We are very proud to host the taste scale freshly released this morning by the International Riesling Foundation (IRF) on our website: http://rieslingrules.com/the_book/irf/international-riesling-foundation-announces-riesling-taste-profile/. Pacific Rim has been a very active founding member of the IRF and we have done our part to contribute to the devellopment of this scale among with some 30 other Riesling producers from all around the world (we have the list included on our website). I want to salute here Dan Berger for his work and patience; trying to get wineries from 4 continents to agree on something was somewhat of a challenge. Also, all this could not have been done without Jim Tresize of the New York Wine Foundation - Thank you Dan, Thank you Jim.

Pacific Rim plans to use the visual scale and description on all its bottlings starting with the upcoming 2008 harvest. We are discussing keeping or not the residual sugar on the label in conjunction to the visual scale. If anyone has a strong opinon, please leave a post.

Yesterday I got a call asking me if our wines were vegan. Well, first I had to think about what that really meant (from wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegan Veganism is a diet and lifestyle that seeks to exclude the use of animals for food, clothing, or any other purpose. Vegans endeavor not to use or consume animal products of any kind) and then think back about our winemaking and our package. I can think of any animal product in our package at all (glass, aluminum, paper, plastic…) and in the winemaking either, except in the Dry Riesling since we use a microscopic amount of Isinglass (sturgeon bladder) at the end of our winemaking. There might be also some insects (do they count?) that might be picked with the grapes and a few fruit flies that fall in the tank during fermentation. So,can I claim that all our wines are Vegan ( with the exception of the Dry Riesling, though honestly we use about one pint of the Isinglass for the whole blend…)?

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.

Walulla vineyard is located right at the mouth of the Walulla gap on an impressive cliff. This vineyard hosts our Biodynamic Riesling, about 140 acres in total. At an elevation of about 1,200 feet the vineyard overlooks the Columbia River which runs 800 feet below one mile South East. The cliff is quite breathtaking and can be treacherous. Bill Den Hoed told me that the day before my visit someone went over the cliff with an ATV after losing control of the speedy machine. The ATV went down 800 feet and became one with the moon like landscape by the river shore. The driver saved her life by jumping before going over the cliff. Bill told me in a funny sort of way: “The chick’s all right but the four wheeler is toast”…Bill and Andy have so many good stories about the cliff and the humans that interact with it; I love every single one of them.

The vineyard is at the image of the landscape, breathtaking and somewhat insane. We’ve done some pretty advanced viticulture designs there. First the density is very high (about 1,600 vines/acre), second it is Biodynamicly farmed, third the trellis is very special (sort of a raised lira with collapsible trellis for machine harvesting) and lastly we are experimenting with buried drip irrigation. We also have 4 clones from Germany in this vineyard.

2007 will be our first commercial harvest out of Walulla. We are planning on making a single vineyard wine with those grapes and it will be probably fermented entirely with native yeast that comes on the grapes’ skins. Be ready for a very, very interesting and distinctive Riesling from Walulla in Spring 2008!

This is the first serious episode on my quest for the perfect Riesling site in the Pacific Northwest.

I was in the Snake River Valley AVA this week. I went to see a few vineyard sites (Bitner Vineyard, Williamson Vineyard…) and visited a few wineries (Parma Ridge, St Chapelle, Koenig….) to understand what is happening in Idaho. The area is beautiful, quite reminiscent of the Yakima Valley of Washington that we call home. The climate seems pretty similar though with more precipitation (11 t 14” a year) and at a higher altitude (most grapes are grown above 2,000 feet of altitude). This was unfortunately not the cool site I was dreaming about.

One particularity of the region is the proximity to Boise and the increasing pressure that residential real estate development puts on the farmers. I saw some acreage selling for $40K/acre that would have been great vineyard land. I am not sure where the AVA is going but they will have to deal with this before long.

The wines were nice. My favorites were the Viognier from Koenig and the Syrah from Williamson Estates. Both were made by Greg Koenig and I must say that I was impressed. Koenig winery itself is worth the visit if you like eau-de-vie makers. The big dog in town is St Chapelle as it represents about 85% of all wines made in Idaho. Chuck Devlin, the winemaker at St Chapelle, produces good wines at reasonable prices.

I think I want to try to make a Snake River Riesling to see if I can produce something distinctive. I am thinking about a small 500 cases lot if I can find the right grapes. I think I have a couple of irons in the fire to make that possible. May be my dream of a pan-Northwest Riesling can come true?