Harvest Update from Winemaker- "Rollin' with the Puncheons"

Good Afternoon All,
It has been almost three weeks since I was able to take the time to sit down and give everyone an update on how things are going this harvest. My apologies for being incommunicado but my lack of correspondence is a reflection of how busy the wine production staff has been the last 20 days. Since my last update we processed 108 tons of red fruit here at Round Pond Winery and 40 tons at our custom crush facility. On October 19th we broke the RP record for tons processed in a day by crushing 18.7 tons. We smashed that record the next day by processing 30.2 tons. I am sure that you are all aware that the rains that we had during this period played a large roll in necessitating this frantic schedule.

This year was somewhat of a déjà vu experience from last year in that we encountered two large rain events back to back. The vineyard and winery team learned a few lessons from last year on how the fruit would respond to two such rains so we picked out blocks according to fruit ripeness and the ability of some of the Cab grape clusters to hang through the rains. I think that we played the hand that we were dealt perfectly and achieved the best possible quality out of the vineyard that was attainable this year.
2010 will be the first year that we have made Malbec and Petit Sirah at the winery. I will use these as blenders but early tastings show these wines to be very interesting independently and we may do some small varietal bottlings of these. The Petit Verdot, which always impresses me, has done so again this year. I imagine that I will use a healthy dose in both our Estate Cab as well as the Reserve Bovet Cab. Currently the Sauvignon Blancs are finishing fermentation and they also taste great.

Cheers,

Brian Brown
Winemaker

Harvest Update from the Winemaker

Happy Wednesday,

We are at the tail end of what has been our second heat event this growing season. The weather has bumped sugars up a bit and quickened the ripening process. Many of the skins still have a chalky grittiness to them but I’ve noticed that the green flavors have disappeared from all of the different blocks that we bring in for Round Pond wine. Now is the time of year when I am in the vineyard everyday checking to make sure all of the fruit remains sound as well as tasting for flavor development which will trigger my decision to pick.

Today we harvested our first lots of Nebbiolo and Cabernet Sauvignon. The Nebbiolo got hit pretty hard by the first heat event earlier in the season and as such we lost a significant portion of the crop. The fruit that made it to the winery this morning does look good and although we will have a smaller volume of wine I think that what we do make will be pretty tasty.

The crew is performing a selective pick in the Cabernet block this morning. I’m having the guys harvest only part of the fruit off of each vine. Their instructions are to pick any clusters with dimpling berries or any signs of sunburn. What they are leaving behind are visually perfect clusters. I am doing this because the clusters that are starting to dimple are finished ripening and will only dehydrate from this point forward so they are as good as they will ever get. If I let them dry on the vine any longer then we will have “pruney” flavored wine which I find unappealing. The fruit that I left on the vine will have longer to ripen and the vine now has fewer clusters, so more of the vine’s energy will be focused on those clusters that are still hanging. I’m hoping that the longer hang time will translate into some Reserve quality wine.


Cheers,

Brian Brown
Winemaker

Slowly but Surely... Harvest!

The thing so many people forget about the wine industry is that it is an agricultural industry. This means that first and foremost, it is a farming based business. So by nature of the business, this means we live and die by what the year's harvest brings us. This year has been a particularly challenging growing season. We had a cooler than average summer which makes it very difficult for the grapes to fully ripen on the vine. Throughout the growing season, the viticulture team went through the vineyards to perform "leaf pulling". This means they pulled leaves off the vines to make sure the fruit was as exposed to the sun as possible to achieve ripeness. Then in the late summer, we experienced a freak heat wave that was so hot, it burned a lot of the exposed fruit. Normally that fruit would be shaded and protected from the sun's harsh rays, but not this year. The heat spike only lasted 2 days, but the result was sunburned fruit.
This is not the end of hope however, it just means a lot more work for vineyard crew. When it came time to pick Sauvignon Blanc a couple weeks ago (21 days later than past years) the crew had to first make a pass through the vineyard and remove all the sunburned/shriveled grapes. They then went back through to pick the rest of the clusters that were ripe, and if there were a few sunburned grapes left on the cluster, the picking crews removed those grapes carefully before throwing them in the picking bins.
This is a textbook case of what we call "precision farming"; it can be very time consuming and expensive, but the results are worth all of the extra effort.
So as of now, we have harvested most of our Sauvignon Blanc, and a little Petit Verdot. We are still waiting on our Cabernet Sauvignon to get fully ripened, and these warm Indian Summer days are definitely helping things along. Stay tuned for more harvest updates and see more pictures on our facebook page!

