Cameron Winery -- sustainably farmed, non-irrigated, Oregon pinot noir and chardonnay

But the good news is that our Pinot noir will be available to taste at the Ponzi Tasting Room and Wine Bar in Dundee.

Newly grafted Pinot noir canes at Cameron Winery

In the late 19th century when the European wine industry was literally imploding due to a little root louse called Phylloxera, many vignerons fled to South America and California. Fortunately for those who stayed, a viable solution was discovered and the vineyards were eventually saved.

The answer was found associated with the source of the infection, which started when native North American grape vines were imported to the culture collection in Montpillier, France. Phylloxera rode along as a contaminant on the roots of those vines but soon escaped to begin its devastation of the vineyards of France and elsewhere But since the host vines had adapted to the little insects, the solution was found in the host vines themselves.

It turns out that European grape vines (Vitis vinifera) can be attached to the roots of North American grape vines. Over the last 100+ years, as you might imagine, a large number of North American cultivars of “rootstock” have been made by crossing various genotypes (that is plants of unique genetic character). While all of these are resistant to phylloxera to a greater or lesser extent, other aspects have also been selected for. These include drought tolerance, resistance to other parasites, root depth and so on.

Since phylloxera eventually hitched a ride from Europe to the West Coast of North America, these rootstocks are as essential to the vineyards of California and Oregon as they are to Europe. In all these viticultural areas, many vignerons have learned how  to join the scion (the part that provides the aerial part of the plant) to the root stock in a process known as “grafting”. Since the vineyards at Cameron contain a huge inventory of different clones of Pinot noir and Chardonnay as well as many Italian varieties, the only viable solution to expanding or replacing sections of the vineyard is to graft the vines ourselves. At first I thought “well, this isn’t rocket science” but after my first gallant attempts, I had to adjust that cogitation.

There are so many steps in the process of a critical nature that the overall success rate can often be quite small. From lining up the appropriate sizes of root stock and scion to getting the moisture correct in the perlite where callusing occurs to the temperature of the callus box to dipping the callused vines in wax at the perfect temperature to rooting in potting soil and so on. At the end of the process, one hopes to see a greenhouse full of little green shoots popping out of tiny grape vines.

Pinot Noir vines three weeks after grafting

Newly grafted vines hanging out in the greenhouse

Bud break just happened in Clos Electrique vineyard, and our friend Jeremy Fenske was there to capture it. Take a look:

Fois & Gras enjoy a spring walk in the Clos Electrique

It is said that healthy farms maintain a balance between plants and animals.  Plants obviously provide a direct nutritional source for herbivorous animals and insects.  But animals also provide crucial input into the plant biosphere as well.

Here at Cameron Winery, chicken tractors chug up and down the vineyard rows providing potent nourishment to the vines.  The fowl scratch up the soil and defecate their offerings in a ritual which requires moving the tractors once a day.  Goats mow down competing blackberries and the barn in which they reside is cleaned out every two weeks and the enriched straw added to the compost pile.

Our hives of honey bees pollinate the array of nutrimental plants in the vineyard, allowing them to efficiently reseed themselves. The geese…well let’s be honest here…don’t do anything but they do provide comic relief which is a form of health in its own right!

Our compost piles which are constructed from wine pressings, chipped up vineyard prunings and animal waste (mentioned above) provide not only potent nutrition to the vineyard but a viable colony of earth worms as well.

In the end we provide a largely “closed system” which requires minimal input of nutrition from outside the system.  This is in essence the definition of “sustainable.”

Pruning the vineyard is generally considered the least enviable of tasks.  Since it necessarily occurs in the winter when vines are dormant, pruning in Oregon is associated with cold, wet, muddy conditions.  There is not a glove invented that will keep your 10 digits warm throughout the day.

So it is no surprise that in many vineyards, pruning is generally delegated down the economic ladder to its lowest rungs.  And yet Teri and I with our higher degrees and Tom and Dan with accumulated expertise as sommeliers and in all things pertaining to the cellar happily don rain gear and muck boots and trudge out to the vineyard nearly every day this time of year.  Actually the word “happily” might be a tad too positive on many days, perhaps best replaced by “determined”!

