Hi,
It’s pretty quiet at the winery right now, although I have re-opened the winery for visitors. All the wines barrels have been racked and now I am concentrating on doing some bottling and blending. I am just about to put together our batch #7 of Tramp Harbor Red.
I can hear the Mariners on the TV as I type this. I admit it; I am kind of a baseball junkie. I love its pace and its suspense and I can work on my newsletter, take a break, and go back to the game.
I am busy organizing a book festival for Vashon Island, called ReadOn, WriteOn, VashOn; A Celebration of Books, Readers and Writers. This festival, held over Memorial Day Weekend, is intended to complement the Poetry Fest, that I helped organize last year. My hope is that they will alternate bi-annually; this year the book festival, next year the poetry fest.
I am getting help from some very talented people, including four other committee people and help from our financial officer and our designer/illustrator.
At the winery, I am just now starting to sell our first varietal Cabernet Franc. The Cab Franc has been used in blends but this is the first year that I have enough of the variety to make its own wine type. This wine has great blueberry flavors with a nice long character, with hints of tea leaf. From DNA testing, it is one of the parents to Cabernet Sauvignon and also Merlot. It is amazingly lighter, yet it has a kind of penetrating character to it.
Tasting out of barrel, I start to see some stars emerge; especially the ’09 Grenache, the ’09 Pinot Noir and some of the ’08 wines: Cabs and Merlot.
My cider, Irvine’s Vintage Cider, Vintage Blend, continues to sell well. In fact, it seems to be really taking off. I think this is because cider and beer are more popular with the younger crowd. And currently, there are some exciting new local ciders. I am particularly impressed with Finn River, Snowdrift and Wild Fire.
So this is interesting. I have noticed that my customers are getting younger. I have also noticed that younger people come in groups of four, six, eight, even twelve. I told my son this and he said, “Yeah, dad, it’s kind of the fashion right now, to get a group of people together and go wine tasting and touring.” Well, I can tell you that it can make for interesting Saturdays when a group of people show up out of the blue and all of a sudden the winery is really busy.
A couple of weeks ago, six younger women came to the winery, celebrating a birthday for one of them. Other groups rolled in and soon there were about twenty people there.
Then my friend Chuck Roehm showed up and he just happened to have his harmonica on him and sat on a stool at the end of the tasting bar and played and sang the birthday girl a song for her birthday.
And I just served up the wine, and rang up some too.
Lastly, I am sending out a note to the Vashon Wine Club that two recent wines that our group has tasted are available at Vashon Thriftway at special prices through the end of the month. The white wine is the Aligote by Shooting Star, a California winery purchasing the rare Aligote from a vineyard in the Yakima Valley. In style it is like a combination of Pinot Gris and Chardonnay, and it is kind of a sister to Chardonnay. It is wonderfully fruity, dry, and penetrating. Priced at $13.99.
The red is a Portugese wine known simply as Tinto, by JP Azeitao. It is a blend of three grapes: 60% Casteloa, 20% Aragonez (Tempranillo) and 20% Syrah. Priced at $7.99. You’ll find the wines in the section where they feature their Wines of the Month.
If you are interested in joining the club, check out the website, vashonwineclub.org. I am just getting everything up and running. My plan is to offer occassional wine tastings and wine classes and recommend wines, like the wines above.
