Windy Oaks Estate Vineyard’s Jim Schultze, pt.1
Ξ June 8th, 2009 | → 0 Comments | ∇ A Day at a Time, Interviews, Winemakers, Wineries |
Last May, days before the Santa Cruz Mountains Vintner’s Festival, a devastating fire which had swept through portions of the west side of the Santa Cruz Mountains was finally 100% contained. During the course of following the fire I called a number of wineries in the vicinity to ask after their safety, and was later to write a summary of the exchanges. Among the most compelling stories was that of Jim and Judy Schultze, owners of Windy Oaks Estate Vineyards near Corralitos. Their car was packed with all they could save, and they waited for the evacuation order to come. Judy watched trees explode into flame half a mile from their residence, winery, and vineyards.
Well, a year has passed. Another Vintner’s Festival has arrived. I thought it an interesting time to visit the winery.
I arrived at just after eleven on Friday and was driven by Mr. Schultze to the highest vineyards on their property. Looking out on the Monterey Bay, among the namesake oaks, we talked.
Admin Are you looking forward to the Vintner’s Festival, and the work in the tasting room generally?
Jim Schultze I really enjoy the opportunity to talk to people and to explain to them about the vineyards and why they are so critical to the wine we make, the holistic idea of the whole thing. But it’s pretty difficult when you’ve got a line out to the crush pad!
So, we’ve got 15 acres of vines here, fourteen of Pinot Noir and one of Chardonnay. And we’ve planted a little vineyard in Aptos which is another four acres of Pinot.
So Pinot is your speciality…
JS Yes. It’s all we do. Well, we’ve got an acre of Chardonnay here so we make 50 to 150 cases a year. Everything else is Pinot. We planted these vineyards, except the ones down by the winery, in ‘96, ‘97, so the oldest of them are in their 13th leaf this year. So they are getting nice and mature as you can see.
We’ll just drive up to the top. The top of the vineyard at the oak trees here is a ridge about a thousand feet above the [Monterey] Bay. We can see a large chuck of the Bay the the whole of the Monterey Peninsula if it is clear.
Pinot grows very well here but are you yourself a keen Pinot fan?
JS Actually I am. We lived in Europe for a couple of years and started going to Burgundy quite a bit. That’s what really gave me my inspiration for the winery here. It was a model because in Burgundy all the wineries that you’ve heard of, Domanie Romanée-Conti, Dujac, Mugnier, Roumier, they are all 100% estate. They don’t differentiate between growing grapes and making wine. They think of them as the same thing. And that was my model when we decided to do this. So we’re all estate, we don’t buy any grapes. We put a lot of effort into the vineyard. We’ve developed some proprietary approaches to maximize quality in the vineyard that are very labor intensive.
And then in the winery we take what one wine writer recently described as an ‘extreme minimal intervention’ approach. So we try not to manipulate the fruit at all. We don’t use any additives, no enzymes, no acidulation, that kind of thing. The winery is all gravity. We do about half wild yeast fermentations which are the yeasts that occur naturally on the grape skins. And we have a very long barrel aging. So it’s a very natural approach to winemaking.
The vineyards are really unusual, they are the key to our wine in that we have probably the longest growing season for Pinot Noir in California. We typically have bud break at the end of February, early March, and for the last four years, two of which were really early years in most of California, we finished harvest within two days, plus or minus, of November 1st. So, February, late February, to November, we’ve got the vines in an active growing state! (laughs) People talk about the Sonoma Coast, oh, the long, slow, late season… they typically harvest two to three weeks ahead of us.
Anyway, a very long, slow growing season, typically we don’t get a lot of heat spikes, so it allows the fruit to develop a lot of complex flavors without getting super high sugar levels. The wines end up with moderate alcohol levels but with a lot of layering, a lot of nice complexity.
So no messing with the sugar content at all, the alcohol…
JS No. We really don’t need to. Well, it’s pretty clear out there. You can just make out the beaches along Monterey, heading up into Monterey there. When it is clear you can see a good chunk of the Bay. Today there’s a marine layer over the Bay.
Whose property is that off in the distance?
JS That’s actually Regan Vineyard, John Bargetto. They’re 100 to 200 feet lower than we are. As you probably know, one of the unique things about the Santa Cruz Mountains is there are literally hundreds of micro-climates because of the irregular shape of the Bay, the irregular shape of the mountains, all the different elevations. So you could go literally a quarter mile in any direction from here, plant exactly the same vines and yet get different flavor characteristics in the wine because it would be a different micro-climate.
