Olive Harvest
I’m sure you know how much we love to grow and make a diversity of products at our Bell Mountain Ranch. Each year after grape harvest we turn our attention to our 700 young olive trees. We use the olives to make delicious fresh olive oil to use throughout the year, and we cure a portion of them slowly with salt water and marinate them with fresh herbs and garlic from the gardens.
This year our olive crop was very light. Unseasonable June rains hit just when most of the trees were flowering, knocking the delicate flowers off the trees and disrupting fruit set. The few remaining olives struggled to develop during the cool summer, and I wondered if we would be able to harvest any olives at all this year. However, we finally discovered a few trees with a lot of great olives on them. That discovery made me happy that I have chosen to grow eight different varieties of olives, as some flowered after the rains hit and helped ensure a crop this year.
At our wine club pick up party over the weekend we had help from our members to kick off the olive harvest. Each member picked and took home a jar to cure in salt water. We also started a batch curing at the estate to serve at our spring wine club party and in the tasting room. This Monday we donned our picking buckets and hand-harvested the rest of our olive crop by gently coaxing the olives off one branch at a time to avoid bruising. In all, we harvested about 20% of the crop we hope to have in a good year, but the quality is wonderful. We cold-pressed the olives, and the oil is now settling in tank for bottling in early spring. I can’t wait to taste it.
I look forward to sharing our oil and olives with you. If you stop by the tasting room or one of our events early next year you will get a chance to taste them!
Nov 17, 2011 at 8:08 PM
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Be the first to comment on this postVerjus
Although the main grape harvest is still a few weeks away for us, we’ve already started crushing a small amount of fruit for a new project: verjus. Bon Appetit magazine has a wonderful introduction to its uses, production and origins but essentially, it’s the juice from unripe grapes. As part of our quality-centric farming, we frequently remove clusters that are a little further behind (in terms of maturity) in order to improve the purity of fruit in the remaining crop. It’s a necessary though painful process – dropping fruit that you’ve nurtured all season long to the ground.
This year we took the decision to save some of our Cabernet Sauvignon clusters for verjus. The results have been delicious. This sweet tangy vinegar alternative will soon be ready to share but we’re very happy to have been able to experiment so successfully with our first attempt. Kudos to the cellar team for their diligence in making time in a packed schedule to make it happen. We should have the first bottles ready to try in the tasting room early October – and some may even make it into the Alexander Valley Bar for some afterhours cocktail experimentation….
A bounty of potatoes
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Most visitors to Medlock Ames will quickly latch onto this key fact - we’re almost as proud of the food we grow as we are of the grapes we farm. At this time of year, despite a wet and odd start to the growing season, we’re starting to see all kinds of wonderful and delicious edibles ready to harvest.
One of the most heartening crops to pull in is the humble potato and it’s nice to see it make a triumphant return to our bell mountain market garden. Digging up these magical tubers is like finding a tiny pot of gold (or red as the case may be) with a variety of spuds making star appearances this year. The names alone are enough to whet the appetite - fingerling, yukon, red Pontiac and my personal favorite – the purple Viking. (One can almost imagine a brawny and colorful potato making an epic journey across the Atlantic to discover Vinland.)
At any rate, this star vegetable is often relegated to a starchy side role at dinner time so it was nice to see our friends at treehugger put it up on a pedestal with this delicious recipe for a potato salad that pairs bizarrely well with the 2006 Cabernet Sauvignon. It works well and is one of the more creative pairings we’ve seen – we’re tempted to work it into our tasting room menu while these new potatoes are at their peak. Delicious partnerships like this are why we keep on trying new things at Medlock Ames and it goes a long way to reward all those hours in the garden….now back to making wine.
June already
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June already. The last couple of months have been a whirlwind - most significantly - we had a lot of rain at an inopportune time. Fortunately the cool spring delayed physiological development so that we had very little bloom when the rain hit.
Now, with the threat of rain over and warm days ahead (105 the other day), flower development is proceeding rapidly, which is what we want. We’re watching the vineyard like a hawk, walking every single row twice a week to check on conditions and during these walks my mind tries to digest the 2011 crop that I can see as well as some things I cannot: one thing that is in the back of mind as I walk the rows is that the future 2012 clusters are forming microscopically inside the buds over recent of weeks.
