Harvest 2008 will be remembered as probably one of the coolest season in Eastern Washington in a long time. Our grapes are coming at low sugar (a good thing for lower alcohol), good flavor and high acid (which is great for Riesling in general). We are about 40% through picking we need to make serious strides in the next two weeks as we are drawing near the end of harvest.

One unattended consequence of this long cool hang time is the slow development of good botrytis. Good and divine Botrytis (as opposed to bad and evil botrytis aka sour rot) occurs when the botrytis fungus grows inside the grape berry and literally dries up the berry by using the water within resulting in a concentrated grape berry. Wines made from partially or completely botrytized harvest are among the most complex and delicious in the world.

This year I figure that about 15% of our berries have been dehydrated with botrytis and that bodes well for the complexity of our wines. We might even try a little TBA (for Trocken Beren Auslese: 100% botrytized harvest) for fun…

About five weeks ago we have received the raspberries from Mount Vernon that will make our Framboise this year. We have brought this reicipe out of the closet because we got so many folks calling asking for it. Well, it is back and I must say it is a very very delicious batch! We are one of the rare winery to make this type of wine/liqueur from fresh raspberries. I think it is because it is such a pain in the neck to make this type of beverage from fresh fruit rather than from concentrate. The reward for using fresh fruit is theintense raspberry flavor we extract during the making. It must be one of the most deliciously raspberrishly insane drink out there. We are now done with the infusion part of the making where we put the berries in contact with alcohol to extract the flavors and we now are settling the finished Framboise before filtration. If all goes well, we should have the Framboise out by Christmas time.

This is a picture of Scott, our Enologist, after a Framboise bath - Nice job Scott, it tastes great!

After a heat spell last week, we are back to cool weather this week (mid 70’s) with some really cold weather scheduled next Monday (we even might have a freeze that night). The acids are very high in all we have brought so far, though we only brought in 10% of our total production. We are working our way through our Sweet Riesling vineyards right now and all looks very good. I am a bit anxious about some cool sites, but I am sure I am not the only one out there.

Well, here we are. We will probably start picking on friday the first lots for our sweet Riesling and for a super secret project (can’t talk about it quite yet). Acids are very high overall and the flavors are nice and crisp. Should be a terrific vintage.

We have started our first pied de cuve (yeast starter) yesterday.

Yesterday we had the first samples for the 2008 harvest season. The results: 13.8 for the Riesling at Selenium (Yakima Valley) and 16.5 for the Chenin Blanc at Andrews (Horse Heaven Hills). It looks like we are a good two weeks behind which is great for Riesling and other aromatic whites.

This is a one year old video that Andy Perdue from Wine Press Northwest shot during harvest. I finally succeeded in pasting the link here.

NW Winecast for Oct. 30: Pacific Rim Winemakers

This week we started our Vin De Glaciere winemaking. It is a very fun wine to make even though it is quite excruciating. The basic idea behind the making of this nectar is to press frozen grapes, leaving the water iced (in the form of a suburban size ice cube) in the press and releasing only the sugar. The juice coming out of the press is very sweet (about 36 Brix). We will ferment it to about 9% alcohol leaving about 16% of Residual Sugar. We freeze the grapes from a single vineyard in the Yakima Valley in a big freezer and we usually press about 10 tons a day which will be made into 350 cases. It is a long process that will take an entire month. After the pressing we have to ferment the ultra sweet juice which also requires some efforts because yeasts do not thrive in such a high sugar environment. It will probably take another month to ferment and will cause a few dozen cardiac arrest to the winemaking team worrying about the yeast finishing their job. At the end we make a very crisp and focused single vineyard Riesling dessert wine that is just plain delicious.

As some of you might know, one of our main Riesling source comes from Wallula Vineyard in the Horse Heaven Hills appellation. Our vineyard sits at about 1,200 feet of elevation and presents several unique characteristics. The first one is to be planted with high density (about 1,613 plants per acre) allowing high competition between vines. The second characteristic is the ingenious trellis system which creates a micro environment under the vines very conducive to high quality Riesling. The third characteristic is our extensive clonal selection. The last characteristic and may be the most important is that this vineyard is farmed entirely Biodynamically.
The wines from this vineyard are turning so good this year that we are considering a single vineyard bottling from this special Terroir. We have tried to go Biodynamic all the way (ie in our winemaking as well) but we only succeeded with one tank. I understand this is not too bad of an achievement for a Biodynamic rookie that I am. The wine is very exciting. Check this out: No pesticides, no fertilizer what so ever in the vineyard, handpicked, no yeast added (only the one that came with the grapes), no yeast nutrients, no acid, no nothing during the winemaking process. Now, that is as pure as it gets.

Well, harvest 2007 in our new home in West Richland is now completed. We have plenty of wines finishing fermenting, but as far as bringing grapes, we are done.
The wines are turning very well. 2007 will be remembered for its high acids and cool harvest weather. Everything tastes great and is very promising.
This year we really focused on getting the new winery to work and on studying each vineyard lot much more that we have done in the past. One R&D project we’ve conducted was to develop a native yeast fermentation program. The native yeasts worked great and we will do 100% wild yeasts next year. I think we get more complex wines and very healthy fermentation with the wild yeasts (plus it is neat to make the wine with the yeasts that came on the grapes).
I’ll try to be a bit better at posting  on this blog now that harvest is over with.
Cheers.

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??

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.