Dover Canyon Winery

101 Uses for a Wine Tank

• Really deep pool.
• Impromptu steel drum songs
• Storing wine before bottling
• Fermenting large lots of grapes
• Wildlife shelter
• Better phone reception
• Lightning rod

Cleaning tanks is fun.  When the weather isn't bitterly cold, at any rate . . . this month I would generally wait until the mid-morning sun hit the crush pad before shucking my shoes and socks and climbing into the tank.  Our largest tanks are only 3,000 gallons and while they have safety railings around the top, there are no ladders inside.  We place an empty picking bin under the tank door and main valve to catch the wash water so it doesn't schloop all over the crush pad while we are pressing.  I climb into the bin and then slither through the 2-foot opening into the tank.  There is no graceful way to do this.   My front gets thoroughly smeared with grape goo, and I generally look around to make sure no one is watching first before hefting my butt in the air.  I go in barefoot to preserve the purity of my white sneakers and to leave a cleaner "footprint" in the tank.  Grapes crunch beneath my bare feet and the sticky, cold grape gunk gets between my toes.

During harvest, we use the tanks to ferment larger lots, which means we also need to punch down the fermenting fruit.  The stainless steel lids are removed for the duration of harvest because they are impossible to lift manually.  In the past, we jerry-rigged plastic covers for the tanks, and that worked, but they required constant checking and tightening after wind or rain. 

Dan solved the problem by ordering custom-built spa covers for the tanks.  They were made to fit the tank aperture; have skirts that keep rain, bugs and leaves out; are heavy enough to withstand inclement weather; and best of all, it's easy to fold back one-half of the cover for twice daily punchdowns. 

Winemaking Misadventures

Most people think of winemaking as a fairly simple, alchemical process that occurs briefly, and then the wines mature for two years in oak casks or kegs, requiring only an occasional tasting and perhaps a gentle racking to keep them pure.

And theoretically, that is the plan. But winemakers rely on equipment, and equipment often breaks down, or starts running backward for some unknown reason, or the winemaker forgets to turn it off and it blows something up. It’s always kind of fun to be on the fringe of a disaster—although it’s definitely not fun to be the poor sot in the middle of it.

The Yeast that Ate my Brain

In a British Columbia article titled “Where’s the Organic Wine?” the author says:

“Conventional wine may also be produced naturally, or may include more than a dozen additives, such as synthetic yeasts, sulphite preservatives and taste and appearance enhancers. Natural, organic methods rely on cultured, not genetically modified yeast for initial fermentation.”

Disregarding the other undocumented claims in this paragraph, I am seeing these derogatory references to wine yeasts more and more frequently. Somehow, people are getting the idea that commercially available yeasts are not natural.

Blending Trials

We face each other over two glasses of wine. He asks for my opinion first. My wine repertoire consists of "I like it," or "I don't like it," and maybe a comment on the acid-fruit balance. But this is all he needs—the gauntlet thrown down.

Examining wine is this man's sport and passion. He doesn't just taste, or smell, or see. He views wine as a chessmaster views the board, or a sailor his boat. Every tiny detail is vital, and my opinion is only a catalyst, a challenge that invites him to step closer and lose himself in yet another brief but passionate relationship.

If I say I like it, he looks surprised, as though I couldn't possibly be serious, but bravely he says nothing, going back into the glass to re-examine it dubiously for positive qualities. After a moment he says, "But the phenolics are a bit high, don't you think? And there is a definite brassica component that detracts from the varietal character of the wine."

If I don't like it, he looks offended but again says nothing, reexamining the wine with one eye on me as if I might bite him when he's not looking. Gradually however, as he searches for the particular faults that affected me, his attention becomes more and more focused on the wine.

He peers through his pie plate glasses into the wine with an intensity that causes me to lean away from my glass toward his. His attention pours downward into the tiny maelstrom of swirling wine, as if leaving his body momentarily to become one with the tiny swirling sea of color and aroma.

Placing first one nostril, and then the other as far into the glass as he can, he breathes deeply, drawing individual molecules into his delicate receptors.

"Definite cat piss," he comments on the chardonnay. And of the pinot noir, "A little too much diaper."

Finally he tastes the wine, sipping it distrustfully, not sure how it will affect him. With a sorrowful shake of his head, he says, "The fruit is overripe, caramelized at best. The color is a little muddy, and the aroma is not varietally accurate."

Although the wine tastes wonderful to me, I feel empathy for his sorrow, because the wine he criticizes so cruelly is his own.

It takes a lot of good beer . . .

Harvest season in the wine industry is hot, thirsty work. The vines are covered with a summer's worth of dust, and inhabited by black widow spiders and other crawling, climbing, biting insects. Workers who peel back the bird netting draped over the vines have the pleasure of removing dead birds, squirrels and possums entangled in the net. Driving the tractors which tow the picking bins up and down the rows is hot work too, and bees follow the picking bins in swarms, lying thick on top of the sweet, sticky grapes.