Removing last year’s main cane (photo by Jeremy Fenske)

I think that pruning is one of the most important tasks that we accomplish each year in the vineyard:  it allows us to mechanically separate the weak vines from their stronger neighbors, pruning each according to its vitality.  Days and weeks out there with the vines allow a slow, methodical survey of the vigor of the vineyard, helping us to identify areas that might need additional compost or specific cover crops.  Specific clones will tell you this time of year whether they were pruned and trained correctly last year or whether different methods need to be tried this time around.

There is a wealth of information sitting out there if one takes the time to access it.  It is no lie that great wine is made in the vineyard and I noted early on that when I traveled to Burgundy to visit notable small domains, I was as likely to find “the man” out in the vineyard as in the cellar.

(And for a meditative analysis of pruning, please see last year’s post on “the zen of pruning”)

As the last clusters of grapes rattled through the destemmer and precious berries rolled down the shoot into the fermenting vessel, we all breathed a sigh of relief: la fin de la vendange, the end of harvest.  Though in reality this signaled only the finish of work in the vineyard;  the work in the cellar continues unabated.

Satisfied winemaker

Red ferments are monitored and the cap (skins that rise to the surface of the tank) are punched down into the frothy, ebullient must (fermenting wine).  Juice recently pressed from white grapes is allowed to settle its sediment in stainless steel tanks for a few days and is then racked (moved) to barrels.  In most cases the yeasts emanate from the skins of the grapes, the source of fermentation therefore being the vineyard from whence the fruit comes. As red wines finish fermenting, they are pressed to tanks for a few days of settling before being “barreled down”  (racked to 220 liter oak barrels).  And as the white wines approach the end of fermentation, they are topped up and will slowly finish as the cellar heads to winter.
On a quiet day with no other activity happening around the winery, the cellar is a magical place to be.  Fermentation locks on the tops of all of the barrels gurgle and sing to each other throughout the dimly lit subterranean chamber.  Aromas waft by…at one moment grapefruit rind from a white ferment, at another leather and blackberry from a red.
I find myself smiling.  Another vintage under my belt;  I have lost track of how many, but in a world that lives on comparisons and analogies, I know that this is one is special.

Vinny, the newest addition to the Cameron menagerie

The End Game
Late September here in Oregon signifies the final stages of ripening.  The red grapes have turned black (perhaps thats why the French call it Pinot black!) and the white grapes are starting to gain a yellow hue.   These are sun-induced changes that protect the grapes from sun-burning which is essentially solar oxidation.
In red grapes these protective compounds are called anthocyanins and they absorb light in different parts of the spectrum.  Pinot noir in particular tends to produce anthocyanins that absorb predominantly in the blue part  of the spectrum (short wavelength) and therefore make wines that are very red in color (that is, they bounce back to your eyes that part of the spectrum which they do not absorb).
White grapes and particularly Chardonnay produce quercitin as an antioxidant.  Quercetin is responsible for the yellow hue in the wine.  These compounds that the grapes are currently synthesizing to protect themselves from oxidation will extract into the wines and will also protect you from oxidants in your environment.
Other changes are also afoot in the grapes.  Components which the yeast will turn into volatile flavor components are being synthesized.  Phenolic components, in addition to the anthocyanins, are being synthesized as further antioxidants.  Acidity is starting to drop though it is still quite high at this point.
And of course sucrose (what we call table sugar) is cascading down the vascular system from the leaf canopy.  When it arrives at the berry, the grapes have devised a very clever system for pushing it into the berry against an increasing concentration of sugar within.  It simply breaks the sucrose into 2 pieces (“hydrolysis”) as it enters the berry, thus effectively producing a different looking substance than what is outside.  It thus essentially maintains a gradient for sucrose to flow into the berry.
I like to think at this time of year that the grapes are truly working for me, synthesizing things that will smell good and taste good, once the yeasts enter into the equation.

Clos Electrique Veraison August 21 2012

But of course the French have a noun for the time at which the grapes start to turn from green to red.

Veraison in Clos Electrique Pinot noir

The grapes’ susceptibility to mildew begins to drop significantly at this point, which means that applications of chemicals meant to prevent mildew (such as sulfur and copper) can now cease.  Physiologically at véraison the very important plant hormones called “giberellins” begin to drop precipitously.

