California’s Rainy Harvest of ’89

The sun had yet to splay its first rays through the old oaks along Spring Mountain Road as the station wagon cut through wisps of ground fog heading down to the valley floor.

This was harvest day, my annual run through the vineyards to see the condition of the fruit up close, and on this cool Sunday morning I was eager to see the quality of the Cabernet Sauvignon fruit in the Napa Valley. Doom and destruction were the bywords of this vintage thus far, and there was no guarantee of quality fruit on the vines we’d pick.

Rain that dropped three inches of moisture on California’s north coast--Napa, Sonoma, Mendocino and Lake counties--had hit just as some of the varieties were ripening. The precipitation had virtually every winery scrambling to harvest grapes before any more damage to the crops could be done.

Twenty-two-hour days are not uncommon for wine makers these days. I heard of one assistant winery worker who went home at 4 a.m. to change a torn pair of jeans, leaving the head wine maker still at work with hoses. “When I came back at 5:30, he was asleep on bags of tartaric acid,” said the assistant.

Fortified with a hearty breakfast at Doidge’s Coffee Shop on Main Street (including a great scone and a double cappuccino ), we hied off to Beringer Vineyard’s Home Ranch, behind the famed Rhine House in St. Helena. In tow with Beringer Vice President Tor Kenward and wife, Susan, were Molly, 3, and Cooper Kenward, as well as Dagan Duncan, 12, a family friend. The wine we’d make from these grapes will be 21 at Cooper’s 21st birthday party.

Other pickers included Madeleine Kamman, head of Beringer’s School for American Chefs; J.B. Holstein, former chef at the White Pillars in Biloxi, Miss.; Jody Allen Stern, a chef at La Madre in New York City, as well as my three intrepid pickers, my sons, Marc, 11; Adam, 8, and Joel, 5.

As we walked up the dusty trail toward the vineyard, I feared the rot we’d find. Rot was the major problem wine makers around the region had reported after the third of three rainfalls pelted the area.

“You have to be very selective about how you pick,” said Beringer viticulturist Bob Steinhauer. He noted that the previous evening it had rained on Beringer’s vineyards in the central coast, damaging what otherwise was a large, high-quality harvest, and that only by picking clean fruit and leaving rot on the vine would wineries make great wine.

However, Andy Beckstoffer, one of the Napa Valley’s largest growers, noted that Cabernet Sauvignon--the variety we were heading to pick--is a rugged variety capable of withstanding a drenching if the days after are dry and cool, without excessive humidity to propagate rot and mildew.

“Wow, look at this fruit.” exclaimed Tor as we hit the first row of vines. “There’s a bunch here.”

As expected, the tonnage in this vineyard was huge. Steinhauer allowed as how it might be three times the size of last year’s crop in this same field, where the bunches looked scrawny and there was barely enough last year for us to make even a barrel’s worth, 60 gallons, about 700 pounds of fruit.

This year, however, as Marc and Adam got out their scissors and as I hauled six lug boxes into the vineyard, it was apparent that we’d have no trouble picking.

Moreover, by 10 a.m., the sun had burned through the haze and the cool earth was warming, but the temperature was only about 70 degrees, about 20 degrees lower than at the same time the year before.

I grabbed my serpette --a small, curved knife used to cut the bunches from the canes--and headed out for the last row facing west. The bunches of Cabernet grapes glistened. The violet-blue color was dramatic against the emerald of the leaves, and flecks of dew mingled with the natural yeast dust to create colors of rare depth.

“Ow,” said Marc, who had slipped on a rock and had cut his wrist.

“Squeeze a grape on it,” said Kamman. “That’s the way they do it in the vineyards in Europe.”

“I won’t cut myself this year, Daddy,” said Adam. “I’ll be more careful with the scissors.”

“Cuts are part of picking,” said Tor.

Molly and Joel collected rocks of varying colors from a nearby ravine, watched by Duncan out of the corner of an eye as she continued to pick.

At 10:30, the sound of the whistle of the Napa Valley Wine Train, as it passed through town, rolled through the hills and I realized that we were more than two-thirds through with the harvest, much faster than a year earlier, and I was still on the first row of grapes.

By day’s end I had nicked my fingers only twice, battle scars most winery workers show evidence of at this time of the year. Marc and Adam went unscathed. Joel got a pocket full of rocks.

Interestingly, the Cabernet we picked showed almost no rot at all. Only two bunches I harvested had to be tossed on the ground because of rot.

By 12:30 p.m. we were finished picking, and the temperature never rose above 80 degrees, still 20 degrees below what it had been the year earlier. And with 28 lug boxes filled to well above the rim, we had about 90 gallons of wine after crushing (in a small, home-wine-maker’s crusher).

Then Joel, Duncan, Holstein and others pulled off their shoes and leaped into the square fermenting box to squish the grapes with bare feet--considered the gentlest means of getting the fermentation started with good color extraction from the grape skins.

Then we added a prepared yeast strain developed in France that seems to generate a strong fermentation, and we walked away. In little more than a week, we’d have wine.

“I can’t say what kind of flavor we’ll get,” said Tor Kenward as we had an Italian-style harvest luncheon at Tra Vigne. “But the juice looks good.” With our luncheon we opened a bottle of Cabernet that Tor made in 1983 and a bottle of the 1986 Cabernet that he and my family harvested in 1986 in honor of Molly’s birth year. These wines were celebrating their sixth and third birthdays, respectively.

Picking Cabernet after a rain-filled harvest year is always risky, but Steinhauer noted that Cabernet is a thin-clustered grape variety and the cool winds that ran through the Napa Valley following the last storm in late September this year dried out the bunches and that helped to prevent rot.

This is as good a rationalization as any for planting Cabernet in regions that get moisture during the harvest.

Beckstoffer pointed out that some Cabernet vineyards were actually helped by the rains. The rain washed dust off leaves and gave the vines a shot of water they needed.

Stu Smith at Smith-Madrone Vineyards, high above St. Helena, said his Cabernet was one of his best ever.

So four days after harvesting Cabernet at Beringer, I drove to the top of Spring Mountain Road and down the rocky trail toward Smith-Madrone.

There, Charlie and Stu Smith, the brothers who built this remote winery on the slope of the hillside with the 180-degree view, squirted some 1989 Cabernet out of a fermenting tank into a glass. Fermentation hadn’t yet finished.

The color was as dark and violet-blue-black as anything I’ve seen, and the aroma, still jam- and grape-like, offered intense fruit richness, more than anything I have tasted so soon after the harvest.

“This could be our best Cabernet yet,” said Charlie, even though he is a big fan of his winery’s recently released 1985 Cabernet ($15), a wine of fullness and rich fruit with a decided Bordeaux leaning.

So despite the dire predictions following the rains, California’s 1989 harvest may yet prove to be successful.

Wine of the Week: 1988 Beaulieu Vineyard Dry Sauvignon Blanc ($8.50)--Stylish lemony fruit with a hint of lemon-grass spice and a fresh, melon aftertaste make this one of the best straightforward Sauvignon Blancs on the market. Often seen at $7 a bottle, it’s an excellent wine to match with shellfish.