Tolosa Winery

Harvest Update: Summer to Fall

Mellow weekend here. I was out of the winery by noon both days and had time on Sunday to cook the cellar crew breakfast, chilliquiles with fresh salsa. There is no more appreciative audience for a late breakfast than a crew that has been working since 5:00 am. Sunday, when we typically don't bring any fruit in is the only day when it's practical to cook breakfast as there are only 8-10 folks working including the lab staff. This weekend was for me the break between summer and fall. While the equinox may have been two weeks ago, fall really began this weekend with the first cold nights and cool windy days. The ripening will now slow dramatically as the vines are getting the signal from the cold nights that it's time to pack it in. The only fruit still on the vine are the Syrah and Grenache blocks. I'll probably bring in the fruit for rose a bit earlier than the red wine picks.
All of the Pinot is down to barrel. It looks very nice - a bit like '06 looked at this stage with dark colors and above average tannins. The first barrels of Chardonnay are dry and are being topped up. The later Chardonnay both barrel and tank are still fermenting. It looks good so far. The only wine that is truly done at this point is Pinot Gris. I've racked it off its fermentation lees and added some SO2. It's pale as platinum and very tasty.
The next week or two will be fairly easy, some vineyard sampling and fermentation monitoring and then there'll be another couple weeks of fermenting the Syrah and another vintage will be "in the barn"
-Larry

Harvesting the Sauvignon Blanc

I pulled the Sauvignon Blanc in yesterday. While this is a very limited production wine for us, it is a wine that I really like personally, and a wine that responds to both vineyard and winemaker input.
Most of the work in the vineyard that effects flavor in this wine happens early. You have to take almost all of the leaves out of the fruit zone so that you get direct light on the clusters. This lessens the amount of bell pepper character in the fruit. We also had some weak areas in this block due to spring frosts so we had to go through and remove the fruit from the weaker shoots.
Once the vines have been set up it's a matter of constant and careful tasting of the fruit until the flavors peak. I watch the analysis of the fruit for basic ripeness, but the final decision is based almost entirely on walking up and down the vine rows pulling berries off and tasting them. I am looking for a flavor that is quite similar to a ripe green fig. It is fruity, but has a musky element to it as well. I found that flavor in many berries when I was tasting two days ago, so we picked yesterday. We had a light schedule in the cellar so I used a "champagne" style press regime. This is the gentlest form of pressing, but it takes forever so you can only execute it on a slow day. The resulting juice besides having the flavors I was looking for also had perfect numbers in terms of sugar acid and pH. This is a rare and happy confluence when both flavor and sugar ripeness arrive simultaneously. It should make a very nice wine.

-Larry Brooks

The First Relief of the 2009 Harvest...

Things have settled into a smooth enough groove now to talk about the early part of this harvest. It started off with a bang. That's for sure. Six of the eight days beginning August 27th were unseasonably hot with a few of them record breakers. This pushed all of the Pinot to high sugars as well as quite a few of the Chardonnay blocks. We began getting the Pinots off on Sept. 2nd when we saw that the sugars were not going back down again and the dehydration of the berries was in danger of pushing them towards raisins. There is always a nerve racking period between when the fruit comes in and when you taste the first new wine. This is because the decision to harvest and the choice of fermentation technique is irreversible, yet you don't know if your choices were correct until you can taste the first wine 8-10 days later.  Until you get your first completed fermentation you don't really know for sure if the decisions you've made are correct. This year was doubly unnerving because such a high percentage of the fruit had to come in very quickly. In a normal vintage the earliest picks will be small and a week to two ahead of the main picking so you get a little preview as it were. This vintage was more of an all or nothing situation. Last night and this morning we drained the new wine off the earliest picks and it is with some relief that I found the wines to be dark, flavorful and well extracted with tannin. It was not what I expected from this vintage, but I am happy at the result.
More than half of the Chardonnay has come in as well. It has been pressed settled and moved to respective barrels and tanks for its fermentation. It's very hard to tell much about Chardonnay quality at this early point. You can tell if it's bad, which this year is not. But, you can't really tell how good it is until sometime much later. January- February at the earliest and sometimes not until you've got it bottled. Chardonnay is far more coy than red wine, which reveals itself much earlier for better or worse.

Cheers and we'll be in touch through the next stages of Harvest 2009...
-Larry Brooks
 

Tolosa Solar Slide Show

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Night Harvesting Pinot Noir

Here is a slide show of the night crew harvesting our 2009 Pinot Noir from Block 596 located in our Edna Ranch East Vineyards. This was the second night of harvesting, which is done at night because it's much cooler and helps keep the sugars from rising after being harvested.  There are also some sunrise shots of the vineyards of Edna Ranch and the sun coming up over our beautiful Edna Valley! It's definitely going to be another hot day here, which is unusual so its a good thing we have the ability to pick at night. Enjoy!

