One Year in the Yakima Valley

Before we get all excited about harvest and crush in September, here is a snapshot of our year in the Yakima Valley, verbiage courtesy of a rediscovered vintage Visitor's Center brochure.

Spring, First Signs 

 

IN THE VINEYARD: Buds begin to swell, budbreak, and the vines begin to show the new season’s green. Cover crop and grasses begin to grow and surrounding orchards bloom.

IN THE CELLAR: Bottling wines for summer wine releases (fresh and fruity white wines, dry roses) and young reds for fall release. Warmer temperatures encourage the red wine barrels to complete their secondary, or “malolactic” fermentation.

Summer, Grow Grow Grow

 

IN THE VINEYARD: Vines flower and their delicate scent perfumes the air. Grape clusters “set” and begin to show this vintage’s crop. Winemakers take advantage of the warm weather to check out the upcoming crop in the vineyard.

Red grapes color up after going through “Veraison” and begin to soften and build grape sugars. Toward the end of the summer, the varietal flavors are apparent and sampling for harvest maturity begins.

Fall, The Action Begins

 

IN THE VINEYARD: Harvest begins! The entire year’s crop will be harvested between September and November. If you’re lucky, you can see some of the activity and share in the excitement of a new vintage.

IN THE CELLAR: Fermentation turns the cellar into its own “aroma-therapy” center. Yeasty, fruity and delicious aromas are everywhere.

 

Winter, Peace & Quiet

IN THE VINEYARD: Frost generally drops the last leaves off the vines, and they descent into dormancy for the winter. The bare vine architecture is in stark contrast to the way they looked in mid-summer with lush, green leaves.

Removing Plant Parts

Okay, that was weird. What I meant was… pruning. We are pruning.

Why do we prune? To control the size and form of the vine, and to optimize the production potential of the vine. Bam.

Timing here is crucial—we’re looking for the window after the vines have been dormant but before budbreak (when the growing season begins again). For us, that is now!

Every year there are variables—timing, strategy, and everything else involved when Mother Nature is your business partner, but one thing is for sure: quantity and quality hardly ever go together. This is especially true with wine. Careful winter pruning makes for quality fruit and a quality vintage. It starts with the grapes, friends!

The various faces of Copeland Vineyard:

 

 

Done at last!!!

Harvest is now officially done (one ton of late harvest Riesling on Saturday hardly counts) now that Matt has all of the 2009s put to barrel. Finally, it is over!!! All in all 2009 was another great year. We skirted the frost and quality was great. I have never seen Matt as pleased with a vintage this early which I think is a good thing. I am excited to see how the 2009s progress and mature over the next couple of years.

We are getting ready to bottle the remainder of the 2007s and 2008 Lemberger and the super secret surprise to be announced in early spring.

The tasting room is closed and all is good on the wine farm. If you are in the area and thirsty we are generally around so swing by. We will gladly pour you a taste despite our official closed sign.

Happy Holidays!!!

Oops...Have Not Posted in a While

Since our last posting, almost a month ago (my bad), a lot has happened. We have finished harvesting everything for ourselves and only have two tons of late harvest Riesling and Petite Verdot for other wineries to go, pressed off all of the Syrah, Cab Franc, Myer Merlot and Cab, the Cab Franc Rose', Riesling, Viognier and Chardonnay and finished with fermentation, we had a frost scare, I got Swine Flu (I do not really think it was H1N1 but it makes for a better story) in the middle or our busiest week, and we picked the most fruit ever by over double in a single week, we held the first annual Great Grape Stomp and had another great Winemaker for a Day event (pictured above). Living the dream we like to say.

Hopefully all of my whinning makes the tardy posting a little justifiable.

The light is at the end of the tunnel and it is great. We still have 35 tons fermenting but should be done with that by the end of next week. It has been the craziest harvest we have dealt with but fruit quality was outstanding so it is worth it. A full harvest recap to come in the near (sooner than a month) future.

The crew is now winterizing irrigation and equipment, fixing all of things we break during harvest and hold together with duct tape and a prayer and generally taking a deep breath. Matt has been busy monitoring fermentation (50 tons at once is a lot for us) and I have been his cellar rat for the past few days.

There are videos of both the Great Grape Stomp and Winemaker for a Day posted our Facebook page.

More interesting and thoughtful postings to come...

Harvest, Harvest, Harvest

Harvest is moving along. Things are moving remarkably quickly at this point. At this rate we should be done more than two weeks early.

We spent all weekend picking and crushing and after a long Friday night (literally all night) and few technical difficulties we got our new destemming and auger feed equipment dialed in (at least we hope so becasue I have to put in any more 28 hour days I might end up calling immigration on myself for the free ride to Mexico and never come back).

This weekend we picked Syrah and Riesling. On deck for this week is more Syrah, more Riesling, Cab Franc, Merlot and Malbec and maybe even some Cab from a light set hot site. The question of the year is where the hell are we going to put all this fruit? It might be time to clean out the garbage cans and tuperware (is that how you spell that?) and anything else that could possibly hold grapes for fermentation.

