Below is a press release that we have put on the wire yesterday to shout to the world how proud we are to be number one!

RICHLAND, Wash.– (BUSINESS WIRE) — Many “experts” believe these are times to avoid risk and survive the economic storm. At Pacific Rim Winery, the founders have taken a radically different tack by making risk-taking a pillar of their company culture. In just three years, their strategy has paid dividends – and, in the process, they’ve left an indelible mark on the wine industry.

Three years ago this month, a small band of Bonny Doon Vineyard expatriates founded Pacific Rim Winery. Their challenge: Create an entire brand around the success of one wine (Dry Riesling). Bonny Doon Vineyard has a rich history of innovative and creative thinking, and the winery’s founder, Randall Grahm, is widely recognized as the force behind the democratization of the wine industry over the past two decades.

With this pedigree, it’s not surprising that the team who founded Pacific Rim would challenge industry conventions and redefine a few “tried and true” wine industry rules along the way. Because of their innovative thinking, aggressive growth, creative marketing and – of course – award-winning wines, Wine Business Monthly (the industry’s preeminent trade magazine) has named Pacific Rim the #1 HOT SMALL WINE BRAND OF 2009.

Pacific Rim received the HOT BRAND honor largely because of a passion and commitment to do things differently and a willingness to take risks. The biggest risk taken by the Pacific Rim team was to commit to a single wine variety, RIESLING. In an industry where wineries spread risk by investing in multiple wine varieties, the team at Pacific Rim wanted to make a statement. That statement was: Do one thing and do it better than anyone else. In fact, Pacific Rim crafts ten Rieslings across flavor profiles – comprising 90% of the winery’s production. Affirming the wisdom of their singular Riesling focus, Riesling was recently named the fastest growing wine variety by AC Nielsen (even surpassing Pinot Noir).

Their risks have paved the way to 40% growth year-on-year and total sales approaching 150,000 cases. This is growth that would make any business proud in today’s challenging economic times. And all of this has occurred during a time where wine brands are shrinking or dying and growth for the overall wine industry has been flat.

But the brand’s singular commitment to Riesling is only part of the story. Pacific Rim demands innovation across all their efforts: from vineyard management to package design to communications programs.

·         Last year, Pacific Rim released a Riesling Made with Organic Grapes. The grapes are sourced from their Wallula Biodynamic Vineyard – the first and ONLY Demeter certified Biodynamic vineyard in Washington State. The wine was awarded the #3 TOP 100 BEST WINE BUY of 2009 from Wine Enthusiast. Subsequently, demand for the wine has exploded.

·         The brand’s packaging is unlike anything in industry. Transparent labels with progressive artwork promotes the beauty and clarity of Riesling while telling a visual food pairing story (e.g. a dragon portrayed on their popular Sweet Riesling label blows fire onto an iron caldron – communicating the wine’s perfect balance with spicy fare).

·         Pacific Rim published the Riesling Rules Book (a fun and information-packed exploration of all things Riesling). The book’s objective voice and subtle branding has earned it broad recognition (even a review in USA Today). The book is available FREE on Pacific Rim’s website www.RieslingRules.com and 35,000 copies of the book have been distributed to date. Content includes: wine styles, food pairings, global growing regions – even the Top Ten Movies to Enjoy with Riesling.

·         Other recent programs have included: SAVE WATER/DRINK RIESLING (a sustainable program in partnership with the Wild Salmon Center) and RIESLINGS GREETINGS (a Holiday retail chain POS stack-and-go concept).

Being true to their innovative spirit, Pacific Rim promises a few more innovations this upcoming year: launching a content-rich social media strategy, Riesling Rules online animations and Rieslings Greetings 2.0.

About Pacific Rim

Pacific Rim celebrates Riesling in all its wondrous forms. The winery is owned by Randall Grahm and located in West Richland, Washington. All vineyards are located within the Columbia Valley. For more information, see www.rieslingrules.com.

Congrats to Whole Foods Austin for their beautiful White Flower sparkling Riesling display. Looks so beautiful it made us very happy in the office! thank you guys.

