Riesling Rules Book » It’s the grapes, stupid!

First look at crop size

Nicolas — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 19:08:20 +0000

Now is the time to look at yields and estimate the size of the harvest. We are practically done estimating at Pacific Rim and we think we will have a normal yield with some vineyards affected with some shatter (shatter = less berries per cluster due to bad fruit set). All in all we are happy with the size of harvest and the cooler weather which will probably delay harvest 8 to 12 days.

I have also received today a crop estimation from the Washington Association of Grape Grower (hence the post) and it confirms the delay in ripening due to cool weather. The current estimate for total crop for Washington is 156,000 tons (10 million cases) which would be flat to slightly up vs actual 2009 harvest. Chardonnay would still be #1, Riesling #2, Merlot #3 and Cabernet #4. All top four varietal would be slightly down except Merlot (be ready for some cheap Merlot out there!). Major growth in volume is projected to come from Sauvignon Blanc, Syrah (Syrah is struggling in the market place, so expect bit of oversupply) and Cabernet franc (what in heaven is going on with Cab Franc +1,500 tons?).

Pacific Rim grape sourcing 2010: the facts

Nicolas — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 20:20:54 +0000

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!

A cool spring in the Northwest

Nicolas — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 21:45:42 +0000

Spring should almost be over on the West coast of the United States but we are witnessing a fairly cool 2010 influenced by the infamous El Nino slowing down our growing season – this is a particularly good thing for us Riesling producers (we like cool germanic weather). Physiologically our vines are now blooming and we are probably about two weeks behind a normal season – This is also great for Riesling because delayed maturity promote long hang time and long hang time = better flavor development. I still expect harvest to be starting in 14 weeks or so.

Below is the GDD chart (for more on GDD http://rieslingrules.com/the_book/winemakers-blog/vineyards/2009-vineyard-update/ - you will also see the 2009 chart in comparison)

Ancient lava flows from Eastern Washington

Nicolas — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 16:42:26 +0000

From the tri-city herald — Lava flows that helped shape the sprawling Columbia River Plateau occurred faster than geologists previously believed and likely contributed to massive climate changes, said a Washington State University researcher.

Steve Reidel, research professor of geology at WSU Tri-Cities, British researcher Tiffany Barry and others studied so-called Grande Ronde basalt lavas in the plateau region, which covers much of eastern and central Washington, northeastern Oregon and parts of western Idaho.

Their studies indicate the Grande Ronde flows, which include at least 66 percent of the basalt in the Columbia River plateau, occurred over a period of about 420,000 years and between 15.6 million and 16 million years ago.

That’s faster than what geologists previously believed. And at least 110 eruptions occurred during that time frame, according to a paper Reidel co-authored with Barry for the international geological journal Lithos.

The researchers said the frequency and size of the eruptions likely had a widespread impact on the environment. Just one of the lava flows could have covered much of Washington with nearly 10,000 cubic kilometers of lava, which is about 10,000 times the volume of ash produced by the eruption of Mount St. Helens in 1980, according to WSU.

“We realize with the eruptions of these basalts that there was a lot of carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide and chlorine that went into the air that had big environmental consequences,” Reidel said.

A single flow could have been as hot as 2,000 degrees and could have taken up to 50 years to cool. Reidel said that could have created monsoon rains in the Northwest and emitted plenty of heat and sulfur to alter the climate.

One result could have been the extinction of some plants and animals that lived at the time, although there has been little fossil evidence uncovered from lava flows to date aside from petrified wood.

“People are now starting to look for extinctions in the rock of this period in the Pacific Northwest,” Reidel said

Reidel said the flows likely were slow-moving enough for animals to outrun it and escape to higher ground in the Blue Mountains or Cascades.

“This was a golden age for horses, but there haven’t been any fossils found yet,” he said. “Petrified wood couldn’t run, but horses could.”

The belief that species were extinguished is based on evidence from other lava flows that occurred in the world millions of years ago, Reidel said.

For instance, a large extinction occurred during the end of the Triassic Period about 200 million years ago that coincided with lava flows coming from what is now northeastern South America and eastern North America, according to WSU. And gases from lava flows on India’s Deccan plateau initiated a mass extinction about 65 million years ago.

Reidel, who has been studying local rocks for years, and Barry — of Great Britain’s Open University — began collaborating more than five years ago. They got basalt samples from Hanford and outcroppings between Vantage and Lewiston, Idaho.

Grande Ronde basalt lavas were found stacked on each other with little or no accumulation of sediment, suggesting the succession of lava flows occurred quickly geologically, according to the manuscript to be published in Lithos.

Barry also compared argon isotopes in the oldest and deepest levels of the basalt to younger and shallower levels, and used the decay rate of the element to determine the relative ages of the rock.

