So what’s the fruit set like this year? Hear what Winemaker/Owner Adam Campbell has to say about the outlook for the 2022 vintage:
“September and even in October really is the perfect time to come out and taste wine at Elk Cove. What I like about it is you can see these vines in their full glory, right? Big green canopy, ripening fruit on the vine. If you come out you definitely have to stop into the vineyard, go to our old historic vineyard planted in 1974 and taste those grapes off the vine. If you taste the grapes, especially if you chew the skins you can start picking up those Pinot Noir characters and tannins and things that you’ll see in the grapes you will see in the wines. So it’s an amazing time to come out and visit us.” – Winemaker/Owner Adam Campbell
FULL TRANSCRIPT OF THE VIDEO:
Adam Campbell:
Hey everybody, my name’s Adam Campbell, owner and winemaker for my family’s winery Elk Cove Vineyards and right now we’re standing in our Mount Richmond Vineyard on the east hill and started planting this particular site in 2007. We’re standing in a Pommard clone block of Pinot noir that’s kind of just now thinking about going through veraison and ripening up the fruit.
Anna Campbell:
How has the growing season been so far this year, Adam?
Adam Campbell:
Well, 2022 has been an interesting growing season. I always like to say that after almost 50 years of growing grapes between my folks and myself we’ve seen almost everything. This one is a little bit of a curve ball for me, we had quite a wet spring, April, May and even June. We had a lot of rain, started this season with really good soil moisture. Earlier than that we had a little bit of a frost event on some of the vineyards in Oregon. But fortunately, where we stand here at Mount Richmond was not frost affected. So I think the growing season really is primarily influenced by that really wet spring, which led to a really healthy canopy. Lots of green growth, lots of leaves kind of staying green doing their job. But we ended up with quite a large fruit crop because of that wet spring with some larger clusters which I think we kind of see through here.
Anna Campbell:
Cool. So when you have a large crop does that mean we’re bringing in more fruit, making more wine? What does that mean to have a large crop?
Adam Campbell:
So when these vines set a large crop, what we see here is probably around four tons per acre. What we’ll do is we’ll come through right at about color change or a little after and we’ll thin the crop. We’ll basically take off every third cluster, maybe every other cluster in some vineyards to bring the crop level down to a more reasonable amount that will not only ripen but put tons of complexity and flavor into the grapes. So it’s really important for us with Pinot Noir in these Northern cooler climates to keep our crop level really regulated about two and a half tons per acres is where we’re aiming for in this vineyard.
Anna Campbell:
Nice. Have thinned here yet or are we about to thin? Where are we at in that process?
Adam Campbell:
So what we’ve done is we’ve done an initial pass with our vineyard crew and they’ve taken off wings, which are… You have the main body of the cluster and then a little bit of a side cluster. They’ve taken those off and they’ve also taken about every other shoot will go down to one cluster per shoot. So actually these vines in front of us look like they’re really almost in the target range. This is a vine that just has a single cane pruning. So one cane coming out and about eight to 10 shoots coming from the body of the plant and each of those shoots having one to two clusters. So it’s about 10 clusters per plant here, which interestingly enough is about one bottle of Pinot Noir right here.
Anna Campbell:
So one bottle of Pinot Noir per plant? Is that-
Adam Campbell:
In this vineyard.
Anna Campbell:
Oh, interesting. Okay.
Adam Campbell:
Yeah, this vineyard is a high density vineyard. So essentially each vine is only three feet apart, in a lot of vineyards they’re six or eight feet apart. We’ve chosen to plant more vines per acre here, putting them quite close together which does two things. One each vine only has to produce eight to 10 clusters, which will lead to that complexity and concentration of flavors. But in addition to that the vines kind of have to compete with each other. So as the roots from each vine come out, they hit the roots of the other vine. It forces them to go down and dig deep for water which is what we want and basically it kind of has them compete with each other to give more interesting flavors to the clusters that are there.
Anna Campbell:
So we can see there’s some irrigation lines here, some drip. Are we irrigating these vines?