We are releasing a new Riesling this month- we have now up to 10 different Rieslings in our lineup . This new release is a 2009 Riesling that we made in what I would call the “traditional” Johannisberg style (I know, I know, we are not supposed to use this term anymore). So, what is a “J” style? Well, it is usually a 2% residual sugar Riesling picked around 22.5 Brix (Auslese ripeness level) with about 12.5% of ethanol. It is the most proeminent style in Washington State. Ours is slightly different (of course) in the way that it is about 2.3% residual sugar and 11.5% ethanol therefore picked at 21.5 Brix (a ripe spatlese ripeness level). Like all of our Rieslings we like to pick grapes earlier than most folks in order to contribute a lot of natural acidity to balance the sugar and also to keep a lower alcohol content. The grapes come from the Yakima Valley, a cooler climate more appropriate for this style I believe. The wine is very fruity (think mango, guava, apricot with a hint of floral notes) and refreshing, a nice addition to the portfolio that does not replicate any other Riesling we make. When I was looking at the Riesling line up a few weeks ago it dawned on me that we have a geometric RS series in our portfolio: 0-2-4-8-16! 0% RS is our Dry Riesling, 2% RS is our new Riesling, 4% RS is our Riesling made from organic grapes, 8% is our sweet Riesling and 16% is our Riesling Vin De Glaciere Selenium Vineyard. Pretty fun, no?

This is the time of the year when we are bottling our first Rieslings blends. This year, the first blends to go to bottle are our Riesling made from organic (4% Residual Sugar), our Sweet Riesling (about 8% Residual sugar) and our new Riesling (2% Residual Sugar - another post about this Riesling later this week). It is always very satisfying to come to this point after months of work in the vineyard and at the winery. The challenge, and somewhat the fun part of the job, for a Riesling winery like us is blending smartly the different vineyard lots we produce in order to optimize each style we make (we make nine different Rieslings). In order to have plenty of options for blending we make many different lots of wines that are based on the vineyard they came from. The selection for those lots starts during the growing season where we usually sort each vineyard based on their intrinsic potential that year:  sparkling base potential, dryer Riesling potential and sweeter Riesling potential. Based on that designated potential, the grapes are picked either earlier in the season (for the sweeter styles so they have more acid to balance the sugar) or later (for the drier styles).

When the grapes are picked, the juices are evaluated pre fermentation to make sure that the designated style we had of this particular vineyard still makes sense. At that point we also refine the target style beyond sweet and dry based on flavor profile, sugar content, acid levels, phenolic content and the Biodynamic or Organic status of the juices. For Dry styles we divide the juices for sparkling, Dry Riesling, Solstice Single Vineyard and Wallula Biodynamic Single Vineyard. For Sweet styles we divide the juices for Riesling (2% RS), Organic and Sweet Riesling. Each lot is then allocated a target final residual sugar and we stop the fermentations based on our juice evaluation in most cases. Finally comes blending times where we pretty much review every single fermentation lot and we always tweak the blends left and right based on our desired final flavor profile, acid level, phenolic level and sugar level. That makes usually for a busy November/December.

Love the last paragraph of Jancis Robinson’s wishes for the year published in the financial times today:

“Meanwhile, my personal wish for 2010 is to drink more and more Riesling. It is relatively low in alcohol, high in flavour, develops beautifully in bottle, expresses terroir and goes very happily with so many of the foods we eat now. It doesn’t have to be sweet either.”

I say amen to that statement, less alcohol, more pleasure, light wine like the food we eat those days… We must be twins Jancis and I…

I have read so many top 10, top 100, top whatever that I thought, may be I should have a top something as well. I was not sure how many “tops” one should have though - 10 - 20 - 5 up/ 5 down - so I have settled on a list of cool achievements that have allowed our company to climb to the top (sorry could not resist another “top” word, might be over the t…).

Before we run through this top secret list of top of mind super top happenings, let me thank every customer that has purchased a bottle of our wines in 2009 - as they say in the airline industry, “we know you have many choices out there and we thank you for flying with us today!”. Without consumer support, our small Riesling winery could not grow and prosper. Thank you also to our distributors for carrying our wines throughout the country, our importers for representing us in our export markets, our grape growers for providing us with top quality year after year and of course our top employees (13 total!) for shaping the wine company we are today.

