vashonwineryjournal.com Blog

Man oh man, here we are, the 1st of September.

Last weekend, August 22, we had the 2nd Vashon Winery Folk Festival. It was a remarkable festival conceived by Wally Bell who found all of the musicians…and what a stellar selection.

Music went from 2pm until just after 10pm with a performance on the hour, plus side shows while the groups or individuals were setting up.

You can check it out on myspace.com/vashonwineryfolkfestival, to view pictures and to listen to the various artists.

I had many favorites but I particularly enjoyed Tamara Lewis of Seattle, her voice and personality were arresting, and I liked her ballad-like songs.

But I also really liked Tania Opland and her husband Mike. The previous night she sang a song as we sat around the campfire and it really took my breath away…..a Stephen Foster song. I couldn’t see her from across the campfire but her voice seemed to rise with the fire’s smoke.

We were really blessed to have Pete Scott here from England. His music is fun and poignant and I enjoyed talking to him over the next week or so that he spent with Wally.

Next up is the Sound Food Reunion with Scott Cossu in concert, Sunday, Sept. 6, 6pm.

Then, October 10, is a repeat of last year’s CiderFest, though this year other groups are tagging on for a full day of harvest activities. In fact, the new name is CiderFest; a Harvest Celebration. I will be helping organize the cider tasting in the afternoon of the 10th, I think from 3 – 6pm.

And then of course there is this thing called harvest……I better get to work.

Well, hot August is pleasantly cool after a blisteringly hot July. The hot, dry weather has pushed the local grapes along in their ripening. I haven’t talked to the folks in eastern Washington but I assume they are just a bit ahead. The warmth of the last few weeks balance out the cool, damp spring.

I will be making Syrah this year and some Grenache, and maybe a touch of Viognier to add to a blend of all three grapes in the style of the Rhone wines. The Syrah will come from the Dwelley Vineyard in Walla Walla, the Grenache from Snipes Mountain’s Upland Vineyard. I’m not sure yet about the Viognier.

I just blended a new batch of Tramp Harbor Red. Each time I make up a batch I use one barrel from the previous batch. To that I add three other barrels; this time, one from the ‘06 Merlot, another of the ‘06 Cabernet Franc, and one of the ‘07 Accidental Red.

Have I told you about the Accidental Red? Or more accurately, the (almost) Accidental Red. Well, in the excitement of the ‘07 vintage I agreed to purchase Malbec from a vineyard up north, north of Vantage, near Crescent Bar. After I agreed to purchase them right there at the vineyard, I then measured their sugars and they were unbelievably high. I started my drive back to the winery…….three hours straight, all freeway driving. I was a bit nervous about my brakes but on the freeway I never really had to use them. Then when I left I-90 to get on I-5, I merged over to get in the lane to take me over the West Seattle bridge. This little car tried to cut in front of me and I slowed down but then he slowed way down and dropped behind me but I was watching him through my side-mirror when suddenly the car in front of me was stopped…….I could see that there were three people in the small Ford Focus and I was going to rear-end them, and I thought my brakes wouldn’t hold…..but somehow I didn’t hit them. I must have missed them by less than an inch and I was so happy, that I didn’t recognize the swooshing sound coming from the back of the van….when all of a sudden my seat got hit by the 1000 pound bin of grapes and I was trapped against the stirring wheel. But I was alive, and those in front of me lived and I just needed to get on that ferry and get home.

Then I got a call from Rex Noah of Vashon Island. Rex wanted to know if I wanted some Cabernet Sauvignon and some Merlot from Walla Walla. I was kind of hard up for grapes and said yes. When they arrived the next day, I measured their sugars and they were low, about 20.5 brix…..so I crushed the grapes altogether and co-fermented the grapes (the second accident); and it turned out fantastic. I’ve used two of the barrels for the Tramp Harbor Red blend but I have saved one that I hope to bottle as Accidental Red.

I also will be releasing Folk Red which is the same as the Tramp but with a commemorative label for the Vashon Winery Folk Festival.

That’s all for now. Hope to see you at the Folk Festival.

Oh, and we are also planning a Scott Cossu concert at Sound Food Restaurant on September 6, Sunday, and combination with a reunion of Sound Food people. Both events are $10. 

It is July 6. Today was a bit cool and a bit of rain was squeezed from the clouds. Very refreshing.

