Only the Grapes Have What’s in the Land. All My Winemaking Decisions Are Based on That.
Some say the grapes are like jewels, but for me, they are more alive. Grapes interact with us when they grow and when we make them into wine. Even the wine in the bottle changes, and in the glass too.
Every vintage is different. So I have to study and taste a lot and be ready to change, to remember past lessons. To understand what I must do. Sometimes I just have to be brave and trust my instincts.
After budbreak, half my days start at sunrise with my crew in the vineyard. Most of them have family back in Michoacan, Mexico, like me. Some of them were on the team I managed in the Inter-American Futbol League. I’ve worked with them for many years. I trust them and they trust me.
As we get close to harvest, I check the grapes almost every day. I try to give my crew a week’s notice. We pick when the residual sugar is about 24° brix or so. That is just a little earlier than some in Napa Valley. I like to pick as soon as the grapes have everything I want for the wine, when the seeds are brown, but I can still taste bright, strong flavors in the flesh. The skins are mouthwatering, not yet dry or bitter. If you want to keep tasting another grape, that means you’ll want to keep tasting the wine.
The grapes are picked by hand in the dark early morning hours, when the acids are highest and sugars are lowest. In Napa Valley, we don’t usually have a problem getting ripeness, but for my style, I want good acids to give structure to the wine, not dependent on tannins. The grapes are tipped from the small picking bins into larger bins in the trucks, then go straight to the winery for crush. going to pick. My guys don’t go off to pick at another vineyard. I like them to stay with me to help with the crush. They know the grapes best, and they know what I want.
We sort the grapes on a conveyor and remove the leaves and green berries. We crush in each vineyard lot separately and keep them separate through winemaking, until I blend. Each lot is given an ID code that is used all the way to bottling.
Cabernet Sauvignon is cold-soaked on the skins (maceration) for 4-5 days, mostly in open-top bins, punched down 3 times daily. Some lots I cold soak as low as 45° F, others a little higher. Near the end, I move the bins outside to slowly raise the temperature and begin fermentation. I am not a fan of warm or over-extended maceration to extract the maximum concentration. I think this flattens flavor and textures, and the tannins can get aggressive. I taste often during cold soak so that when it is time to ferment, I can have in mind what yeast strain to use for each lot.
Crush days are long, so my crew is happy to go home. I have a cot at the winery so I can stay and do what I need to do any time. There is only one chance to get everything right.
For pressing, we’re very careful. I want satiny tannins from the skins, but I don’t want bitter tannins from the seeds. For fermentation, I use many different yeasts, and they can change year to year depending on how I feel about the grapes. Like most winemakers, I keep the temperature as low as I can without stopping fermentation. These days it is common to use high-powered modern yeasts that are faster and dependable. But our grapes come off vines that are 20-30 years old, or older, so I like to start with heirloom yeasts to match the nature of the grapes. The older strains ferment slowly, which I like because they give more flavor nuances, but sometimes I need to finish with more modern yeasts to make sure fermentation doesn’t get stuck. Sometimes I use red wine yeasts for white wine lots, and vice versa. It just depends on what I think the juice needs. I’ve done a lot of testing and experiments over the years, after everyone leaves the cellar. I’ve made a lot of mistakes, but I learned from them, and I found out some new things that work, too.
The wine is fermented in small lots at cool temperatures for 10-12 days to dry (less than 0.5 % sugar). During fermentation, we do délestage (rack the wine off the lees and return to the barrel) twice to impart mid-palate richness.
After fermentation, we transfer each lot into individually selected French oak barrels, mostly one, two, and three years old. I use new French oak barrels for the most concentrated lots only. Barrel ageing gives the wine a chance to breathe slowly to awaken more layers of fruit flavors and texture, but for my style, to get everything only from the grapes, I want to keep the flavors and tannins of oak out of the wine. I’ve learned to get structure and tannins from the grapes. I top the barrels every 45 days to keep out air in the barrels that can turn the wine to vinegar (VA). This is one of the ways to keep the texture fresh and supple, and the flavor not tart.
I rack off the lees several times during the last 3 months so the wine is practically clear before blending and bottling. I use a sterile filter at bottling. It may not be romantic, but it is best to keep the wine stable, and the only difference is when something goes wrong in the unfiltered wine. I use agglomerate corks (like Champagne corks) that have been treated to minimize cork taint to under 1% of bottles. These corks don’t look fancy, but they do a very good job preserving the wine for many, many years. We work too hard to have things go wrong after the wine is in the bottle.
I want every part of the wine to come from the grapes, including structure and tannins, and all the flavors. I know we’ve got that if the wine is ready to drink at the bottling line, without harsh tannins and with the mouthwatering finish. The wines will keep developing in the bottle and will drink well for ten, fifteen years or more.