Dover Canyon Winery

Shit Happens: The Exploding Fish Emulsion

In March and April we receive the last of our spring rains. This is the time of year we like to give the soil around the vines a little boost by pumping diluted fish and kelp emulsion through a temporary drip irrigation system. We only want to do this during the spring rains so the native precipitation will carry the emulsion deep into the soil, replacing nutrients naturally. The fish and kelp combination also encourages the biodiversity and health of the cover crop and soil life, including natural fungi, microbes, worms, and insects.  We ordered a barrel—a 50 gallon drum—of fish and kelp emulsion from a firm in Oregon. Unfortunately, the emulsion was on backorder for a long time and didn’t arrive until spring was over and the rains nothing but a memory.

So we put the drum in the walnut processing shed until the next spring. It sat in the open shed through a hot summer and fall and a cold winter. The following spring arrived. One sunny morning around 7 am Dan was eager to get started on vineyard chores.  With no particular warning to me he said, "Hey, come help me set up the fish emulsion drip!" I protested sleepily that I was still in my peejays.  I would also be working in the tasting room that day, so I wanted to change into some clean jeans and a sweater first. "No, you don’t need to change. This will just take a minute."

So I let him talk me into riding down to the creekside barn on the ATV, still dressed in my black velour pajamas, with a pair of Uggs on my cold little feet. Dan unscrewed the cap on the drum and explained that my job was to kneel at the base of the drum and hold a five-gallon bucket steady while he dumped a few gallons of fish emulsion into the bucket. Our drip emission feeder is a five-gallon model, so Dan would then pour the emulsion into the feeder and set the drip rate. Once the water was turned on, the water would pass through the feeder, dilute the emulsion and carry it up the hill, depositing it at the base of each vine in a steady drip.

So there I was, kneeling down and holding the bucket as Dan tipped the drum over. We were unaware that over the course of the year, the emulsion had fermented anaerobically in its enclosed drum. Its contents had morphed into something even more awful than the original contents.

Vineyard Update: Late July/Early August 2007

The syrah is approaching veraison (the beginning of color and ripening), but the berries are still green-to-lavender.  The zinfandel, which laid a heavy crop this year, is just beginning to turn lavender.  However, this is waaaaay ahead of schedule.  In conversations with other growers, vineyards across the central coast are developing color 2-3 weeks earlier than usual, probably in response to the lack of rain we have suffered this year.  (See last year's vintage reports for X-treme wetness.)

Sugar and color are only the most obvious qualifiers of grape quality.  The seed pips must also ripen to a toasty brown, the berry's pH must rise to a level between 3.4 and 3.7, and the other phenolic (aroma and flavor) compounds must also mature.  Otherwise, you end up with a prematurely sweet, but tasteless, berry.

Will all the flavor compounds mature in time for harvest?  Will it ever rain again?

A Paean Salute

Zinfandel. Primitivo. Guttural pagan names that perfectly elucidate the robust, peppery, shamelessly lusty fruit of the zinfandel grape.

March. The end of winter and cold feet, of leaving for work in the dark and coming home in the dark. It's almost time to dust off the barbecue; our hunter-gatherer instinct awakens and hungers for blackened, peppered steaks and grilled vegetables.

This month is our paean salute, our end-of-winter bonfire, our celebration of everything wine symbolizes—good food, warmth, red berries and red lips, sunlight and firelight, and most of all, the mystery of earth's bounty and man's eagerness to preserve it.

Some zinfandels are elegant yet barbaric contenders for a Gallic throne, mysterious and powerful, with layers of complexity under a velvet mantle. Some are distinctively New World zinfandels—brash, bold and individualistic. Late harvest zinfandels and syrahs with dark, divine flavors strike a resonant note deep in your soul on a chilly night.

Each season's harvest is different, a reflection of the winds, the moons, and man's ability to capture earth's magnificence in a bottle.

A Focus on 'Vineyard Presence'

The name "Dover Canyon" comes from a steep east-west canyon that slashes directly through the heart of northwest Paso Robles, bringing us a wind tunnel effect of cool Pacific air every afternoon. Our vineyard and wine barn are on a hilltop vectored between the Templeton Gap and Dover Canyon wind tunnels.

Summer breezes are so brisk they will slide a full glass of wine right off the patio tables. While Paso Robles has been traditionally thought of as excessively hot and dry, the western hills lead into the Santa Lucia foothills and enjoy cool breezes, strong diurnal temperature swings, 22 inches of rainfall a year, and steep hillsides with varying soil patterns.

In addition to our own zinfandel and syrah vineyard, winemaker and owner Dan Panico buys fruit produced in the northwest corner of the appellation, from the Templeton Gap microclimate to the Adelaida Hills district.