It has been a record 29 days without rain and the grapevines have caught up and July is supposed to be nice, so, we might have a decent harvest of island-grown grapes.

The Vashon Poetry Fest was a huge success with all of our events at or near capacity. It was really fun helping to organize and sponsor the event attended by over 700 people over Memorial Day Weekend.

I decided to just do a few large events this year, rather than a number of smaller events at the winery. The poetry fest was born during a poetry reading last year by the state’s poet laureate Sam Green. He offered to bring to Vashon his friend, Tony Curtis, of Ireland. Together they rocked. On the final day of their visit, we threw a breakfast send-off for them. I was sitting between the two poets, listening to both talk. Tony shifted gears right in the middle of a sentence and started to recite an original poem, then as quickly shifted back to finish his sentence. It took me by surprise and I had to ask him if he indeed did what I thought he did…..and he said, yes….”I have had this idea for a poem that just had to come out and I will finish it on the airplane on my return trip home.” Shortly, photos of the event will be posted at Vashonpoetryfest.com. It was one of the top things I have ever been associated with and it was made entirely possible by the warm humanity and talent of both Tony and Sam. They were absolutely amazing. I also want to publicly thank the poetry committee: Ann Spiers, Lonny Koneko, Devon Atkins and Faith Sohl. Each contributed mightily in making the fest happen.

I will be doing a wine tasting at Cafe Luna this Friday, July 10, but not of my wines. Rather, we will taste a selection of five wiines from around the world, including: Argentina, south Oregon, Italy, Chile and Australia. These are table wines, selling for less than $12. in the grocery store and available at very reasonable prices at Luna, by the glass or by the bottle. Seems like a perfect way to start a weekend: pull into the Luna, taste some wines for $8. (for all five wines), meet some folks, and then maybe stick around and listen to the sounds of Mark Wells, a very strong and distinctive vocalist, guitarist.

I also do a similar tasting at Sound Found on First Friday, working closely with Mardi Ljubich of SheFidgets Catering. There we usually taste three or four wines for $10, wines that are slightly more interesting, and more expensive. I find people like to come into the restaurant, order their dinner at the front door counter, then start with the wine tasting. I will often come by their table, pour them the next wines, talk abou the wines….just as dinner is ready. Mark, Mardi’s fiance and the bartender, has said that customers rave about being able to taste wines from around the world and one woman exclaimed, “I’ve just been around the world in wine!”

The next big event for Vashon Winery is our 2nd Annual Folk Festival on August 22, Saturday. This is an all-day event held at the winery grounds with music going from 2 – 10pm. It is organized by Wally Bell and his wife Carolyn. I think you can find a MySpace video of last year’s event plus music from many of the performers, both last year’s and this year’s at www.myspace.com/vashonwineryfolkfestival. I think you can listen to their music as well; that’s Wally’s thing.

Finally, we have just released our new 2005 Merlot and our 2006 Semillon. Both are very good. The ‘05 Merlot is one of our very best; from a cool growing season that finished with a hot bang, ripening the grapes, I think, to perfection. Of interest: recent DNA testing shows the parentage of Merlot as Magdeleine Noire des Charentes (the mother) and Cabernet Franc (the father). This underscores the relationship between Merlot and Cabernet Franc and why they are so complementary. You can try our Right Bank Red which is a 50-50 blend of the two. It is starting to drink wonderfully.

The 2006 Semillon is a change from the slightly acidic ‘05. I think consumers will like it better for its softness and nice ripe flavors. Personally, my bet goes to the ‘05.

Hope to see you soon, at the winery, at Sound Food, at Cafe Luna, or just about….oh, like at the Wine and Jazz Fusion Garden during Strawberry Festival. We’ll be pouring the Merlot and the Semillon and likely the Tramp Harbor Red.

Ron Irvine

Vashon Winery

It is May and it is still raining and cold. I am so happy to get home to a warm house (even at) this time of year. Again, everything is late in the vineyard because of the cold…..the buds are just pushing out now (in vineyards on Vashon Island) and likely will cause the harvest to be late like it was last year. This is so freakish and unusual. If, and when we get a more typical growing season, island-grown grapes are going to take off.

As promised, I am tasting the 2006 Vashon Winery Pinot Noir, Puget Sound AVA, made from grapes grown at Monument Farm Vineyard. I am committed to tasting this wine every May and reporting my impressions right here on the journal. I have gone beyond tasting it, and I am now enjoying a glass of the wine as I write.

