I think we might be something like 20% through harvest. We have already received a lot of our Sweet Riesling, some Dry and some Chenin. The acids are looking great which should provide us with a great backbone for the wines. I think I have also found some Riesling from Oregon (Willamette Valley) that we could make into a very delicious Kabinett style, very very exciting. The weather is turning a bit sour on us but that might not be that bad especially is we get decent botrytis in the vineyard. May be a year where we will make a TBA??

I was at the Wallula Vineyard last week with Alan Busacca, a very knowledgeable geologist that has been studying Eastern Washington for many moons. Our goal was to dig some 7-8 feet deep to see what our soils where made of exactly on that site. What we saw was straight windblown loess for 8 feet with a darker top layer from organic matters mixed with the silt and then a whitish layer from calcium carbonate deposits. Very uniform, packed with minerals soils. We did not see any ash layers trapped in the silt that would have helped us dating the soils (about 1 inch of soil is deposited by the wind every 200 years in this part of the Columbia Valley). For example Mt Saint Helen had a major eruption 14,000 years ago and a white ash layer can often been seen that help dating the soils above or below the ash layer. No matter, I have learn tons from Alan on that day and I can tell you that we have some pretty special dirt up at Wallula that will help produce some very distinctive wines with high mineral characters.

Today we’ve prepared our first Pied de Cuve. This is an old technique that we are using this year to reduce our dependence on commercial yeasts. The idea is to cultivate the yeasts that are on the skins of the grapes a few days before receiving the grapes from a given vineyard and use those yeasts to inoculate the fermentation. To do so we receive the grapes a week before the vineyard is supposed to be picked and we crush the grapes by foot (Steven and I did that today, pretty fun really) in order to put in contact the yeasts that are on the grape skin and the juice from the berries. We then monitor the growth of those yeasts over time by looking at the yeast population under the microscope and by monitoring the sugar drop. This is a great process, bit more time consuming than tossing commercial yeasts from a bag into the tank, but it will increase wine complexity and it is much more romantic and elegant I think.

Yesterday we brought our first grapes. The winner this year is Chenin Blanc from Andrews. The juice off the press is very sweet about 24 Brix and quite ripe. The weather has been fantastic for white wines so far, in the mid 70’s this week. This should be a stellar vinatge if all goes well.

Northwest Rieslings Rock for a New Wave.

Review in the Oregonian