Why should the winemaker care at all about this phenomenon? Giberellins stimulate cell elongation, which is how the berries increase in size from tiny BBs to their current size.  When the giberellins drop, cell elongation ceases which means that berry size is now set.  Traditionally this is therefore the time to start dropping excess crop.

At this point the prize goes to the patient viticulturist:  as véraison  proceeds it soon becomes obvious which clusters are the furthest ahead in the ripening which allows one to selectively drop less ripe (green) clusters.   And perhaps in the end the most important aspect of veraison is that it is a metaphor for “light at the end of the tunnel”.  Harvest is now within sight for the optimist, while for the pessimist it is the light of an oncoming train bringing rain, rot and calamities!

#1 K Clone DriveK Clone Drive

Many years ago Carmen and Enrique stopped at our winery in Dundee looking for a place to live.  In return they promised to rid the premises of mosquitos and other flying insects.  Sensing a deal that we could not refuse, they were offered habitation beneath the tiles overhanging our front porch. Carmen and Enrique prospered, raised a family and then one day in late July of that year they suddenly disappeared, all of them.  Life went on and we more or less forgot about our feathered friends until the following March when they suddenly reappeared together with family seeking habitation in their old quarters.  But where they were once two, now they were 4 and additional housing was necessary.  An A-frame house was hung from a sheltered side of the winery and the young couple moved in.  Again they graced our presence for the next 4 months and then just as suddenly as they had reappeared in March, they disappeared in July.  Since they never considered a simple postcard, we were forced to do some sleuthing (in the era before internet which meant going to the library and checking out books).  We soon discovered that Carmen, Enrique and family were of the clan Violet-Green and, as such, they make their winter home in Central America and in their case, Costa Rica.  That’s a distance of 4300 miles and while we can get there in approximately 7 hours when traveling at 500 mph on a commercial jet, Carmen, Enrique and family fly at around 20-25 mph with stops for rest and sustenance along the way.  Over the years we have built a number of houses for our Central American guests and they are now considered “family”.  In early March of each year in anticipation of their arrival, we clean out the houses and ready them for the big arrival.  Generally within a day or 2 of the Spring Equinox the entire extended family shows up, making several victory laps around the winery while announcing their arrival.  For many weeks they dine on whatever is available and generally hang out, but at a certain point in May pairing up and nest building begins in earnest.  And that’s when the fun begins and where humans can lend a hand.  Since the geese at this point are shedding their winter down, plenty of nesting material is suddenly available for the swallows.  Thus if one picks up the discarded down and tosses it into the air, chances are pretty good that the swallows will soon discover the game and begin swooping down and picking the feathers out of the air.  The down then finds its way into the many nesting houses hosted by the vineyard.  By early July the rapidly-growing young swallows are pretty much driving their parents existence, the latter snapping up insects and returning to the nest to feed them to the incessantly chirping babies. But at some point, usually around mid-July, the parents start teasing the youngsters, returning more slowly, flying around in front of the nest before coming in and generally coaxing the babies to stick their heads out and check it out.  On the big day, the greater community of swallows might be seen flying around in front of the nest calling to the babies.  I have only seen them jump out of the nesting box twice but what a sight it was:  a long way down to the ground (with Guido in the area just in case of a screw up) and the youngster finally launching himself out of the box, flapping wildly, pausing and dropping like a rock, flapping wildly again  and finally getting the hang of it all.  Once all of the new flock are launched, the clan gathers together and one day they are gone.  And so it was this past week, the last week of July, and how quiet it is all of a sudden.  Our pals are gone, not to return until next Spring.

Clos Electrique Pinot noir flowers

For the last two years, spring in the Willamette Valley has been cool and wet, meaning that flowering has occurred extremely late.  This, in turn, has led to very late, stressful harvests.  So it is with absolute joy that we can announce the advent of flowering here in mid June 2012!  The first flowers appeared on June 17th and we expect the process to take at least a week – with alternating warm and cool periods accelerating and slowing the process respectively.  Extended periods of flowering such as this can give rise to exceptional vintages (all other factors considered) since it leads to a range of ripeness and therefore greater complexity in the resulting wines.  Therefore we suggest that you keep your eyes peeled on Oregon 2012!