Groth Cellar Reports
Meanderings in the Cellar
By Sir Lee
Summer 2009
“Summertime and the livin’ is easy” Porgy and Bess, George and Ira Gershwin
Well, not quite. Not quite summertime and not quite easy!
Summertime – not necessarily. The weather this summer has been unusually cool delaying the development of the grapes somewhat. Usually a delay now results delays later – later veraison, later ripening, later picking. Of course, we are always wary of these types of delays because they can put us late into the season where we are susceptible to the dreaded “harvest rain”. We have been very fortunate in the recent past because we have not had any major rain events during harvest since the infamous 1989 harvest. So it has not been our normal summer and the living has been somewhat uneasy. However, the upside of this is that we had generally great weather during flowering so we have a good crop hanging and we could catch up with some warmer weather.
Easy – not necessarily. We have had our bottling schedule disrupted a bit due to some supplier issues but these issues are easy to deal with. Fortunately, we have many great long-term vendors who always take care of us when run into these little problems. In the cellar we are bottling 2008 Chardonnay, 2007 Oakville Cabernet and 2007 Reserve Cabernet. We are re also receiving and prepping new barrels for our Chardonnay and Reserve Cabernet. Unlike the old days when we used large quantities of water and chlorine we now use only minimum quantities of purified hot water to ready our barrels for the new wines. The presses have been checked over, the forklifts serviced and all of the bins cleaned. We are ready whenever the grapes are.
I predict a harvest starting with a little Sauvignon Blanc in late August (enough to get the cobwebs out of both the equipment and our brains!) with a major push starting the second week in September, finishing by the first week in November. Anyone for a little wager?
(If so, keep in mind that I call the harvest and I have all the cards from the deck in my possession…)
