Mea Culpa-Domine miserere mei
1100 08 August Paso Robles, CA
Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.
The final blend of the Volatus 2024 Pinot Noir. Of note, the Pinot is always on Montgillard barrels not the Vlad in the image.
August bottling, a final opportunity to move wines from barrel to bottle and market before the frenzy of harvest becomes all encompassing. At Volatus, that means Pinot Noir. As all of you who have tried it know, we are one of the few wineries in Paso making the noble, yet finicky Pinot Noir from Paso fruit. Maybe six or seven wineries using home field grapes with almost everyone else doing Pinot from south county, Santa Barbara, or Monterrey. The Volatus process is no more than 11 months in barrel so with the Pinot harvest historically starting 01 September plus or minus a day an August bottling it is.
The 2024 Pinot harvest was interesting. Overall, the growing season across the summer was relatively warm and the grapes came in just a touch early. I was slightly concerned as the vineyard carried an above average crop in terms of quantity. For Pinot, this can lead to inconsistent berry size and ripening. Some clusters were definitely not as ripe as others but that can easily be handled once the fruit hits the winery sorting tables.
Gently dropping the fruit on the table, a 25’ long, vibrating stainless steel “conveyor”, it begins the journey to become the classic Volatus Pinot Noir. I will always be watching the grapes, along with at least two other sets of keen eyes and quick hands, and if a cluster does not meet the standard it is tossed aside. As we started the sort, my initial concerns were realized as we sorted, aka removed/tossed out, about 20% of the grape clusters. Most were underripe and others were just not attractive or tasty. Interestingly, the best way to determine if a questionable cluster stays or goes is to taste it. Personal technique, but biting into the full cluster like an ear of corn is the way to go.
Fermentation was good using the same Burgundy origin yeast just as we have since 2015. Everything looked and smelled great with normal kinetics and a total fermentation time of just under two weeks. We drained the free run juice, the wine that gravity feeds off the completed fermentation without any additional pressure and kept it separate. With the free run collected, we pressed the remaining wine, skins, and solids with a gentle bladder press. Keeping the press wine apart from the free run is normally good in theory but most years we end up blending the two together as they are both delicious without much noticeable difference.
My practice is to let the newly finished wine rest in the small press tanks for about 3-5 days. This allows the gross lees to settle with the barely clarified wine sitting on top. After the settle, into the barrel it goes. At Volatus we use only Montgillard barrels, coopered in Nuits St. Georges, Burgundy for our Pinot. In the 24 vintage, 100% new French oak for the free run and once used French oak for the press juice. With the primary fermentation complete, I inoculated the wine with malo lactic bacteria and set the barrels inside to work through secondary, slowly transforming the malic acid into lactic. Took about two months but malo finished, we topped the barrels, and then put the wines to bed.
A few months later, it was time to start tasting the wines and evaluating what we had. As you might expect, we had tasted the wine over the course of fermentation and malo but the true flavors and aromas were somewhat masked with those of yeast and ml. Unlike, previous vintages, I soon discovered a difference between the free run and press barrels. Initially noticeable but over time the delta between the two became significantly greater. The press barrels were not bad nor flawed but they did not pop with the expected Volatus Pinot aromas and flavors.
Fast forward to July, one month before a prospective Pinot bottling, when we begin to put the individual wines and barrels together to create the final blend. The simplest blend and the one you always hope works is taking equal amounts from each barrel, mixing, and hoping for the best. Unfortunately, the blend was not it, uninspiring and mostly flavor free; not my target wine, of course. Time to dive deeper and find another blend. Before that we needed to taste each barrel and assess goods and others. It became immediately apparent many of the barrels were not good enough. Ultimately, the strongest wine was a blend of only the free run wine. Well shit.
What does that blend really mean to the winery? Fully half of the 24 Pinot was not good enough to go into a Volatus bottle. Were the rejected barrels bad or flawed? Not at all, they just were not what I want to represent our brand and the already critically analyzed class of Paso Pinot. Time, money, my confidence, etc. were lost. Inevitably, I did the quick mental math as to the dollars wasted and the potential lost revenue. Not gonna lie, that is a kick in the pills you do not want to experience often.
To quote one of my favorite movies, “Needless to say, I was a little despondent after the melt down, but then, in the midst of my preparations for hari kiri, it came to me.” It is much better to sacrifice the wine, time, and money but keep the Volatus winemaking integrity. A simple promise to myself and every current and future Volatus wine drinker, “I will not put a bad wine into bottle.”
So in my favorite language, Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. In the vulgar, through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault. As I currently filter the 2024 Pinot Noir, looking at my forensic analysis of what went wrong, I own it. Too many small variables I let slip in the vineyard and in the winemaking to fully discuss here but the lessons are learned.
Alas, my own hero’s journey is almost complete with the redemption of a delicious Paso Pinot that meets my standards, delivers on the promise I made above, and will be exceedingly fun to drink.
Fight’s On!
Bull Schmitt