You see that in agriculture generally. At Farmer’s Markets, for example, some folks closer to the Coast can’t grow certain vegetables, but just over a hill, for crying out loud, that can make all the difference in the world.
JS Yes. So, looking around at the vineyard, the one acre of Chardonnay is right here. [Bottom of slope.] Everything else you see in Pinot Noir. The sections down at this end are our oldest sections. Bay Block and Henry’s Block are typically where our reserve comes from. The Bay on one side the Redwoods on the other… (laughs)
Just beautiful. I remember speaking with your wife, Judy, on the telephone, just a year ago when the fire was raging. She mentioned watching the trees explode along a ridge line.
JS Yes! Those lines down this hill over here are actually fire breaks big bulldozers cut. The fire came right to that point, about a half a mile from here. And you can see beyond that, that hilltop, all that’s burned up there. It’s starting to green up, it’s actually greened up remarkably considering the fires were just a year ago. It came pretty close. Luckily the winds, our normal Bay breezes started blowing at the end of the first day. We ended up getting very little smoke here. Actually, Watsonville got a lot of ash. We go almost no ash here! For some reason, the shape of the hills and so forth, the smoke blew over initially, and then, of course, once the sea breezes started it blew up towards the summit and over towards the valley. We were really lucky, both in terms of the smoke and, of course, the fire! there seems to be a difference of opinion as to whether vineyards will actually burn. but I wouldn’t really want to test it. (laughs)
As far as the smoke damage is concerned, I had heard that only in Mendocino County, there is some indication of smoke damage. That it might mark the vintage in interesting ways.
JS Well, a friend of mine bought a quantity of fruit from a vineyard out in Carmel Valley. She called me and said “I can’t figure out what’s going on with this wine. Can you come and take a look at it?” And I did. The interesting thing is that I had never smelled or experienced smoke-tainted wine before. But with this wine, in the nose, it actually smelled smoky, not in a good way, sort of an acrid smell. And then there was a similar sort of flavor. It’s hard to describe but it is not a pleasant sensation. And this vineyard is right in the line of where the Big Sur fires’ smoke blew. They went on for weeks. This vineyard was right in the wind path of that. That wine was a good example of what can happen. It’s not good.
Like the smell after a house fire. Nothing romantic about it.
JS The smoke or so-called smoky flavor in wine can be a good thing in wine, but not this type of smoky.
So, it’s a great site here. The interesting thing is we farm by block and harvest by block. So our harvest extends over a three week period. And we make nine different Pinots from these few acres. And they are all different. It shows you the impact of terroir, which I know you are interested in!
I sure as hell am! It makes all the difference in the world. That’s why I am here today, to be honest with you. I pick vineyards very carefully before I venture out.
JS I find that the terroir is far more important than the particular clone. There is a lot of talk recently about Pinot Noir clones, how certain ones have certain characteristics, other ones have other characteristics. I find here, the key thing is really where the clone is growing in the vineyard. I can take the same clone, like the Dijon 115, from different parts of the vineyard and the fruit will have different characteristics and the wine in barrels, slightly different flavors. I keep everything separate in barrel and then blend it in the end.
Do you have a different barrel regimen for each of the Pinots? New oak, second year?
JS We use about half new oak, new French oak. Our wood program is very important to us because we are using a high percentage of new oak. I like the oak to sit in the background. The other thing we’re doing that’s kind of unusual, at least for California, is our Pinots are in barrel anywhere from 17 to 27 months. Now you’re starting to see a lot of Pinots that have been in barrel 9, 10, 11 months. The fact that we’re in barrels so long has some wonderful benefits, but it also means that the barrels need to have a really tight grain so they don’t release the oak tannins into the wine or alot of oaky flavor and aromas.
So we go to France every year. We’ve got three main barrel makers in Burgundy…
Would you care to mention them?
JS We use Francois Freres, Remond, and Sirugue, they are the three main ones. We visit them every year, work with them on wood selection and toast levels. With toast levels I have very specific requirements, which is a medium toast, long toasting so it is deep in the barrel; deep is a relative thing. It’s still a small part of the surface in terms of depth. But deep toasting, long toasting, not charred.
