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 By Anjie Park
On a particularly hot afternoon, he sits in his pickup truck on the dirt road by the vineyard, looking out over 300 acres of grapevines. He looks up and sees the birds gathering on the telephone wires and thinks to himself, “It’s getting close.” |
2005 Autumn Home Page |
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Every year at this time the starlings and linnets show up to proclaim that sugar levels in the grapes are rising and they’re ready for a free lunch. Louis Lucas and his vineyard crew get the nets out and cover the vines so that they’ve got grapes left to pick in a few weeks.Left to their own devices, birds can devour the entire crop. Louis has spent the whole year nurturing these vines, feeding them, watering them, pulling off useless suckers, and keeping the bugs at bay, in hopes that his efforts will produce grapes worthy enough to bottle under the name that he is proud of. Harvest, which the French call “vendage” and Californians refer to as “crush,” is an exciting, hectic, and exhausting time of year in the vineyards. Louis’ days are occupied with making sure his tractors are in working order, counting his bins, checking his winery tanks, cleaning his barrels, tasting his maturing grapes, and hiring enough workers to reap this year’s bounty. He is keeping a close watch on Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Grigio, and Pinot Noir since they will be ready to pick earlier than Cabernet Sauvignon, which is typically harvested around late October. Like most of the smaller boutique wineries, Lucas & Lewellen hand-picks their grapes, a slow and painstaking process which ensures a higher quality selection. The “big boys,” with their miles of vineyards, usually choose to machine-pick, which is much more cost-effective but may sacrifice quality. A machine doesn’t know which cluster to pick and which to leave behind and it’s not polite to talk about the non-grape “things” which end up in machine-picked bins. A farmer knows that it’s time to pick when sugars, acid levels, and flavors in the grape are right. In a perfect world, they come into balance at the same time to produce fruit that will inspire the winemaker. In the real world, the weather varies from year to year and every year the crop is different. Very hot summers can produce grapes that are high in sugar but do not taste good and cooler summers can produce grapes that won’t mature. Although it’s rarely permitted under United States federal law, many European winemakers in cooler regions lean on a process called “chaptalization,” in which they add sugar before fermentation to feed the wine yeast which produces alcohol. This year’s torrential spring rains and warm summer days are producing grapes which vary in quality from varietal to varietal but Louis will reserve judgment until he gets his grapes to the winery for crushing. In general, white wine grapes will be crushed and the juice will be put into tanks or barrels to ferment without the skins. In red wines, the grapes are crushed and the juice is put into tanks with grape skins, giving red wine its color. After a few weeks of fermentation, red wines go into barrels and are left to age until the winemaker determines that they’re ready . Louis has been growing grapes for 40 years and he still loves the harvest season, a time when the air is crisp with the smell of fresh grapes, the winery is buzzing with excitement, and tasting-room staff waits anxiously for his relieved smile and the pronouncement, “It’s been a great harvest! Just wait until you taste...” |
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Copyright 2005, Inside Santa Ynez Valley Magazine, All Rights Reserved |
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