Adding Chardonnay to Gantz Family Vineyards

Calera Pinot Noir clones with the canes removed; the head will be cut off when they graft the new Chardonnay.

Way back in 2009, when we were establishing Gantz Family Vineyards, we selected Pinot Noir as our grape of choice. Russian River Valley is famous world-wide for our stellar Pinot and we knew we had a lovely little spot to grow it in, as well as phenomenal winemakers interested in buying from us.

For our clones, we selected Pommard, the workhorse of Pinot, and Calera, the darling of wine makers. Calera is not the darling of wine grape growers. Pinot Noir is famously the most difficult wine grape to grow. It has very thin skin and is sensitive to frost, wind, soil types, and critical glances. Calera is the most hypersensitive of the bunch.

After 10 years of fussing, babying, pleading and praying, we’ve decided enough is enough. The Calera blocks returned as much as 50% less fruit than the other clones.

The Russian River Valley is also world famous for our luxury Chardonnay. Forty-six years ago, at the Judgment in Paris, the 1973 Chardonnay from the famous Napa winery, Chateau Montelena, was given top honors over France’s best vintners. Those grapes came from Russian River Valley’s own Bacigalupi Vineyards.

With support from our winemaker clients and our vineyard manager, we’ve made a momentous decision to graft the fussy Calera clone over to a beautiful Chardonnay grape clone, Mount Eden. Of course, we will continue to grow the Pommard and Mariafeld Pinot clones, which are so popular with our winemakers. Our 4.5 acre vineyard will now be 65% percent Pinot and 35% percent Chardonnay.

Beginning with new rootstock would take us five years to have sellable Chardonnay. Fortunately, we can perform top (or T-) budding, which is the process of budding new clone material onto an existing rootstock. Next year, we expect the harvest on the new Chardonnay vines to be at about 50%, which we will be able to sell. We will have a fully mature harvest the following year.

We’re lucky to already know that this Chardonnay clone does spectacular on the property. We have a small block of the same clone that we’ve been growing just for Clay’s use. We harvest it ourselves and Clay uses his talents to make a wine available only to friends and family. It has become a favorite and our daughter regularly forces us to send cases of it to her in Houston so she can impress all of her friends. (note: the latter part of that sentence was written by our daughter.)

We’re so excited for this new chapter. Wish us luck!

Harvest 2017 at Gantz Family Vineyards

Gantz Family Vineyards measures itself on quality and not quantity, but after last week's harvest, we were pleased with the results. As a relatively young and small vineyard experiencing only its fifth harvest, the main thing we want to see is improvement year over year. We were pleased to see growth in 2017, with an abundant amount of Pinot Noir fruit harvested and delivered to winemaker Kosta Browne Winery.

As it goes with farming, it was down to the last minute before we were absolutely confirmed on the picking date/time. It was supposed to be at 2 a.m., Wednesday morning (September 13), so Celeste figured she had time to rehearse with her a cappella group Tuesday evening, come home for a nap, and start fresh. No such luck! Our vineyard manager, Jim Pratt of Cornerstone Certified Vineyard, announced that picking would start at 10 p.m., Tuesday night (September 12). So Celeste left rehearsal early and hit the ground running! We like to provide lots of "fortifications" for the crew; Clay made sure the crew knew where the snacks were and proceeded to make pot after pot of coffee.  

Delivery of the bins

So many bins

Even though Kosta Browne had delivered more bins than ever, we still needed to supply 2 of our own!

Pulling up the bird netting

Both of us help with the "sweep" harvest, picking up the grapes that the crews drop or miss. But later in the evening, it became apparent that because of our new leafing strategy, it was hard for the guys to find and pick the fruit, particularly in the Pommard and Calera blocks. So Celeste decided to go out and pull leaves away, just ahead of the crews; it's a task she's planning on taking on again next year. She can't do it all, but it certainly helps.  

Vineyard workers

We're very fortunate to be working with Jim Pratt and his crew from Cornerstone Certified Vineyard

A lot of leafs

Our new leafing strategy kept our fruit from getting sunburnt but also made it difficult to pick.

Clay

Clay and Celeste followed the workers, getting at the fruit that they missed.

The crew started at 10 p.m. and finished at 6 a.m., working through the mild, 61-degree night. Just as the last crew member emptied his tub into the bin, a few raindrops began to fall. As the last bin was fork-lifted onto the truck, the rain started to pour in earnest, complete with lightning and thunder. We couldn't believe our luck! The crew started at 10 p.m. and finished at 6 a.m., working through the mild, 61-degree night. Just as the last crew member emptied his tub into the bin, a few raindrops began to fall.

Delivery at Kosta Browne Winery

The Mariafeld 23 clone, which we introduced into the vineyard last year, performed better than expected and Sam Ausburn, Kosta Browne's viticulturist, was pleased about the quality. It was a nice result, especially because deciding to replace some of our Calera with the 23 wasn't an easy decision. We do feel like the results validate (at least initially) some of the steps we took for the first time this year:

• The fourth cane in the Calera calmed the vines and resulted in better set.

• A new leafing strategy helped protect the grapes when we had the Labor Day heat spike.

• The grapes seemed to respond well to a regulated deficit irrigation strategy.

Because it is farming, we have to give a big nod of thanks to Lady Luck. Our row orientation (E-W) combined with our leafing strategy helped to protect the clusters from the hot weather. An E-W row orientation is unorthodox, but we picked it (with counsel from our former vineyard manager Ulises Valdez and Kris Lowe) because of the way our site was laid out and because, in our spot in the Russian River Valley, we were not too worried about sunburn. This year was not ideal for growers by any stretch -- with heat spikes, wide temp fluctuations and rain during harvest -- so we feel like we were very fortunate.

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