ROCO Winery - 2005 Vintage Notes
Mother Nature often balances out her allocation of rain, sunshine, and heat throughout a year. Yet in 2005, we enjoyed one of the sunniest, warm March's on record while May and June was miserably wet and cold. As the result, grape flowering was sporadic with overall yields for the Willamette Valley down some 30-40%. For the first time in many years, botrytis infection on grape flowers promised to be a problem. Strangely, within a given vineyard one vine block would have very little fruit and an adjacent block would have a somewhat normal fruit set. Berries were small to normal resulting in much lower cluster weights.
Due to increased soil saturation in June, the vines showed no water stress until deep into August. Yet, grapevine vigor was an issue that led to excessive lateral shoot growth. With little fruit hanging, the vines tended to grow vegetatively rather than focus on fruit ripening. Extra effort to remove leaves in the fruit zone and drop green second crop grape clusters was essential to formation of mature fruit flavor. The end result was a mix of over-ripe no seed berries and under-ripe normal berries within the same fruit cluster! When to pick, when to pick?
September was much cooler than normal, but sunny. Fruit ripened slowly under bright sunshine. The fruit retained acid due to cool weather, but developed ‘hidden' ripe flavors behind this bracing acidity. A very good move at the end of September was to pick a large portion of one's crop based on ‘faith' that fruit was indeed ripe flavored and that once fermentation was complete the excessive acidity would precipitate with the increase in alcohol. So far this seems to be the case. Fruit harvested before 29 September is displaying bright, complex flavor, nice mineral structure, and some exciting wines. It is amazing how much color the Pinot Noir wines have considering the ‘on the vine' impressions one could make. We had Pinot Noir sugars up to as high as 25 Brix!
ROCO's Wits' End Vineyard was picked on September 28 and 29th. Perfect timing in an imperfect growing cycle.
In the Cellar
The grapes are hand harvested and chilled to 35°F before they are destemmed and placed in small open topped fermenters. Whole berries are cold macerated prior to vigorous fermentation and post ferment maceration. Wine is pressed into French oak barrels for malo-lactic fermentation. Eighteen months of barrel age later, the wine is bottled, packaged and sent off to light up your palate.