Oh yeah, the picture is from sunrise on Saturday morning while STILL crushing.

Harvest Begins (if not perfect)

Yesterday was our first day of harvest. We picked six tons of Chardonnay for ourselves and three tons of Rousanne and three tons of Semillon for other wineries. All in all yesterday went great. However, today was one of those days. Our pick schedule changed 37 times and our new equipment (new to us at least) did not quite work as planned.

The auger feed (which gets the grapes into the destemmer) is a little taller than we would have liked. Matt saved the day with some quick welding and it looks like it should work now (please cross your fingers or knock on wood or whatever else you do for good luck).

We will be picking Syrah and Viognier on Friday and crushing Merlot and Gurty. Sunday is a big pick with Riesling.

There is another video of our first morning on Facebook.

And It Starts...

Harvest is officially upon us. We are picking Chardonnay and Riesling from Copeland and Rousanne, Viognier, the remainder of the Semillion and Syrah from Dineen and have Merlot and Gurty coming from other sites all by Friday. My favorite day of the year is finally here. Harvest!!!

Will keep you posted on how harvest goes as it unfolds. Pictures and videos of harvest to come.

Wine 101 #2-Brix

I took grape samples today. The Copeland Vineyard Chardonnay and Syrah are 17.8 and 18.2 brix respectively. This means we are a still a few weeks away from harvesting as we like to see roughly 25 Brix (less for white wines) when we harvest (this is not a hard number as we also look at acid and flavors when determining harvest).

When taking brix readings in the winery we always get a lot of questions from guests about what exactly a brix is.

That said I thought this a good occassion to hold the second Wine 101 "class." Brix is a scale used to measure the percent of dissolved sugar in a solution at 20 degrees celcius. This scale was developed by Adolf Ferdinand Wenceslaus Brix and is used primarily in winemaking and fruit juices (brewers use the Plato scale; why I have no idea). Simply, a brix is a way to quantify how sweet the grapes are.

While the juice is still juice (ie not fermenting) we use a refractometer to measure the brix. For pure simplicity and functionality's sake this is my favorite tool we use. Very simply the refractometer measures the sugar through the degree at which light going through the solution is bent. The more sugar a solution has the more the light will be bent. So simple. I love it.

This is a refractometer.



Although blurry this is what one sees when looking into the refractometer. There is a numbered scale in the middle and where the blue crosses is how many brix you have.

It is hot!!! I am not sure what else to say. The wine farm is a little slow with the heat as the crew is going home at 10am to avoid getting cooked. Luckily the winery is a refreshing 65.

We are spending a lot of time right now working on the 'darkside' of the wine business. Finishing budgets for the next fiscal year, working distribution alotments and generally getting caught up on inside jobs (not all bad with heat). We do not expect a big impact on the vines from this heat but are keeping a close eye on everything. A little water does wonders to keep the vines moving and healthy.

If you live in the Seattle area we are doing a tasting at Picnic (Phinney Ridge) tomrrow from 5:30-7:30. More information at http://www.picnicseattle.com/. We will be pouring Riesling and Rose (both of which we are out of in the tasting room) as well as a few reds. Perfects wines for hot day. Hopefully we will see you there.

Catching Up and Summer Update

Well we have been not so good about posting on a regular basis but hope to do a better job moving forward.


Life on the wine farm has been very busy for the past three or four months. The grapes are growing like mad, actually we just now starting to slow them down. We expect to begin to see verasion (when they change color) in another two to three weeks and will be begin harvest in 60-75 days. Thus far the growing season has been good at the heat spell we are in experiencing is a good thing (provided it does not get much hotter).

Crop loads look great and we anticipate another stellar year for Washington wine. However, prayers, animal sacrifices, knocking on wood, voodoo dolls or anything else you feel might help would be much appreciated. When Mother Nature is at the helm one never knows for sure.

The crew is finishing up with leaf stripping and will get a much needed break very shortly to rest up for harvest.

We will soon be bottling the 2007 vintage and from what Matt has let me taste thus far I am excited to get these wines into a bottle. Matt is busy putting the finishing touches on the final blends and will start fining and filtration very soon.

TMW is excited to announce our wines will now be distributed in the greater Chicago area as well as the state of South Carolina. If you live in or are visting either of these locations just ask your favorite wine shop or wine steward and they can get them for you. Your support is much appreciated.

The annual Chalk Party to benefit The Pegasus Project was huge succes and we, as well as the children your Rose' purchases support, cannot thank you enough. In fact we are down to the last five cases so be sure to pick some up. This photo is of this year's winning drawing, which will be the label for the 2009 Rose'.






If you are looking for one more fun thing to do this summer there are still a few tickets left for both of the Dinner and Movie showings. August 1st and September 5th we will open up the lawn, break out the barbeque and projector and enjoy the wonderful summer evenings Mother Nature gives here in wine country. More information and tickets available at http://www.twomountainwinery.com/ or 509.829.3900. FYI limited tickets available.



We hope you are having a wonderful summer and will hopefully see you soon.

Promising to be better about posting,

Patrick T. Rawn