Pinot Noir, and then let me take a tiny taste of each one. I wanted to try the Pinot first, because somebody had mentioned strawberries and cherries when they had tasted it, and I loved both of those things. When I tried it, though, I didn’t notice cherry because I was too busy registering how weird it felt on my tongue.

I didn’t like it, and didn’t want to try the Chardonnay until my mom mentioned that it was named after me. “Look, there’s your name,” she told me, pointing at label, where “Katherine’s Vineyard” was written. I took a sip and immediately decided that I liked it a lot better. For one thing, when I put my nose into the glass, I noticed that it had a slight pineapple aroma. For the five-year-old version of me, this was a serious advantage, because I absolutely loved all things pineapple. For another thing, it had a rich, golden color that reminded me of pineapple too, but also made me think of liquid sunlight. When put up against a wine with the powerful combination of yellow coloring, pineapple aromas, and my name, the Pinot Noir didn’t stand a chance.

Twenty years later, I still tend to prefer Chardonnay to Pinot Noir, while my sister really likes Pinot. Is this coincidence, or does it all come down to having a personal connection with the wine because of its name? I’ll probably never know.