It seems like the last time we had this much rain was back in October when we didn’t really want it, before we’d picked all our grapes.

So far, over in Lockeford, where most of our winegrapes are grown at our Gill Creek Ranch, we’ve accumulated about 6 inches of rain since the beginning of October. Compare that to close to 16 inches we had at this point in the season last year, and you can see we’ve had a pretty dry year – the third driest winter on record!

On Monday, before the storm blew in, Markus Niggli (our winemaker) had a chance to snap some photos of our neatly-pruned Gill Creek Ranch Chardonnay and old vine Zin. He also chatted with local wine writer for LodiWine.com, Randy Caparoso. (You can read the story either here or at their site.)

The abundant rains last year filled upstream reservoirs, such that some pretty major releases of water were apparently required to manage capacity. These releases flooded Lodi vineyards along the Mokelumne River that supply us with German varietals we use in some blends.

The river got so high that it sent water up through the pesky gofer home network under our low-lying Gill Creek Ranch Viognier vineyard block. With no breach in the protecting berm surrounding the vineyard, we wondered where the water was coming from at first – before we noticed the gushing gofer holes.

We should be able to get by on last year’s bank of water, but not without irrigation. Even old vines with deep roots can’t survive if their entire root system dries out and remains dry for too long.

In fact, Markus was quoted, “We’ve already turned on the irrigation twice this year, to let water soak into the ground — the first time in the seven years I’ve been here that we’ve had to do that in the winter.”

Our real concern is frost.

“The last thing we need this year is to lose crop to frosts, just as the vines are in bud break,” Markus told Randy.

In particular, that same Viognier vineyard loves to collect frosty morning air that travels along the river. A few years ago we installed an overhead sprinkler system and frost alarms to protect the crop that has suffered a number of vintages.

Last year, Steve and Markus were awakened a few times in the wee hours to activate the sprinklers when the temperature crept down into the low 30’s, threatening to kill the tender, new, inches-long green shoots.

The dry, clear weather has made for lower lows and higher high temperatures over the last several months. Plus, dry soils lead to less humidity in the air, which allows temperatures to drop further. This threat of freezing temps usually extends through most of April around Lodi.

To push off budbreak – and therefore to keep new shoots out of as much of April as possible – Markus and crew rescheduled pruning for two to three weeks later than usual, “especially for grapes like Viognier and Barbera, which might have already been in bud break if we hadn’t delayed pruning.”

The current forecast of more than a week of clouds and rain, mostly below the low 60’s should thankfully help keep budbreak delayed, hopefully past the end of March.

But ask any seasoned Lodi grower and they’ll tell you that somehow everything works out come harvest.

Not long after sun-up on a Monday a couple of weeks ago, I snapped a bunch of pictures while Steve described the art of pruning.

There had been a few days delay in our photo shoot while the perfect pair of long red, pruning loppers could be imported back from the shed over at Gill Creek Ranch near Lockeford. While it’s possible to snip off last year’s woody shoots with scissor-sized shears, in professional hands the large loppers slice through old-vine, inch-thick wood like butter.

To begin work, Steve picked a row of the same Carrú Vineyard Barbera he planted in 1972, right up against the north side of the gravel parking lot near the winery on Armstrong Road – the Borra’s Home Ranch.

Steve decided to plant Barbera because Ernest and Julio Gallo said it would be the next big thing. Unfortunately, in this somewhat fickle business, three short years later the next big thing was White Zin. Rather than sell all the grapes, in 1975 the family made nearly 400 cases of the boutique winery’s first bottling of Barbera.

To get close into one of the two outstretched cordon arms of an old vine, Steve lops off a few upward dangling shoots that would otherwise knock off his glasses or the hat that has become his omnipresent trademark.

“This would be easier if we hedged all these rows.”

He’s indicating that a mechanical pruning could chop off all the long shoots allowing him to get right against each spur position and make only the most educated cuts, rather than having to machete through the jungle of long shoots.

“See that bud?”

I lean forward and snap another one of about 83 photos while listening attentively.

“That one’s pretty thin.” It’s on a shoot that’s about the width of my pinky finger. “This other one is stronger, so that weak one is coming off.” He works the shears to make a strategic cut, removing the wimpy shoot.

Steve then makes another cut, leaving the classic two-bud spur that will give rise to two strong shoots, each with one or two clusters of lusciously-complex Barbera grapes.

We then move less than a foot down the arm to look at nearly the same set of shoots and buds – but there are differences. Each spur is hand-trimmed with a vision of not only what the grapes will look like, but also an idea of which way the shoots will grow and even what they might look like during next year’s pruning.

