2009 Wine Bloggers Conference

This past weekend I had the opportunity to attend the North American Wine Bloggers Conference in Sonoma. It is an annual meeting for members of the wine blogging community, wine industry, and wine media. It is chance for bloggers and members of the wine industry to meet, taste wine, and of course discuss the future of wine, wine media, and the internet. As wine consumers become tech savvy, wine bloggers have become an excellent new source for information and reviews. The internet and social networking are also providing great new ways for consumers to find out about, and be connected to great wines. Bloggers from all over the US, as well as one from New Zealand, converged in Santa Rosa to learn, and of course drink some wine. This year was graciously hosted by the wineries and grape growers of the Sonoma, Napa, Russian River, and Dry Creek Valleys. On Friday we had a chance to taste great wines from the region at multiple pourings with special tastings featuring Sonoma and Russian River Valleys, with many of the winemakers themselves doing the pouring. Very fun to taste wines that we don't really produce in Washington State, most notably Pinot Noirs and Zinfandels. Awards were also given to the best wine blogs for 2009. We were treated to a lovely day in Napa Valley on Saturday beginning at Culinary Institute of America at Greystone with speakers Barry Schuler of Meteor Vineyard and Jim Gordon of Wines and Vines Magazine. Next was a lunch and vineyard walk at Stag's Leap with vineyard manager Kirk Grace. This was followed by a tasting at Palmaz Vineyards featuring Viader, Madonna Estate, and of course Palmaz Cabernet. The winery is impressive. Not only do they have an amazing view of the valley but the entire production facility is built underground. Quintessa then hosted a grand tasting of an amazing lineup of producers from Napa Valley. It was a chance for all the conference goers to taste some of the best wines the Napa has to offer. There were lots of big Cabs of course, but there were interesting white wines, and bubbly, to taste as well which helped keep my palate from getting too burned out. I finished my day with a dinner at Domaine Chandon with the wines of O'Brien Estate, Louis M. Martini, Parry Cellars, Newton, and both bubbly and still wines from Chandon. Sunday was perhaps less wine filled but more educational with seminars about blogging, social networking, and the future of wine media and marketing. The end of the conference was punctuated by the announcement that Walla Walla will be the host for next years' event. Napa and Sonoma have certainly set the bar pretty high for us here in Washington to match their hospitality. Good thing we have such fabulous wines here in Walla Walla to share with the new generation of wine writers. We look forward to hosting everyone a year from now.

Summer in Walla Walla

Summertime in the Walla Walla Valley is all about harvesting. We are a long way from harvesting any grapes, we won't begin until the middle of September, but there are many other crops that are being picked across Walla Walla. The rolling hills surrounding Walla Walla are tan this time of year from all the ripening wheat that they are preparing to harvest. Peas are the other major crop that the farmers rotate with wheat. The pea harvest is coming to a close but you will still see some of the giant pea harvesting machines creeping through fields on the outskirts of Walla Walla. Most of the peas are destined to end up frozen in a grocery store near you. In our neighborhood, the sweet smell of fresh cut alfalfa is heavy in the air. Of course July is mostly all about the Walla Walla sweets. From the end of June till the end of Summer, Walla Walla is full of onions. There are bags of onions available in every type of store and roadside stand. Every restaurant in town has onion focused menus and the locals race to see how many onions they can eat before the season is over. Of course there is a sweet onion festival going on this weekend. The only catch with the super sweet onions is that the season doesn't last long and the onions need to be eaten quickly because they don't store for long. This year seems to be a great year for local cherries. The Bings and Rainiers are giant and full of flavor and available all over town. The little town of Milton-Freewater to the south has a state of the art cherry sorting house that preps all the local fruit for shipping all over the US. There are lots of other fruits in the valley that are not grown in great quantities but are a treat for the locals like blueberries, raspberries, apricots, and strawberries. There probably won't be any peaches until August but when they are ripe nothing is more delicious. Here at Pepper Bridge the only harvesting going on is the picking of lavender. We have a large patch of lavender with many different colors and types and it is finally fully blooming. We don't pick the lavender for any use here at the winery but our visitors are welcome to take some with them. It looks beautiful and you can smell the lavender all the way down the driveway. Lavender loves the hot dry heat of Walla Walla, it is a close impersonation of the south of France after all. This time of year you see blooming lavender all across the valley. It smells like summer.

Bottling 2007 Vintage

It has been a flurry of bottling activity here at Pepper Bridge. We just finished bottling the last of the 2007 vintage which includes the Cabernet, the Pepper Bridge Vineyard designate, and a little bit of Reserve (Yeah!). These wines will now rest in bottle for their grand unveiling a year from now. It is such a long time to wait but it is going to be worth it. The word on the street is that 2007 is really something special. The growing season was just what Jean-François is looking for, plenty of sun and heat in the summer and a long harvest with warm sunny days and very cool nights. When we get cool nights during harvest here in Walla Walla the grapes retain more natural acidity and develop more flavors and aromas. For Pepper Bridge, the resulting wines for 2007 are delicious, full of dark fruit and earth with lots of complexity. Maybe this is the best vintage to date for Walla Walla? So bottling this exciting wine is in and of itself an event, but add to it all the excitement of bottling with a brand new bottling truck. This was the debut of the brand new mobile bottling line, Bugle Bottling. This is a cooperative venture between Pepper Bridge and AbejaWineries and the Artifex custom crush facility. It has been a long time in the planning and the building and now the truck is operational and bottling wine. It is a pretty slick operation to see in action. Most of the wineries in Walla Walla depend on mobile bottling lines but this new truck is pretty high tech, lots of sensors and automation. On a personal level, I am very excited about the automated capsuling machine that eliminates my job on the bottling truck. I am sure that the computer controlled machine will do a far better job than me and will never get bored of capsuling for 8 hours straight. Special thanks to Dana Lane for the fabulous photos!