Summer Growth

Last week we reached veraison in our vineyards, which can be one of the most beautiful times of year to look at the clusters on the vines. Veraison is the time of year when the tiny green berries begin to turn color and start to fill up with juice. It is from this point that they officially start to ripen. For the vineyard crew, this is an important time to make sure the grapevines are properly pruned so the fruit is well exposed to sunlight and air. Our vineyard manager Chris Pedemonte says one of the important things to look for when you are walking through the vineyard rows is "speckling". This is when the sunlight breaks through the leaves and hits the ground. It can be a great indication of how the vines are growing and if the grapes are getting too much, or not enough sun exposure. If you see patches that are too shaded on the ground, you know the fruit needs more light. This is also important for things like air movement which can prevent things like mildew, mold, and certain pests.

While we are happy to see that we have reached veraison in most of our vineyard blocks, it has been a challenging year so far for the grapes as a whole. We have had a fairly cool summer out here in Napa, and temperature highs of 75-80 degrees have left the grapes a couple weeks behind in their ripening stages. What this means for us right now is a later harvest than normal, most likely not starting until after Labor Day. We are hoping (begging) for a late Summer heat wave to kick in any time now, and bring us up to speed. So while the rest of the country is experiencing record high temperatures, that is definitely not the case here!
As for a quick update on what's going on in the winery, the cellar crew is hard at work getting the barrel chai ready for the 2010 vintage.
They need to make space for the new wine that will come in, so this year you will see our barrels stacked 4 high instead of 2 high. It's quite a balancing act to see in action, and the crew has to be very careful that everything is level and in line, otherwise it could all topple over with one foul move! In the process of moving all these barrels, the 2009 vintage wine is being racked. This is the process of moving the wine from barrel to tank, cleaning out the barrels and removing any dead yeast sediment that has formed, then refilling the barrels with the wine for further aging. It can be a lengthy job, but it's sure easier moving empty barrels around rather than full ones!
Stay tuned as we get closer to harvest... one of the most exciting times of the year in wine country!

Sensory Garden Overload!

Round Pond may have ~350 acres of vineyards planted, but since those are no where near ready for harvest, our current focus is on our organic and biodynamic gardens! Jeff Dawson planted our sensory garden behind the winery in February of 2009. When you enter the garden, you are greeted by 4 quadrants, each designated to a different set of characteristics. The front two are Cabernet Sauvignon descriptors and Sauvignon Blanc descriptors. These are planted with fruits and vegetables that have the attributes of flavors or smells you would find in the wine. The back two are affiliates, foods you would pair with each of the the wines. The garden sprawls from these center qauds in each direction, overflowing with leafy greens, flowering buds and ripening fruits.

This time of year is just the beginning of the incredible growing season ahead of us. The melons are just starting to form and the tomatoes are still bright green. But the plants, birds, and buzzing bees are hard at work, and so are the gardeners! Jeff Dawson and his son Marley work in the garden every day to make sure our winery , olive mill and the estate homes are supplied with the freshest vegetables and fruits they can offer. They practice biodynamic gardening which is a unique practice that is based on the lunar cycle. While there are several other eccentricities to this gardening practice that I do not fully understand, suffice it to say that whatever they are doing works!

The gardeners also work closely with our in-house chef to communicate what they plan to expect for harvest that week. This allows chef Hannah to prepare food and wine pairings, and our educational, interactive Garden to Table brunch that takes place on Sundays. If you are looking for an opportunity to get your hands dirty in the garden and learn to prepare a fresh meal straight from the bounty that the ground provides you, this is a great opportunity! Check out more about that on our website.
This week the garden is providing us with fresh baby lettuces, strawberries, peaches and cucumbers! I had a little sampling of warm strawberries yesterday afternoon, just to check that they were good enough for others to eat. The winery staff gave their nod of approval as well!
We hope that if you are ever in the area you will come by our winery and take a stroll through our gardens. No appointment is needed for this visit, and we encourage you to stop by multiple times throughout the year to watch as the plantings change and different items come into season. For a detailed look at our growing season on the property, you can check out our facebook page.