Here are my notes:

Light red, but red, with almost no pink except some at the wine’s edge. The aromas have great raspberry/cherry notes with a hint of baked rhubarb. Very forward on the palate; mouthfilling, but more like a white wine fruitiness and feel. Flavors of raspberry (with a hint of rhubarb) with a long finish that is delicate. Almost no tannin. I am struck by its yin/yang nature: it is light, distinctly fruity yet full-flavored. I think will be even better next year.

This is an interesting wine, made from very young grapevines (three years old, planted in 2004 and harvested in 2006). In 2007 the vineyard got hit by powdery mildew and all the grapes were lost. In 2008, the cool, wet spring pushed harvest way back to late October and we were lucky (and blessed by a fabulous October) and able to get enough grapes to produce a half-barrel, half as much as in 2006. The 2008 is just weird but I am hopeful. It tastes more like carrot-juice than Pinot Noir but I think it has a lot of flavor and is just now shedding its cloudiness. Like I said, I am hopeful.

The winery is getting ready to go into the busy summer business with busy Saturdays where I do the Vashon Market in the morning until about 1:30pm, then run to the winery to be open from 2 to 5pm.

I have decided to do fewer concerts this summer and instead concentrate on one big one, the 2nd Annual Vashon Winery Folk Festival held at the winery. This year’s festival will be on Saturday, August 22nd, and again will be organized by Wally Bell, a notable musician himself and one of the entertainers.

I have decided to take my concerts island-wide and involve more of the community. This is very exciting. The first ever poetry festival will happen on Memorial Day Weekend with all kinds of activities. We are calling it the Vashon Poetry Fest and you can view our website at vashonpoetryfest.com. If you have questions, email me at info@vashonpoetryfest.com. There are events starting on Thursday, May 21, beginning with an open mic at Cafe Luna called “Young Poet’s Talk Back” led by Devon Atkins. Friday night mythologist Michael Meade will explore the beginnings of poetry, reading Hafiz and Rumi, with ecstatic music by Qadim Ensemble of San Francisco playing sacred Middle Eastern music. With luck our featured poets will arrive in time for Meade to introduce them.

On Saturday and Sunday poets Samuel Green (WA state’s poet laureate) and Tony Curtis (an award-winning Irish poet) will teach poetry workshops during the day. At night they will present Irish music and lyrics on Saturday night at the Red Bicycle (Raising the Word in Song and Drink) and Sunday night will sit down to dinner (A Poets Feast) with guests and enjoy a poet’s dinner prepared by the restaurant and read their poetry and talk about it. And finally, on Monday at 12:30 people will gather at the Veterans’ Memorial in Ober Park to mark Memorial Day with a Reverie for the Living and the Dead led by Michael Meade. It may or may not proceed up to the Village Green to the Poetry Pole. Oh, and on Saturday afternoon at 3:30, Lonny Koneko and Ann Spiers will lead a Community Reading at the Land Trust Building. Ann Spiers and Kevin Miller will also be leading workshops on Saturday and Sunday.

Worth mentioning: I have labeled some of our Tramp Harbor Red as Poet-Tree Red with a back label that reads vertically, Keep Vashon Poetic. It is this month’s Wine of the Month up at Vashon Thriftway. By the way, this is a new batch of Tramp Harbor Red, a blend of one barrel of the last batch, and one barrel each of the Accidental Red, Cabernet Franc and Merlot. This batch has a bit more Malbec in it.

Also, my fabulous bottling crew has just bottled the new 2005 Merlot to be released in about two weeks. It is very good with good middle richness and a long finish, possibly one of our best Merlots yet. I will be happy to get this out to my accounts, especially grocery stores where my blends tend to suffer as wine managers are reluctant to put more blends on their shelves.

Hope to see you this summer. I would like to do a couple of dinners at the winery and I will announce them through our email-mailing list.

Meanwhile, I am working on a music fest for the island and I will give you more details as they develop.

Whoa, we just skipped through the toughest months of the year for the winery. January through March is make or break for the winery (every year and this year in particular). Luckily, back in September I figured I would need to attend some of the charity tasting events, and pour wine in wine shops. That was a good strategy, though it extends my hours considerably. But, I just had one of my best January through March quarters ever!

