As noted, I spent a week participating in the Napa Valley Vintners’ Wine Educators Academy in August 2008. It was a magical experience due in large part to our exposure with the vintners themselves.
On Wednesday morning of the week in question, all participants were to be ready and waiting in the hotel lobby at 7:30 AM (yes, you read that correctly — an early morning meeting). As vintners arrived, they pulled a name or names out of a hat (well, actually out of a ziploc bag, but you get the point) and thus, we were paired with vintners for the day.
My colleague Brad and I had the good fortune to be matched with Todd Graff of Frank Family Vineyards. Todd is a Valley veteran, having grown up in the neighboring county of Sonoma and working for a number of other Napa Valley wineries before taking the helm at Frank Family. With a degree from UC Davis, Todd is formally trained as a vintner and also spent time abroad, further adding to his wealth of wine knowledge. We were delighted to spend the day with Todd.
We began the morning with a visit to Carneros, the most southerly of the sub-appellations within the Napa Valley AVA. Carneros is interesting for a number of reasons, it spans both the Napa and Sonoma Valleys; and it is the coolest, being also the closest to the San Francisco Bay. Given this climatic condition, Carneros is known for producing Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, as both still and sparkling wines.
On this day in particular, Todd wanted to determine whether or not the Chardonnay grapes destined for his sparkling wine were ready for harvesting. Consequently, we assisted him in collecting data to make his decision. First, we tasted the grapes to check for overall sugar and acidity levels as well as phenolic compounds and flavors. For sparkling wines, you want to preserve the bright acidity and avoid overly ripe grapes, so they should taste a little underdone.
Brad used the refractometer (a device used to measure the sugar levels in grapes), adding a grape and checking its Brix every so often. Meanwhile, I carried a bucket, lined with a plastic bag, into which Todd cut off random clusters of grapes, making a zip-zag motion as he traveled down the rows. These grapes would provide a good overview given that we were picking from different sides of canopy, and thus, different sun exposures, to get a more comprehensive view of what was going on in the vineyard.
Later, upon our return to the winery itself, located in Calistoga, Todd dropped off the grape clusters with one of his colleagues in her lab. She then proceeded to crush and press the grapes to force them to give up their juice, which was then inserted into a high-tech machine to obtain more complex and formal readings on the grapes. The results of the test indicated that the grapes were near peak for sparkling wine and would be picked later in the week.
