Brian Arden Wine

A years past

admin — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 20:43:17 +0000

Here I am again, “a day late and a dollar short”, as my Dad always says. This last year was yet another amazing adventure that ended with an exhilarating harvest. For the last three harvests we’ve seen the gambit of challenges; 30 year frosts, early rains-late rains, fires-smoke taint, and mild summers which prolonged ripening. They always say “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”; I now know what that means in more ways than one. I’m going to see if I can do a quick run-down on the events of this past year, bear with me.

This year started out with an early bottling of our Lake County Sauvignon Blanc. If you haven’t tried it, you should, it’s wonderful. It’s always an exciting time getting everything ready to bottle. Dealing with all the suppliers, corks, foils, screen printers, glass companies, mobile cross-flow filtration, and a mobile bottling line. It’s almost like a little performance that you have to arrange in a poetic dance. At the end of which you don’t get to reap the benefits for a while to come as the wine needs to rest and recover from bottle-shock. It’d be nice to get that instant gratification of a standing ovation and the roar of the crowd. Oh the joys of patience, not one of my virtues.

We had rain here in the valley for long into the spring and then again in the fall. Bud break ran late, which caused a short ripening season. The problem with late rain is you run into issues with mold and mildew. To prevent these complications a lot of vineyards pull leaves to open up the canopy so that the clusters can dry out. Some spray sulphur. The problem with this year was right after the rain came, a heat spike. These open clusters now became vulnerable to sun burn and the 100 plus weather. As the season ran on we found out we were going to lose three crops to the elements. A sad day for the growers, my father, and I. Though we are very fortunate to have good relationships with growers and look forward to our ongoing endeavors together. We were lucky this year with what fruit made it to the winery. Everything looks beautiful, and I’m excited to start the dance once again.

Shannon and Matt, my cousins, came out to Napa again this year. Thank you again for your tasting expertise during our blending trials. Going the other way, I finally made it to Wisconsin to see all of them, Judy, Mike, Scott, Danny, Eli, Shannon and Matt. We made our way to Green Bay to see the 49ers take on the Packers. Didn’t go so well for us, but the stadium and history was one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen. If you ever make your way to Hudson, WI, go to the quaint wine bar called Nova. Again, thank you for your hospitality, and go Niners. Also, I made my way out to Maui to see my dear friends Martin and Jennifer get married at the Ritz. It’s always nice to play a little golf at the Plantation course, and have a Mai Tai at the pool while looking at the ocean.

I wish everyone a Happy New Year! Carpe Diem.

Brian Harlan

A TIMELY BLOG – Part I, December 2009

admin — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 17:52:19 +0000

It was pointed out to me that our monthly blog hadn’t been updated for quite some time, a year in fact, not since last April, picky, picky, picky. What confused everyone was the “Monthly News” heading on the webpage, which could mistakenly lead the reader to think that it is, 1) monthly, and 2) news, and up to this point, it’s been neither. There is an easy way out, we could change the heading to ‘Periodic News’, or ‘All The News That’s Fit To Print’, or ‘When We Have the Time News.’ That might do it, we could leave out Monthly or News or both, mmmm, we might need some help with all this, suggestions anyone?

But before your creative juices start flowing too freely, you should know, taking the easy way out doesn’t apply to how we do much of anything at Brian Arden Wines, not harvesting, sorting or handling our grapes; not how we work with the fruit during fermentations; do our punch-downs, do our rackings, design our labels, or market our wines. So the easy way out just won’t do, well, unless of course it’s an easier way to do something even better.

So let’s catch up and answer the question, what’s happened since April of 2009? The easy answer (low bar standard) would be everything; the 2009 harvest – wonderful; the 2009 wines currently aging in oak – fabulous; the released 2008 Zinfandel – absolutely delicious, and the 2009 Sauvignon Blanc – world class, as fine a Sauvignon Blanc as you can buy, and I’m throwing New Zealand imports into that mix.