Alright, now to the TOP:

- Top performance: in 2009 Pacific Rim has grown 38%! Wow, not bad for 13 folks making Riesling. This is outpacing the wine category and the strong Riesling Category - Great job!

- Top three new wines this year with smashing success - Riesling Made from Organic Grapes (92 Points from Paul Gregutt!), Sparkling Riesling (SOLD OUT!), Autumnus Red (great Italian style wine from WA).

- Top Dry Riesling named best wine of the year by the Sommelier’s Challenge!

- A Tip-Top 2009 harvest with two new Rieslings in the portfolio

- Four babies born in 2009 - Top baby/employee ratio

The ice cold temperature is not bad for everyone, at least not for Pacific Rim. As you might remember, we had left some grapes in the field this year in the hope of making a TBA of sort i.e. a botrytized wine better known as noble rot wine. It got too cold to produce a 100% Botrytis wine (though we got a good amount of botrytis) and in exchange we are getting several nights below 10F which is allowing us to make a true ice wine this year! We just got done picking today and received 6 tons of frozen grapes with lots of botrytis (yum yum). We are pressing tomorrow morning and we hope to get 500 gallons of the precious high Brix, complex juice. This should be a very very interesting wine (and yes another style of Riesling). A picture of the vineyard yesterday is above - amazing that such a odd looking bunch produces such an amazing wine.

Our first effort at making a sparkling Riesling has been rewarded by an overwhelming demand for the wine and zip! we are out of it at the winery (you will still probably find it in retail accross the country). This is very rewarding to see that this delicate wine has been received with such enthusiasm by everyone (by the way thank you to Beverage Dynamics Magazine for rating the Sparkling White Flowers 91 points!). I have saved 10 bottles for the holidays for my own cellar (should be barely enough to carry us to the next bottling in January…). Making this wine was a bit of a bet because of the style we went for (Dryish and fruity) and the fact that it is clearly labeled as a Riesling. Never fear! you were out there to support our creative effort and this new style in the market place. We are now working on our next bottling in January - so stay tuned for more bubbles.

Last Friday night I had the opportunity to present our wines at the Beaujolais Nouveau party at the Heathman Hotel downtown Portland. The event was sponsored by the French American Chamber of Commerce as well as the Alliance Francaise of Portland. This was a very well attended (sold out) event in a perfect location with, quite frankl,y some of the best food in the city. The chef (Daniel Boulud) and the sommelier of the Heathman (Jeff Groh) were present and kindly accepted a couple glasses of wines of Washington wines lost in a sea of Beaujolais Nouveau (I did not give them a choice). We were the only white wine poured, so I got lots of attention and since the event was four hour long, I had the opportunity to tell our story to everyone that wanted to hear it. All our wines were a hit and I ran out quickly of Sparkling and Dry Riesling. Many people were having fun tasting different sugar levels and trying to find their “sweet spot”. Interestingly enough, I had plenty of people coming to me for our Autumnus red (tired of Beaujolais nouveau already?). Great event in the Portland area, I recommend it highly.

Note:  That same week end we were also pouring at two Cost Plus in the Portland Metro (thank you Shawn and thank you Brian) and on Saturday night Chris was pouring at the 20 something event in Seattle. Busy week end for the team.

Big thank you to Cost Plus for the great partnership and especially the great support during the holiday period. We already had our Dry Riesling nationally in all of Cost Plus’ stores and now we will have the Sweet Riesling as well. Additionally several States (CA, WA, OR, FL, TX, IL) will be carrying our White Flowers Sparkling Riesling for the holidays. At Pacific Rim we truly appreciate the opportunity that Cost Plus if offering smaller brands like us to expose our great wine on a national level. So, pick up a bottle of Pacific Rim at cost plus for the holidays!

