We must now be about half way through our harvest with most of the early Riesling picking done. We pick early for our sweeter styles (such as our Organic or our Sweet Riesling) so we have plenty of acid to balance the sugar we do not ferment. We are almost done with our Wallula fruit (a third of all our Riesling comes from the Biodynamically farmed Wallula) which is our warm early site. We should out of the sheeps hair in a few days, hang on girls!

Quality is high with plenty of flavors and surprisingly high acid. I think that our canopy management this summer is really paying off. I thought last year was a great Riesling year, but this year is turning out very very nice.

Another three weeks of picking fruit and we should be done….

The grapes from our single vineyard Solstice are ripening nicely. This should be (again) an outsandingvintage for what is usually our smallest bottling of the year (200 cases a year). We sold out of the 2007 and just bottled the 2008 6 weeks ago. above is a beauty shot of the clusters this year - yes, Steven, I know I am a lousy photographer and my camera stinks. I love this block, it is not good looking per se (see the old gnarly vine below), oldish (planted in 1972, just like me), naturally cropped at 2.5tons per acre, on very shallow soils straight on the fractured basalt. I think one of the most Terroir driven wine we make with some petrol notes - very Alsatian inspired. It is a bit geeky of a wine (That’s probably why Ole at Wild Ginger in Seattle liked it) but always a treat.

Here is a picture of Rick from the Hogue Ranches in the Yakima Valley (we source three Riesling blocks with those guys) posing next to their new owl houses spread out through the vineyard. They where built as a school project by a Prosser high schooler (Keith Forsyth) and placed throughout the vineyard. Likely large barn owls will move in February next year and will help control naturally the sage rat population. Thank you guys for providing a habitat for those beautiful birds and consequently reducing any needs for chemical (read poison) control of the sage rat population. This is what sustainability is all about!

The only grapes we havebrought so far are for our yeast starter. Our wines will be  again fermented with 100% native yeasts this year and we have dialed in a process to get that done. A week before we harvest any given block we bring a 700 Lbs starter from that very block of Riesling, stump it with our feet and wait for the grapes to ferment. A week later our starter is usually ready to use and inoculate a whole tank from the same block. Our first starter this year is of course for our Sparkling Riesling “white flowers”!

In our constant search for new ways to drink our wines we stumbled on a sort of cosmopolitan recipe that uses Framboise. Framboise as always been a great cocktail item (think a Framboise Kir Royal, a Framboise Mojito, Framboise Margarita…) but we had never try it in a Martini type cocktail - We did and what a fun drink that was. A must try - May be we need a cocktail page on the web site?

2 parts Vodka

1 part Framboise

1 part Cranberry juice

Shake, pour and decorate with red fruits

If Alice (in Wonderland) can believe in six impossible things before breakfast, I can appreciate six improbable tipples by happy hour. Some of the following are rarer than others, but all are items you don’t come across in your average supermarket (you gotta go to a wine shop).

• Framboise: It’s a fruit infusion liqueur made by infusing, or soaking, raspberries (hence the name) in alcohol. This one, by Pacific Rim Winemakers of Portland, Ore., is made of fruit from Mike and Jean’s Berry Farm on Mount Vernon. It’s potent and sweet and intensely raspberry flavored. They suggest sipping it with chocolate after dinner or plopping it into a glass of bubbly for a kir royale. Oh, it may leave a hint of tannic residue in the bottom of the bottle. Pacific Rim suggests this is rich in antioxidants, so you should drink it. Recommended, at $14 per half bottle.

miami-herald-090309