Daily Decisions

A Harvest Diary

Thursday September 26th and the very cold foggy conditions continue. When I awoke this morning the fog was so wet it sounded like rain on the roof. A weather pattern like this definitely puts the ripening of the fruit on pause. The Pinot Noir went down to barrel today. Deciding which barrels to use for any given wine involves a bit of guesswork. The denser the wine the more new oak barrels it takes as a percentage of the whole to make any flavor impact. A very light Pinot might need no more than 20% new oak, while a very dark brooding one could absorb 50% or more without harm. This Pinot Noir is dark but not exceptionally so. I decide on 25% new oak - Francois Frere three year stave age tight grain with medium plus toast. There are many good cooperages that will work with Pinot Noir, but the FF remains my favorite. I’ve also found them to add a bit of sweetness to vintages like this that are cooler and less ripe tasting. More importantly this wine will get 50% once filled barrels. These once used barrels have the best flavor and aromatics - I consider them to be tastier than new barrels. They lift the aromatics without influencing the texture too much. Wines that I am particularly fond of go into a high percentage of once filled barrels. The balance goes into a third fill barrel which is essentially neutral. The truth is you don’t really know how a given vintage will take oak until early the following year. At that point you can adjust by moving the wine from its initial barrels into more or fewer newer oak barrels to fine tune the oak expression.