With the 2016 vintage safely in the barrel and now undergoing malolactic fermentation, we have time to step back and reflect on the season. It’s too early to prognosticate about “vintages of the century” but it was certainly a good one. Before we get caught up in planning the holidays, and maybe another tropical vacation, here’s
Here are the Cabernet Sauvignon grapes in our vineyard on Diamond Mountain just waiting to be picked. We both sampled them today; Bill’s sample was 24.7 brix and Dawnine’s was 24.6 brix so we dodged having to talk about each other’s sampling technique and went on to check the other varieties. Cab Franc was a
Matt Kramer’s New California Wine, a revision of his 1992 classic Making Sense of California Wine has just been published. We like his revisionism! Here’s what he says about us: “Dyer Vineyard—This is the tiny, personal vineyard (and home) of two former winemakers, Dawnine Dyer (former head winemaker of Domaine Chandon) and Bill Dyer
Diamond Mountain District 8/22/16 – It’s mostly quiet on Diamond Mountain where there’s near unanimous agreement that it will be mid September before we see any real action. Budbreak was early but a cooler May delayed bloom and put us pretty much back to “normal” by the time we had berry set. Cluster counts are
Diamond Mountain District 8/25/15 “Vineyards on Diamond Mountain can be divided into two camps- those that finished bloom before the cool weather in May and those that didn’t finish bloom until early June. Those on the earlier track, north-facing slopes and young vineyards, are rapidly approaching full maturity while those on the later track are
I suppose every field has its controversies. Two that we hear about quite often in wine production are alcohol level and the hundred point scale. I will address them together as I believe they are closely linked. Over the last decade or so we have seen alcohol levels in table wine creep up. Levels of
You can see that things are really taken off in the vineyard! The weather’s been lovely and the vines are showing their appreciation. As the shoots have lengthened, we’ve started tucking them into the trellis system – it’s called “vertical shoot positioning.” The purpose is to get lots of sunlight to the leaf surface, to
For quite a while, now, we’ve been meaning to review all the vintages of Dyer Vineyards Cabernet – we’re amazed to realize there are fifteen vintages now (seventeen if you count the two in barrels!) But, we just hadn’t gotten to it. In a recent moment of serendipity, Bill was talking to Doug Wilder, the
We recently sent out an e-mail to our mailing list customers informing them we will not be releasing a 2011 vintage from our vineyard, and instead are offering an older vintage (2005) from our library for the holidays. This is after 15 consecutive annual releases–here is the story behind our “missing vintage.” We have often
We are off to an early start with the 2015 Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon vintage—here on Diamond Mountain our vines budded out about 10 days ahead of normal. We did something a little different this year with our pruning, which you can see in this photo. Mid-winter when the vines were very dormant we pruned
Managing tannins is key to making wine on Diamond Mountain- all those lovely aromas and flavors can be overwhelmed by hard mountain tannins if not managed properly. And like most things in winemaking, that management starts in the vineyard. We are already doing tannin management for the 2015 Cabernet Sauvignon. We recently removed excessive shoots
Winemakers tend to be “optimystics”, which is probably a good thing as each year nature hands us a new season with its own set of challenges. When we get through a vintage, sometimes it is difficult to rein in our enthusiasm for what we produced often leading to some amusing pronouncements. Having said that, we