The slightly harder answer to our news blog, now tentatively called “Stuff”, is going to follow in another blog. When we come back I’ll start on the real “NEWS” story of what Brian Arden Wines has been doing to bring truly distinctive wines of quality to you.

Arden Burt….

Crooked Little Books II

admin — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 22:20:07 +0000

Full cup, I’m back…

Some old and very experienced winemakers will tell you that winemaking is REALLY SIMPLE, good grapes, a little yeast and just stand back and watch ‘er’ go. God, I hope it never comes to that. The search for great fruit might eventually wind down once you’ve reserved a spot in the vineyards you want, but each year brings new challenges, because every year the harvest changes; rain, frost, heat, it all matters. And you haven’t even gotten to the winery yet where the choices and options and combinations of choices and options would take decades to explore, even if you break each varietal up into small lots, which we do.

I’ve yet to get into it, but there is a huge difference between making wine in T-Bins or small fermentors as opposed to huge stainless tanks. Certainly there is a scale difference, but there is also a complexity difference. I have a friend who makes one of the very expensive cult wines sold at auctions. Believe it or not he has a contract allowing his pickers to go through a vineyard harvesting only the apex bunches (farthest from the arm or cordon). Then he breaks the fruit up into three fermentation lots and uses three different yeasts. After fermentation the lots are combined and aged in French Oak. He does this for complexity, because each fermentation will follow a different path with different temperatures and time frames, and every yeast strain contributes something different to the flavor profile. Yeasts are known for their extractive capabilities, their alcohol and temperature tolerances, and their flavor characteristics; lean or round, rich and smooth, or more edgy and tannic. Every supplier will have pages of descriptive charts on hundreds of yeast strains, take your pick.

At Brian Arden Wines we also break our grapes up into multiple fermentation lots, each with a different yeast selected because of its performance and flavor profile. And yes, there are distinctive differences in each wine sample, and those differences make the wine more interesting and complex. If you watch people who love wine taste good wine, pay special attention to their eyes and facial expressions. The more complex the wine, the more you can see the exploration by the wine drinker, puzzlement, the second sip, the look, the contemplation, the smell, the swirl – trust me, it’s all there. If a wine doesn’t stop you, make you pause, then it’s probably, maybe… just good or ordinary. And trust me on this too, there is a world of difference between someone telling you the wine is good, and someone telling you with that look in their eyes and the expression on their face that the wine is more than just good, it’s “really good.”

In April I was out in Dry Creek with my girlfriend Espie and we stopped by a winery, not going to tell you which one, but it looked like an airplane hanger with a garden on top. When we drove up the mother was watering flowers in sawed off oak barrels (what else), the son was sitting in the shade (no surprise there), and the father was scurrying about in the small barrel storage room working (I think I know this story). It wasn’t an accident that we were there, this small winery had been recommended by the staff at one of Dry Creek’s great wineries. The winemaker (one of Napa’s masters) had retired to make wine with his son out at the end of Dry Creek Road (Sbragia, please make the trip out to their winery sometime, it’s wonderful, tell Ed that Arden Burt sent you). Anyway, the tasting started with a Chardonnay followed by a Pinot, not two of my favorite wines, but I had planned to politely sample each on the way to the wines I was truly interested in tasting. Of course I was talking a mile-a-minute – until the second sip, then I stopped and looked, and swirled, and smelled, and sipped again, damn, this is really good. All the time the winemaker was watching me quietly. When I finally looked up, I told him how remarkable and wonderful that Chardonnay was and I asked him how in the world he’d made it. A little presumptuous and forward on my part, I know, and it’s something my family considers a minor character flaw. My inquisitiveness occasionally embarrasses my son causing him to roll his eyes. I can live with that, because the things I learn, the things people tell me, unbelievable.

