Harvest is approching and it is time for us to look at our grapes sourcing and make sure all is in balance (i.e. we have just enough of everything for each wine we make). Below is a synopsis of what harvest will look like for us:

- 3,181 tons of grapes or 203,000 cases of wines – our largest harvest yet

- 92.2% Riesling, 97.1% White grapes (Gewurzt and Chenin). We have a little Gamay coming this year (plus our usual Barbeara, Sangiovese and Primitivo blend)

- 1/3 of our Riesling from Wallula 2/3 from the lower Yakima Valley

Next week I will be touring all our blocks to confirm quality and volume. Ready, set, Go!

Just coming back from a quick trip to raspberry land also known to us as Mount Vernon in the skagit valley of western Washington. It is there that Mike and Jean Jungquist grow our special selection of Raspberry that we call internally the “Morrison”. We’ve selected that raspberry varietal because of its low seed bitterness and its crazy high raspberry flavors. Mike and his family gow one field for us (picture below) so it is really a single vineyard raspberry! It is a major commitment from our team but this is what it take to make a primo raspberry infusion like framboise. The field yields about 40 tons of raspberry every year. We’ve discussed experimenting with a few newer selections this year, so I might be up for a raspberry clone tasting this summer (they breed about 180 new clones every year) – raspberry fans send me a note and I’ll take you up!

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.

Both vineyards are owned by James Willard (Jim) and are in the lower Yakima Valley. Solstice is the source of our single vineyard Solstice Riesling and our block is 30 year old. The grapes are always concentrated (we go for about 3 tons/acre in that old block). The vineyard itself has a very organic feel to it (See picture below). This year the crop looks great with a modest canopy at this point.

Jim was pulling out an old Cabernet Sauvignon vineyard and he showed me the old vines (35+ year old), they were quite massive. Check this impressive picture of Jim vs the old Cabernet:

Skyline is the future source of a newly Gamay vineyard for us. The vines are now two years old so the first crop will be in 2010. Very exciting. Pictures of the growing babies below.

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.

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!

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!

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 did our first maturity sampling. One Riesling sample from Selenium, where we hope to pick some low sugar lots, came at 13.5 Brix (ouch!). The first vineyard to come in is usually the Chenin Blanc from Andrews; That came at 16.5 Brix. Seems that we are a good 3 weeks away from the first grapes which is a bit behind normal and should lead on outstanding qualities (at least for Riesling).

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.