Little Smoke Gettin’ in El Dorado Vineyard Owners’ Eyes… or Their Grapes

Photo courtesy
myyosemite.com

Worried about buying or using grapes that might have smoke taint from the Rim Fire?   El Dorado grapes don’t seem to be affected.

Bob Clarke, whose 12-acre Latrobe Vineyards is 15 miles SW of Placerville,  notes:  “We are not having any problem with smoke in the Latrobe area. Our only bad day was on Tuesday, otherwise we have had very little smoke. We finished harvest of our Sauvignon Blanc on Monday so that is past us. Zinfandel to go yet but we should have no problem with smoke affecting our Zinfandel.”

Primitivo at Shaker Ridge

Elizabeth Standeven of Shaker Ridge Vineyard, located in the town of El Dorado which is 4 miles SW of Placerville (or 38 miles NE of Sacramento),  says, “I am hopeful that the smoke will not be enough to taint our wines. It has been a heavy lingering blanket some days, but most days it has blown off fairly quickly in the day. Based on our experience in the past with fires closer to us than the Rim Fire I am not expecting any problems.”  Shaker Ridge grows Barbera, Primitivo, Tempranillo, Touriga Nacional,  and Tinta Cao.

Greg Baiocchi of Baiocchi Family Vineyards, located in the Fair Play region of southern El Dorado County, declares, “We really have nothing to worry about at this point as the amount of hours where smoke to grape skin contact has occurred thus far has been minimal in El Dorado County.” Baiocchi Family Vineyards grows Tempranillo, Mourvedre, Syrah and Grenache.

Great Wines are Made with El Dorado Grapes: Tempranillo and Tempranillo Blends, for example

Image courtesy
WineAccess.com

Our kudos to Baiocchi Wines & Vineyards for carrying the El Dorado Grape torch to the Grand Tasting "TAPAS" in San Francisco in midsummer. Baiocchi was the only winery pouring our El Dorado grapes in the form of Tempranillo.

This tasting is an extremely well-promoted event in the wine world, attracting a large media contingent and lots of follow-on publicity. TAPAS, which is short for Tempranillo Advocates Producers and Amigos Society, also has other El Dorado members. They have recently instituted a Wine Trail on their website at http://www.tapasociety.org/trail/sierra .   

Several other El Dorado Wine GrapeGrower Association members proudly grow Tempranillo in their vineyards.  They are:

• Alvarez Vineyards
• D’Artagnan Vineyards
• Grace Vineyards
• Kingsgate Farm
• Pasto Vineyards
• Pineoak Vineyard
• Shadow Ranch
• Shaker Ridge Vineyard

 

We'll talk more about El Dorado tempranillo growers in future posts, why it's grown in El Dorado, and how it fares...besides making good wine of course!

For the TAPAS tasting, Greg poured his G minor, a blend of Grenache-Syrah-Tempranillo, and his Orellana, a blend of Tempranillo-Grenache.  He also used this opportunity to pour two Grenache-only Baiocchi wines, Sharon's Vineyard Grenache and Neophyte Rose.  All Baiocchi wines are produced from estate fruit.

Greg Baiocchi supplied this info on his Vineyard’s Tempranillo Specs:

 

1 Acre

Clone - FPS 02

Rootstock - 101-14

Soil - Decompsed Granite, well draining

Trellis - VSP North/South

Spacing - 4X7

Training - Unilateral

Attitude - West

 

Baiocchi stated:  “Tempranillo is a vigorous varietal that loves sun / heat and well drained soils. The vines will produce up to 6 tons an acre if allowed. Our site in Fair Play at 2300' has all of the Terroir to resemble sites in Spain in which it’s a native.

 

"The decomposed granite, rootstock, training & spacing was all designed to de-vigorate the vines. We challenge them, stress them a bit and create an environment where they will produce superb wine grapes. We train them to do what we as winemakers want them to do, instead of just re-producing as they were bred to do...

"We do our best to crop this acre at 2.5 tons, which creates much handwork thinning the shoots and clusters at specific times during the growing season. With this management, though, we are able to harvest fruit with incredible concentration of phenolics and flavors.

"Tempranillo's personality and character is dark and brooding. Great fruit is complemented by earth and leather which makes for a great partner blending with Grenache and Syrah = GST,” concluded El Dorado grape grower and vintner Greg Baiocchi.