Round Pond - Bud Break Vintage 2010

Springtime at the Pond

Vineyards are an exciting place because they are ever changing and evolving; the ideal place to watch life and growth, literally, before your eyes. This year, Round Pond wants you to experience our 2010 growing season from start to finish, so you can truly understand what that goes into each bottle of ours that you love so much!

Many people forget that wine is an agricultural product, so it is easy to overlook all of the labor and love that go into producing the wine itself. We hope that this blog will be a source for you to come learn about all those "behind the scenes" details that play into production, as well as a place to come enjoy the lighter side of the Pond that is our Estate and family.

So where to begin? Spring is a fun time of year around here! After months of dormancy, the vines begin to come back to life. Bud break is the first stage of the growing cycle for the year, and it is also one of the most vulnerable times for the vines to withstand. Tiny buds begin to emerge which are very sensitive to all of the weather and elements that are a part of the season, so it is important for the vineyard managers to protect them from frost damage. The abundance of rain has helped us tremendously this year, so we have no worries about lack of water when using irrigation to protect against frost.

Right before or during budbreak, the cover crops that have been growing all Winter are mowed down. Cover crops are a natural way of getting important nutrients that may be lacking back into the soils. It can also help prevent erosion. Many of you are familiar with Black Mustard (which is actually yellow) that grows throughout the Napa Valley. What you may not know is that it is purposely planted to add Nitrogen back into the soil! There are actually dozens of different types of plants that are chosen for cover crops, and each is carefully selected depending on what nutrients each individual vineyard needs. Round Pond uses what is called precision farming, which is very involved and time consuming, but of course results in the wine quality being that much higher. For example, in our vineyards you might see one row planted with cover crop, but only half way down the row. Why is this? The half that has a cover crop needs those nutrients, but the other half has healthy soil that needs no additional help. Now that's a lot of hand's on precision work by our vineyard team!
After the bud's are growing and we're out of frost danger, its time for suckering or basal shoot removal. This is another labor intensive process that involves a team of vineyard professionals slowly walking through every single row of the vineyards and removing all the extra buds/shoots that have begun growing out of place. If we let the vines do what they wanted, there would be an overload of growth that would result in massive amounts of fruit, all at very low quality and poor flavor. But, if we remove the extra growth and only allow a specific amount of shoots per vine, then each bunch of grapes is assured to reach full ripeness and maximum flavor potential. All of the extra effort that the vines would have put into those extra grapes is instead concentrated and focused into fewer clusters. This is one of many reasons we can produce the big, beautiful, full bodied Cabernet Sauvignon's that you love so much!

Besides all the growth that is taking place in the vineyards, Spring is also exciting because of the other life it brings to our Estate. The bird houses are filling up quickly with nests and eggs, and the jack rabbits are bouncing wildly in the fields. Even the dogs are tired of their Winter dormancy, so they're out giving the birds and rabbits a good run around!


We hope you will follow along with us this year as we give you an inside look at all the life here on our Estate, and please feel free to post questions or ask for more detail about any of the topics discussed. Below is a video about bud break that includes an interview and discussion with our vineyard manager Chris Pedemonte. Stay tuned and enjoy!!

Twitter and wine??

For many people the Twitter world is completely foreign and tweeting sounds like a whole new language. But whether you understand it or not, it's here, and it's becoming a huge new movement in the wine world! The way we are tasting wine and talking about it to others is revolutionary. With Twitter, you can gather people from around the world and share tasting notes as easily as you can send a text message.
There is one man in particular that comes to mind in this industry who saw this potential and has found a way to capitalize on it: Rick Bakas of St. Supery. Earlier this year he announced that he would be organizing virtual Twitter tastings that individuals would be able to participate in from anywhere. The first tasting was for California Cabernet Sauvignon, so the "hashtag" was #CaliCabs. What this means is that every time someone tweeted (posted) about a wine they were tasting, they would include "#CaliCabs" in their post, and any Twitter user who searched that hashtag would see every post made by anyone who used it in a tweet.
In addition to being able to taste and talk to people virtually, local Napa Twitter users took it to the next level and organized places to meet up and taste together. Round Pond participated in this first tasting at Judd's Hill winery with our 2006 and 2007 Cabernet. The set up was simple: everyone bring your laptop or handheld device to tweet from and a bottle to share. As the tasting commenced, we were all able to taste and tweet about one another's wines. The beauty of Twitter is that information spreads virally, so by getting together in a central location the information spreads that much farther. Each person who brought a wine to share was also given an opportunity to share more detailed information about the wine with the group, lending a more personal note to the overall results. Round Pond's winemaker Brian Brown joined me for this event, and while the idea of Twitter was completely new to him as well, he was able to see first hand how much information you are able to share and how far it really goes using this medium. Our wines personally received a lot of love, especially our 2007 Cab that hadn't even been released yet!

