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WINEMAKER INTERVIEW 68 WINES&VINES January 2016 P inot Noir specialist Merry Edwards, now in her fifth decade as a winemaker, started cooking with wine as a teenager, inspired by some cookbooks from the California Wine Advisory Board. Her interest in wine grew during her college years at the Uni- versity of California, Berkeley, when Edwards started experimenting with fermentation of both fruit wines and beer. But her studies focused on physiology, and when she graduated in 1970, she planned to write about nutrition. With that in mind, Edwards started studying at UC Berkeley for a master's degree in nutrition. But a visit to UC Davis prompted her to transfer there to study winemaking. She earned a master's degree in food science with an emphasis in enology in 1973. Finding a job as a winemaker was another matter. She was offered lab jobs—the tradi- tional role for women at wineries in those d a y s — b u t t u r n e d them down. Eventu- a l l y, E d w a r d s w a s hired at Mount Eden Vineyards in the Santa Cruz Mountains, where she first worked with Pinot Noir. After three years she moved to Sonoma County, where she helped develop Matanzas Creek Winery. Making wine from Pinot Noir was put on hold for a few years, until she left Matanzas Creek in 1984 to consult and run her own short-lived brand, Merry Vintners. In 1996 Edwards purchased land in the Russian River Valley, which became her Meredith Estate vineyard. She started Merry Edwards Wines the next year. Coopersmith Vineyard, named for her husband, Ken Coopersmith, was planted in 2001. Edwards also has long-term leases on three vine- yards and works with several other wine grape growers. In 2013, her 40th year as a winemaker, Edwards was inducted into the Culinary Institute of Amer- ica's Vintners Hall of Fame in St. Helena, Calif., and won the James Beard Award for best wine, beer or spirits professional. Q What sort of challenges did you face with the 2015 harvest? Merry Edwards: 2015 was the earliest harvest I have experienced in my 42 years of winemaking. It began Aug. 15 with Pinot Noir from our Geor- ganne Vineyard on Westside Road (Healdsburg, Calif.) and finished with the lower slope of Mer- edith Estate (Sebastopol, Calif.) on the 11th of September. This is about nine days earlier than we traditionally begin harvesting. Part of our as- sessment of grape maturity is the evaluation of seed maturity, which was somewhat skewed by the presence of so many tiny, seedless berries in all of our Pinot Noir vineyards this season. In addition, set was poor, which meant loose clusters. This resulted in good development of flavor a n d p h e n o l i c c o n - tent—so great quality, but small quantity. My estimation is that our crop of Pinot was down by about 30%. Sourcing good Pinot to make up these low yields was not easy. However, my friends helped me source additional fruit I can use to produce our Russian River Valley and Sonoma Coast blends. Our single-vineyard wines will be smaller in quantity, but excellent in quality. The shortage of Pinot was exacerbated by the progressive losses from Pierce's disease in our vine- yards located on Westside Road: Flax and Geor- ganne. The loss of vines has been devastating, with my current estimation of losses standing at ap- proximately 25% over the past three years. We replaced many vines this summer, only to see other vines develop symptoms later in the growing sea- son. Next spring we fear a repeat of last year, find- ing many vines that "woke up dead," as Sonoma A CONVERSATION WITH Merry Edwards A master of Pinot Noir discusses the 2015 harvest, drought and balance By Laurie Daniel BEN MILLER