Vashon Winery Journal (vashonwineryjournal.com)

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!

Well, I have to tell you: I just made my last payment to the former owners. I guess I now own the winery except that I now make payments to the bank rather than to the former owners.

I don’t know how it is really different, but it feels different.

It is exciting and scary the way the economy is acting up. I think it is going to work though. I think we are in for a few dark days but after that it is going to get really good; interest rates will be low and the crazy prices of the past ten years will be more in line with reality.

I am pressing our wines. Shana Anderson, who now works for me on occassion, has been helping. She is a great worker and listener, as I tell her all my stories. I have also gotten help this year from Verne Johnson and Bob Jones.

It has been an unusual year for quality and it is way too early to know what the vintage will produce. So far we have pressed Pinot Noir, Dwelley Vineyard Merlot, (I call it) Rex’s Vineyard Merlot, and just a couple of days ago, Upland Vineyard’s Cabernet Franc. I will probably press the Upland Vineyards Cabernet Sauvignon next week, almost two months after crushing the grapes.

To all: I wish you a very Merry Christmas or merry whatever you may celebrate during the darkest month of the year and I really look forward to the challenges of next year.

Ron 

It is Halloween and harvest is pretty much behind us; all the grapes are in, wine is fermented and waiting to be pressed, and the last batch of apples are waiting to be crushed and pressed.

At the beginning of October I helped organize the first CiderFest on Vashon. It turned into a very full day of apples, harvest, cidermaking and cider tasting; then topped off with a cider dinner.

As part of CiderFest on Vashon, the Vashon Fruit Club had their annual fall fruit day where people can view various apple varieties, even bring some in for identification. Also the club was crushing apples for juice.

I served on a panel headed by Dr. Bob Norton on “How to Make Hard Cider” attended by about forty people which was a little short of amazing because there were gale force winds, buckets of rain and an occasional blast of sunshine. Drew Zimmerman of Red Barn Cider and Richard Anderson of Westcott Bay Orchards were on the panel also. I know that people enjoyed the seminar because there were lots of good questions.

Following the seminar we had a cider tasting in the Farmers’ Market pavillon. There were nine cideries serving 21 different ciders, from very dry (mine, Irvine’s Vintage Blend) to quite sweet (Dupont Cidre de Normandie). I think about 150 people showed up and seemed to really enjoy themselves. At about four o’clock it got really crowded but no one seemed to mind. Cideries that participated: Aspall Cider (England), Samuel Smith Organic Cider (England), Wandering Aengus Ciderworks (Salem, Oregon), Eaglemount Cider Company (Port Townsend, WA), Blue Mountain Cider Company (Milton-Freewater, Oregon), Irvine’s Vintage Cider (Vashon, WA), Dupont Cidre de Normandie (France), and Red Barn Cider (Mt. Vernon, WA).

Together this was one of the most comprehensive cider tastings ever done.

We concluded the day with a four-course cider dinner at The Hardward Store: we started with mussels cooked in cider, followed by a garden salad using Chesire cheese and cider vinaigrate, a main course of baked salmon with cider and curry. Dessert was a cider bread pudding. All matched with a variety of ciders.

At the dinner, Vashon Rotary recognized Dr. Bob Norton for his contributions to the horticulture community on Vashon and awarded him the Paul Harris Award. Then Dr. Norton announced the winner of the Cider Tasting, the Dupont Cidre de Normandie, awarded in his name.

Now to wine. All of the grapes are in and most have completed fermentation, and a secondary fermentation called malo-lactic which is a bacterial fermentation that changes the malic acid (a sharp acid found in apples) into lactic acid (an acid found in milk products and thus softer). Now I allow the grapeskins to sit in contact with the wine for about three weeks beyond fermentation. I will decide to press by taste when I feel that I have picked up some extra flavor, and when the tannins are softened (called polymerization). It calls for constant attention and tasting.

I suspect I will start pressing the skins in about three weeks, just before Thanksgiving.

And lastly, we harvested the island Pinot Noir from Monument Farm Vineyard on October 26th, a beautiful day. And it was somewhat of a miracle as we needed, and got, a glorious October full of heat and dryness. I am absolutely dumbfounded. A month ago the grapes didn’t even look right…..it was as if they were these taut little plastic purple grapes but they seemed to ripen up, turning soft and black. I mean black, not blue and without the bloom, that dusty quality on the skins.

Right now the crushed grapes are in a tank undergoing a cold-soak, soaking at a cold temperature prior to fermentation in an attempt to get a bit of tannin and color out of the skins.

All in all, a good harvest.