Adam Campbell:
So here at Mount Richmond we have a good water source of really good wells. So we put in drip irrigation for the first three to four years of a vines life. So these vines were planted in 2007. So they would’ve had irrigation in those critical early months to essentially get them on a good path and start being a healthy vine. But then once they’re about three to four maybe five years old, we’ll cut the water off completely which forces the vine to dig deep, push the roots down. We want them to be essentially self-sufficient and to do that we need to manage how we irrigate. So irrigation in the young vines and then cutting it off for anything over five years old.
Anna Campbell:
So is this what they would call dry farmed?
Adam Campbell:
Yeah. So at this point we are completely dry farmed here in this vineyard block, it hasn’t seen irrigation for 10 years.
Anna Campbell:
So I was thinking maybe we can get in a little close and you can show us what we would be cutting off when we’re thinning or what we have already cut off.
Adam Campbell:
So here you see a couple really beautiful clusters. What I really like about these is that they’re small clusters with small berries. It really lives up to its name, Pinot Noir is essentially… Pinot is a French colloquial term for pine cone or pine and you can see it really does look like a pine cone here. What we want to see is, if you look at this sister cluster to it down below here it has this offshoot which is called a wing. When we come through and thin we’ll take this wing off. So essentially it’s part of the cluster, but it tends to ripen later and we want to take that off and just leave the main body of the cluster. These are both going to be tiny little clusters that really should make really amazing wine.
Anna Campbell:
So that’s amazing, you’re not only pruning taking off clusters but you’re taking off parts of clusters.
Adam Campbell:
Yeah. I think that’s really important to remember is, is that not all clusters ripen at the same time and we essentially want to take that ripening window especially in a cool year like this. Where we’re not going to be picking this vineyard until well into October. We want to take that ripening window and kind of condense it. If you think about it, if you have a vineyard that’s the ideal 24 bricks. But within the clusters you have some grapes that are 28 bricks and some clusters that are 20 bricks. You have 24 bricks on average, but what you also have there is the potential for over ripe and under ripe flavors. So by thinning the crop and especially by fine tuning and doing that pass where you’re taking the wings and other things off. You’re bringing that down to instead of 20 to 28, maybe it’ll be 22 to 26 and you’ll get more consistent flavor. Good ripe flavors, ripe tannins that are all really important for Pinot Noir.
So another thing we can do when we’re thinning the crop in addition to reducing the overall number of clusters and kind of fine tuning those wings that are offshoots from the main cluster is to essentially open up the canopy and we’ve pulled leaves here. We want really as a goal to not have any clusters touching other clusters, because that’s where you would essentially have less airflow, more potential for rot or Botrytis or other bad things that we don’t want. Especially with it being such a late season where we know we’re going to wait through some rain before we’re going to pick these grapes. So when they come through and do that second thinning pass, where we’re really looking at trying not to have clusters touching. They’ll probably address this cluster right here. By taking that and putting that on the ground you can see that you have air flow and dimpled sunlight onto both of the remaining clusters. Really important to get that air flow through there so that we decrease the opportunity for Botrytis or rot to take effect.
Anna Campbell:
So I thought Botrytis was a good thing, they call it noble rot right?
Adam Campbell:
Yeah. So Botrytis is an amazing thing for some grape varieties. We know it is noble rot because there’s some sweet wines certainly from parts of Germany and other places that prize the Botrytis for concentrating the grapes. But it’s a bacterial infection that kind of gets into the grapes, while it’s great for some white wines, especially sweet wines in Sauternes or in Germany or when we make some of our sweet Riesling’s. In Pinot Noir it’s really a negative so we want to avoid it at all costs. So there’s some really good organic sprays that you can use to ward off Botrytis, but what I like to do is primarily look at viticultural practices that diminish the opportunity for it to take hold. So that would be the things like leaf pulling, opening up the canopy, getting sunlight early on these grapes. So you could see the sunlight on these grapes here, this is essentially early morning sunlight. When the sun rises in the east it’ll hit these grapes first because there’s no leaves here.