Paso Robles is geographically the third largest appellation in California, so there is considerable geological and meteorological variation in the appellation, and a number of very distinct microclimates. Dan prefers the northwest corner of the appellation due to its pre-calcareous soils, steep slopes, and east-west wind patterns.

Dan prefers dry-farmed or stress-irrigated fruit, and the heavier rainfall of northwest Paso supports vineyards with rootstocks and clones chosen for dry farming.

Dan also focuses on Zinfandel and Rhône-style wines. He produces several individualistic Zin releases each year, from spicy old vine Zin to powerful, smoky nouveau styles.

Dan's wines are robust, with distinctive smoke and licorice flavors, and gentle perfumes of oak that do not overwhelm the fruit. His focus is on vineyard presence—plenty of fruit, a sense of terroir and vintage, and a crisp acidity that offers longevity of fruit.

Our vineyard

In the zinfandel vineyard, which is dryfarmed and headtrained, we have three acres of small berry clone zinfandel on St. George rootstock planted on the back slope, which is warm and very, very rocky. The soils are Linne Calodo and Santa Lucia, with clay loam on the bottom slope, and pre-calcareous soil and limestone bedrock near the hillslope summit. An average annual rainfall of 22" a year is retained by the underlying clay and provides deep moisture throughout the growing season.

We also have two acres of Shiraz Clone 1 on 1103 rootstock, on bilateral trellising right behind the winery.

Why only seven acres, you ask? Dan and I like to do the work ourselves, and we knew this was as much as two people could realistically handle and still have fun.

A New Year in the Vineyard

Winter, even here in our relatively mild central coast, is a time of dormancy. Barbecues are covered or rolled into the garage, basketballs and baseballs lie forgotten in dusty corners, roses and grapevines raise bare arms against cold and shredding skies.

Like most fruit trees and vines, grapes require this period of dormancy to build strength for the coming vintage. In a way, this time of year is truly the beginning of the next vintage, just as January is the beginning of our new year. A vine is impacted by its past—the type of trellising selected, the demands of past years in terms of water and heat and production, and the amount of tender care and handling it may or may not have enjoyed. But that is in the past. Now the vine is resting, rebuilding, getting ready to produce a new "leaf," as a year is often referred to in viticulture. A new leaf, new buds, new clusters as if nothing had gone on before, as though nothing can deter it from beginning fresh.

Like all plants, a vine is mindless in the sense that it will joyously burst into life in the spring and given its own way it will sprawl, climb, and spread like the weed it is, until, exhausted by its summertime orgy of sun-chasing growth, it finally produces some wild clusters of bird-size fruit.

It is up to the husbandman, gardener, or vineyard manager to prune, shape, domesticate, and tame those shameless vines into tidy rows of well-branched vines dripping with the appropriate number of grape clusters per acre—discipline bringing order and strength into nature.

2005 Harvest

It’s been an easy harvest, with fruit coming in at a predictable pace. The weather has been consistently warm and pleasant, although the temperatures have started dropping dramatically after dark, which means that Dan’s early morning and late evening punchdowns are a little frosty.

A full harvest report and photos of our vintage action from early spring through harvest can be found at the friendly culinary site eGullet.

We turned away several vineyards this year because the pH values were too low. Some growers were unable to sell their fruit. There is hype all over the print and online media about a high quality vintage, and certainly the fruit that we selected this year is excellent—huge aromas, heavy pigments, and perfect alcohol and pH levels.

However, my heart goes out to the growers who simply weren’t able to make it happen this year. With late, heavy spring rains and rampant but weaker green growth in the vineyard, those vineyards that were not proactively dropping fruit and shoot thinning early in the season were unable to properly ripen their fruit. I wonder if the press is taking into account those growers who gambled and lost this year. I guess it would be a little difficult to get those interviews, though, eh? What would you say? “Excuse me, sir, but I understand that your fruit was hopelessly imbalanced this year, and that all the wineries you contacted rejected you. May I ask how you feel about that?”

According to industry sources, this is the second largest harvest of winegrapes in California, which means that vintners on the spot market were able to select only the best fruit. Bulk wine brokers (firms that buy unused fruit or fermented wine for sale later) are also reporting a very high quality vintage. But consider that demand is not very flexible—it is determined by the number of tanks, barrels, and fermenting bins at each winery or wine processing facility. The wine industry can only expand so much during harvest, just as loosening your belt only works so long during Thanksgiving dinner.

So when it comes to evaluating the 2005 vintage, one can approach it from the wine production angle—there is certainly a lot of great fruit available this year. Or one can consider the true character of the vintage, in which case we should remember that the excellent 2005 vintage was a struggle for many viticulturists, and a struggle that some lost.

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.