The results of the #CaliCabs tasting were promising and plans for the next tasting started coming about nearly the next day! This time it would be #SauvBlanc, another varietal Round Pond does well and something we were excited to share. The idea of having a community location where interaction and live discussion accompany the virtual tasting really took hold with Linda Cordair of the Quent Cordair Fine Art gallery in downtown Napa. She personally invited local tweeters out to her gallery to partake in the tasting and all we had to do was show up with the wine! The gallery provided nametags for the guests and the bottles (so people could reference the Twitter name as they tasted the wines). There was also a beautiful spread of Sauvignon Blanc friendly foods including sweet water oysters, compliments of Hog Island Oyster Co. This being the second go-around for the Twitter tasting in general, there was even more positive response and participation. We tried 50+ different Sauvignon Blanc's from various regions around the world and even several from specific areas in Napa which were great to compare. Round Pond poured our 2009 Sauvignon Blanc that will be released in May of this year. The wine was showing crisp, clean and full of bright fruit, which really helped it to stand out in the crowd. The positive response was overwhelming and we even heard "favorite of the night" more than once! Total responses included over 2700 tweets from over 600 people!!

The next Twitter tasting is scheduled for April 1 and the hashtag will be #WineBlends! So wherever you are and whatever experience level with Twitter, give it a try. If nothing else, just search #WineBlends and follow along with the tasting on Twitter. We might be pouring our 07 Cab since it's blended with Petit Verdot, but you will have to wait and see! If you can resist cracking open a bottle and participating, I will be surprised. Cheers!

Clink, clink, clink....

If you were standing on our crushpad at exactly 8:03AM this morning, that's the sound that would have flooded your ears. Today we bottled our 2009 Estate Sauvignon Blanc, and boy were we excited to get this beautiful wine into bottle! 2008 was our first vintage for Sauvignon Blanc, and while we are long known for producing world-class Cabernet Sauvignon, our Sav Blanc is quickly picking up a following of its own. Our winemaker Brian Brown and several employees agree that this years bottling is even better than last, which, if you've tried our '08 Sav Blanc, you know how hard it is to top!

The vineyard 4.87-acre vineyard was planted in 2005 on our property bordering the Napa River. These fertile soils mean abundant vine growth and we help to control vigor with the Fletcher-Lyre split canopy trellising system. The grapes were harvested the last week of August and the first week of September, just before the big rains! The brix averaged about 24.8 degrees.

We use 100% stainless steel on our Sauvignon Blanc to make sure the crisp, refreshing fruit flavors of this distinct varietal shine through. Fermentation begins in tank, and when there is just a small amount of sugar left in the juice, we move to stainless steel barrels to finish the fermenting process. These unique barrels allow more surface area contact with the wine and with the lees. Although we do not stir the lees (or batonnage as the French would say), the contact with the lees on the sides of the barrel offers a hint of softness to the wine, while still allowing the fruit and acidity to remain bright.

Similar to the '08, the '09 Sauvignon Blanc promises those stone fruit and Meyer lemon zest characteristics that we love, and the lingering acidity makes it perfect to enjoy with your favorite summer dishes.

We will be releasing the 2009 Sauvignon Blanc in the Spring to our Wine Lovers members first, of course! If you are not already a member with us but you know you love our wines, what are you waiting for? Take a look at what we have to offer! You will definitely want first grabs at this wine that is truly expressive of Round Pond's Estate! Cheers!

Welcome to the World of Round Pond!

Hello Everyone! Welcome to the Round Pond blog! This will be the place to go when you want to read up on the latest goings-on at our Estate. Recipes, upcoming events, wine reviews, new releases... this is your source for everything Round Pond! We will even let you get to know our family a little better so you can see what day-to-day life is really like at the winery and olive mill.

Of course our website is always a great source for information about us, but this blog is intended to give you a more personal look into who we really are, and what we really do!

Hope you will subscribe and follow along with our adventures. We're looking forward to an exciting year!

Cheers!