Now here’s the important thing, he said you know, “the Chardonnay and the Pinot are my ‘wine lovers’ test, if these two wines don’t stop you, then I’m not going to spend a whole lot of time talking about how I made them.” For the next two hours he shared with me his philosophy and techniques, how he’d spent time in France studying their craft. He talked about the little touches, the artistic flourishes and embellishments that he feels adds character and complexity to his wine. And this leads me back to where I started, ‘putting grapes in a tank and throwing in some yeast.’ I might add, this winemaker prefers not to use the new commercial yeasts designed for high performance commercial operations, but old-world Bordeaux strains.

There’s an ending in here someplace, a good point to stop, so let me leave it here for now. That nervous anticipation is because I know that it isn’t just grapes in a tank; it’s walking fabulous vineyards with premier winegrowers; it’s ordering the right oak, testing and tasting, visiting with fellow winemakers and listening intently while they share their passion; it’s dinners at some of the finest restaurants in the world after a long day. It’s sampling fabulous wine crafted by masters with skill and attention guided by an artist’s soul. Make no mistake about this, the great winemakers are artists. And there is something absolutely wonderful about tasting wine with the winemaker while looking out into the garden as his wife waters flowers in oak barrels, and his son quietly watches his mother from the arbor shade.

— Arden Burt

(Note; The ‘Metal Cow’ picture was taken by Rick Emery at the fabulous Galusha home on Frogmouth Lane, Cooroy, Queensland Australia, the other two shots were contributed by Lorell Long. If you ‘click’ on the images they will enlarge and fully display.)

Crooked Little Books I

admin — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 17:57:28 +0000

I do intend to talk about wine making; it’s that time of year, budburst, canes going in all directions, berry-set. Already I’m beginning to feel the stirrings of anticipation. But there are other things on my mind that I need to write about first. So if you’ll pardon my musings and be a little patient, I promise I’ll get to the ‘wine’ because I know that’s why you visit our site and are reading this journal.
It’s very early on Saturday morning, and as usual I’m up before even the birds have started stirring outside – restless mind syndrome. I have my cup of coffee, and I make a great cup of coffee, which I intend to tell you about sometime, beans from Yemen and Ethiopia, Tanzania and Costa Rica. There is no sugar, cream, steam, frapping, zapping, stirring or whirling going on in my cup, just great, rich, sweet, delicious coffee. I read somewhere that the Yemen word for coffee means ‘sweet drink,’ and if you buy the right beans and make coffee the way it should be made, it isn’t bitter at all, it is sweet. Well… except for the volcanic island coffees like Kona or Sumatran. Those coffees are more acidic and that is why, for instance, most Kona coffees are Kona blends. If I keep going on here I won’t need to write about coffee later, so I’m going to move on to what I really wanted to talk about – books and winemaking.
You can’t see it of course, but I have a bookshelf next to me. There are books on philosophy and religion, politics and economics, science and health, life, spirituality, geopolitics and poetry. Books by authors such as Campbell, Wilber, Chopra, Moyers, Emerson, Twain, Keillor, Johnson, Friedman, Terkel, Safire, Bourdain and Sri Aurobindo. There is another bookshelf in the garage and in storage are boxes filled with books on climbing and Yoga and Silent Springs. My kids will tell you that it’s scary, but I’ve actually read all those books, and I’m sure they wonder why I’d spend years of my life wandering through the minds of others. It’s not as though I’m going to be working in the oval office, or sitting around the kitchen table with Obama exploring paths for the advancement of humanity, or creating a vision for America and the world. I would love to have some quiet time with our President for sure, and my first piece of advice would be for him to cut short our visit and sit down each week with people who spend time alone contemplating what it means to be human. Moyers compiled two books from his interviews with the world’s greatest minds; “A World of Ideas I&II,” and www.TED.com is the digital version of that, fabulous and wonderful – start with those people.
I can count on one hand the individuals that I know personally, either through the life they live or their insatiable intellectual curiosity, that have a depth of understanding that transcends Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Remember Maslow’s pyramid, food and shelter on the bottom, sex and … whatever on top? Sex is actually on the bottom with food and shelter, just testing. These individuals seem immune to the talking heads, commercialism, voyeurism, sensationalism and the fear that so often encapsulates our media driven lives. We talk, we keep in touch, it’s a very small club and we are aware that the time is fast approaching when one of us isn’t going to be there, a shared and private window on the world will be shuttered. Which I suppose is the answer to the ‘why’ question, it’s all woven together, the coffee, the books, the music and art, the friends, the thoughts, and yes, the wine. All touch our subtle creative and intuitive self, our better self, the one that hints at what we are capable of becoming, if we could just get that food and shelter thing taken care of.
My viticulture and enology books aren’t on a bookshelf; they are all lined up along a window sill. Tall ones on the left against the wall (‘The Oxford Companion to Wine’ and ‘Wine – From Grape to Glass’) short ones on the right leaning this way and that (‘From Vines to Wines’ and ‘Winery Technology & Operations’), all the crooked little books. In between is pretty much a complete graduate-level library of textbooks on viticulture and enology – and yes, I’ve read them all. The ubiquitous yellow highlighted paragraphs reveal passages that I felt were important. An amazingly low threshold has to be crossed to warrant a squiggly yellow line, I buy highlighter by the case. By the way, the sun is coming up and the coffee is running out – not good, but I have more to say. I’ll be back, I promised to talk about wine, and I always, and I mean ALWAYS keep my promises!
Part II is coming…
— Arden Burt

