Services

Viticulture

Work with winery management and vineyard management on any future plantings in regard to spacing, varietals and clones

Develop pruning protocols for each vineyard block with winery and vineyard management

Develop best vineyard practices, i.e. suckering, leafing, lateral removal, short shoot thinning, cluster thinning, by block/price point

Identification of vineyard pests and diseases and discussion of possible solutions with vineyard management

Communication of all viticultural needs and requirements to vineyard management to ensure timely execution of practices

Evaluation of vineyard blocks for vine water status—observational—and irrigation needs

Evaluation of vineyard blocks with winery management to determine which blocks may yield the highest quality fruit

Evaluation of crop load and vine balance through crop estimation pre-harvest

Assist or lead in pre-harvest viticultural decisions such as veraison/green thinning, leaf removal, irrigation, and picking.

Winemaking

Develop an understanding of specific stylistic and marketing goals

Examine all winemaking SOPs, work with winemaking staff to development and implement any new protocols if necessary

Evaluate past and current inventories and give recommendations for further aging or treatment including

Wines already bottled

Wines aging in barrel

Wines aging in tank

Evaluate barrel programs for each wine and/or vineyard block and give recommendations for future purchases

Educate and instruct in proper laboratory methods and practices

Assist or lead in harvest winemaking decisions such as pick dates, white press programs, maceration protocols, yeast, cold soaking/maceration practices

Monitor all fermentations on a daily basis. Training of winemaking staff for target wine profiles/characters for red pressings

Monitor and make decisions with winemaking staff regarding new wine triage, barrel aging, and blending lot selection

Lead and evaluate wine for blending trials. Give input for final blends for bottling to achieve stylistic goals.

Give input for fining and filtration

Can be present for bottling

I am also a resource for winery compliance, have created winery and vineyard operating budgets—and operated with in them and developed winery operation and sales projections.