Central Coast Wine Blogs

The Magic of Crush

In late summer, there is a moment in vineyards known as "veraison," which translates roughly as "moment of truth." It is the moment when grapes begin to turn from hard, green beads into sweet, plump fruit. From that moment until harvest the vineyards are at their most vulnerable. The hazards of the early season--heavy rains, late frosts--are minor compared to the dangers that haunt the last few weeks of vintage. Hordes of deer and birds descending on tender fruit can wipe out an entire harvest in a few days. Late season heat ripens grapes too quickly, robbing them of flavor. A lack of heat delays harvest into late fall, when freezing nights can turn grapes into tasteless mush. Late season rains swell grapes with water, breaking the skins and infecting entire clusters with mold.

During these last few weeks of summer, winemakers are in the vineyards, looking at the clusters, crushing grapes between their fingers, tasting the fruit. The winemaker's phone rings unanswered, mail piles up in messy stacks, and deadlines are missed. In the winery itself, cellarmen spend weeks draining barrels and tanks of previous vintages, bottling and labeling wine and shipping it out, cleaning tanks, barrels and equipment. Like the unveiling of a statue, cloth covers are pulled off the crusher and the press, and the huge machines are rolled outside, cleaned, and tested. Truck-size scales are pulled out of storage, assembled and calibrated to receive incoming fruit.

But to those of us who have been through this before, these busy weeks seem quiet, sounds seem muted. The vineyards are full and leafy, and heavy with fruit. Vines sag over their trellis systems and trail on the ground. Heat waves dance over the vines and an occasional breeze lifts the aluminum strips which are meant to frighten birds. In the winery itself, empty tanks stand with their doors hanging open. Barrels are turned upside down in their racks and the whole winery has a strangely hollow feeling.

Like survivors of a storm who smell another forming, we move through our preparations quickly with our minds focused on the horizon of late summer, waiting as the rising sugars and flavor of the vineyard slowly escalate--because all of this activity is only preparation for the season we call "crush."

A Visit with Benito Dusi

 

As clearly as I can recall, Ridge was the first extra-appellate winery to actually put "Paso Robles" as an appellation on their label. A daring move for a winery with a fine reputation—to align itself with an area that, at the time, was commonly associated with cattle farming and the subterranean Salinas River, which disappears entirely under its sandy riverbed every summer.

Imagine it is 1959.  Driving down Highway 101 to the beach towns of Morro Bay and Cambria, Dusi Vineyard was a charming stop on the way to a clamming weekend with the wife and kids. Women wearing loose rayon sundresses, silk stockings and open-toed heels accompanied their husbands on the short walk into the Dusi tasting room—a small, separate cottage between the home and vineyard. A six-foot tasting bar hosts the southern side of the cottage. Magazines lauding the four San Luis Obispo County wineries are still carefully fanned out on the corner of the tasting bar. I pick up the 1959 Sunset guide to California wineries. A two page black-and-white spread with brief descriptions of each of the four wineries also includes photographs of sleepy Cambria, a rickety one-boat dock with a view of the Rock at Morro Bay, and a family clamming on a local beach.

In a daring leap of faith, central coast zinfandel grower Sylvester Dusi and his son Benito raised the price of their wine by ten cents a case. Dusi zinfandel went from $5.90 a case to $6.00. They held their price at $6.00 a case for fifteen years—from 1959 to 1974.

In 1959 Benito Dusi was a young man in his mid-twenties. Although now in his seventies, it’s not hard to see Beni as the young man he was and always will be. He has a way of flashing oblique glances at me under his lashes, as though he knows a good joke but is too shy to tell it. He’s not tall, but he’s muscular in a wiry kind of way, standing upright with his shoulders unconsciously back and open, even when the room is cold. It is easy to see him as a young, bashful, and incredibly smart farmer.