Last Box of the 2006 Harvest Season



Hurray! We had our last crush today. This is a photo of the last box of the 2006 Harvest/Crush season. Yes, the very last one. Many of the surrounding wineries are also winding down their crush season. I thought we were done this season with the Cabernet Sauvignon. But, we got a small load of Lemberger from Kiona. These will become the "Lola Red" house wine for Tom Douglas's Lola Restaurant in Seattle. Shhhhh! Don't tell Cab Sauv, but I think I have a mad crush on Lemberger. When I first encountered this wine. I admit I turned my nose up at it. The name. The unfortunate, un-sexy name. It just didn't do anything for me. Lucky for me, this red grape varietal from Germany-Austria flourishes in Washington and Oregon and there are a number of great expressions of this wine. Kiona is where I first fell in love. Kiona Wines describe their Lemberger Red as, " rich red wine aromas, nuances of Cabernet or Merlot are present, but with a spicy intriguing background not easy to identify at first tasting. Wonderful and well-defined aromas of blackberries and cloves emerge with more experience. This mildly tannic wine sports great structure, with a velvet mouth feel. American and French oak is evident in the long smooth finish." Indeed! As an eating grape, it is delicious and sweet. What I like about Lemberger is its deep color and earthy fruitfulness. Kay makes a gorgeous Lemberger Dry Rose which expresses the very thing I love. I had a fun time following that grape to wine. Here I am yeasting the Lemberger grapes for the Lola Red.
Thurston Wolfe also makes a nice Lemberger which sells out very quickly. Although Lemberger is not widely planted with only about a 100 acres planted in the state, it was the favored grape of Dr. Walter Clore "Father of Washington Wine." Kiona Vineyard was the first to plant it commercially in 1976 and release the first commercial vintage(1980) in 1983. But don't feel bad if you've never heard of it. Lemberger is also known by other names: Blaufrankisch in Austria, Franconia in Friuli and Kekfrankos in Hungary. Some wineries are marketing the wine as Blau Franc, Blue Frank or Blue Burgunder. These sound promising. Every wine has it's day. When that day comes, I'm sure that Dr. Walt will be smiling down at us. What a long way Washington Wines have come since the early days of the WSU Experimental Station in Prosser, WA.

"Mog, Mog...Who's there?"



"Materials Other than Grapes," that's who....
"Mog" or Materials Other than Grape as it's called is exactly that: all the stuff except the grapes. This includes leaves, canes, stems. petioles and yes, the occasional spider or two. Anyway, this is what our box of MOG looked like today. All of our grapes here are hand-picked so there is much less MOG than there would be in grapes that are machine harvested. Of course, this photo was taken after we swept and cleaned up. Between sorting, the floor looks like a tornado has come through with leaves and stems strewn all over. First, the person picking up the lug boxes dumps about 30 pounds of grapes at the start of the sorting table conveyor belt. While the grape clusters are traveling down the belt, our hands fly everywhere as we hand sort and pick out stems, leaves, spiders, and substandard clusters. A lot of large scale wineries do not do this step of hand sorting which is another differentiator for small-scale versus large-scale. There's a cost associated with taking this step. But for K & C, this is what sets them apart. Their wines are hand-crafted all the way through. Today we went through 180 boxes (that's 5,540 lbs or about 2.4 tons). During the short break between pallets of grapes, we swept up the mess on the floor and dumped those into bins along with the pressed pomace. One cool thing I've discovered is that many production wineries take this stuff and basically compost it. Here at Chinook, we spread it out over the edge of the vineyard and Mother Nature takes care of the rest. It becomes a wonderful ground cover and puts nutrients back into the soil as it breaks down. Circle of life!

Crushing Cabernet Sauvignon


I finally meet you! It has been with sweet anticipation I have been waiting for this day. Ever since I walked the denHoed Vineyard and saw his "extreme" trellising and listened to Bill tell me all about Biodynamics, I've been waiting to follow this grape to wine. On Halloween, C delivered over 2.5 tons of the smallest cab sauv berries I've seen. They looked like little blueberries. Tasting the grape, the flavor was intense and concentrated. Already, I know this will be a good ride. We crushed them on Wednesday and tonight we threw the yeast. K and I gave them a little cheer as we always do. "Be good, make great wine..." The color extraction over the last 24 hours was not as intense as I expected. But K did tell me this is normal. The smell was clean with no off whiffs. In the next few days, the aromas will intensify and so will the color. This is what I experienced with the cab franc and then the merlot. The first punchdown was easy with a white foam, then as the cap thickens, the punchdown will become harder to breakthrough and the foam will become a rich reddish pink with intensely dark red juice. The juice tastes slightly different every day as you follow the grape into wine. My flavor is 22Brix. Oh how I wish I could bottle that juice. So perfect, so effervescent, so sublime....then as the sugars turn to alcohol the flavor changes from sweet to wine. And the CO2 dances on your tongue.

The Cabernet Sauvignon is one of Washington State's two major grape plantings. The other being Merlot. As evidenced today as we crushed another late batch of Cab Sauv in the wet, cold, freezing rain, the grape's late ripening makes waiting this long for the crush/harvest season to be over somewhat intolerant for a California girl like me. But I waited and I'm glad I waited. This will be my last crush for the season before I say goodbye to this beautiful and fertile place.