Woodward Canyon Winery March 2001

Summer was hot and very, very dry, leading to a very early crush. The fruit in the Walla Walla Valley was at least two weeks ahead of fruit elsewhere, and it was RIPE. Reds ripened before whites and all at once - it was a madhouse. Rick was in his pickup, driving between vineyards taking samples and trying to decide what to pick when. The production crew shuffled tanks and barrels, as everything became full to the max. Just when we didn’t have room for another grape, it lightly rained for two days, providing a break and a chance to move more wine into barrel. Then came more heat and another flurry of grape arrivals. As the fog and clouds now move in, everything is crushed, pressed and fermenting in tank or barrel, and talk of which lots will go into what blends begins again.
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Vineyard When the vineyard was first planted in the late 1970s, wheat fields surrounded it. Over the years, with the drop in grain prices, the interest in preventing erosion and in restoring habitat, that land is no longer cropped. It has been enrolled in a government program that requires it to be planted with native grasses and maintained as such in exchange for payments. In addition, the conditions that were attached to the water right that we obtained last year required that native shrubs and trees be planted and that a “dribbler” be provided for wildlife. The dribbler is a metal catch basin for rainwater that provides a source of water in an otherwise arid environment. Prior to harvest, the vineyard crew spent quite a lot of time preparing the land outside of the vineyard for the planting of sagebrush, juniper trees and other native plants. This has been a long-time interest of Rick’s and we are excited to anticipate the change in the landscape.

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Our estate vineyard crops were very light this year due to the drought conditions and the hit of errant 2-4D in the middle of the growing season. With limited water, the plants could not grow well past the chemical damage. Winter will bring more talks with our grain-growing neighbors to the south in Oregon that use that herbicide.

In order to increase quality, other vineyards also cut back on water and dropped more fruit. This resulted in incredibly concentrated flavors and some of the highest sugars that we have ever seen. The fruit looked good and tasted great as it came in. This should be a fantastic vintage. The only thing that we will have to watch for in the fruit that came in from some vineyards will be high alcohols. We are doing some things, such as fermenting the Estate fruit on its native yeasts that we hope will mitigate those alcohols.

The final terraces have been created, and the vineyard crew has moved from harvesting to installation of posts in order to be ready to plant the last fifteen acres next spring.

Winery

As Rick drove to the vineyards to determine when to pick, the production crew readied the crushing and pressing equipment and filled rows of new barrels with water to swell them and make them ready to receive the new wine. For the first time we are trying out some larger barrels for the syrah and barbera, 120 gallon or 454 liter barrels made in Italy.

This was the second year using the PC Blend computer software that tracks the grapes from the vineyard to the bottle and keeps a record of the use of each tank and barrel. Over time we will be able to look at the reports that can be generated and find information on trends in pH, sugar or resulting alcohols in certain vineyards or how the use of particular yeasts effected the wines. The barrels are labeled with bar codes that are read by a scanner that enables us to know what wine was in each barrel and for how long. When the production team has made blending decisions based on taste, the program can be used to match their blend percentage to the number of barrels of each wine needed to make that blend for the desired amount of total gallons. While we do many things in the winery in the traditional manner, the wise use of technology can help make the best use of time and information.

Besides our regular crew, we had two French interns and a college student helping. In a normal year, both the college student and one of the student interns would have had to go back to school long before crush was over. But this year, they were with us for almost all of it due to the early season. They spent a lot of their time in the hot sun on the sorting table, and the cool classrooms were probably a relief.

There are particular smells of crush that make you smile each year when they return. The vineyards hanging with ripe fruit, the full boxes of grape clusters waiting to be crushed, the grape skins or pommice that is left after pressing and the fermenting juice all have a particular odor. This year the winery continues to smell of pommice because we have piled it in the field behind the tasting room for use as mulch in our new flowerbeds.

The tragic events in New York and the slowing economy have impacted some wine markets, so Rick and Gilles will be spending more time out in the markets working with our distributors to ensure that sales remain steady.

Thank You

We have been honored to be the Grape Escape’s featured winery this year. In looking back at the first column, I see that we talked about the local wine industry and noted that we were approaching 30 wineries. Today we have 31 bonded wineries in the Walla Walla Valley and, with a number in the permitting process, are approaching 40. There are approximately 404 hectares of vineyard now planted and at least 22 more going in next spring. This has not been without some controversy as change is not always easy to accept, particularly where grain crops have been “king” for years. The wine industry is booming statewide as well. The Washington Wine Commission, an industry trade group, estimates that the wine grape crop harvested this year in Washington was a record 97,000 tons. We feel very fortunate to be involved in an exciting, dynamic business and to be able to do something that we love. We also very much appreciate your interest and support. Cheers!