The Making of a wine

Shiraz is a vigorous variety and requires a great deal of attention with regard to vine spacing, the training system, the rootstocks, the precise clones grafted to the rootstocks and so on. We have three distinct sites with a total of eight blocks of Shiraz, ranging from 1.2 acres to 5 acres in size. All are planted with rootstocks selected on the basis of soil analysis (minerals, depth, consistency, water-holding capacity, et cetera), the overall climate (rainfall, day-night temperatures, marine influence) and also previous grape-growing observations. Let’s look at one block, low in growing vigor because it is very rocky. (Our affectionate name for it is “the rock pile.”) Here, the vine rows are spaced seven feet apart and a vine planted every five feet. This adds up to twelve hundred vines per acre. The vines are trained and pruned in a way that will potentially yield forty-eight grape clusters from each vine in an average year.

After pruning and all of the other dormant-season viticulture operations, we pass into spring and summer and the birth of a new vintage. We practice a modified version of sustainable agriculture in all of our vineyards, using a minimum amount of fungicides and planting cover crops to prevent soil erosion. As an aid in growing, we have drip-style irrigation, which is managed according to the needs of each individual row.

Verasion—the term for the change of grape color, from green to red in the case of Shiraz—signals that the year is moving toward harvest. We thin the crop for balance and intensity. Prior to picking, we send out a crew to remove any distressed clusters. Harvest starts at daybreak and continues only as long as the morning stays cool, which aids us later at the winery in controlling the temperature of the crushed fruit. Each cluster is hand-harvested into the picking boxes.