After we get going I realize no one’s talking.

I break the silence, “What are you thinking?”

“I got into the zone,” Steve answers. “It’s really relaxing working the puzzle of one spur after another. You can tune everything else out.”

In the early days of selling his Barbera, Steve says, “Most grapes were packed in lugs labeled Zinfandel, which they said they’d re-label, but who really knows?”

No one cared much that his grapes were Barbera until the 1980’s, as they came a bit back into fashion when Napa’s legendary Louis Martini grew to be a big fan of Steve’s vines. Martini would send his son to collect the harvested grapes.

After climbing atop a truck to get a few panoramic shots, and scrambling in the mud for a dramatic close-up, I let Steve know I’ve got what I need.

“I could keep going, but I’ll leave it to the crew,” he says. “I should have them pick this part of the row separately and see if my yield is better.”

I have to admire Steve’s workmanship after all these years. No wonder Borra wines are so darn good.

Needless to say, we’re excited beyond belief. Our Fusion was chosen as “One of America’s Finest Wines” – a winner of The 3rd WSJwine® Annual Dozen 2011 competition, which appears as a half-page announcement in today’s paper.

Over 800 wines were tasted blind last year by a panel of top judges, led by the world’s No. 1 wine writer, Hugh Johnson. Of those highly-regarded wines only the best 24 made the final cut, grouped as The WSJwine Annual Dozen 2011 and The Luxury Dozen, along with other respected names, such as Pine Ridge, St. Supéry and Trefethen of Napa, and Scott Harvey of Amador. WSJwine is a partnership between The Wall Street Journal and the world’s leading direct-to-home wine merchant.

Our 2008 Fusion is a Rhône-style blend of Petite Sirah, Syrah, Mourvèdre and Alicante Bouschet grapes mostly grown at our Gill Creek Ranch, north of Lockeford, and near the winery. “I’ve been farming those grapes for a long time, so it’s wonderful to finally get recognition on such a high level,” said Steve Borra.

Our winemaker, Markus Niggli agreed, “This is an amazing honor for us and Lodi! Don’t tell anyone, but we think our cooler vintage 2009 Fusion is even better, which is good because we have less than 20 cases of the 2008 left.”

DOUBLE-GOLD AT SF WINE COMPETITION!

And to put icing on the cake, we just found out today that our newly-released 2009 Fusion won a Double-Gold medal in the prestigious 2012 San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition in the “Rhône Other Varietals & Blends-up to $19.99”category.

This competition is considered the “Largest Competition of American Wines in the World,” with a record-setting 5,500 different wines submitted. To get a Double-Gold is a major accomplishment, because all five judges in the tasting panel need to be unanimous in awarding a wine a gold.

To celebrate our critically-acclaimed Fusion family, we’ll be literally rolling out the Fusion red carpet on Saturday, January 14 from 12 p.m. to 5 p.m. at our tasting room. We’re waiving our usual $5.00 tasting fee in honor of the occasion, and a special commemorative glass will be included with any wine purchase, so please make plans to join us!

Pages 4 and 5 of today's Wall Street Journal

Winemaker Markus Niggli: "These will make a killer 2011 Merlot!"

After a dearth of blogging, I finally caught up with our winemaker, Markus Niggli for a comparison of the last several vintages of Borra wines.

A COOLING TREND

Following a string of pretty toasty-warm vintages, Markus recalled, “2009 was the first year with a cooler growing season and higher acidity. The wines were more crisp with a freshness even in reds, with the ‘09 47.5° Red Wine as the best example.”

Warning: the following contains a gratuitous display of numbers, requiring a quick background in high school chemistry.

“pH” is a measure of how much acid is in a liquid – wine in our case. It’s a pretty goofy system, because it’s the opposite of what you’d expect: the higher the pH number goes, the less acid there is. Tap water is pH 7, while wines range from take-the-enamel-off-your-teeth, lemon-like pH 3.0, on up to very soft pH 4.0. Nice, balanced, food-friendly wines tend to be near the middle, pH 3.5.

“For the Red Wine, 2007 and 2008 were big and lush with pH near 4, but the 2009 is 3.52, which is a more classic acidity,” says Markus. “And the alcohols are coming down. 2011 will have alcohols around 13.5%, not 14.5% or 15%. There’s less sugar, but more balance. 2008 was a sugar race and acid was lagging behind.”

Translation: during the growing season, sugar replaces acid in a grape as it ripens and develops complex flavors. A lot of warmth for too long a period means the sugars accumulate quickly and the acid drops quickly, heading toward pH 4. It also means there isn’t as much time for flavors to reach their potential.

