Winemaker's Journal
February
Vineyard pruning is crucial for next year's growth. I remember in a college biology class finding out that the twilight is called the animal change period when the daytime animals go back to their dens and the nocturnal animals come out. February is the equivalent of twilight for barrels. Let’s call it the vintage change period.
It seems simple enough to move the 2007 out of barrel and put the 2009 in, but it’s really quite complicated. The first step is to blend the 2009. We don’t have a tank large enough for the full vintage, so getting a homogenous blend involves a bit of algebra and some strategic planning. You know when the kids ask, “when will I ever use this math?” – well here’s a good example. Taking 30 or more tanks of different components and combining them to make one blend in those some 30 tanks is quite a challenge.
Once the blend is made, we can start filling barrels, that is when there is space. There isn’t room in the cellar for three vintages at the same time, so some of the 2007 has to come out, the barrels removed and new barrels put in their place for the 2009. (The third vintage, the 2008 stays put.) Then we can move some of the 2009 from tank to barrel, which creates room for more 2007 and so on.
In Napa we can accomplish this feat in about a month. In Alexander, we will have all of the 2007 out of barrel by the end of the month, but it will probably be into March before all the 2009 is resting comfortably in barrel. After a lot of hard work and logistics all the 2009 barrels are resting in their cozy dens and the 2007 is ready for bottling and a second phase of aging in bottle before release in 2011 and 2012.