I participated in tastings at West Seattle Wine Cellars, at the Poverty Bay Wine Festival (in Des Moines), at the Old Time Tacoma Wine and Jazz Festival, and just this last weekend, the Capitol Food and Wine Fair. At the charity events I usually pay a booth fee, and I am paid for wine I serve as samples and then wines that people purchase as glasses of wine, or bottles to go.

It is really tough though: long hours on my feet, and usually numbing music that I have to yell over. Fortunately, I get to expose my wines to a lot of new people and also it is fun interacting with people or just watching them as they socialize.

The biggest event is coming up this weekend, Taste Washington, where attendees can sample any of 200 wineries’ offerings. Plus the food is usually excellent. I find the most interesting thing is to watch how restaurants choose their dishes which is critical to attendees holding a glass of wine in one hand. I think my favorite was a restaurant that put a savory meat filling in a miniture, bite-sized, rice cone which they stuck into a some kind of edible sand-like material. People could just help themselves and the cones could be consumed in a couple of bites.

I’ll be serving my Semillon, Right Bank Red and my Tramp Harbor Red. All have done well at other tasting events, especially the Semillon and the Tramp Harbor Red. I think they are priced right and once people try them, they buy them.

Not much has been happening at the winery. The wines are sleeping right now and frankly it has been bone-chilling to work in the winery. However, the wines like the cold, it helps to stabilize the color and to drop out some of the potassium as cream of tarter.

Surprisingly, the wine changes quite a bit during this time. The most remarkable thing is that the acidity of the wine stabilizes and becomes slightly higher. Correspondingly, the color starts to get darker. I think both are related to the potassium reduction.

I have had a hard time with this concept with a seemingly increase in the acidity of the wine, measured as TA which can be expressed as (take your pick) Total Acidity, Titratible Acidity, or Tartaric Acid (which is the main acid that is measured). I have to be a little careful as I tend to like grapes with a slightly higher acidity and a corresponding lower pH. Sometimes I have added too much acidity (as tartaric acid) to the young wine and then watched as the pH started moving too far down. 

The wine’s pH is a measure of the strength of the acidity. The lower the pH, the stronger the acid, usually measured by the amount of tartaric acid in the grapes. I find it a conundrum that doesn’t seem to bother other wineries. They generally go ahead and produce and sell their wines with unusually high pH levels and I assume correspondingly lower TAs. The wines will naturally drink better younger but the winery risks the wine being infected by bacteria and yeasts that thrive at higher pHes, generally above about 3.6. Also, the wines won’t age well as they don’t have the acid necessary to develop. For that is the key to aging (we’re talking wine here, not us), having good acidity, lower pH, and enough tannins (but not too much), and having sufficient fruitiness (or flavors from the grape).

I don’t think you can have it both ways: to produce a soft ready to drink wine while still also producing a wine that will age, let alone all of the other problems that can be encountered in the winery, while the wine is in barrel such as brettanamyces, a yeast that adds a barnyard character to a wine. Once in the winery, it is hard to get out.

So, that is not a rant, just an explanation of my dilemma, and how I am still trying to figure out the best way to make my wine.

What else?

I have just assorted a new blend of Tramp Harbor Red which I refer to as THR(4). Here’s what I do: I take a barrel from the previous blend of four barrels and add it to three barrels. THR(4) therefore has one barrel of THR(3), then one barrel each of ‘07 Accidental Red, and a barrel each of ‘05 Cabernet Sauvignon and ‘05 Merlot. The Accidental Red by the way is a blend of 50% Malbec and 25% each of Cab Sauv and Merlot. The Accidental Red is an unusual wine in that I co-fermented all three grapes together to achieve a better balance of acidity and pH. And also to lower the potential alcohol. I will also be releasing the Accidental Red as a separate wine sometime later this year.

Finally, I have to tell you about a couple of events I am working on. First, is the Vashon Poetry Fest which I conceived at the end of last year following a poetry reading by Samuel Green at the winery. Green is our state’s poet laureate and he offered to bring an Irish poet, Tony Curtis, to the island. This has turned into an island-wide event way beyond my little winery. Which is okay with me as I wanted to help enrich the entire community. I figure I’ll sell as much if not more by selling my wine to island retail shops and restaurants and many more people will benefit. I am working with a terrific group of people that I feel are like-minded.

Likewise, I am trying to organize an island-wide jazz festival. I am a bit busy with the Poetry Fest but hope to concentrate on jazz shortly. My vision is to re-create the main highway in the town of Vashon into Bourbon Street with music emanating out of numerous venues on both Saturday and Sunday of Labor Day Weekend.

