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.