 | Perennial Vintners | In this issue: |
| ▪ Sched: Normal weekends | ||
| ▪ Tasting room: Back to normal, new wines soon | ||
| ▪ Vineyard: Growing year summary | ||
| Newsletter -- Oct-2015 | ▪ Winery: Labeling parties, racking | |
| (Click here to view in HTML on website) | ▪ Reviews/awards: Great NW Invitational | |
| http://www.PerennialVintners.com/ | ▪ Misc: Port Townsend Vineyard | |
(Click on any image below to go to website with more information/larger image/etc.)
▪ Sched: Normal weekends
PV is open every weekend, Sat. and Sun 11am-5pm. I'm at the winery pretty much 7 days a week, so call/txt my cell 206-200-5902 most any time - if I'm around, I'd be happy to greet you and give you the private vineyard tour, or you can of course just stop in for a minute to buy wine! Or if you're in the neighborhood, just come up the driveway to check if I'm around.
Please note that there is no all-wineries-open weekend in October, the next all-wineries-open (WABI) weekend is 27,28,29-Nov (Thanksgiving weekend).
And remember, you can save money by bringing your unused iPhone earbuds for a discount on PV wines.
▪ Winery: Labeling parties, racking
▪ Misc: Port Townsend Vineyard
As mentioned in previous newsletters, Mike is involved in a new vineyard and winery venture in Port Townsend. The local paper (Port Townsend Leader) did an interview with the whole crew, article here.
Please note that there is no all-wineries-open weekend in October, the next all-wineries-open (WABI) weekend is 27,28,29-Nov (Thanksgiving weekend).
And remember, you can save money by bringing your unused iPhone earbuds for a discount on PV wines.
▪ Tasting room: Back to normal, new wines soon
If you've been by the winery in the last couple of months, things have been really hectic! As my winery is also my tasting room, there were several weeks where there was barely enough room for people to stand because of all the red wine fermentations going on in 4'x4' square bins on the floor! Well, these are done, the bins are out of the winery and in storage until next year. I've also added a new tank this year, but it's not a big one, so there's once again room to move around in the tasting area.
We'll be releasing the 2014 wines soon (once we get the labels on), so the big excitement is that we'll have some new wines available in the tasting room soon! I will send another email to this newsletter email list when they'll be available for sure (hopefully by 1st week Nov).
▪ Vineyard: Growing year summary
This year was an amazing growing year! Winter was mild, leading to an early warming, which brought the grapevines out of dormancy almost 6 weeks early! This early warmth persisted along with exceedingly dry (record setting) weather, leading to the grapevines going dormant mid-summer due to lack of water. This is unprecedented here in Puget Sound, most of us have only ever had to irrigate during the first year of establishing a vineyard. I had to irrigate with city water from the garden hose - I am not looking forward to my next water bill.
It's hard to see in this tiny image, the top green line is this year. (You can click on this graph to go to the website and see the full sized graph.) This shows how the temperature builds up through the year and compares to previous years. This year was the warmest on record until the 2nd week of Oct. Although we're now tracking 2014 (the previous warmest year) nicely, we have another week-plus to beat it.
Due to the time it took to get irrigation caught up, we ended up losing most of the 4+ weeks aheadness that we started the summer with, and harvested only a week or so earlier than a more typical year. The berries were on the smaller side, which is expected. The birds were onto the Melon before the sugars were really there, which means I didn't have the netting up yet, so this harvest is notably smaller than last year, but it's quite good. We have our largest harvest of Siegerrebe ever! Madeleine is typical, and Muller was very small. Our E WA Lem and Rose' are typical, we bought heavy on the Syrah so we'll have a lot of that one. Overall I'm quite pleased with this years harvest.
▪ Winery: Labeling parties, racking
The next big events for the winery are labeling parties. We'll be getting some 4,000 labels in in the next week or so, and we need to go through all the pallets of bottles, pull down the box, pull out each bottle, label it, and restack all the boxes - it'll be some heavy lifting moving the boxes... I'll be putting out the call for volunteers (so please consider joining our pv-helpers email list), as soon as I know when we can start. It'll probably take 5-6 work parties for an evening, of maybe 3 hours each. I'll have a couple a month until we're done, we don't have to get it all done immediately.
Actual winemaking tasks, we're done with harvest. In the next few weeks I'll be racking each of the wines. This is where I pump the clean wine from a tank into another (empty) tank and leave the bottom few inches of crud behind. The crud is mostly just dead yeast. I'll then also add sulfites to protect the wines from oxidizing. Oh yeah, before I can do that, I have to rebuild the pump - it started leaking during harvest. Other than that, I finally have time to breathe! It's good that I'll have this time though, as now I'll need it to get the new wines in front of wine shops and such in time for the holidays...
▪ Reviews/awards: Great NW Invitational
Just a few weeks ago we got a Silver award from the Great Northwest Wine Invitational for the 2013 Frambelle. This is really an honor as this is a very unique competition. The judges are asked to nominate wines that they would like to see be invited, so that means if you're there, you've already caught someone's attention. That means it's already a best-of-the-best before anything has even been tasted!▪ Misc: Port Townsend Vineyard
As mentioned in previous newsletters, Mike is involved in a new vineyard and winery venture in Port Townsend. The local paper (Port Townsend Leader) did an interview with the whole crew, article here.