July 9, 2003
2003 in Santa Barbara County-Another Great Vintage in Paradise! You heard it here first.This week I spoke to a longtime friend and vineyard manager, Jeff Newton, about prospects for the 2003 vintage. Jeff Newton owns Coastal Vineyard Care Associates and farms a number of prominent vineyards in Santa Barbara County including Stolpman, Fiddlestix and Westerly.
I think that when people buy and consume wine, they often lose sight that what they are drinking is preserved fruit. You can preserve fruit by drying it, as in the case of raisins and apricots. You can preserve fruit by making jellies and preserves, as in the case of delicious Santa Maria Valley strawberries. And you can preserve grapes, for example, by making it into jelly or wine.
We, as Americans have been raised on soft drinks since childhood and reinforced by TV soft drink advertising, that it might be quite easy (and wrong) to think that the contents of a bottle of wine is something that's manufactured. Wine is never manufactured!
The famous wine producer and founder of Silver Oak Cellars, Justin Meyer, refers to his profession as wine growing, not wine making, because growing the fruit is the precursor to making the wine. I believe very strongly in the old French axiom that goes "the wine is made in the vineyard."
So it makes a lot of sense occasionally to take a look at what's going on out in the vineyards. Wind during flowering, cold temperatures, and fog, are all factors that can affect the yield and quality of the fruit, at harvest from late August into late October.
So far this season, Jeff told me, pinot noir is looking like an average crop with no surprises. Timing, so far, is about normal. Given no excessive and lengthy hot spells, it's looking like a "normal year."
Jeff added the crop, so far, looks balanced and it looks like it will be high quality. Here we are in early summer and Jeff told me he's excited about the potential of the 2003 quality of pinot noir.
With regard to the Bordeaux reds (cabernet sauvignon, merlot, and cabernet franc) and Bordeaux whites (sauvignon blanc and semillon), the yields are down significantly, he told me. The reason he said was the seven days of overcast weather in June that coincided with full bloom.
The syrah crop, he told me, is down in yield slightly, but "looks to be a very good vintage." Syrah, by the way, is the noble red grape of the northern Rhone valley of France, the grape that produces the great Hermitage wines and Cote Rotie wines of France.
Pinot noir, by the way, is the great wine of Burgundy in France; its white wine counterpart from Burgundy is chardonnay.
As a footnote, I think one of the best books on wine ever written was Justin Meyer's book, Plain Talk about Fine Wine. It was published back in 1989 by Capra Press in Santa Barbara. I spoke with Barbara O'Dowd, the publisher's assistant, to see if the book is still in print. Sadly, it isn't, she told me. But she added that with recent interest, they are thinking about possibly reprinting it. You might also check with Chaucer's Books in Santa Barbara-a great resource on books about wine and spirits-or at Amazon.com which I am told sells used books on line.
Times wine columnist, Bob Senn, lives in the Los Alamos Valley and owns the Los Olivos Wine & Spirits Emporium.