(Note; the pictures in the carousel were taken by Lorell Long, who was kind enough to go through her extensive library and contribute some of her favorites to our website. If you ‘click’ on the images they will enlarge and fully display.)

All To Ourselves

admin — Wed, 20 May 2009 18:25:03 +0000

Brian and I were going to keep it all to ourselves, maybe share a little with some close friends and family, but the 50 cases we produced in 2007 is now in bottles and, well, it’s very good. 2007 was going to be an experimental lot taken from a particular block in our youngest vineyard (not all that young – 25 years) and kept for home consumption. My Dad and brother Rodney had been talking about the soil characteristics of this particular site (more gravel and a gentle slope fostering excellent drainage), and how the grapes there had a special richness. So we confiscated a ton while Dad wandered around wondering out loud if he was ever going to get paid for those grapes (he hasn’t yet, but a couple of cases are going to end up in his cellar very soon). Brian, Brian’s uncle Howard, Howard’s brother-in-law Tommy, and I picked it ourselves into ½ ton MacroBins.
The grapes were hauled to the winery in Brian’s Tundra, substantially over the recommended load capacity I might add (1,700 pounds), so we avoided Cobb mountain and took the flatter and longer Hwy 101 route. We could see over the hood of the truck, so we were good to go. At the winery the grape bunches were sorted and the berries separated from the stems and sorted again. We fermented the wine in two small T-bins and the fruit was monitored two or three times each day and punched down to keep the cap wet and to constantly keep the juice in contact with the skins. Temperature and Brix readings were put on a computer and graphed; there was no acid or tannin additions, no saignée (juice bled off to concentrate the wine), nothing, just wonderful grapes being made into wine under watchful eyes.
When those grapes came into the winery our consulting winemaker actually thought we’d picked up some Pinot Noir someplace, those berries were so small (a good thing), but unlike Pinot, the skins were thick, and neither characteristic is typical of Zinfandel. We knew we had great fruit; you could taste that while wandering around sampling berries in the vineyard. What we didn’t know was whether or not the wine would reflect the higher phenolic components and be balanced and structured. The whole exercise was designed to let this old clone express itself and to put the wine in the bottle with as little tampering, tinkering or adjusting as possible.
We originally pressed the wine into new American Oak barrels, but American Oak has an angular profile that we felt was going to get in the way of the wonderful fruit coming out at every barrel tasting. So after a short period in American we moved it in to French and then to neutral oak for long-term aging. It was bottled on February 23rd and is now being allowed to age a couple of months more in the bottles to eliminate any ‘bottle shock.’
If you’d like to see where this particular block of vines is located, go to Google Earth and type in 38 57 49.04N, 122 50 26.13W in the ‘Fly to’ box and hit the magnifying glass. Google Earth will take you to the exact location where the grapes were harvested.

