I should have known that the vintage of 2009 wouldn’t be as smooth as previous years; that would be too easy. With a fairly wet spring, Mother Nature had us tethered to a Kenworth truck. Luckily for us the truck wasn’t moving, but then neither were we. As we moved into July and August the truck started rolling, so we jumped on and never looked back…
Something on the Whites
As I’ve mentioned in the past (to those that will listen), one of the many luxuries of working with vineyards for our white wines in the Columbia Gorge AVA and the Willamette Valley AVA in Oregon is how much later we are able to harvest our fruit than the Columbia Valley. The cooler temperatures give us longer hangtime with lower Brix and higher acidity (bing!) at harvest. While the majority of Washington Vineyards are harvesting their white grapes in late August and early September, we aren’t even sending our pick bins to the vineyards; we don’t pull our Pinot Gris, Pinot Blanc, Gewurztraminer or Riesling until mid to late October. This gives us a few extra weeks to get things set up and prepped for harvest (which is one of those things that seems to sneak up on us).
The Reds
While we didn’t have to worry about the whites in early September, I was in the vineyards a couple times a week checking on flavor development and the health of the canopy. If you arent’ in the vineyards regularly, it’s impossible to really know how the fruit is progressing and thereby to know when it’s the right time to make the harvest call. That said, we pulled the first of our Merlot from Ciel du Cheval Vineyard on Red Mountain on the 18th of September, just a day before we pulled in 2008. We really paid attention to crop loads, canopy and stayed on top of watering during the week to 10 days of 100+ degree heat. It’s actually hard to breath when it’s that hot, but that’s why I am in the vineyards about 8 am.
Our next harvest came about 9 days later when we pulled our Klipsun Merlot. This is our first year working with Merlot from this fabled site and it looks promising at this point. It’ll give us additional depth and concentration to complement our flagship Cabernet Sauvignon as well as our red blend. A quick aside on Merlot: I’ve never been a big fan of domestic Merlot on it’s own, but I really like what it contributes to wine in small percentages. It’s that chocolate and orange peel aromas paired with a softer, silkier palate than Cabernet Sauvignon.
From here the grapes flowed in with our Klipsun, Ciel du Cheval and Alder Ridge Cabernet Sauvignon arriving the first week of October. Syrah came in about 5 days later. We’re doing some fun experimentation with syrah this year, but I’ll go into that after we get the wines through ML and resting in the cellar.
On the morning we harvested our Willamette Valley Pinot Noir (yes, I said Pinot Noir), I stopped of at Celilo Vineyard to pull some samples of the Pinot Gris. I’m sure glad I did as all the flavor and acidity were there. This was the earliest that Pinot Gris has ever been harvested from this site, but don’t let that fool you into thinking there was a compromise in flavor or depth. I really think this wine will be another stunner. Stay tuned.
While this is just a quick summary of harvest, be sure to check back in to see our thoughts on the wines’ progression.