Our Lot 09 47.5° Red Wine is almost ready for pre-release to our La Dolce Vita Club Members.

The last few cool seasons have allowed the grapes to hold on to their acid while flavors bloom and sugars creep up in a more controlled fashion.

Per Markus, “The acid has more time to get softer and the cooler temperatures during the growing season holds the Brix from going through the roof while the grapes are hanging nicely, hopefully until mid-October or later.”

Winemakers get pretty excited over certain numbers that otherwise look plain boring. For example, Markus is wide-eyed ecstatic about Zinfandel this year: “Our 2011 Zin has 3.56 pH with 25.1° Brix! What else do you want?!? It’s right there! Our 2008 Zin pH was 3.9-4.0 with sugars over 27° Brix!”

Translation: 2011 will be a dynamite vintage.

Fresh 2011 Home Ranch Merlot grapes ready to be crushed.

INTENSE COLOR

These cool vintages for some reason give us the most intense color in our wines – that’s if you want to call pitch black color.

Markus bleeds off a few barrels of juice from almost all of his reds, not only to make these red wines a bit more intense, but also to have pink juice for making our popular dry-style Rosé.

But that intense color proved to be a challenge: “It’s hard to make a Rosé look like a Rosé this year, because after only a couple of hours of skin contact the juice that we bled off was so dark!”

THE RAIN ISSUE

“2009 was not a good year for Petite Sirah because of that huge October 13 rain. It’s the same this year, but two rains (October 5-6 and a surprise rain on October 10) in a short period speeded up rot. One rain, we can handle. A second, we cannot. All of a block of Syrah 877 in Gill Creek Ranch was lost to rot. The Rhône’s are thin-skinned. You try to grab a berry from the bunch and all you have is skin. The pulp just disintegrates right out,” says Markus with a look of forlorn disgust.

Every barrel must be checked for off odors - an indication that something is going wrong.

Rain, wind and otherwise oddball weather during berry set in May made us all brace for a smaller crop due to “misses,” where grapes never form, or due to “hens and chicks,” where small green grapes never grow and ripen. It also led to “shatter” where a light brushing of a cluster with your sleeve will cause random grapes to plop to the ground.

Back to Markus, “Crop size is moderate to light this year, but it varies with the winegrape variety. Zin is 50% down. Merlot had a 25% decrease over last year, which was overall 25% shy. We could have sold out our whole field of Zin, but we didn’t have enough for all our contracts. Prices and demand will go up for next year.

“Our Viognier block at Gill Creek Ranch gave us 47 tons and it should have been 100 tons, but the quality is insane at 4 tons per acre! I’m very happy with the Viognier this year. I’m also very happy with our Zin, Merlot and Field Blend, and the whites are really good. On the other hand, the Petite Sirah and Syrah may be just OK.”

The bottom line is that cooler vintages in Lodi are helping us make more intense, complex wines, but there won’t be nearly as much to go around. So stock up on your favorites!

This German varietal Kerner, made with grapes from Mokelumne Glen Vineyard, will go into one of next year's white bottlings.

In case you aren’t familiar with him, Buddy was literally raised in the fields of Lodi and has developed an infectious passion for his backyard regional farmers, growers, and food producers. His menus reflect the bounty of the valley, seasonal healthy eating, and the wonderful wines of San Joaquin. This dinner is to celebrate the continuation of his favorite project, the Gourmet Club.

If you’re reading this near dinner time, we apologize for tempting you and getting your unruly stomach growling, but here are the courses for this scrumptious feast, all finely tuned to pair with our Borra wines:

One
Hors D ’Oeuvres served fireside on the patio
Paired with 2010 Members Reserve Rosé Lodi

Raspberry barbeque chicken skewers with lemon yogurt sauce

Two
Paired with 2010 White Fusion Lodi
Roasted Sea Bass, sierra gold potatoes, spring onion, asparagus, peas and mint

Three
Paired with 2006 Old Vine Barbera Lodi
Arugula and Spinach Salad with strawberries, navel oranges, daikon radish, tarragon, citrus vinaigrette and balsamic syrup

Four
Paired with 2010 Members Reserve Chardonnay Lodi
Grilled Pork Tenderloin, spring bean ragu with bacon and savory, cabbage-carrot slaw and basil

Five
Paired with 2007 Red Fusion Lodi
Blue Cheese Panna Cotta, blueberry compote, lemon yogurt, almond cookie

The idea is to push the boundaries from wine-food pairings you’re accustomed to.

For example, most would grab a Chardonnay to go with salad, but Chef Buddy felt inspired to challenge the traditional with a meaty red. He played on the actual flavors within our Old Vine Barbera and came up with a winner.

