Winemaker's Journal

April

Juan Cordova, Napa Valley Cellar, hand corks a three liter bottle.

April is a crucial month in the life of a winery. After a winter of dormancy, our vines show their first signs of growth, as tiny buds and tender shoots emerge from the canes. It’s exciting to witness the start of another growing season but we are also a little nervous because on any given night our vineyard crew might have to fight a frost that threatens to destroy most of our crop. By the end of the month, judging by the exposed and elongated flower clusters, we will have our first sense of the size of the 2008 crop.

With last year’s wines safely tucked away in barrels, April is a time when we begin the bottling of an earlier vintage, in this case the 2004.

Bottling is a highly technical process and requires constant attention to quality control. Our staff is meticulous in assuring that every bottle meets our rigorous specifications. We are vigilant about avoiding any cork taint, or “corkiness,” which is caused by 2,4,6- trichloroanisole (tca), a by-product of improperly aging and processing cork. Although there is no health risk from it, humans can detect the moldy basement smell of tca at a threshold of just three parts per trillion! We inspect every batch of 10,000 corks by soaking 50 of them in a neutral white wine for 24 hours. If we detect any tca or other off aromas, we reject the entire batch. We also inspect the corks visually, analyze them chemically, and test them for proper moisture and coating. Every cork that goes into our large format bottles is individually evaluated prior to bottling. We are very proud of the attention to detail by our Silver Oak staff and the quality package they produce.

So, in the vineyard April is a month of beginning, and in the winery it is a time of closure. The cycles balance themselves as always.