2001 Garys' Vineyard Pinot Noir

The Harvest
2001 has proven to be a classical vintage in my estimation. A warm spring and normal summer weather kept everything on an even keel. Beginning with a beautiful set in April and even vigor throughout the spring and into the summer made it easy for us to manage the site.  In late June, I did my usual cluster count and cluster weight evaluation and determined that we needed to drop fruit from two clusters to one cluster per shoot. We made our green harvest at the completion of veraison in mid July to keep fruit levels to one kilo per plant.

We began our harvest on September 18th at the top of our section and completed it on September 30th in the bottom of our section. Average sugars at harvest were 23.5 brix with acid levels at 8.4 grams per liter.  Ripe stems and seeds allowed us to once again proceed with 100 % whole cluster fermentation. This was exciting to see such beautiful fruit that would require very little on my part.

The Vineyard
Gary Pisoni first introduced me to Gary Franscioni in 1996.  A reserved man of quiet intensity, he shared the same desire to grow world class Pinot Noir. For all of Gary Pisoni’s boisterous passion, Gary Franscioni exhibited an understated confidence as a world-class grower.  Together they planted 42 acres of Pinot Noir taken from cuttings off the Pisoni vineyard and grafted to 3309 and 5C rootstock in what is known as Arroyo Seco sandy loam.  The vineyard site is just about 8 kilometers south of Sleepy Hollow Vineyard along the Santa Lucia bench of Monterey County in the heart of the Central Coast of California. Planted to a bi-lateral cordon vertical shoot positioned trellis on 6 X 8 spacing, and farmed to 35-40 hectoliters per hectare, both Garys’ are determined to produce the same quality of fruit that is produced at Pisoni Vineyard.

Most of our vineyard sites are significantly influenced by the relative proximity to the Pacific Ocean and Garys’ Vineyard is no exception. Often we will see fog lingering in the vineyard until late in the morning only to return in the late afternoon. This contributes to the slow evolution and the fairly high acid of our grapes, an essential component of our wines.

Production
In the vineyard we begin with triage however those on the back of the tractors cannot keep up with pickers and so we continue triage on our sorting table. I think it is critical that we get a very good look at all of the fruit we have harvested to make sure we haven’t missed anything in the vineyard. A simple rule is given to those who are on the sorting table, “If it doesn’t look good enough to put in your mouth do not put it in the fermenter". We spend an incredible amount of time here to make sure that we have clean ferments and I am always perplexed that so few of my colleagues spend very little time sorting there own fruit. Most just run and gun or dump and pump. After we have completed triage into the small cuves (4ft x 4ft x4ft) we will chill the juice to 6 degrees centigrade for 48 to 72 hours.

Using a controlled strain of yeast RC212 and nutrients if required, we begin the pigeage. To my mind this is the gentlest way to immerse the cap into the juice. Using the human body to mix up the now fermenting must and introduce oxygen to the yeast helps to keep the percentage of shearing of stems and crushing of seeds to a minimum. We also find it allows for excessive heat to blow off (peak cap temperature does not exceed 30 degrees centigrade).  Finally we press off just prior to completion of primary fermentation so as to get the still active warm wine directly into barrel. This helps to integrate the wood into the wine. The wine will finish primary and secondary over the next several months and remain on gross lees in elevage for 22 months before being bottled unfined, unfiltered. The finished wine will rest in bottle for an additional 14 months before release.

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