— Arden Burt

Deja Vu All Over Again

admin — Wed, 20 May 2009 18:20:20 +0000

It takes 15 minutes to get down each row, and there must be at least a thousand rows. I’m in second gear – low, creeping along at 2 miles per hour between the vines. You can’t be in a hurry here, no way to speed it up, make it go faster, get done any quicker. There’s just the drone of the diesel engine at 2,200 rpm, which is the minimum required to run the PTO (power take off) that spins and lifts the mowers attached behind me. I haven’t done this in, Oh… 40 years.
Growing up on the farm we had all kinds of things to drive, trucks, pickups, flatbeds, motorcycles, and tractors. And one of the really neat perks was that you could drive them anywhere as long as you stayed off the main road. See, a lot of farmers owned multiple pieces of property scattered about the county and kids were essentially cheap farm help, and you needed to travel between orchards and vineyards to do your work. So the cops thought nothing of it when they passed some 10 year old driving down the road in a Willies Jeep barely able to peer over the steering wheel. Of course they never knew if you were heading to the next orchard or to your favorite swimming hole, or even over to see that cute girl in 6th grade. The one I found out my older brother Rodney was also sneaking off to see when I wasn’t around.
There were rules of course, actually just one, stay off the main roads that we referred to as ‘freeways.’ Lake County had one freeway that ran from Kelseyville to Lakeport, a distance of 9 miles. In Lake County freeways are not what you would describe as a freeway with multiple lanes, off-ramps and overpasses. In Lake County a freeway was a two-lane road with no pot holes, that’s pretty much it. If you could drive it at 55 mph (still the speed limit by the way) without leaving the whole underside of the vehicle in the middle of road it was a ‘freeway.’ You couldn’t drive through town either; I guess that’s two rules.
Fortunately, all of our favorite swimming holes were accessible by country roads. One was up Kelsey Creek Drive to a pond along Kelsey Creek where a farmer had built a little coffer dam for irrigation. We’d climb through the barb wire fence with the No Trespassing sign (also something about being prosecuted) and have a wonderful time swimming and jumping from the oak tree on the bank. Our other favorite spot was Highland Springs Dam, no barb wire fence there, but it did have a ‘Stay Off the Spillway’ sign, which was riddled with bullet holes and, of course, the spillway was where we sat, soaked up the sun and dove off into the cool clear water. We could go anywhere we wanted, Mom and Dad didn’t really care or worry as long as we were home by dinner, and you ALWAYS had to be home by dinner.
By the end of your first day on the tractor you’ve pretty much solved the problems of the world and moved on to solving Einstein’s conundrum of quantum particle non-local attachments. Only seven more days to go, that is how long it will take to cover the 50 acres of vines. There’s a pattern to it actually, out 5 rows, back 3 rows. Now I know you’re thinking, “what in the hell is he talking about.” Now this is complicated so stay with me, draw a diagram if you need to, but here goes. Tractors towing anything are long and the distance from the end of the row to the fence or trees is typically short because farmers don’t want to waste valuable farm land with driveways. So you don’t have the turning radius to go down Row 1 and come back up Row 2. If you go down Row 1 and back Row 3 you still have to figure out how to get to Row 2. You begin to see the problem, hence the 5/3 rule, but now that gets more complicated. If you go down Row 1 back Row 6 (5 rows with plenty of room to turn) and back three you end up at Row 3 leaving that pesky 2 Row sitting there. The goal is to make consistent loops that will never leave a row behind. The trick is that the first turn has to be at least two rows before you go to the 5/3 pattern (if you start in Row 2) or two 2 row turns if you start in Row 1. Scenario 1 starts in Row 2 and goes like this: 2-4-1-6-3, while Scenario 2 would look like this: 1-3-5-2-7-4. And you thought farmers weren’t all that bright.
There is another advantage to slowly creeping by each vine, you get to look at it, how it developed, the arm structure, the canes, how the buds are positioned. You can almost see which vines will produce the best grapes and how the bunches will be balanced in the canopy. You can also see the healthy vines and those that are struggling. Not that you can stop and flag a struggling vine for special care, but some areas of the vineyard seem to show patterns of strength and other weakness; that is something you can pay attention to and work on. It can also help us at Brian Arden Wines select the best block to harvest. You can listen to the mower blades as they touch the ground over small humps and hear whether the soil is loamy or gravely, and that will affect berry profiles. You can feel the breezes that will keep the bunches drier if there are late fall rains, and perhaps protect them from frost damage in the spring. A lot of very important things can be relearned sitting on a tractor, I’d forgotten all about them.