In the winery itself, cellarmen drag heavy hoses from one tank to another, even up onto the catwalks, so wine can be pumped up to the top of a tank and sluiced over the grapeskins floating near the top. Others are standing inside fermentation tanks, shoveling out the heavy pomace, the residual grapeskins left after the wine has been pumped off. Everything needs cleaning, all the time. Tanks, barrels, buckets, hoses, fittings---everything is washed, brushed, scoured and sanitized in a continual war against nasty organisms and fruit flies.

This time of year, you are likely to find local winemakers enjoying a hot dinner at Papi's Mexican restaurant, arguing the merits of various yeasts with a hot tostada in one hand and a cold beer in the other. Cellarmen and winemakers sit in the shade at the end of the day with--you guessed it, a cold beer. The cellar refrigerators hold equal parts of yeast, bottled wine samples, steaks, and beer.

Harvest Begins . . .

Harvest began on Saturday with 2 tons of petite sirah, and continued on Sunday with a small lot of carmenere. Fruit from our source vineyards all seems to be getting ripe at once. Dan’s cellphone is buzzing constantly, and we have fruit scheduled for delivery every day this week. Sundays are usually quiet in the tasting room as far as customer traffic, but it was a busy day for grower visits as local growers stopped by with baggies and buckets of field-selected clusters for us to test, and updates on ripening and picking crew schedules. I put some syrah clusters on a pretty plate on the tasting bar so customers could taste the berries and evaluate grapes the way we do—for soft skins, acid balance, and toasty pips. I also did some quick refractometer readings right at the tasting bar for the growers, and let our customers use the refract as well. We’re also in the middle of packing and shipping our fall wine club packages, so it’s really hectic around here. But the air is alive with expectation, the annual surge of excitement that accompanies the beginning of harvest.

The Magic of Crush

In late summer, there is a moment in vineyards known as "veraison," which translates roughly as "moment of truth." It is the moment when grapes begin to turn from hard, green beads into sweet, plump fruit. From that moment until harvest the vineyards are at their most vulnerable. The hazards of the early season--heavy rains, late frosts--are minor compared to the dangers that haunt the last few weeks of vintage. Hordes of deer and birds descending on tender fruit can wipe out an entire harvest in a few days. Late season heat ripens grapes too quickly, robbing them of flavor. A lack of heat delays harvest into late fall, when freezing nights can turn grapes into tasteless mush. Late season rains swell grapes with water, breaking the skins and infecting entire clusters with mold.

During these last few weeks of summer, winemakers are in the vineyards, looking at the clusters, crushing grapes between their fingers, tasting the fruit. The winemaker's phone rings unanswered, mail piles up in messy stacks, and deadlines are missed. In the winery itself, cellarmen spend weeks draining barrels and tanks of previous vintages, bottling and labeling wine and shipping it out, cleaning tanks, barrels and equipment. Like the unveiling of a statue, cloth covers are pulled off the crusher and the press, and the huge machines are rolled outside, cleaned, and tested. Truck-size scales are pulled out of storage, assembled and calibrated to receive incoming fruit.

But to those of us who have been through this before, these busy weeks seem quiet, sounds seem muted. The vineyards are full and leafy, and heavy with fruit. Vines sag over their trellis systems and trail on the ground. Heat waves dance over the vines and an occasional breeze lifts the aluminum strips which are meant to frighten birds. In the winery itself, empty tanks stand with their doors hanging open. Barrels are turned upside down in their racks and the whole winery has a strangely hollow feeling.

Like survivors of a storm who smell another forming, we move through our preparations quickly with our minds focused on the horizon of late summer, waiting as the rising sugars and flavor of the vineyard slowly escalate--because all of this activity is only preparation for the season we call "crush."

Bottling Day

Bottling day is always an adventure. This bottling went well, and by late afternoon we were enjoying a glass of wine with friends while cleaning the cellar and tanks. After weeks and months of quietly gestating in barrels, the act of moving the wine into bottles requires a large crew, a mad scramble, earplugs, and logistical timing.

We use a mobile bottling unit, an amazing piece of machinery housed in a trailer which is always delivered to the site by a semi the evening before bottling. Once the truck is scheduled, wines are carefully racked out of their barrels into portable tanks and lined up in the order they will be processed, so hoses can be swiftly moved from one tank to the next without losing pressure. Weeks in advance, we have ordered pallets of bottles, corks, and foils. Labels have been created, printed, proofed and delivered. Most of the time everything is delivered on time and to the correct address.

The Last Bottle

Well, there it goes. Long time family friends Steve and Irma Cunningham saved some of Dan’s first private vintage, a 1992 cabernet sauvignon which was then called Vallon. Each bottle was hand-etched with the name and given or sold only to family and friends. Over the years, we’ve enjoyed a few remaining bottles, but we were pretty sure we had consumed it all until Steve (right, Dover Dan center) decided to surprise us with one more bottle.