Yesterday I was sitting on a Riesling tasting panel in Walla Walla and we were comparing Riesling from some classic regions in the world versus Washington. It is clear in my mind that Washington has its own style and produces its own type of Riesling. Here are a few thoughts about the regions we have tasted yesterday that I have put down:

- Mosel: Great acid, large influence of Botrytis with great honey, waxy nose. Kabinett styles are the most distinctive from that region and they balance the acid very well. A very distinctive style.

- Australia (Clare Valley): Bone dry styles. Lots of lemon, some alcohol and often some petrol notes. Once again a very specific profile that one cannot miss.

- Alsace: Very mineral wines with some ripeness and body. Sometimes a hint of alcohol. Not always technically bone dry but tasting almost always dry .

- Washington: Rarely bone dry, often some sugar though always great acid to balance the sugar. More fruity than steely with Peach being a main component. Often in a wide range of sweetness.

Tom, our fearless southeast regional manager, has just sent me a beautiful picture of our Sparkling Riesling stacked at the Whole Foods in downtown Austin. I cannot tell you how much I LOVE those pictures. They are the living proof that we are so right to seriously believe that Riesling will take over the w0rld of wine. Tom, thank you for the pic. Of course big thank you to the whole food buyer at that store (Jen Powell). Jefory Banta (of whole foods as well) is on the picture in total admiration in front of the stunning display.

Thank you guys!

I was invited this week to the 2009 Michigan Wine and Spirit Competition to judge Michigan wines along with some 30 other judges. I have tasted a great diversity of wines and several great wines. The whites were good but the reds were surprisingly excellent. For me it was also the opportunity to taste some amazing cherry wines (the Longview Winery Reserve Cherry wine was amazing) as well as some hybrid wines I am not used to try. The wines of the day for me were the Left foot Charlie Pinot Blanc, and most reds from Brys Estates though the Merlot 2007 was especially nice. On the Riesling side, some great semi -dry Riesling (45 North Vineyard 2008 Semi Dry, Chateau Grand Traverse 2008 Semi-Dry, Bel Lago Semi Dry). The Dry and Ice Wine were OK, but not stellar. Overall inspiring wines, great job Michigan!

Few pictures from my trip in Germany (Mosel today). What a beautiful place and great Rieslings to taste (not discounting the food either).

I went to see a few great estates such as Selbach Oster, Sankt Urban Hof and Schloss Lieser.

I like to learn about what they do (in the vineyard or at the winery) , why they do it and how this can make a difference in wine quality. I will have a few post in the next few days about what I saw, liked and did not get.

above is a view of the Mosel (Zeltingen in the distance). Below is a row of the Wehlener Sonnenhur from the lower road. Middle is a close up of the slaty soils.

I know that some of you folks have been curious about our new Autumnus labels for our white blend (Riesling, Chenin Gewurztraminer) and our red blend (Sangiovese, barbera, Primitivo). The art came from real pieces of art from Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1527-1593) who was an Italian painter known for creating  portrait made entirely of fruit, vegetables and other edible fare (he even did a portrait made out of books). His most famous painting (above) is made of fruit and vegetable and is part of a serie of four self portraits representing the four seasons. The painting, representing Fall, is called “Vertumnus” whom is the god of harvest and bounty in Latin (Fall being also Autumn in english, we gave the name “Autumnus” for our red and white blends).  We love the connection to food, which is exactly why we have crafted those high acid wines for. Here you have it. Arcimboldo was really an iconoclast and very ahead of his time in an era where other artits where mainly painting religious scenes. We like his innovative energy and he is an inspiration to us. Below is a self portrait (without the fruits!) of Arcimboldo:.

I was working on a format to show the level of sweetness of our wines relative to one another. I had the idea of using the taste scale from the International Riesling Foundation. I liked it so much that I thought I would just post it. The wines are lined up from dry to sweet from left to right. Neat way to see the entire range of wine we make isn’t it? It is also a great way to realize that we really make wines at every sugar levels. They are 12 wines above and 7 of them are Rieslings. Cheers!

