In March of 2004 I began work on a small vineyard in my backyard: about 750 square feet with 26 Syrah vines on Teleki 5C rootstock, which permits water budgeting to control the otherwise overly-vigorous Syrah vines. Because of the limited space, I went with a very tight spacing in a Vertical Shoot Positioning (VSP) trellis system: 4 feet between both vines and rows. The rows run north-south to maximize insolation, and I hedge the canopy at 7 feet to avoid having the vines shade each other. This means that when the vines are fully grown, each row is a seven-foot wall of foliage that’s less than one foot deep. And, I pull leaves off at the bottom to both increase air flow around and sunlight on the grape clusters to promote ripening and prevent mildew, and increase sunlight on the basal buds that will create next year’s shoots and crop.

Forest Pool Vineyard, Fall 2007

Syrah, a Rhone Vally varietal, generally requires a hotter climate than obtains in the Santa Cruz Mountains, but growing it in a cooler environment can help develop a much more complex flavor, at the risk of not having enough of a growing season to fully ripen the grapes. This year, the fourth year of growth and the first in which I permitted the vines to develop grape clusters, October was ushered in by a series of rainstorms and cool weather, but the prospects were looking good, for the forecast promised at least another week or two of Indian Summer: ideal for letting the grapes hang and slowly dessicate and concentrate their flavors. The good folks at Fermentation Solutions, whose advice and hand-holding have helped immensely in the run-up to my first harvest, recommended I hold off, since Syrah is not prone to bunch rot from late season rains.

Syrah grapes ripening

But the forest critters had discovered the ripening grapes, and this morning I found yet another vine stripped despite the bird netting—probably a raccoon. (Next year I’ll buy better quality netting, rather than the cheap hardware-store variety I tried to make do with.) I didn’t want to risk losing the entire harvest; as it was, I was now down to much less than 50% of the potential harvest for this year. So, despite a refractometer reading of only 19.8° Brix (sugar level) rather than the 23° to 25° Brix that would be ideal, I decided it was time to harvest and crush. I went down to the Seven Bridges Cooperative in Santa Cruz and rented a manual crusher/destemmer. When I got back, we got to work.

Harvest Day, 2:30 PM: Deborah picking grapes

An hour later we had four buckets of grapes: less than fifty pounds. Once the vineyard is in full production, and I’ve figured out how to discourage four-legged grape thieves (probably an electric fence), we should get more on the order of 300 pounds.

Harvest Day, 3:30 PM: Unsorted grapes

An hour more, spent removing shot grapes (little green, undeveloped ones) and raisined or badly damaged ones, we had about 43 pounds of grapes ready for the crush. With more grapes, we wouldn’t sort quite so carefully, instead just looking for obvious problems like mold.

Harvest Day, 4:30 PM: Sorted grapes

From thence I repaired to the winery (i.e., the garage), while Deborah went inside to lie down and nurse her aching back, which had been stressed by the sorting process. This room is fairly cool most of the year, which makes it ideal for winemaking.

Harvest Day, 4:30 PM: The Redwood Dragon Winery production facility

I dumped the grapes into the hopper, and began turning the crank. The grapes are pushed down between two rollers (the crusher) by a couple of paddles. Then, inside the long box on the bottom, more paddles push the crushed bunches against a half cylinder with holes in it (the destemmer). The grapes separate (mostly) from the stems and drop through into the chute, while the stems come out the opposite end.

Harvest Day, 6:00 PM: The crush begins

Although the grapes went through the crusher/destemmer in in just a couple of minutes, it took a while longer to clean out all the places where grapes had stuck inside the machine. Now I had a little over 4 gallons of must: crushed grapes with a few stems in them. I picked more stems out manually, and then was ready to move on to chemical analysis. As I was able to crush into the primary fermenter (because I had so few grapes), I didn’t need to transfer the must to a new container.

Harvest Day, 6:30 PM: 4+ gallons of must, minus stems

Now I added 1.3 grams of potassium metabisulfite to sanitize the must. Meta, as it’s called, generates sulfur dioxide when mixed with water, which “stuns” the wild yeast and other undesirable microorganisms into inactivity. Otherwise, all sorts of off odors and flavors can develop. I was a little disturbed when the must turned an icky olive-green color at this point.

I then ladled out enough must to fill the hydrometer tube, and left it to settle for a few hours before making a more precise Brix reading than is possible with the refractometer I was using before harvest. (The presence of suspended solids will bias the Brix reading.) Using the hydrometer I could accurately adjust the sugar level to an appropriate level, which was necessary since I harvested before the grapes were fully ripe. This is not legal in California commercial wineries, but not uncommon in France, especially in Burgundy.)

Harvest Day, 9:30 PM: Measuring sugar level (21.0° Brix)

At 21° Brix, I needed to add about a pound of sugar (ordinary cane sugar works fine) to bring the sugar level up to about 23.5°. (The fancy word for this process is chaptalization.) I did so, mixed it up well with a giant stainless steel potato masher, and then put the top on the primary fermenter and put it to bed for the night.

Tomorrow: the marriage of yeast and must!