Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Barrels and More Barrels


This week at Pepper Bridge we are in the midst of final preparations for harvest. We are just about 3 weeks away from bringing in fruit, depending on what mother nature has in store for us here in Walla Walla. We have been receiving new barrels on an almost daily basis. Our wine making team has been busy in the cave prepping barrels for the new vintage. Assistant Wine Maker, Tim Kerrigan has been receiving and unwrapping new oak barrels all week. All of our barrels are made in France and this year we have about 90 new barrels from 6 different coopers. Tim will be labeling and numbering all of the new barrels, adding them to the list of barrels that he will be filling soon with wine. There is a master plan for what wine goes in what barrels, so Tim keeps careful track of all the barrels. Cellar Master, Horacio Enriquez has been busy cleaning our used barrels, rinsing them with hot water and treating them with sulphur. About 50% of the 2009 vintage will be aged in used barrels. For us, a used barrel means that it has been used for one prior vintage. We age our wines in barrel anywhere from 18 to 24 months. So when we get a new barrel it will hold wine for about two years, when the wine is removed, that barrel is considered used. We will then use that barrel for one more vintage. After that, we will either sell the barrel to another winery or to locals that have creative uses for wine barrels, i.e. planters, furniture, wood for grilling. By the end of the week all the barrels should be clean, on racks, stacked, and ready to hold wine.

Sunday, August 16, 2009

2008 Blend is in the Barrel

We are getting so very close to the beginning of the 2009 Harvest here in the Walla Walla Valley! It is a very exciting time. Our managing partner, Norm McKibben, estimates that we are at 80% veraison in the vineyard. Arturo and the vineyard crew have begun putting up the netting to keep the birds from eating the ripe grapes. Just a few more weeks to go and the grapes will be ready for picking. This means that assistant winemaker, Tim Kerrigan and cellar master, Horacio Enriquez have been hard at work making room in the winery for the 2009 wines. We have two barrel rooms here at Pepper Bridge, one for the most recent vintage and one for last year's vintage. Since the 2007 vintage has been bottled, it is time to move the 2008 vintage to make room for 2009. This also means that it is time to assemble the final blend and rack the 2008 Cabernet Sauvignon. For the 2008 Cab there are two vineyards, Seven Hills and Pepper Bridge, there a 18 separate blocks of grapes, 5 different varietals, put into 105 barrels from 8 different coopers. It is a lot of wine to keep track of. Our wine maker, Jean-François, and Tim have spent the last year doing blending trials. That means tasting samples from all of the barrels and all of the varietals and building blends out of all the different components. It sounds like a dream come true I know but it is actually a very difficult job. It is much like building a recipe, adding a dash of Malbec to the Cabernet and seeing how it tastes, then maybe adding two dashes of Cabernet Franc and tasting again. Blending is really quite artful and displays a wine maker's palate as well as their organization. Don't forget that for the 08 Cab we had 105 barrels of wine, each with a different flavor profile. Once the final blend has been assembled, it is time to rack the wine. Racking is basically a filtering process. As the wine ages in barrel, sediments in the wine, called lees, will fall to the bottom. Tim uses a racking wand to pull the wine out of the barrel, being careful not to disturb the lees. When all the wine is out, they will clean all the sediment from the barrel with hot water and ozone and then put the wine back. Typically the wine will be racked twice to three times in its two years in barrel. This process removes most of the sediment from the wine. Now that the 08 Cab has been blended and racked, it is being moved to the second barrel room where it will rest until it is bottled next July. Taking the Cab's place in barrel room number one are daily deliveries of new French oak barrels that will be filled with 2009 wines!

Sunday, August 9, 2009

2006 Seven Hills Vineyard Designate

Cabernets and Merlots are the focal point here at Pepper Bridge, but we do make a couple of special gems that are Bordeaux blends. Our winemaker, Jean-François, makes two special wines for our wine club members that are vineyard designate blends. Depending on the year, our Cabs and Merlots are usually made up of a 50/50 blend of the two vineyards. Our two vineyards, Pepper Bridge and Seven Hills, are only about 10 miles apart but the differences are dramatic. Pepper Bridge Vineyard, which surrounds the winery is typically the more masculine, with bigger tannins and bolder fruit flavor. On the flip side, the Seven Hills Vineyard, on the Oregon side of the valley is the feminine, with more minerality, softer fruit, and an earthy quality that Jean-François likes to describe as dusty malt. The vineyard designate blends are a fun way to taste the vineyard differences. For the 2006 vintage, the Pepper Bridge Vineyard is a Merlot based blend, a first for Jean-François. It is a big wine and shows off the power of Walla Walla Merlot. The 06 Seven Hills Vineyard is a blend of 50% Cab, 40% Merlot, and 10% Cab Franc. 2006 vintage is the first time that Jean-François has had Cabernet Franc from the estate vineyard for the blend and you can smell and taste its influence on the wine. Loads of spice, currants, cherries, plums, with that earthy note that is so distinctly Seven Hills Vineyard. This wine is smooth and delicious and Wine & Spirits Magazine agrees. The August issue gives the 2006 Seven Hills Vineyard a 94. Of course the only catch is that we craft this wine for our Bridge Club members only. So if you want some of this wine you can join the club or bribe a club member friend to get some for you.

Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Veraison in the Vineyard


We have had a long hot streak here in Walla Walla the past few weeks. Has it been 100 degrees and more since the middle of July. It can be a little warm for the human residents of the valley but the grapes love it. These warm days, and warm nights, have gotten the grapes moving. We got off to a late start this spring with bud break about 2 weeks behind schedule. This warm snap has seemingly gotten the vineyards back on schedule, possibly even a little ahead of schedule. Normally when temperatures spike over 100 the vines shut down and not much grape ripening occurs. For whatever reason this has not been the case with our recent weather. The grapes have been ripening right through the hot hot heat and veraison is upon us in the vineyard. Veraison is my favorite time in the vineyard. It is only just beginning in the Pepper Bridge Vineyard, with clusters having only a couple of berries changing colors. Once the color change is in full swing, the grapes clusters are beautiful. Each berry on a cluster can be a different color from green to dark purple and the colors change every day until suddenly everything is purple. Veraison is a very important time in the vineyard, we want the ripening to happen evenly and quickly. This heat has made for a more complicated job for the vineyard crew. They are thinning grape clusters at the moment, making sure that each plant is limited to a set number of clusters. All the extras, small, and incorrectly positioned clusters will be removed. With all this dry heat we have been irrigating the vineyard, but it is a juggle, too much water and the plants will waste energy growing more foliage, too little water and the plants can become over stressed, the grapes can get sunburned, and pests can take hold. This time of year you can see Rick Trumbull riding through the vineyard checking for trouble. He specializes in vineyard health, making sure that the vines are getting the right amount of water and nutrients, as well as looking out for problems like mildew and bugs. At the moment Rick is on the lookout for mites which can multiply quickly on vines that are stressed by the heat. It is a complicated time of year in the vineyard, with lots of important decisions and hard work for Jean-Francois and the vineyard crew, but is an exciting time. We are getting close to harvest 2009!