Measurements of Grande Ronde basalt show it ranged from about 1,640 feet thick in some areas to almost 2.4 miles thick in others, producing enough basalt to sink the earth’s crust and create the Columbia River Plateau, according to the manuscript.

Shake and Spill in Chile

Nicolas — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 19:09:52 +0000

Obviously one cannot be sad enough for the terrible quake that shook Chile this week. It is all more important to me because the earthquake hit a wine producing region in the middle of their harvest. I just cannot imagine the added chaos at all those wineries. I was listening to my favorite podcast while on my bike ride this morning, and the topic of the amount of wine lost last week in Chile came up: 125 million liters. Once in the office I took my calculator to put that number in prospective, that is 33 million gallons or about 194,000 tons of fruit. Well, that is more grapes that we harvest in Washington in a whole year (we’ve harvested 156,000 tons in Washington in 2009). If that is not enough to put things in prospective, the interviewed person from the Wines of Chile association mentionned that it was “only” 12.5% of the wine they had on hand at that time. We are just a drop in the bucket, aren’t we?

Some details about our Riesling Made from organic Grapes

Nicolas — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 20:31:08 +0000

What do we do to have a certified “Made from Organic Grapes” Riesling: to be organic the wine as to 1) be made from certified organic grapes 2) be made in a winemaking facility certified to organic standard 3) follow a process filed with USDA that is organic. Pacific Rim is certified by the Washington State Department of Ag which, in turns, is certified by USDA. The process is fairly restrictive, expensive (we pay a percentage of sales to WSDA) and requires yearly inspections from WSDA and yearly filing.

Why is our wine labeled ”Made From Organic Grapes” rather than “Organic”: Everything we use in our winemaking is certified organic. We actually go beyond the regulation because 1) we do not use commercial yeasts 2) we do not add any acid to our wines. The only non organic element we use is sulfur dioxide know as sulfites (not to be mistaken with sulfides which is a term gathering a bunch of stinky rotten egg compounds sometimes found in wines). Sulfur dioxide is a very common preservative in dry fruits, pre packed vegetables and juices. It is authorized in wines up to 350 mg/L but in Organic and biodynamic winemaking it is limited to 100 mg/L which is why at Pacific Rim all our wines are bottled with less than 100 mg/L of sulphur dioxide – guaranteed. We bottle the Riesling MFOG at around 90 mg/L (or ppm). Therefore the non organic fraction of the Riesling MFOG is really 0.009%. So it is quite a pure organic wine but since it has 0.009% of non organic product we have to call it MFOG.

Why use sulfites in wines by the way?: Sulfites act as 1) an antioxidant which is very important in white wines (we don’t need much for that purpose because we use air tight screwcaps and we make sure that our wines have no dissolved oxygen when they go in the bottle) and 2) an anti bacterial and anti fungal agent which is important for us because we have residual sugars and residual malic acid (we do not do malolactic fermentations). A last bonus of sulfites is that it is a bit like salt with food (Just like sulfites, salt is not healthy if you eat too much of it!) as it highlights and focuses the aromas and flavors of a wine. Finally note that sulfites are naturally produced by yeast in the 30ppm range usually – so even an Organic wine probably contains a small amount of sulfites.

Our style: The grapes are picked around 22 Brix which would qualify for a very ripe Spatlese in most German regions. We make it in a definite sweet style but beware the acid on that one! About 0.78 TA, 3.04 pH and 3.5%RS. I think this is a very balanced wine with always very refined aromas of fresh white flowers and some peach. This is really a chameleon wine as far as pairing goes and at 10.5% Ethanol it is easy to drink!

Botrytized Riesling Ice Wine

Nicolas — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 00:28:23 +0000

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.

When the Eastern Washington Grape heart stopped beatting

Nicolas — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 17:21:15 +0000

About two weeks ago we got a hard freeze in Eastern Washington (see this post) and we are still not sure what are the long term consequences of this unusual weather event. One fact we know is that the weather stopped the growing season – drop dead. Below is the current GDD chart (see this post about the exciting world of Growing Degree Days):

Here you can see that 2009 (the black line) was behaving much like 2003 (warm year standard in red) until the freeze in early October and from then on there no degree days that have been recorded and we might end up close to the long term average (in teal). Pretty dramatic, no?

Hard frost

Nicolas — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 02:38:03 +0000

Alright, this is the end of harvest. It got down to 20F in the Yakima valley on Saturday night frying most vineyards. Thankfully we were watching the weather channel so we were ready for it. Pacific Rim should be done picking this Thursday. Usually we have up to 10 days after a hard forst to pick the grapes before they fall to the ground. I feel that we’ve dodged a bullet here! Thank you for weather forecasting…

Great quality this year made by a great team. I look forward to share the first wines with you all.

Half way through

Nicolas — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 18:42:52 +0000

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….