— Arden Burt

Spring..

admin — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 17:41:24 +0000

As I sit here at the local coffee shop, the Calistoga Roastery, I realize that yet another month is passing by too quickly. So, just this time I’m going to compile a few months into one entry.

Lindsay and I are packing up once more to move across town. We hope to find a “home” in a still unfamiliar culture and way of life. After being here for over a year now, it was just a few months ago that Lindsay finally said “I really like it here”, a phrase I’ve been waiting for. It takes a while to find your place, and into the lives of others. Along this journey we find ourselves meeting amazing new friends, peers, and colleagues. It is my hope that this path will lead us down a road of exciting new adventures with no end in sight. While along this adventure it seems at every turn in the road an exotic feeling bubbles up inside of me. A mind-boggling feeling of anxiety and a nervous tension that for some odd reason excites me greatly, but makes Lindsay grab onto me with her beautiful puppy dog eyes, and makes my father jealous with envy.

Earlier this year we’ve already been through a variety of emotions and adventures. The weather was unfamiliarly warm, which brought back worries of frost much like 2008. Early bud break in Sonoma really started to worry growers. During this warm January, Lindsay and I headed to San Francisco to go to the acclaimed ZAP Festival. It was a pleasure to see where true fans of Zinfandel foresee the varietal evolving. After the festival we completed our final tasting and blending of our 2007 Zinfandel that we bottled in early February. It’s a relief to have our first vintage completely under our belt. There were many lessons learned, and many more to come I’m sure. We were pleased to find when we returned from the city that our cousins made a long overdue visit to see us here in Napa, though they only stayed a few days. It was a pleasure, and I truly enjoyed heading over to Sonoma, eating at the Girl and the Fig, drinking barrel samples from Falcor, and of course a Guinness on St. Patrick’s Day.

Just this last month the family, minus Dad, headed to Yosemite for our annual camping trip. We hauled our two small city dogs Bella and Roxie with us. Which I’d like to think was more for the entertainment of my nephew Tyler and niece Heidi, than for Lindsay’s attachment to the little mutts. The waterfalls were in perfect form this early spring, flowing at a rate I have rarely seen. As our clothes dried from the mist of the falls, there was a chill in the air that seemed more pleasant than I had imagined or anticipated. Unfortunately, this soothing reverie was cut too short and we had to head back to real life.

The vines have begun to shoot and awaken from their winter sleep. With this beautiful green comes the excitement and anticipation of yet another season. The lifeblood of the valley is just now beginning with tourists buzzing around, and feeding the local economy. The energy is exciting, but what I love about Northern California is the pace of life, quite tranquil.

We’ve been working on this site with Damion Hickman Design for over a year now. It has been a truly rewarding experience to work with all of the talented creative geniuses there. I hope you enjoy this site and future writing from my father Burt and I.

P.S. We’ll miss you Virginia Andreson.