Well, I am right in the middle of harvest. I am making a little less than normal: no Semillon, more Cabernet Sauvignon and a bit of Merlot and less of Cabernet Franc.

I have been busy. In August we had two concerts: Danny O’Keefe and then Vashon Winery’s first Folk Festival. Danny O’Keefe was remarkable as he sang new songs from his recent CD, On Time. The weather co-operated and the concert was held in front of the winery. Danny was personable and approachable and his songs carried up into the trees.

In late August Wally Bell masterfully directed our first Folk Festival with ten different groups playing Americana to Celtic. The festival was headlined by Larry Murante who played at 7pm. Other notables were Kat Eggleston of Vashon Island (recently returned from Chicago), the Hayburners (Jennifer and David) from beautiful Renton and a special apprearance by the Colwell Brothers. All the entertainers were fantastic and most stuck around to listen to their contemporaries.

Then September snuck up on me. At the beginning of September we had a poetry reading by Samuel Green. Green started his reading in the orchard outside reading a poem about teaching his son about killing…….and I swear I would have fainted had my usual early evening deer ambled past us. He should have been there as early Transparents plunked to the ground.

Then we went inside and Green read his and other poets’ works. He own works were sensitive and observant and he almost sang the words to us.

Samuel Green is our state’s first Poet Laureate and sitting amongst the barrels all of us felt somehow connected.

Now wine: throughout this time period I was busy blending and bottling two different batches of Tramp Harbor Red which has sold unbelievably well. The last batch used one barrel from the previous blend to which I added one barrel each of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Cabernet Franc. I think it was my best to date.

I am just running out of that one and getting ready to blend and bottle a new batch; this one with more Merlot and less Cabernet Franc, again using one barrel from the previous blend.

This is a little more complicated as I am trying to deal with handling the grapes that just came in. The Cabernet Sauvigon is from Upland Vineyards in Sunnyside, a new vineyard for me and one I am incredibly excited about. It is managed by the Newhouse family and I deal mainly with Todd Newhouse, third generation vineyard manager. I met Todd when he asked me to do some research on his property and the original owner, W.B. Bridgman.

Todd has recently opened his own tasting room, Upland Estates, located just below the Vineyards, though his wines are made in Grandview.

When I picked up the grapes his father Steve came over to help. His Grandpa, Al, waved from his truck.

I’ll make another trip over, likely next week, to pick up the Cabernet Franc, a late ripening variety.

Oh, and our island-grown Pinot Noir, grown at Monument Farm Vineyard. It is really struggling to get completely ripe and to develop enough sugars. The early spring rain really set the plants back this year but we are hoping that we will get something……I don’t worry about the sugars because I can always add sugar; it is the ripeness of the grapes that concern me. Right now the malic is strong in the grape and it is slow to change to tartaric but I think it is happening as the grapes are softening.

On Sunday after getting samples of the Pinot Noir I drove over to the Chasselas Dore vineyard and found that the raccoons had beaten me. I am really torn…….the vineyard needs so much work, it is really wild with grass as high as my head and scotch-broom and blackberries between the rows. I am just happy that I didn’t spend too much time working the vineyard.

Well, I keep heading toward December when I have to make my balloon payment to the former owners. I think it will happen, but it is really scary with the credit market the way it is. I can’t even get banks to return my calls.

I have a lot of good wines to sell, and about to go into bottle. I just started selling the Right Bank Red which is an equal blend of Merlot and Cabernet Franc that emulates the wines of St. Emilion in Bordeaux. I also hope to bottle a new Cabernet Sauvignon and a new Reserve Red.

I know that I am not the only one that feels like time is flying by, well maybe not flying by, but definitely on the move.

I watch the apples in my tree off of my kitchen window as they grow seemingly each day. They are like an hourglass with sand flowing down.

I’m not sure where I am going with this. I think I am already starting to get a bit nervous about harvest coming up. I am trying to decide whether to purchase a trailer that I can haul behind my Jeep and that all depends on how much wine I intend to make.

I know that I am not going to make Semillon this year as I still have two vintages in barrels. It’s odd that it is my best seller at the winery when visitors to the winery get to taste it, but on the shelf it just sits there. So that is two tons of grapes I won’t be buying.

I am excited that I am going to be using a new vineyard this year. It is called the Upland Estate in Sunnyside. Most of the vineyard is located on the east end of Snipes Mountain which is a east-west running hill that is about eight miles long in the middle of the Yakima Valley. It was originally planted to grapes in 1912 and a few of those vines are still alive. They are massive, about the size of Shaq O’Neill’s thighs. 

