Sunday brunch at the historic Palace Hotel in San Francisco?  Don’t mind if I do…

On Sunday, we were invited to pour our wines at the Palace Hotel as part of their Sunday Blues Brunch.  My wife, Meghan, and I were the lucky ones chosen to represent LangeTwins to take part in a decadent tradition at the Palace Hotel – brunch in the Garden Court.

A little bit of history: The landmark Palace Hotel was completely rebuilt and re-opened in 1909 after being damaged by the huge 1906 earthquake of San Francisco.  It’s most famous room, the Garden Court, rests under an ornate stained-glass window dome and Austrian crystal chandeliers….so, it was safe to say that I couldn’t wear my work boots.

Trivia bit: The glass dome-ceiling is also the same one that Michael Douglas fell through at the end of the 1997 movie, “The Game”, for those of you interested in worthless movie trivia!

Executive Chef Jesse Llapitan and his team came by for a tasting and really enjoyed our Generations Viognier and Proprietary Cabernet Sauvignon.  The food was excellent and we were happy to pour our wines to compliment the cheese tasting tables nearby.  In fact, we were there to promote the upcoming Artisan Cheese Festival in Petaluma taking place on weekend of March 26th in Petaluma.

Buy tickets ahead of time for a luxury food weekend featuring over twenty-four artisan cheese makers, twenty wineries and breweries, and just as many chefs preparing handmade bites for all.  We’ll be there paired up with our friends at Fiscalini Cheese Company!

How do you know when the winegrapes are ready to harvest?

At LangeTwins, we use a few different methods to determine when our winegrapes are at their optimal flavor and composition to produce our award-winning wines.

As harvest approaches, we begin taking “sugar tests”, or samples of berries from a particular vineyard block to measure, essentially, the content of sugar in the grape juice.  Remember that by the process of fermentation, sugars are converted into alcohol, so, the higher the sugar, the more potential alcohol your wine will have, depending on how your fermentation goes.  Taking a sugar test of the grapes is the most basic way of measuring the maturity of the fruit in the vineyard, but certainly not the only way.

Here’s how we do it:

First, we find a sucker who wants to work all summer in a dirty, sticky environment, taking sugar samples for us.  This year, that lucky individual is Michael VerHagen, a young man with significant agricultural experience from the Lodi area.

Michael samples berries in the vineyard cruising on his ATV, taking a representative sample of the fruit.  That means that he is taking three or four berries per cluster, from different positions on the cluster and the vine, and doing it throughout the vineyard. In a 10 acre vineyard, he might take three or four passes through, grabbing berries from clusters on the outside of vine, inside, high, low, and in different positions on the cluster (shoulder, wing, center, etc).  Michael then places these berries in a one-gallon bag.

Once back at the truck, Michael crushes the berries inside the bag, and pours the juice on the refractometer, a device to measure dissolved sugar-to-water mass ratio, or more simply, the percent amount of sugar in the juice. Read more about how a refractometer works here.

Looking through the eyepiece, we can see that the sugar level in this sample is 12 degrees Brix.   In general, winegrapes are harvested between 18 °Bx and 25 °Bx, depending on winegrape variety and goals of the winemaker.  But sugar is not the only measurement of a winegrapes maturity.  As we near harvest, we will use similar samples to measure the TA (total acid), pH, and perhaps some phenolic compounds to help us decide when a winegrape is at its peak of perfection to harvest.

Even though we have all of this fancy technology at our fingertips, we still employ the tried-and-true taste test and visual evaluation to decide when a vineyard is ready to harvest.

The color, texture, and flavor of the skins and seeds of the grape can easily override the empirical, objective data gathered through measurements.  Is it still tasting a little herbaceous?   Is that deep cherry flavor there that we want for this variety?  How about the seeds – soft, crunchy, flavor?  How does the vineyard look and do we think it can continue to support/improve the flavors of the winegrapes?

Our viticultural and winemaking team walk the vineyards and evaluate the fruit and vines before harvest to ensure that we are picking at the optimal time to make the best possible wines.

After all, the vineyard team works all year long for this moment, so it’s imperative that we  harvest the fruit at the right time, because amazing wines can only be made from amazing grapes.

Girl Scouts are hard workers! (See below for pictures!)

On Tuesday, April 21st, I had the opportunity to work with local Girl Scout Troop #2029 to continue our habitat restoration efforts at our Sandpoint property along the Mokelumne River.

To start off the afternoon, co-host James Jones, Wildlife Biologist from East Bay Municipal Utility District (EBMUD), led the Girl Scouts on a nature walk along the Mokelumne riverbank to point out native plant species, owl and wood duck boxes, mature elderberry plants, and a honey bee hive that I hadn’t noticed before either!

With shovels, cartons, and stakes in hand, the Girl Scouts learned how to properly plant a potted elderberry. We worked for about an hour to plant all of the elderberry bushes, but we finally finished.

LangeTwins would like to give special thanks for Troop #2029 and their parents for generously volunteering their time, efforts, and hard work to help with our restoration work along the Mokelumne.  The girls now have a hand in converting an old vineyard and sandy bottom field into a wonderfully biologically diverse riparian habitat area, a significant contribution to the ecological health of our watershed.

A little history on our restoration efforts on the Sandpoint property:

In 2004, we removed the old tokay vineyard that our grandfather planted and decided to embark on a habitat restoration project that would expand the riparian corridor along the Mokelumne.  With our own efforts and the help of a CalFed grant, invasive plant species were replaced by native oaks, wild roses, buckeyes, willows, box elders, and elderberries bushes.

In 2006, LangeTwins was the first signee of California’s first programmatic Safe Harbor Agreement, allowing us to plant the Mexican elderberry bush, host plant of the Valley Elderberry Beetle, a protected plant under the Endangered Species Act.  Had we not been able to work together with our partners, who included EBMUD, Environmental Defense, the Lower Mokelumne River Stewardship Steering Committee, San Joaquin County Resource Conservation District, and US Fish & Wildlife Service, we would not have been able to plant the elderberry bushes and also continue our normal farming operations nearby, due to significant restrictions under the Endangered Species Act.

In the end, the Safe Harbor Agreement was a win-win for both private land stewards and our government agencies, and the result was hundreds of plantings of the elderberry bush, and hopefully the return of the endangered beetle to our watershed.

Again, a big thanks to the Girl Scouts!

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