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Olfaction Seminar at Tolosa

Tolosa hosted a unique week long seminar geared towards winemakers a week or so ago. It was taught by Alexandre Schmitt, a perfumer who has worked for the last eight years using his skills as a perfumer to systematize and standardize descriptions of the aromas of wine. Twenty four local winemakers attended. There were five three hour sessions. While there was a bit of classical lecturing almost the entirety of the class was taken up by smelling and describing different compounds and extracts. Alexandre would soak small paper strips with a bit of the material to be smelled. We would be given a few minutes to smell it and then be asked to describe it in detail. Even if you recognized the scent you would be asked to describe, not name it. Curiously few of the winemakers could identify aromas blind. In the case of hop essence for example, the central aroma of beer, only one winemaker out of the twenty four could name it. More common spice and fruit essences could be named by four of five winemakers maximum.
One of the more curious phenomena was how a single molecule could evoke very complex descriptions. Here are descriptions for three aromas;
Triplal (an artificial molecule - invented by man - not found in nature) very fresh, leafy, sweet, wet grass, hint green pepper, mint, tomato leaf, resin, radish, earthy
Geosmin ( a synthetic molecule - found in nature but made by man) green, some solvent, fresh beets, earthy, dusty, humus, dry without woodiness, tanky or stale
Distilled violet leaves (a natural product used in perfumery) warm, earthy, sweet, pipe tobacco, tar vanilla, cooked, dried hay, pleasant
It is extremely interesting how a single molecule such as the Triplal and the Geosmin can evoke the same sort of complex associations and descriptors that the distilled violet leaves evoke which is composed of hundreds of compounds. You would think that the single molecules would have simpler descriptions than the complex mix of a natural product but it's just not the case. In some way the single molecules were more intriguing and mysterious to smell.
Alexandre also pointed out that it is extremely important to separate the smells of personal association or memory which he called syncritical from the objective description of aroma which he called analytical. When I wrote a couple weeks ago about the sometimes humorous descriptors winemakers use - those were the outermost limits of the syncritcal.
At the end of the week most of the winemakers agreed that it was one of the most valuable and exhausting seminars they had ever participated in.
-LB

Baroque language winemakers can use to describe flavor...

I was recently at a winemaker-only Pinot Noir conference. In a situation like this where you don't have to worry about embarrassing yourself the verbiage used to describe flavor can get pretty out there. I don't mean to make fun, because it is very difficult to describe flavor accurately with words, and like it or not it's part of our job. But sometimes it gets a bit over the top. Here's some particular gems that I wrote down. I'm offering a bottle of the 2006 Beyond Pinot to whoever can tell me which two were said by yours truly. A bonus bottle of 2006 1772 Pinot to whomever guesses the one describing the 2008 Tolosa wine.
"Vile, but not in a bad way."
"This wine has too many clothes on. You can't see the body at all."
"Interior of a hardware store."
"Like barfed up mint julep."
"Is this a philosophy thing?"
"I like the pieces, but don't like the package."
"This wine smells expensive."
"Score whore of a wine."
"Smells like a tour through the sawmill."
"One dimension away from being really good."
"Threadbare tannins."
"This wine I consider like a wild son."
"Wearing its sulphides lightly."
"I enjoyed the wine, I just didn't like it"
"I think this wine's name is Violet, and I want to take her out dancing all night."

Yours Truley, Larry Brooks

Chardonnay Blendings with LB

Here is a great video that goes through the steps of creating our different chardonnay's. Here at Tolosa we do 4 different types of chardonnay and of those different types we have hundreds of tanks and barrels that the wine is chosen from. It's a in depth process and to break it down we've created this short video with winemaker Larry Brooks.

 Download Blending Chardonnay - Medium

If you are having problems downloading you can also view the video on Tolosa's  YouTube.   

Surveying 2008 Wines

     
On Friday January 23rd, a group of us surveyed the '08 Pinot Noir lots. This is the first step   towards making blend decisions for the Tolosa brand wines. At this stage we simply break down the wines into three categories, A- Estate or above, B – “SLO” quality, and C - bulk wine. This accomplishes two things. It gets the bulk wines out of the way and also gives us guidelines for the actual blending tastings which we will start in another week or two towards the goal of having the basic blends made in late February. The important thing about making blends early is that it allows the aroma of the wine to begin developing. As usual we will be barrel selecting as well once we get our blend lots decided.
We also tasted the '08 No Oak Chardonnay tanks. This was just a routine tasting to make sure that they were developing correctly in the tank - they were. We won't be blending that wine for a while yet. We'll keep you up-to-date in late February & March on the progression of the 2008 wines.
Best, Larry Brooks- Winemaker

Vintner's Holiday in Yosemite

 

Tolosa Winery was happy to participate in the first session of the 2008 Yosemite Vintner's Holidays.  November 2nd-4th Winemaker Larry Brooks, Brittney Blete (Tasting Room & Wine Club Manager) and I made the trip to Yosemite in one of the most beautiful times of the year! The event which has dated back many years, choses different wineries to participate in a 3 day event at the Ahwahnee Hotel. We were part of the first session which included Tolosa Winery, Talbott Vineyards, Robert Mondavi Winery and Corison Winery. Larry conducted a great seminar on "Deconstructing Chardonnay Quality", where he described the techniques that have been used in the past compared to what is used in modern day. With Larry conducting his 31 harvest this year he has a lot of experience in how Chardonnay production has evolved. If you are interested in more information on this you can email lmbrooks@tolosawinery.com. 
The series ends with amazing five course dinner in the Ahwahnee Dinning Room, and I have to say it was an meal not to be forgotten! Tolosa 2006 "1772" Pinot Noir was paired with Crispy Veal Sweetbreads with Spinach, Apple Butter & Natural Reduction. Yes, it is not your typical pairing but was very tasty.

If you have a chance to attend one of this year's Vintner's Holiday, you will definately not be let down. Besides the wine and food you have 3 days to explore beautiful Yosemite!  For more information visit the Yosemite Park website.

We hope Tolosa will be chosen in years to come, as it was a great honor!

Cheers- Katie Noonan