Pinot in the winery - More on the way for Friday

First Boedecker Cellars fruit of 2007
Our first fruit of the year came into the winery yesterday! We processed 1.8 tons of Pinot Noir from Carlton Hill Vineyard. This is a beautiful little (6 acre) site in the Yamhill/Carlton AVA. David Polite, the vineyard owner and winemaker in his own right, dotes on his beautiful corner of the world. This is small viticulture at it's best! David personally loaded bins of grapes from his tractor to the Boedecker Cellars F250 after supervising the picking crew.

This year, we received Dijon clone 777 from Carlton Hill, and if this fruit is indicative of the vintage, 2007 is going to be fantastic for Oregon Pinot Noir. Just into the fermenter, we have ripe flavors, great color, and tart, zingy acidity! This will make for some really graceful wine.

Picking Calendar:
We're trying to fight off our urge to pick in the face of the coming rains, as most of the flavors are not really there yet. We do, however, have ~ 25% of the Pinot Noir fully ready to bring in thanks to the efforts of Bob Van Steenberg at Cheery Grove Vineyard. The rest of the dates are very speculative and will have a lot to do with the rain we do or do not get the first week of October.

Friday, Sept 28th: Cherry Grove Vineyard, Block 3 and Block 8 ~ 8 tons
Rain -- Sat/Sun/Mon???
First Week of October (maybe): Cherry Grove Vineyard, Block 6, Block 7
Momtazi Vinyard, Block C
Stoller Vineyard, 115 block
Second Week of October: Anderson Family Vineyard, South Block
Amalie Robert Vineyard, Block 10
Stirling's Vineyard (?)
Third Week of October: Anderson Family Vineyard, Chardonnay
Stirling's Vineyard, Pinot Gris
Fourth Week of October: Aardvark Vineyard, Grenache
Wren Vineyard, Chardonnay

Well , I knew this fall was likely to be fun, and it certainly is turning out that way. With some significant level of rainfall expected next week, we're making the decision to pull in some fruit this week. Even with the cold weather, we have a couple of blocks that are ready to go today, and we could have another 4-6 tons coming in over the weekend.

Here's the schedule as I know it:

Wed, Sept 26: 1.5 tons Pinot Noir from Carlton Hill (sometime in the afternoon)
Friday or Saturday: 2.0 tons Pinot Noir (I'll know the actual date on Wed)

This first fruit is quite ripe (already 24+ brix) and the flavors are good, seeds are brown, and color looks nice. So we have nice signs of physiological ripeness. On top of all that, we have really zippy acidity! Fruit like this produces bright, razor-sharp wines that show good complexity early and age forever...and it's the type of wine I love! Finally a vintage where we'll produce more wine for the Stewart blend than for the Athena blend - Cool!

Seriously, though, 2007 has all the hallmarks of a world-class Pinot vintage. All we need to do now is pray that the forecasted rain turns into irritating showers next week. Keep thinking sunny thoughts.

Cheers - Stewart

Vineyards looking good, but not quite time to pick

Athena and I trekked up and down the Willamette Valley last weekend, checking on all of our Pinot Noir sites. We had clouds, we had showers, but we saw fantastic-looking fruit.

THIS IS GOING TO BE A BEAUTIFUL PINOT YEAR! While ripeness is still quite a ways off, the brightness and beautiful acidity present in the grapes right now point to a classic cool-climate vintage in Oregon.

I'm really excited, as this is the kind of Pinot I wanted to make when we started the winery.

All we need now is 10-15 days of relatively sunny weather (or at least not much rain). Sugar levels are between 18-20 brix right now at all the sites. Usually, I'd predict only 7-10 days, but the nights are so COLD and a the days are cool enough that I'm predicting a slower than normal ripening.

More from May 22, 2007 trip to Vineyards

It was very interesting traveling around this week, if for no other reason than to get some really great photos that demonstrate the difference location makes in Pinot Noir growth.





Amalie Robert Vineyard just South of Dallas, OR. This is a pretty warm site, and Block 10 (my little acre) is quite vigorous. The shoots are 12"-16" long now, and the clusters of buds are well-formed. All shoots had 2 or 3 clusters, and they were monsters. We'll certainly be doing some cluster thinning and shoulder removal after bloom here.



Momtazi Vineyard in the McMinnville AVA. This is another warm site, although Block C is right at the crest of the vineyard (cool night temps) and receives a lot of wind, which keeps the temperatures low early in the season. Here, the shoots are only 6"-10" long. You can see in the picture to the right that the clover cover crop has been tilled under in every other row. This block produces wonderfully cherry-centered Pinot Noir from Dijon Clone 115 vines.





Anderson Family Vineyard at the North tip of the Dundee Hills AVA, right above Hwy 240. The South Block is aptly named. It's South facing, sloped nicely, and warm, warm, warm. This site was the furthest ahead, with shoots 16"-20" long, essentially ready for the first set of catch wires to go up. These vines have always been dry farmed, sending the roots deep into the rocky soil over the last 14+ years.




It's interesting to see how early season growth rates correspond to harvest dates later in the season. Of the three sites, we'll generally harvest Anderson first, Momtazi second (hot days there later in the summer help it catch up), and Amalie Robert last (the Wadenswil clone is a late ripening clone). More on this later, and more info on other sites will come soon.

First trip out to vineyards in 2007

I took my first swing of the year through the valley yesterday. I have to say, the vineyards all look fantastic! There seem to be few issues with shoot length and inflorences this year (unlike the last couple of years). As I get some time, I'll keep updating this posting with photos from the trip. In the mean time, you can see a couple of shots at http://www.boedeckercellars.com/Cellar%20Updates.htm.

Nostalgia

Yes, this is our first truckload of grapes ever received. The fruit on the truck was 667 clone Pinot Noir from Cherry Grove Vineyard. Wow! that seems so long ago now.

Mar 27th, 2007:
Athena and I would like to say THANKS! to our fantastic bottling crews

Without them, we could never have finished the bottling, and we wouldn't have had nearly as much fun putting our 2005 Pinots to bed.

Three days, 1041 1/2 cases, and quite a few bottles of beer...

So thanks to
Ralph and Megan, Charlie and Stacey, Zoe and George, Loran and Cathy, Leif, my dad Mike and my uncle Dan, Jeff Q, Sean and Stacy, Andy, and Eric K the master of the line.
We want to ensure that the rest of the world knows what rock-stars our friends truly are.

Check out upcoming events around the state at www.boedeckercellars.com

Cheers! - sb