People will say it is a real boondoggle going to France every year. It is very enjoyable. We love Burgundy. We love the fact that unlike Napa, which is, say, mainly about grapes and wine, Burgundy is certainly all about wine but it is also about food, the way the two go together. That really appeals to us. We have our favorite restaurants in Burgundy we go to every year. We always look for new ones as well. I am continually amazed at how the right wine paired with the right food will bring out subtle nuances of flavors of each you don’t get in either by itself. Burgundy really hits you over the head with that.
In fact, our son, our youngest son is in Burgundy right now interning at a winery. He’ll be there for the entire growing season, through harvest, through going into barrel. He wants to join the winery here eventually. This is part of his training program.
What has been you experience with winemakers in Burgundy?
JS You know, it’s funny. You find out very quickly that it’s sort of a collegial group pretty much world-wide. When we go there each year our barrel makers will typically take us to visit one or two wineries each. So we’ll visit five or six wineries when we go. We’ll spend hours down in their caves, literally hours, tasting through all the different vineyards that they have. And always staring with the village wines, then moving to the premier cru, finally moving to the grand cru The problem is by the time you get to the grand cru you’re taste buds are totally gone. I always think, boy, we ought to start the opposite! Start with the grand crus! But they always do it that way.
We’ll spend hours doing this, discussing how they make the wine… we sometimes end up with discussions about politics. They are actually interested in the world, what’s going on in America. I always come away with a little experiment to try, some of which work. I then apply it on a large scale. Some don’t. For example, early on we used to take the typical California approach to malo-lactic fermentation which is to inoculate for ML when the sugars in the primary fermentation get down to roughly four or five degrees brix. And so by the time we went into barrel the malo was finished. Now we let the malo occur naturally. Usually, because we harvest so late and it is already so cold at night, it doesn’t get going until the Springtime when it warms up. In our ‘08 vintage, for example, we’re just finishing up malo just now [6/5].
So that was something my barrel makers and the wineries we visited all said we ought to let occur naturally in the barrel. I tried it in a small group of half a dozen barrels. I really liked the results. Now we do it with everything. There is always something to learn. That’s one of the great things about the industry because it really is an art and a science. There are a lot of things that are known, but there are more things that aren’t known, scientifically. There is alot of room for experimentation and creativity, and innovation.
How do the changes in temperature affect the wild fermentations?
JS Well, we do all small lots, small one ton lots. With that fairly small volume you don’t tend to get runaway fermentations in terms of the heat sense, or stuck fermentations. But because we harvest so late with the night’s being so cold our fermentations are really drawn out. Last year we were in fermentation tank an average of 31 days. I had two small French oak fermentors, open top fermentors, that went 51 and 53 days respectively. Long, long fermentations! (laughs) It’s essentially Christmas by the time we get everything into barrel. But because we are in barrel for so long we don’t have to be in a rush to get anything done. The malos finish the next Spring or early Summer and then the wine’s in barrel for a considerable period after that. So we always have a couple of vintages in the barrel room at any given point in time because our last three vintages of reserve, for example, have gone 25, 25, and 23 months in barrel.
My first two vintages of this little block, which I take care of myself, and as a clone we propagated from Burgundy, it went to 27 months in barrel. It is a clone which is not available in this country and has some really interesting characteristics, really intensive dark fruit and long a long, long finish. You take a sip an a minute later you’re still getting nuances of flavor.
Being in barrel for that long topping off becomes an issue. What wines do you use for topping off?
JS We have little stainless steel open tanks with floating lids, and so we take a barrel from a particular vintage and use that as required. Over the course of the vintage we use several barrels just as topping wine. I keep our barrel room at about 80% humidity so it minimizes the topping losses. We top up every month, except in the Summer, every two weeks. I taste every barrel in the winery every month, and I start to develop ideas of what profile it really fits. So I have a profile in mind, for example, for our reserve. I want that to be our most elegant, complex, and feminine Pinot: A lot of layers of flavor, a nice long finish, beautiful round mouth-feel.
So, in tasting through the barrels, if I come upon a barrel that I think really fits that profile I’ll mark that in my mind as a potential reserve barrel. Subsequent tastings, 10 to 15 times or more, after malo (we typically have very high malic acid levels here), I’ll have a good idea of where we are.
End of pt. 1
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