We are now finishing bloom in most of our vineyards. This is a good time to have a look at the growing season so far. Overall the season has been very nice to date with our Growing Degree Days (GDD) tracking close to 2003 (a warm year). Below is the current GDD chart from WSU:

GDD is computed by substracting 50 from the average daily temperature and cumulating that number over time. GDD in the Yakima Valley was 720 as of June 21st. A warm year usually means a early harvest and sometimes lower acidities. We are ready for an early one at this point!

Over the next few days I’ll post some observation and pictures of our main vineyard sites.

I don’t usually like to talk about m private life on a blog, but I am getting really excited about my July trip to Germany. It will be short (I will be on my way to a family event in southern France) and I am lining up two days of Riesling frenzy. Here is a glimpse of my trip so far:

• Dinner with the Selbach on the 8th;
• Visit of Selbach Oster, Sankt Urban Hof and Schloss Lieser on the 9th (Mosel)
• Visit of Schloss Johannisberg, Von Mumm and two other on the 10th (Rheingau) and fly out…

I have my Audi shift stick with GPS unit rented. feeling just like a little boy going to Disneyland…

Thank you to the folks at Winery Exchange for their great review of our 2008 Riesling made from organic grapes. Below is a full transcript:

As 2008 comes to an end, I thought about all the great things that we have done as a wine company this year. I’ll remember 2008 as a year of transformation for Pacific Rim as well as a year of great successes.

This year saw many new wine births and one resurrection. We have started mid year with the launch of our 2007 Single Vineyard series for which we have received so many accolades. We are all humble by the overwhelming reception:

• Riesling Wallula Vineyard Biodynamic (certified Demeter): 93 WE, 90 WS, Top 100 wines of 2008 WE, Top 100 wines of 2008 SF Chronicle. A fantastic wine and our first Biodynamic effort in Washington
• Riesling Solstice Vineyard: 92 WE, 90 WS. A gem of a wine from a great Yakima Valley site
• Riesling Wallula Vineyard: 90 WE. A great wine at a great price expressing the classic Washington characteristics
• Riesling Vin De Glaciere:89 IWC. This is our best Vin De Glaciere to date, refreshing, lively, a pearl.
• Riesling Dauenhaur Vineyard: Great Kabinett style from the Willamette Valley produced in small quantities

We are finishing the year with a few other precious new wines from the 2008 harvest ready to market in 2009: A Riesling made from Organic grapes (sl off dry style), a sparkling Riesling from Selenium Vineyard and the famous Framboise (that would be the resurrection of the year). All of those great new wines should be coming out sometime during the first quarter of 2009. Congratulation to all our staff and partners for growing the grapes, making the wines, developing great packaging and of course providing a way to get it to our consumers. All those wines are stunning and will keep showing Pacific Rim’s commitment to quality.

2008 has also been a year where our position as a Riesling leader in the world has been reinforced greatly. We have received an incredible amount of fantastic third party recognition for our Sweet Riesling (89 WS and one of the top 20 wines under $40 for 2008 for the SF Chronicle) and our Dry Riesling (too many medals to mention). We also were invited to many event to talk about Riesling or just to represent the Riesling community at large. May be more important is the amazing success of our Riesling Rules book, our contribution to the Riesling world.

This year we also have welcomed a few more folks on our staff. A special thank you to them for joining our growing company: Steve, Debbie, Irene and Tom, all good looking folks, all in sales. Our company is so much stronger with you four on board.

Beyond making great wines, getting tons of press and welcoming some key staff in 2008, we also did some great work internally to make sure we can stay the innovative company the we are. We’ve been hit by many cost increases this year forcing us to look deeper at our costs and we have been able in many cases to mitigate inflation in some manners. We also have relied heavily on optimizing our information technology tools and we will keep pushing in this area in order to provide great service to everyone and keep our costs in line.

All in all a challenging but rewarding year for Pacific Rim. I am very bullish for 2009 even if the current economic environment is less so. We will keep making great Riesling and keep exploring new ways to make you all discover how great this varietal is.

Thank you for your support

December 5th 2008: Prohibition was abolished (thank you Utah for your decisive vote) 75 years ago today. There is still much restriction on the trade of alcohol today, but at least we can all get our favorite wines somehow. May be in 25 years we will have a totally free alcohol market like most European countries and prohibition will be truly over.

