Our earliest blocks of Pinot Noir are in bloom this week. Grapes are no different than other plants, and their fruits are the product of flowers. The grape flowers are tiny, but nonetheless have a sweet aroma that can be detected by putting your nose right up against the cluster during flowering. Once you are acquainted with the perfume you can smell them quite easily from quite a distance on a warm day. I can tell when bloom begins in a given vineyard well before I'm close enough to actually see the blossoms. This is the real start of the vintage as far as I'm concerned, because shortly after bloom the berries which will make this year's wine start forming. The period from bloom to harvest is also the time period whose length is least variable. Traditional wisdom says 100 days from bloom to harvest, but my experience tells me that it is closer to 120 days most years. So for Pinot Noir for 2009 I can say with reasonable certainty that we will do our first harvesting on or about the 10th of September. You can also see variation within the vineyard at this time of year so it is important to visit all the blocks and see how evenly they are going through bloom as this will tell you whether or not the ripening will be uniform within the blocks and also between the blocks.
- Larry Brooks


