SUMMER 2008


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BEHIND THE VINE


Behind The Vine with Viticulturist Sukhy Sran When quality is the top priority, as it is with Vina Robles, the process of viticulture often resembles fine gardening. Just as you might carefully prune and shape your favorite rose bush to maximize its beauty, we are tasked with training each vine for maximum fruit quality. The training of the vine begins with the trellis system. At Vina Robles, all of our estate


vines grow on a modified “vertical shoot positioning,” or VSP, trellis system. This system promotes balanced ripening, and it’s ideal for producing lower yields per vine, which is vital to achieving flavor intensity. In a traditional VSP trellis, the vine consists of the trunk and one or two cordons.


Vina Robles focuses on double cordons which promote even ripening of the grapes, with each vine spaced 4 feet apart. After pruning, the vine pushes new leafy branches, called shoots. These shoots are trained to grow upward, forming a tightly manicured canopy. The beauty of this system is that the fruit hangs evenly along the cordons, with minimal obstruction to sunlight or airflow. Over the past three years, we have modified our


trellising to what we call an “open” VSP system. By spreading out the wires at the top to a width of 13 inches, we achieve a slightly looser canopy. This creates a bit of an umbrella effect, shielding the fruit from the harshest afternoon sunlight. Therefore, we maintain the ripening advantage of the VSP system while avoiding potential burning of the fruit. As you can imagine, it’s not always easy getting thousands of vines to behave exactly the way you want them. The vines don’t just grow into the trellis wires. They have to be tucked into them as they grow. This is why we have a team of 20 “gardeners” on the job all summer long, vine by vine, row by row, making sure everything looks just right in the vineyard—so that everything will taste great in the bottle.


THE SCOOP ON BARRELS - PART TWO


At Vina Robles, we subscribe to the philosophy that wine is mostly made in the vineyard, but we also recognize that it is shaped in the barrel as well. In our previous newsletter, we explored how barrels are made, and how they can influence our wine in a general sense. Now it’s time to take a closer look at how we fine tune our barrel program to achieve our vision for each wine. Our barrels fall into three categories: French oak (which accounts for about 80% of our barrels); Eastern European oak, mostly of Hungarian origin (10%); and American oak (10%). Our red wine program also falls into three tiers: Cuvée Collection blends (Signature, Syrée and Suendero), Estate varietals (Petite Sirah, Cabernet Sauvignon and Zinfandel) and our RED4 As the RED4


blend. is a more fruit-driven wine with softer


tannins, Winemaker Matthias Gubler ages it in older neutral barrels that impart less of an oak influence. The Estate wines and our Cuvée Collection, however, see a portion of new oak, with an average of 30 percent of the barrels being new each year. These newer barrels impart the most oak influence, in terms of aroma, flavor and wood tannins. The American and Eastern European oak barrels are


used judiciously as accents that add dimension to certain wines, such as our Cabernet Sauvignon and Petite Sirah. American oak tends to be very aromatic with vanilla, coconut and holiday spice qualities. The Eastern European oak has more of a darker fruit character with a nutty spice quality. Our focus, however, is on French oak. French oak’s influence is more subtle, and its


effect is the most harmonious. Simply put, French oak gives us the best opportunity to craft a sophisticated, integrated and well-structured wine. Some of our barrels are larger than the familiar 60-gallon size. The larger barrels impart a


smaller ratio of oak aromas to the wine, but still help in building structure. As Matthias says, “Our emphasis is on retaining the natural fruit aromatics. We never want oak to overpower or detract from our wines, but rather to add to their overall balance and structure.”


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