Being a guinea pig for this particular pairing, I appreciated the way the intense and rich balsamic syrup mirrored the Barbera in a very savory way.

One side note: that little dollop of balsamic syrup was made from fruit grown in Lodi, then transported to Italy for finishing before its return to our table. Pretty exciting stuff!

The price is $65 per person plus tax, and please note that gratuity is not included. To join us, make reservations now by calling 209-401-1905.

Mustard, mustard everywhere!

Well, maybe “everywhere” is a bit of an exaggeration. We plant a mixture of grasses and other plants in the dirt between every other row of vines to fertilize our prize-winning winegrapes the natural way.

This potpourri of grasses and plants covering the ground is called, simply, a “cover crop.” And this year, after analyzing the soil and vines after harvest, we decided that mustard would be the most beneficial to our Gill Creek Ranch vineyard blocks.

Some cover crops capture significant amounts of nitrogen from the air and convert that gas into proteins and cell walls that later work back into the soil when the cover crop is mowed and/or disced.

We all know that mustard can be spicy hot, but a cover crop of mustard can actually work as a biofumigant, helping to knock out or control bad soil pests like certain nematodes.

Another mustard benefit is that “Napa look” which sure doesn’t hurt the eyes, further beautifying our Chardonnay and Viognier, as shown in these two shots, to the right.

Besides cover crops, we’ve been adding a young tree or two around the vineyard to attract more native bird life, all in accordance with our Lodi Rules certification for sustainable winegrowing:

As we reach the final week of March, excitement is building for bud break on vintage 2011. But as the vines sneak in a few more days of winter’s dormant rest, we’ll share a photo of the old Gill Creek that used to meander through the field where our Old Vine Zinfandel is now planted. Gill Creek only reappears when we’ve had sufficient rainfall, as we have had this past season:

And one more bonus photo, where Markus got to express his hidden inner artsy photo skills:

This massive yearly project involves a crew of six field workers led by our vineyard foreman, Manuel Maldonado, cutting down dormant shoots to two-bud spurs, making each vine look like a pair of manicured moose antlers. All the cuttings are allowed to drop to the ground to be chopped up this week, enriching the soil.

Ideally, one variety of winegrapes is pruned before another in roughly the order they bud out each March. For our vineyards, that means we prune Zinfandel first, over in our Clements Gill Creek Ranch, followed by Chardonnay, Merlot and Viognier, before switching to our Home Ranch on Armstrong Road to prune Barbera and Merlot.

This year, with all the heavy rain we received in December, we wound up pruning the Chard last. According to Markus the field was so muddy that, “You were just sinking knee-deep into it.” Earlier this month Markus spent a half day helping to cut back the Petite Sirah so as to, “not lose the touch of how to prune. It was sunny and nice.”

The next few weeks the crew will be maintaining the vineyards: replacing ties that hold vine cordons onto wires; lowering shoot-positioning wires so they can be raised later in the season; and repairing the trellis cross arms.

What’s also receiving some tender loving care is the irrigation system. In many areas it may look like a vineyard is dry-farmed, but there may actually be sub-surface drip lines buried perhaps a foot into the dirt, as was done with the Home Ranch.

Some sections of the Merlot that is planted north of the tasting room have had the drip lines clog up, which is sometimes only noticed late in the season when a few vines start drying up.

Those lines get replaced by regular drip lines that run maybe half a foot above ground level along the vine row. The good thing about these lines is that you can see right away if they are working properly. The bad thing is that the coyotes can take a bite and make their own drinking fountain – not the best thing in the world for growing high-quality winegrapes.

Along with his small notebook and tiny camera, Randy’s been out visiting vineyards up and down the west coast, writing profiles of wines and winemakers, including a piece he posted yesterday titled, “Food wine or not, Barbera kicks butt.”

We were thrilled to find him focusing on our still-in-barrel Members Reserve 2009 and 2010 Field Blends. Randy quotes Steve several times:

“’The Field Blend,’ Mr. Borra tells us, ‘is sort of a homage to the way my grandfather made wine. He was very Old World — he’d pick the grapes all at once, and everything would go into one vat, no matter what kind of grape it was. Of course, he used wild yeast, and everything was natural — he didn’t know about stuff like sulfur and cultured yeasts — and he’d siphon the wines into one gallon jugs, one jug at a time, one barrel at a time.’”

That’s not too far off from the way we make our modern Field Blend.