It’ll dry them out, which decreases that opportunity for a moist environment which is essentially the thing that is going to produce more Botrytis and other problems.
Anna Campbell:
Got it. So these grapes are just turning color, when will they be ready to pick?
Adam Campbell:
Well, here we are at the end of August and we see color change happening maybe 10 to 15% through what we call veraison or essentially color change. I would expect that we’ll be picking these grapes in that first to second week in October. Which for a lot of folks sounds late, but honestly with my parents producing grapes back in the 70s and 80s this is probably right on track to those kind of classic vintages from back then. I don’t mind picking well into October. I think the key there is to have the historical knowledge that even if you get a lot of rain, don’t run out and pick those grapes right away. Let them settle, let them dry back out and you’ll get back in there when the rain stops and we’ve had some of our best vintages. One of the ones I remember in the more recent histories 2012, which was essentially tracked just like this. We’re getting color change at the end of August, we were all a little bit nervous cause we knew we’d be picking into October.
But then we just had glorious weather through that first part of October and well into even mid to late October and that is probably one of my favorite vintages in the last 20. So essentially we are really crossing our fingers for a good October weather pattern, but I think the odds are on our side and we’re super excited about it. I think for those of us who’ve been making wine in Oregon for a long time we like these later vintages. This is essentially where sure you could have huge rains come in early October and things would be a bit rough. But you could never have true greatness unless you’re ripening these grapes on the viticultural edge of where it’s possible. So for me picking grapes in mid to even late October, even into early November can be an amazing way to get that full flavor expression, concentration of flavors and complexity in these wines.
Anna Campbell:
So when the fruit’s ripe and ready to pick what does that process look like Adam?
Adam Campbell:
Well, I spent a lot of time out in the vineyard. We obviously do a lot of analysis to be sure that the grapes have the proper levels of sugar levels and acidities, have come down to where we need them to be. But there’s no replacing getting out tasting the fruit really trying to make that final decision about when we’re going to pick. When I know that I’m ready and it’s go time, Travis and his amazing vineyard crew come out, set up bins, get it all set up. We actually bring in quite a large crew, folks that maybe during the rest of the summer are picking strawberries or blueberries or other fruit crops. Will come in and we’ll get an army of people, 50, 60 people to pick grapes. Not just anytime during the day but prioritizing in the morning when it’s really cool out. If I can bring in grapes at 50, 55 degrees, they de-stem so much better, we can sort them better. They start their fermentation at a really cold temperature naturally, that’s what we want to see.
So we just assume bring in a big crew pick probably 30 to 40 tons and then we bring it back to the winery and let the interns and our other cellar crew get at it.
Anna Campbell:
So are we just waiting now? What’s what’s happening in the vineyard and the cellar right now?
Adam Campbell:
Well, right now we’re still bottling the 2021 Pinot Noirs which are tasting amazing by the way. So that’s a big part of what we’re doing now is bottling three to four days per week, trying to get set up, get the cellar empty, ready to bring in more fruit. Our vineyard crew that focus on the work with the vines are basically going through and fine tuning and thinning the grapes. Maybe pulling a little bit of extra leaves if we’re worried about too much moisture in the canopy. There’s always work to do but we are kind of all anticipating and kind of crossing our fingers for a great vintage.
Anna Campbell:
Is this a good time to come out and visit Elk Cove and head out to wine country for consumers?
Adam Campbell:
So I think harvest time September and even in October really is the perfect time to come out and taste wine at Elk Cove. What I like about it is you can see these vines in their full glory, right? Big green canopy, ripening fruit on the vine. If you come out you definitely have to stop into the vineyard, go to our old historic vineyard planted in 1974 and taste those grapes off the vine. If you taste the grapes, especially if you chew the skins you can start picking up those Pinot Noir characters and tannins and things that you’ll see in the grapes you will see in the wines. So it’s an amazing time to come out and visit us.
Anna Campbell:
Awesome. Well, here’s to successful 2022 harvest. Cheers.
Adam Campbell:
Yeah, I can’t wait. We’re super excited.
