Welcome Wine Region Makers Experience. Napa Valley Wineries. Tasting is by appointment only. Wine Club Membership. Wine clubs are a great way to stay connected to your favorite wineries.
About Us. Dolce embraces a deceptively simple philosophy: the pursuit of perfection in the art of late harvest winemaking. A true jewel, the Dolce Napa Valley has orange blossom aromas and stone fruit flavors that shine bright, with caramel undertones that promise to gain richness over time.
With its bright apricot aromas, silky texture and whispers of vanilla, this golden-hued vintage brightens a variety of dessert courses, from spiced holiday pies to summer's stone fruit cobblers. It's also a dream with salty bleu cheese. Nature, Craftsmanship, and a Little Luck. Harvest Season Really is a Season. Late Harvest A true jewel, the Dolce Napa Valley has orange blossom aromas and stone fruit flavors that shine bright, with caramel undertones that promise to gain richness over time.
Shop Now. Late Harvest With its bright apricot aromas, silky texture and whispers of vanilla, this golden-hued vintage brightens a variety of dessert courses, from spiced holiday pies to summer's stone fruit cobblers. Created in by the partners of Far Niente, Dolce has achieved what no other winery in the United States has been able to accomplish.
The result? A sublime blend of acidity and sweetness thanks to the luxurious and rare combination of late harvest Semillon and Sauvignon Blanc. Late harvest wines take time and an extraordinary level of focused attention.
Beyond that, in order to create a wine with the qualities of Dolce, it takes land that seemingly was designed for this very purpose. Land with a combination of gravel, volcanic ash, loam and clay which has been formed over thousands and thousands of years.
At Dolce, we like to believe that whatever force was behind the formation of this land had these 20 acres at the southern end of the Napa Valley in mind for something truly special.
With that cooler weather, there's been fog hanging around until 11 o'clock or even noon every day. We are seeing botrytis happening in quite substantial amounts throughout the acre vineyard, he continues. When we first see it and get excited, we see it going from 1 percent to 2 percent [of the vineyard]. Now, it's going from 2 percent to about 4 percent. We have to have the right conditions for it to continue to spread. I believe the fog will be hanging on even though it's warming up, so I'm hopeful that we'll have the right conditions for the next week or so.
Once the botrytis spreads far enough, we hope we have drying conditions so that the botrytis grows, the grapes get fuzzy and the berries get desiccated enough to concentrate the sugars. This is one of the earliest times that I have ever seen such a lovely start to botrytis, Hampson adds.
We are seeing some berries go from golden to slightly pink or deeper pink, and others where the grapes are touching, where the pink starts to turn to purple. That's what we start to see before the grapes turn fuzzy and get concentrated. It's an exciting time in the vineyard for Dolce, although we still have a long way to go.
But there's definitely a lot more happening now than when we were talking at this time a year ago. How often does Hampson check the vineyards nowadays? When it's this foggy, our winemaker, our viticulturalist and I each visit the vineyard once a day, he says. The same conditions that are good for the botrytis we want are also good for molds we don't want.
If we see an area where the wrong mold is starting to grow, we will send in workers to remove parts of clusters or entire clusters, so they don't have a chance to infect more of the vineyard.
We are as concerned about managing pests -- whether it is yellow jackets or the wrong mold -- as we are about managing the vineyard to maximize botrytis. It's an unusual form of grapegrowing and winemaking.
How do they differentiate the good mold from the bad? If you've ever seen strawberries that have been left in the refrigerator a little too long, they develop something gray and fuzzy -- that's botrytis, Hampson explains.
But if you leave them a little longer, you might see mold on there that's green or blue -- those are things that we don't want to have happen out in the vineyard. When does Hampson anticipate picking? It's completely dependent on the weather. I think there's a chance that we might make the first pass through the vineyards somewhere around the 15th of October.
We still need more botrytis, then the grapes need time to dry out, and if everything were perfect, that would still take more than two weeks. It looks like great times, yet at the same time, we are being vigilant to keep from having problems, he says. We are still working on Chardonnay at Far Niente. Plus we've picked our Merlot, but haven't started on Cabernet and that will get busy over the next two weeks.
So it sounds like the timing might end up being lucky also. As always in this business -- and making wine is really glorified agriculture -- it's all about what Mother Nature is going to do.
But this year really could be something special. I'm hoping for fog for a week, to see the mold double every two to three days, Hampson adds. I'm hoping for 20 percent or more mold, then one to two weeks of not-too-hot, not-too-humid weather with a light breeze. That allows the mold to do its work effectively and gives us a chance to do our first pick. Almost always when we do our first pick, we end up with a lot of mold spores going around and that helps infect other grapes more quickly and effectively.
So I like to see the first pick happen earlier rather than later. I'm about as optimistic as I can be for it only being September 18, he concludes. But even though we're busy with harvest, we've all been thinking of you guys out there in New York. You all have a tremendous amount of support out here in California wine country.
Thursday, Oct. For well over a week after I last reported in, we had heavy fog every morning, and it stayed around until 11 a. Then we had a rainstorm 10 days ago. It was predicted to be very light, but it ended up that some northern cold air came in and mixed with wet tropical air, and we had the biggest lightning storm I'd seen in my 20 years in Napa Valley.
It was actually quite gorgeous! We got about 0. It came down fairly hard, which means it penetrated the canopy and ended up inside the clusters. This ended up giving some free moisture to all the botrytis that had already started, and we've just seen a remarkable explosion of botrytis out there. Hampson explains, Normally you'll see [botrytis start with] a pink color where the grape meets the stem, then the pink spreads, then the grape turns purple and then it gets fuzzy.
Right now, I'm seeing clusters with all shades of pink and purple, with some fuzz started. When we check the most advanced grapes, those with fuzz, the sugar levels are as high as 45 Brix. The grapes that are pink and purple are at about 30 Brix. If we have drying conditions, which is predicted for now, I think we are going to see a huge progression in the spread and quality of botrytis. Our winemaker is hoping we'll be able to do our first harvest next week.
We usually do five or six harvests, so this can last quite a while.
0コメント