It is true – the tiny initial ‘starts’ of clusters for next year are quietly forming and the cool rainy weather has an impact on how those develop and I’m betting that we’ll see a lighter crop load next year because of it. That in turn triggers some actions for the coming year… we may have higher than normal vigor with less crop for the vines to ripen, so we will want to plan now for that extra vigor – less compost after this year’s harvest, a more competitive cover crop, leave more buds at pruning to soak up some of that extra vigor. Lots of moving parts to consider and planning that may give me a headache now but help craft better wines later.
The Sheep of Bell Mountain Ranch
Each year we invite a heard of traveling sheep to our Bell Mountain Ranch for the month of March. It has to be before budbreak so that they don’t inadvertently damage the newly emerging crop as the vines come back to life. These sheep, adorable as they are, could all too easily eat or accidentally rub off the tender buds & shoots. Luckily, they aren’t the least bit interested in the dormant vines. However, we also have to bring the sheep in late enough that there is enough grass for them to eat. Right now there is an abundance of verdant cover crop that they can’t get enough of, so this year we have opted to keep them a little bit after budbreak, which started several weeks ago at the ranch.
In the past we’ve used only 12-30 sheep, but found that small numbers can’t consume enough grass in the time needed. This year we scaled way up and have 300 sheep still happily munching away. They are doing a great job and Rocky and Bear, two beautiful but intimidatingly large Great Pyrenees guard dogs, are keeping the coyotes and mountain lions at bay.
We are watching them very closely to see if they can continue to get a little more mowing done. We have to continually be prepared to move them at a moment’s notice, as 300 sheep can do some serious crop damage if we’re not paying attention.
Five Senses
As we get close to releasing the next new wines (RED 2007 and the reserve Sauvignon blanc come immediately to mind) it seems like a good time to look back at harvest time - in particular to a Douglas Gayeton image that sought to summarize the human complexities of vintage. (You can find a larger more legible version of the image by clicking on it.) This was the second of four pieces Douglas is working on with us and you can view it along with some of his other works documenting local sustainable producers and members of the food community at the Medlock Ames tasting room. Douglas managed to uncover and highlight that for our wines and the big decisions of harvest there is more going on than just chemistry or data analysis. When I look back at previous vintages - and in particular when I taste a wine like the 2007 RED - I'm reminded not only of the growing season, harvest conditions and the broader characteristics of the vintage, but I can also recall the character of each block and the flavors we discovered. We work hard to show the character of both vintage and site in the wines we make and I hope that you get a sense of that when you taste, or even when you examine the image above.
Pruning and Planting
In true Sonoma County fashion, just when we had to catch ourselves from complaining about too much rain, the clouds parted and glorious weather descended upon us. This is good news. Dry days allow us to get out of the winery and back into the vineyard to make a start on pruning. We’ve made great progress – both dry feet and hands make the process quicker and more enjoyable but also better for the health of the vines: less risk of infection when there’s no rain in the air. In previous years we’ve opened up some vineyard rows to those of you brave enough to don shears and learn some pruning. We’re hosting a pick up party for the wine club on February 26th at the winery and will repeat the pruning master class then. Email us if you’d like to attend. Last year we penned a piece about our pruning philosophy that is worth repeating and a good read in advance of your first pruning foray!
Don’t get me wrong - we do like the rain and we do need it – but a week or so of sunshine right about now is most welcome. The market garden has had a chance to dry to the point that we can get in there, cultivate the beds and prepare for the first plantings. Our vegetable starts are already in the greenhouse and we’ll be setting out some of the early and hardier plants over the next month. As each year goes by, much as with vines, we learn what works best and refine our plan a little more.
Good Food Awards and good Food Month
A couple of years ago we were lucky enough to sponsor SLOW FOOD NATION – a celebration of artisanal food (and wine) in San Francisco. We collaborated with a variety of producers from chocolate to pickles and coffee to charcuterie and helped organize the sustainable wine bar where hundreds of like-minded wine growers from across the nation presented their wines. Over 85,000 people made the trip to visit the event and it helped highlight the interest there is in our food community.
