The bouquet, flavors and body of our wines beautifully reflect each season and vintages that give birth to their fruit.

The winter and early spring of 2005 brought heavy rains and saturated the ground of the Napa Valley. This, combined with 80 degree temperatures for over a week in March, jolted the vines from their winter dormancy causing an early bud break and rapid shoot growth. As the fruit began to set, it was clear the crop loads would be heavier than normal. A cool dry summer provided a lengthy growing season culminating in an abundant harvest of remarkable quality. The day of the harvest is always a special day spent with friends and family. In the foggy early morning hours of Wednesday, October 24th, the harvest began. We started on the north end of the vineyard working south. We picked the lighter clusters of the #191 first because the heavier clusters of the #337 would naturally stay colder longer as the sun began to rise. The crew started out small, but as the new day dawned many familiar faces joined the busy harvesters in the field. The smell of sizzling bacon and the thoughts of a ranch-style breakfast were hard to resist and by 10:00 AM the harvesting stopped and the eating began. The work resumed as the fog started to break. The harvest continued until the last bin filled with grapes was on its journey to you – capturing the essence of another pristine growing season on this One Acre in the Napa Valley.

There was fairly wet weather into the spring, which delayed budbreak a bit. I finished pruning on March 21st, still encountering rain the following week. It was a recording setting March for rain. By May the vines were growing strong, and into June when bloom and fruit set took place. Mid-July presented a record-setting ten-day heat wave; it got up to 110 degrees on Saturday the 22nd. It seamed that the heat wave helped catch the vines up to a "normal" place in the growing season after the delay in the spring. Varaison began to take place by August 3rd. Somewhat cooler weather arrived in August and continued throughout harvest, allowing for moderately paced and deliberate ripening and a long harvest period. Cool weather dominated early October, with rain coming in the first week. It was actually very windy the week before the harvest, but wanting the acids in the fruit to drop just a little lower we delayed the harvest until the morning of November 1st , the next day it just poured rain. It seamed that the long growing season brought more complex and intense flavors as well as aroma and color development in the wine.

The year began with some really dry conditions as well as some quite cold days and nights around the New Year. It continued very dry, into the spring with only about 60% of normal precipitation. Temperatures were warmer than normal as winter continued into spring. I started pruning on January 9th and finished up on March 11th, which was none too soon as bud break started only about 2 week later. The dryer warmer temperatures resulted earlier budding, bloom and set in our little vineyard. It even got up to 95 degrees on May the 5th. The summer growing season continued on the mild to cool side though, with just a few days topping 100 degrees. With the dryer conditions, I did irrigate the vines around the middle of June and then again the 1st part of July. Varaison began to take place a little sooner. Also, I first noticed it on the last weekend of July. There was a brief period of heat that spiked around Labor Day, but the temperatures cooled after several days. The Brix levels in the fruit were at 23.0 degrees by the middle of September. At this point there were good sugars, but for the best flavors the fruit would have to hang a bit longer. One thing that was noticeable by this point in the, was that the clusters, as well as individual berries on the clusters, were notably smaller due to the dry season. This we anticipated would create greater intensity in flavor, aromas and tannin levels in the finished wine. We got some unseasonably cool and wet weather the second week in October, in fact it rained just two days before we harvested the fruit on Sunday October the 14th. With the wet weather that had just come through, we decided to pick in the afternoon. We had a good turnout for the harvest and ensuing Bar-B-Que as you can see from the picture, taken after hot-dogs, hamburgers and hot links had been consumed. From the early samples of the 2007 vintage, it appears to be another vintage of exceptional quality from our One Acre.

In the 1st few days of 2008 there was a very bad storm with heavy rain the knocked the power out and caused some minor flooding. But in the weeks that followed, the precipitation thinned out, and for the second year in a row, our acre received little more than 60% of its normal rainfall. The spring season was one of the driest on record with virtually no rainfall. Knowing the drier soils would cause the vines to push out early, I finished up the pruning by March 20th. Bud break occurred right about the 1st weekend in April. Daytime temperatures during early and mid April were just about perfect, yet the cold temperatures at night and frost threat held on for more than three weeks. These conditions really provided a "perfect storm" as it were for frigid, dry air at night to create conditions for one of the deepest and longest frost period in decades. On the night of April 20th there was an especially hard frost and we wound up loosing at least 30 % of the fruit. After the fruit set, it seamed that there were fewer clusters with smaller berries. The continued dryness did have one benefit though, the plants produced less vine canopy, and thus allowed the vines to focus more on fruit production. The summer season continued with cooler, fairly consistent temperatures. The weather got a bit warmer around the 1st of September, with the sugars getting up to 23.2 degrees by September the 12th. There was a little light rain in late September and early October, but it had no effect on the grapes. On October 12th, after a difficult weather year, we harvested the fruit on a late Sunday afternoon. One Vine's Journey Through the Growing Season Episode #8 click here to watch our other videos

Even though we may only wind up with about 100 cases from the 2008 season, the low-yielding, yet high-quality vintage thus far seams to have produced incredible concentration which, by all accounts, should produce another well structured, concentrated, elegant wine.

It was another dry start to the year, so I began pruning on the first day of the year. The rainfall would wind up being right around two thirds of normal for the 3rd year in row. I finished the pruning on March 20th again anticipating an early bud break. This year it was just a few days sooner then the 2008. The spring was relatively mild compared to some three weeks of frost potential the previous year. The warmer weather made it much easier to fall asleep at night and stay asleep in the 1st few weeks of April. There was a warm spell in June that helped slow any excessive canopy development. But over all it was an ideal growing season with few heat spikes during the summer. Veraision was beginning to show right about the last day of July. The weather was pretty much uneventful through out September and October with sugar levels rising nicely. The fruit ripen pretty evenly and consistently with everything coming together right up to the 1st part of October. But by the 2nd week of October we hit a bump in the road, we began to get some very heavy rain. With a little more rain on the way, I decided to strip off all the leaves on both sides of the vine rows throughout the entire vineyard so the fruit would be able to dry out and the sun could reach all the berries. It took me about 2 days to remove all the leaves that were left around the fruit on the vines. Even though I was worried about mold, there were only a few plants that I had to drop the fruit due to mold. We did loose some of the fruit due to the high winds during the storm; the berries actually got blown off the clusters. They seamed a little more vulnerable to the wind because of being heavier after soaking up the water from the recent rains. In the days that followed, the sun came out a bit and the fruit had a chance to dry out, the sugar levels went back up and so we decided to go ahead and pick. We did something a little different this time, because of the rainy weather and wanting the #337 clone vines to have just one more day to hang due to their heavier crop load, we harvested on two different days. On Thursday morning October the 22nd we picked the #191 and then the next day we picked the #337. Even with the late season rains we still got great flavors and color in the juice as we crushed the fruit, the Brix came in right at 23.9 degrees. Although 2009 was not a large crop, it was still about 50% more then 2008. Overall we should see in the finished wine, beautiful bright fruit with pure cabernet characters. No doubt another classic Napa Valley Cabernet.

So far 2010 has started off to be a very wet year. I actually started pruning at the end of December. With all of the rain and wet weather, it is likely that the vines will be a bit more vigorous then in the last three years of reduced rainfall. One of the things that I am doing to compensate for the anticipated extra vigor in the spring is leaving more buds. On most of the vines I am leaving and extra or longer canes or an extra bud on the spurs. This should slow the vegetative growth a bit and produce a little more crop load for the 2010 season.