Tonight I’ll celebrate this great milestone with a nice Riesling of course.

Pacific Rim had the great honor to represent North American Riesling at the Riesling Fellowship event hosted at the German Embassy in London this week. We were the only North American winery to attend along with some of the greatest German Riesling producers (Georg Breuer, Wittmann, Rebholz, Loosen, Selbach-Oster, Egon Muller, JJ Prum, Robert Weil, Donnhoff) and along a few other producers from select countries (Rabl for Austria, Trimbach for Alsace, Pewsey Vale for Australia, Conor Sur for South America, Pegasus Bay for New Zealand). The attendance was very small (55 attendees) and quite impressive (head of wineries attending, press, sommelier, embassy guests…). The event was very organized (you are at the German embassy after all, what should you expect?) with a tasting, a talk about global warming and its impact on Riesling and a dinner.

The tasting was very interesting with 32 wines (we brought along our Wallula Vineyard and Wallula Vineyard Biodynamic). The wines that resonated the most to me that evening were:

• 2003 Cono Sur Vision Bio Bio Valley (Chile) - My first Chilean Riesling, and very very delicious
• 2007 Terra Montosa, Weingut Georg Breuer (Rheingau) - Very nice dryish style
• 2007 Auslese Zeltinger Schlossberg, Weingut Selbach Oster (Mosel) - Zingy and young
• 1997 Spatlese, Kiedrich Grafenberg, Weingut Robert Weil (Rheingau) - Sweet, acid, aged, one of the best wines that night
• 1997 Auslese. Erdener Treppchen, Weingut Dr Loosen (Mosel) - Sl Botrytis, aristocratic, nice
• 1997 Auslese Goldkapsel, Scharzerhof, Weingut Egon Muller (Mosel) - Stole the show, amazing wine

Our wines fared very very well in this company and I had several people come to me to congratulate us on our wines.

After the tasting, we went through a good presentation from Professor Schultz (University of Geisenheim). Seems like the Germans are quite happy about global warming as it is making their wines superb every year. Sounds also like we need to buy some land in Southern England and in Canada folks…

Dinner was very polite with a few speeches. I really loved the voice of the German Ambassador (Herr Boomgaarden, what a great name for an ambassador!) as it was contrasting perfectly with the delicate Riesling we had with dinner. Talking about dinner, can someone give me the recipe for this insane crepinette of veal with tarragon and mushroom? I could not stop eating that dish and had three servings (I stopped because I thought I was getting a bit overboard…). Best of all, the choice of beer or coffee after dinner - very very civilized (I took the beer of course).

Thank you Wines of Germany and the wine institute and of course Herr and Frau Boomgaarden for the evening. It was quite special.

I had time today to swing by the British Museum in London to pay respect to the famous print from Sensei Okusai and one of its most famous piece: “In The Hollow of a Wave off the Coast at Kanagawa“ , a part of his great “36 views of Mount FuJi (I guess he had somewhat of an obsession with the divine volcano). Below are the pictures I took from the piece:

Like many before us, this extraordinary work of art has always been an inspiration for our team and this is why we display our interpretation of it as a tribute on our Chenin Blanc label - Of course on the label Mount Fuji is erupting with a cloud of cherry blossom. We have also used the beautiful wave pattern to create a cameo on our single vineyard package to illustrate the power of the Missoula floods

If you want to know more about the art on our labels, I invite you to browse through our site. You can follow the link to look at the Chenin Blanc.

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Meet the fearless Pacific Rim Sales team as they gathered last week in Eastern Washington for our annual sales meeting. They are quite a bunch!

I have had a few good conversation on WLTV forum (http://tv.winelibrary.com/) about winemakers that also review other people’s wine. It has always seemed a conflict of interest of some sort to me. That being said, one of the greatest German Producer, Armin Diel (of Schlossgut Diel: http://www.schlossgut-diel.com/) is also one of Gemany’s most admired wine critic. I still think there is somewhat of a conflict of interest for folks that do that. On my side, I’ll stick to making wine, talking about our wines and will keep my personal opinion for myself.