In January there is going to be another slow food bonanza in the form of the GOOD FOOD AWARDS and Medlock Ames is again a main sponsor. This inaugural event celebrates products that taste great but are ethically made: sentiments close to our own philosophy. The competition will honor a diverse cross section of artisan food producers from across the country in a quest to highlight the best of what is tasty, authentic and responsibly produced.
The winners will be announced on January 14th and on the 15th there will be an opportunity for us all to meet, sample and learn about these fantastic producers at a Marketplace hosted at the ferry building in San Francisco. We hope to see you there and join us in celebrating the best tasting of the best produced wares in the US.
In fact, the weeks following the event will see GOOD FOOD MONTH being celebrated throughout the bay area. All kinds of restaurants, farms, dairies and kitchens will be opening their doors and encouraging you out into your food community. An estimated 500 events are being planned and Medlock Ames has a couple of our own to invite you to:
JAN 22nd: Release of our new olive oil from the 2010 vintage. We’ll be celebrating the new oil with lots of wood fired goodies and edibles from the garden – right at our tasting room in Alexander Valley. 12 to 4pm. Email us to RSVP.
JAN 29th: Bellwether cheese tasting at the tasting room from 12 to 4pm. We’ll have an expert from Bellwether on-site to guide us through some pairings and provide an interactive and informative walk through a flight of wines and cheese. Bellwether are one of our local gems and we are excited that they are able to help us host this event. Email us to RSVP.
We'll also be hosting a dinner at Chez Panisse - details coming soon - and look forward to seeing you at one of these events during what promises to be a fantastic month.
Harvest update
Rain...sunshine...rain again and now sunshine (fingers crossed) for the rest of the week. Harvest doesn't get much more challenging than this. Fortunately, I'm lucky enough to be surrounded by a great crew of people who are working hard and long hours to make sure that we do the very best possible job with harvest 2010. We're also fortunate to have total estate control over our grapes - which becomes all the more important when faced with challenging (there's that word again) conditions. We're able to be nothing short of ruthless in our fruit selection and sorting to preserve only the best grapes. Our test is simple - only the grapes that you'd want to eat should make it into the fermenter. Berry by berry this selection is made. This painstaking and careful work is done (almost!) without complaint by our committed crew. Kudos to them all. I look forward to celebrating with them all when the last of the fruit is pressed off and safely put to bed....(and yes, it will be my turn to pay.)
Canning the harvest
Just before the grape harvest started, we managed to make alittle time to get in the kitchen and 'put up' some of the amazing bounty pouring in from the market garden. Any visitors to the tasting room and Alexander Valley Bar will have witnessed the masses of glorious edibles we've been sharing with our guests - from fresh produce to canned pickles and preserves. That canned goodness doesn't just magically happen though - it takes some long hot days in the kitchen to get things safely stored and ready for the year ahead. We like to keep some of our tricks secret but we've had so many requests for what makes those roasted tomatoes that we use on pizzas so good that we've given in. Just one thing: don't tell too many people how easy it is....
1. Pre-heat oven to 350F - convection roast is best (and a real wood fired oven even better...)
2. Spread out a layer of ultra-ripe tomatoes on a roasting pan. Cherry tomatoes are the perfect size so feel free to cut larger ones into smaller pieces (discarding the green stem!)
3. add some seasoning and even a splash of olive oil if you feel adventurous
4. roast in oven until they change color, then turn and roast again. You are looking to reduce them to a sticky, sweet state. Be patient...have a glass of wine...
5. sterilize pint jars and get canning pot to a boil while waiting for the tomatoes to finish. Make sure everything is scrupulously clean!
6. fill jars with tomatoes, taking care to not leave any air pockets in the jars. Put on lids and boil in canner submerged fully by one inch of water for 15 minutes.
7. remove, tighten lids and leave to cool - listening for the welcome 'pop' of a lid securely fastened to the jar!
That's it! Simple but perfectly delicious and a great reminder of summer flavors to get you through the next 6 months or so.
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