           

I walked the vineyard with Todd Newhouse, three generations of which operate the farm, including the orchards and vineyards; Todd is the youngest, then his dad, Steve, then Todd’s grandfather, Al. Last year when I was picking up some Cabernet Franc I met all three at the loading dock.

I am thinking that I will just get a small amount of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Cabernet Franc. I’m thinking about getting some Gewurztraminer also but I am going to try to get some west-side, Puget Sound, white grapes like Siegerrebe and hope for a good harvest of Chasselas Dore.

I also hope to get some Pinot Noir from Monument Farm Vineyard on Vashon Island.

Oh well, I am getting ahead of myself. This weekend, Danny O’Keefe will be in concert at the winery. Three weeks later, on August 23rd, there will be a flat-out folk festival under the apple trees, eight hours of straight music with as many as ten bands playing, organized by Wally Bell.

And finally, Samuel Green will be reading poetry at the winery to finish off our concert series.

Time might be moving, but I have a lot of things to do in the meantime.

Hi,

I have officially sold out of the 2006 Pinot Noir except for a few bottles in the smaller, 375ml size. Sales have been brisk, especially after our local newspaper, The Beachcomber, did a feature story on the wine. You can read the story at http://www.pnwlocalnews.com/vashon/vib/lifestyle/19295354.html. The story is well written and captures the excitement of producing this wine from locally grown grapes.

I have been very busy selling the Tramp Harbor Red (THR) and just the other day blended up a new batch, similar but different. This THR(2) is made of four barrels: one of ’06 Cabernet Franc, one each of ‘05 Merlot and ‘05 Cabernet Sauvignon and finally a barrel of the previous blend; kind of like the solera system used to blend different vintages in the production of Sherry.

The cool weather is a concern for this year’s harvest as everything is late, though I think it all depends on what happens in the warmer, dryer months coming up. 

The cooler weather has been good for new vines planted recently….lots of vegetative growth. About three weeks ago, Beth and Henry, and my wife, Ginny, and I planted a new vineyard at Beth and Henry’s home on 216th, off of Monument Road, about a thousand feet from the Pinot Noir Vineyard.

Some other goings on: Michael Meade gave a very interesting lecture/concert. We had almost 40 people seaed in the winery while Michael sat in front of the cooler. He lectured, he led us in song, he played his drum and he read poetry by Rumi and Hafiz, 14th Century Muslims who often included wine and its symbolism in their poems. He titled his talk, “The Soul of Wine”.

I have a new blended wine of half Merlot and half Cabernet Franc that I hope to bottle and release it in August. I plan to call it Right Bank red as it emulates the wines grown in the St. Emilion district of France. The wine is beautifully blanced with good acidity and good fruit. It is not rich but rather pretty showing the complementary nature of these two grapes; the Cabernet Franc is more linear and gives the wine length of flavor and a wonderful herbal, leaf character. The Merlot gives the wine wine great fruitiness and weight with flavors of plum and cherry.

And lastly, we are about to bottle our new 2006 Chasselas Dore, Vashon Island-grown.

That’s all….I’ve got to go…pick up some more bottles and get all of this exciting wine into bottle.

 

The Tramp Harbor Red is now in bottle. I brought together my bottling crew of John and George and we bottled the THR and the 2006 Pinot Noir.

I am out in the marketplace selling the wine now and it is going well. Now I have to worry about running out and what am I going to do for an encore, another THR.

This wine is really good. The Malbec is forceful and rich backed by some other pedigree grapes. Though I couldn’t seem to use the Malbec in my normal Reserve blend it does well with the THR blend as it is the dominant grape. The wine is beautifully structured with a rich fruity character and a long taste profile. It is decidely fruit flavored with hints of blackberry and raspberry. The tannins are just right and the acid seems perfect.

The Pinot Noir is being Pinot Noir, finicky and transient; every experience with the wine is different. One thing for sure: it isn’t done changing yet. For that reason I have decided to release it on May 1 rather than April 1. I think it will still be young but it should be closer to what we will see later.

I am working with a family on Vashon Island who is planting grapes to sell to the winery. The initial vineyard is quite small…..though try telling that to the person responsible for upkeep of the vineyard such as pruning, shaping, trellising, weeding, spraying. We are planting four grape varieties: two clones of Pinot Noir (777 and Precoce), Chasslas Dore, and Siegerrebe. With more room it might have been of interest planting Pinot Gris as well.

I am also working with others as well. This is all very exciting and with the cold spring, a little unnerving. Luckily we don’t have anything in the ground yet.

Hope to see you soon at the winery.