Markus, of course, treated Randy to barrel tastings of the maturing wines, which Randy found very much to his liking:

“The 2009 Borra Vineyards Field Blend ($14 $20), which is only now being wakened from its beauty sleep in the barrels, consists of approximately 55% Barbera, 20% Carignane, 14% Petite Sirah and 11% Alicante Bouschet. Tasted out of the barrel mid-January, the wine was wild with raspberries and piles of rose petal and black tea leaves, and tasting of sweet, thick, honeyed framboise (raspberry liqueur), yet completely dry, meaty, and full of zest — lighting up the palate like a finger in an electric socket.”

“Okay, the bad news: only 250 cases of the Borra’s ‘09 Field Blend will be bottled (in early March), and almost all of it will be instantly sucked up by the thirsty, and ever-loyal, members of Borra’s wine club. So if you want in on this wine representing both a piece of history and the beauty of the Barbera grape, you may wish to sign yourself up, pronto!”

“Naturally, Mr. Niggli also gave us a sneak preview of his 2010 Field Blend, slumbering in the barrel, earlier this month. In a word: superfreak. In several more words: the 2010 sports a vivid, almost neon, impenetrable purplish color, with a preserve-like, raspberry liqueur nose as thick as it tastes in the mouth, jam packed with sweet fruit and oak, with hefty underlying tannin. The grape percentages in the 2010 Field Blend: 47% Barbera, 22% Petite Sirah, 18% Alicante Bouschet and 13% Carignane.”

Randy mentioned a price of $14 per bottle of the Field Blend, which should actually be $20.

Knock on wood (a barrel in our case), because if everything goes according to plan, we’ll be shipping out the 2009 Field Blend to all our La Dolce Vita club members this August.

So it’s a good time to join our club.

Read the entire posting at LodiWine.com.

With some almost appearing like some sort of spaceship, they are all very unique and will be wonderful to decorate with or simply heat and eat.

The boys are selling them at the Borra Vineyards tasting room Fri – Sun from 12 – 5pm. So come on by the winery for a bottle or two to go along with some mighty fine pumpkin pickin’ while supplies last.

Much of the focus was on picking old vine Zinfandel, Barbera and Merlot to be shipped to eager wineries in the Midwest and back East, the same way Borra and other Lodi wineries have done for generations.

On Friday, following four days in a row of early-week temps just over 100˚ F, Borra’s top-notch field crew picked Merlot from the “backyard” Borra Vineyards Home Ranch on the north side of the winery, as well as some Barbera.

Inspection of the Merlot revealed small berries with many already raisined or completely sun-fried in the center of each east-west running row due to bad fruit set. Unfortunately, what should be 40 tons from the field may only pick out to 15 tons.

That meant Borra’s crew, headed by Manuel Maldonado, were instructed to carefully select only the best “muy buena” Merlot grapes.

Borra is very fortunate to have a crew that has been working the same vineyards for years. Many small wineries are at the mercy of the availability of hired picking crews. It’s not uncommon for a winemaker who wants to pick on a Tuesday to be told the pick can’t happen until Friday.

With the Borra family owning both Borra Vineyards and Lodi Irrigation, this year-round crew can alternate between irrigation installation and vineyard work. As Markus says, “It’s a great cross venture with another business. During crush they’re not that busy, so they’re here and they’re fast.”

Each harvest seems to work about the same: as half-ton Macrobins were filled, cellar lead Federico hauled them a couple hundred yards back to the winery.

Meanwhile, Antonino from Lodi Irrigation, and others pitched in to help build sturdy thick cardboard bins to be used to ship grapes back East. Each bin was lined with a tough plastic bag before over a half ton of fresh-picked Merlot was dumped in.

To help insure freshness, a column of dry ice crystals was inserted down the center of each mound of grapes to form a cooling core that would last for the entire long trip ahead.

A tie of the bag, placement of a lid, and a few strap ties were the finishing touches before temporary storage in one of Borra’s refrigerated containers – which quickly filled to capacity awaiting a truck. (Trucking companies seem to be overcommitted this year.)

The next day, Markus and the crew pulled in the remainder of the Home Ranch Barbera, then hitched up the tractors to head down the block to Steve’s daughter’s – Gina Borra Granlee’s – house, a stone’s throw away.

That property is also home to the Borra “Church Block” vineyard: a mish-mash of inter-planted varieties including Alicante Bouschet, Carignane, and Petite Sirah. All these old, gnarly head-trained vines were picked at the same time and mixed together, yielding about 5 to 6 tons that will become Borra’s special Members Reserve Field Blend, made only for the winery’s La Dolce Vita wine club.

Markus will throw in about 3 to 4 tons of the just-harvested Home Ranch Barbera to top up the tank holding the Church Block collection, allowing the entire batch to ferment together.