Just an update on the 2009 crop. First, this looks to be (potentially) a beautiful crop with lots of fruit and larger than normal clusters. Of course the last few weeks of weather will play the defining role in the vintage, but at least the potential is there for greatness.

The season started with bloom occurring on Jun 16th – 16 days earlier than 2008. We’ve had amazing cane growth all year – many canes are pushing ¾ of an inch in diameter and the canopy is lush and in beautiful shape. The factories that ripen the fruit (the leaf mass) is in great shape to do its job.

We did lag weights on August 2nd. “Lag” is a period of seed hardening where the energy of vine goes into lignifying the seeds, turning them from green and pulpy to hard and brown. Thus, the growth of the berries appears to “lag” for a week or 10 days. Lag probably occurred a bit before August 2nd since when I sampled clusters on that date, the seeds were uniformly hard.

In the 24 day period from August 2nd to August 26th the Pinot noir clusters grew 32%. Right now, we are assuming another 30% growth from August 26th to harvest which would put the growth from August 2nd to harvest at 72%. The old rule of thumb (though no one can point to any science on this) is that cluster weights should about double from lag to harvest.

Everyone tinkers with this multiplier, to some degree. The clusters started out large, maybe we were late with our lag measurements, etc. If we overestimate the “multiplier” we will end up with a small crop that started out big – not a happy outcome. If we underestimate the multiplier, we end up with too much crop and potentially impact quality. Yet with the canopy in great shape and the crop early, we think the risk of unripe fruit is very low. The bottom line is that for the vast majority of the vineyard, we are at one cluster per shoot, about as low as one can go in cropping the plant back since zero clusters per shoot does not make sense.

We are, on an acreage-weighted basis, at 59% color. Verasion (color change) is moving quickly and my guess is that by Tuesday, September 1st, we will be at 95%. The crew is making a pass through the vineyard today and tomorrow dropping clusters that are sunburned or lagging, a good time to get the fruit more uniform since the visual cue – percent of color change is not hard to miss.

We have 70 planted acres but we will harvest 58 acres this year since 12 acres were planted in 2008. If my forecasts are correct, we will average about 2.3 tons per acre for Pinot noir and 2.37 tons per acre overall.

That should bring in the Zenith crop at about 138 tons – up from 100 tons harvested last year – mainly due to growth in planted acreage but also due to greater yield per acre. 2008 was a small crop averaging 1.6 tons per acre for Pinot noir. Being the analyst-geek that I am, I calculated that this is 138 tons delivered an average of 19 miles with the longest deliveries being to downtown Portland and downtown Monroe (Broadley).

The crop is bigger than normal, but with the vines thinned back to one cluster per shoot through much of the vineyard Mother Nature just gave us big clusters. At this point I expect harvest to commence on about September 24th for the young vines and run through October 7th. Wish us luck for a safe and beautiful harvest!

Tim, the fruit looks great! Keep up the good work!

Matt

Tim,

Thank you for the fruit delivery yesterday.

Like last year your fruit was the best looking fruit of the day and in the running for the best looking fruit of the year!

Looks are only one thing though...

It taste great too...

I haven't run any numbers on it yet but from what my mouth tells me (The most important testing we have) is very pleasing.

See you bright and early tomorrow with the Pommard fruit

John Grochau

Thanks John, we'll be there!

Tim,

I just wanted to let you know that I will be draining all the Zenith Vineyard fermenters tomorrow through Tuesday.. The wines are lovely, once again they are some of my favorites of my 37 fermenters. I will be happy to put them to barrel so I can get some rest!

I hope things are working out well on your end.

Cheers,

John

Thanks John, can't wait to try them!