Finally, Wally Bell is helping once again organize the 2nd Vashon Winery Folk Festival, an entire day of folk music at the winery, outdoors in the apple orchard. This takes place on Saturday, August 22. I think Wally has ten bands playing from noon until about 10pm.

I have to go sell some wine.

Hi,

Almost New Year’s Eve. Happy New Year!

I am looking forward to the new year. I am definitely concerned about the economy and the effect that it will have on wine sales, for myself and other wineries.

I am feeling it already, although it is difficult to separate out the effects of the snow storm with the economic turmoil. Either way, most folks are spooked. My business was down in November and December, as it was last year also; and like last year we had horrible weather just before Christmas. Geez, what is a normal year?

I was hoping for a great December as that is generally how I pay for my grapes. Luckily I cut back on my production this year knowing I had to make my last payment to the owners…which I did and chronicled in the last post, “final payment”.

I am excited about wines that we made this harvest, in particular the Cabernet Sauvignon from Upland Vineyards in Sunnyside. I am always amazed that I am getting grapes from that vineyard. I first learned of it when I visited the vineyard with Dr. Walter Clore as we visited Al Newhouse at the vineyard back in about 1993. I was immediately struck by the location atop Snipes Mountain, right about the middle of the Yakima Valley, and the rocky soil.

Almost with a sense of destiny, I met Todd Newhouse, Al’s grandson, and helped him with some research regarding the vineyard when it began as Upland in about 1912 by W.B. Bridgman, a remarkably forward thinking man who first planted table grapes in 1912 and wine grapes in 1917 when he saw a market for grapes during Prohibition.

For my research efforts, Todd Newhouse paid me in Cabernet Franc grapes. Last year, I got most of my grapes from Upland Vineyards.

I got his Cabernet Sauvignon grapes on October 4th. His father, Steve Newhouse, helped transfer the grapes into my bins that I then brought to the winery for crushing. Al Newhouse came by to visit briefly and there they were; three generations of Newhouses. 

The wine fermented at a cool temperature, dropping into the mid-50s and reaching up to about 72 degrees and continued fermenting for about 5 weeks. I then allowed the grape skins to stay in contact with the finished wine for another three weeks before pressing, which is a tricky technique and requires constant tasting and monitoring; topping up daily with CO2 gas to keep oxygen out of the tank.

The Cabernet Franc, also from Upland, came in later, about the third week of October. This wine fermented a bit quicker and I didn’t leave it on the skins as long because it is less tannic that Cab Sauv.

It is in barrel now but is really weird, as it usually is about this time. It is still murky magenta, light in color, and showing leafy characters without a lot of fruit development. I have learned however that this will all change; the color will clarify and deepen and the leafy character with soften with more fruit flavors (in Cab Franc more plum).

I also made two Merlots from Walla Walla grapes and they are vastly different. One is from the Noah Family Vineyards owned by Vashon Islander Rex Noah. His Merlot is interesting as it seems a bit acidic and the fruitiness is not obvious. But I know that this will change and that the fruit will come out. I think this is going be a good wine for blending with the other Merlot that I got from Dwelley Vineyard, also in Walla Walla.

The Dwelley is fun and I enjoy working with Bob Jones who lives on Vashon and coordinates my dealings with the vineyard. Bob and family (and friends) also help in most of the processing of the wine from delivery to crushing, punching down, pressing and bottling. This year’s wine is bit different. It hasn’t totally finished fermentation and there is a tad bit of sweetness and it has a remarkable richness but it is very different than past vintages of this wine.

Lastly, I have to say that tasting the 2008 Pinot Noir is also very weird….but I think it is going to be remarkable. Those grapes weren’t picked until the last days of October and we were lucky to get about 50 gallons and I have only 30 gallons in a small oak barrel. I don’t think this wine is going to reveal itself for a couple of years. It is in such stark contrast to the lighter and fruitier ‘06 vintage.

Okay, now looking forward. I am just starting to plan for next year’s concerts. I hope to have a couple of festivals, like we did with the folk festival. I would like to help organize a poetry festival and a jazz festival; both will be island-wide.

I also have a bunch of new ideas……so stay tuned.

And thanks for being supportive. You know, I make wines that I like but I make them for you. Enjoy!