Harvest 2006

Whoa, partners! Lots of love going on, lots of love. We are well on our way to the wines of the 2006 vintage! On September 14 we brought in 5.96 tons of Chenin Blanc from the Horse Heaven Hills in Washington. This was monumentus, as we'd never before had to pick up 11,920 pounds of anything! It really isn't all that simple of a Task. Most U-Haul type trucks max out at about 3-4 tons, so were it not for our good friends Barbara and Tom, we'd have had a logistical nightmare! As it was, Tom spends a good chunk of his time hauling off 10 tons of gourmet hay at a time, so this was an easy load for him. Tom and Sean hit the road about 6am, and by 10:30 they were loading grapes on the back of Tom's old flatbed. We were the first grapes to hit the winery this year, so everyone was in on the action. We pressed the Chenin and sent it to tank to settle overnight. We wanted to experiment both with multiple strains of yeast as well as multiple size vessels so we could start learning a bit about how Washington State Chenin developed. For those of you cork dorks out there, here is what we did:

4 neutral oak barrels fermented with Simi Yeast

2-55 gallon stainless barrels fermented with M2 yeast

2-55 gallon stainless barrels fermented with MO5 yeast

1-350 gallon stainless tank fermented with M2 yeast

1-350 gallon stainless tank fermented with MO5 yeast

So, we can look at wood vs. stainless, Simi vs. M2 vs. MO5 yeasts, and M2 vs. MO5 in two different size vessels. We fermented them all separately to dryness, and then combined the stainless wines until the Simi finished fermenting, which took longer than the stainless lots did. I was really sure I'd find a lot I liked best. Early on, MO5 was my favorite. It seemed to show a tropical fruit profile reminiscent of pineapple, and as it developed it began taking on a little bit of a Belgian candi sugar note (I only know that because of our home brewing experience). Towards the end, though, M2 and Simi started shining. I couldn't help but find the Simi full of texture, and the M2 had a really neat lemon zest to it. All in all, the wines blended together beautifully, and I have to say, I like the sum of the parts more than I did each lot.

On October 14 5 tons of Sam's Valley Syrah showed up. Sam's Valley is down in the Rogue Valley of Southern Oregon. We made a trip down there to check out the vineyard and it is in a beautiful spot. Thankfully, this grower takes care of delivery! We did 3-2 ton tanks of wine:

2 ton with D80 yeast

2 ton with D21 yeast

2 ton native yeast fermented

We did 2 pump overs a day during cold soak, 3 pump overs a day during fermentation, and dropped down to two when heat was applied late in fermentation, and then transitioned to one pump over and one punch down. We racked off and pressed with a pneumatic basket press, and the wine has been in barrel for a couple of months now. We've got first, second, and third year oak, and we played around with some of the new oak-we've got Rousseau barrels from Chantillion and Bertranges in 24 month air dried, as well as some house blends at 36 month air dried. This is exciting for us, as we have lots of experience in tasting barrels of cab and Pinot, but much less on Syrah, which is our favorite grape! We expect to keep the Syrah 12-14 months, depending on how things come together.

Both the Oregon Syrah and Washington Chenin Blanc are going to be bottled under a different label. Stay tuned for more info on that adventure...