Spring 2011 Vineyard Update

Madeleine Angvevine

Spring!? It's July already. Argh. Lots of water under the bridge, so to speak. Time for a quick update on the vineyard.
First, I wanted to try some different vinifera varieties here at Raven's Call (in Puyallup, WA) so purchased a bunch of grafted plants from Cloud Mountain Nursery, Everson WA. They had also just pruned their wine grape test blocks and let me pick up Siegerrebe prunings, as I needed to replace some of my plantings that did not survive. I also grabbed a Gruner Veltliner cutting as it was readily available.
In addition, we took a spring trip up Whidbey Island and stopped at Whidbey Island Winery, where they were nice enough to give me cuttings for Madeleine Sylvaner, a white they use to blend with other whites (like Muller-Thurgau).
Later this spring a vintner friend visting a wine grape nursery in OR bought for me 5 other grafted plants that I didn't have yet.
With these new grafted plants, and the cuttings I (have now) rooted, my current tally is... 34 different "treatments" - where a treatment is any different combination of varietal and rootstock. Here is the roster:

Even though our weather here has been lousy, I am still always impressed with the new growth in the vineyard. As a sort of time-lapse, here are some select photos of the last few weeks (months?) at RCV. (Remember you can click any photo for a much higher resolution version.)

14-May-11 Buds just starting to swell.

14-May-11 Swelling buds.

24-May-11 Nice new growth. Fruits are becoming visible.

06-Jun-11 North Block

06-Jun-11 Madeleine Angevine fruits.

06-Jun-11 South block. Pinot noir on the left and Pinot blanc on the right. Finally getting settled in.

12-Jun-11 Nice progress.

12-Jun-11 Mad Ang

19-Jun-11 Mad Ang

01-Jul-11 Northern block this morning.

01-Jul-11 Mad Ang are very vigorous. Lots of fruit this year.

01-Jul-11 Mad Ang rows.

01-Jul-11 Pinot noir and Pinot blanc. Looking much better this year.

Well, just wanted to share some photos and update the status. Enjoy!

2010 Wine Production

My, it's been a while since I updated things here!
First, a wrapup of winter activities. I did finish up the wine rack so that I could store the fall 2010 wine production. Here is the finished product, partially loaded (180 bottle capacity).

By the end of the vinting season I had it pretty well filled up! We ended up with 25 bottles of estate Madeleine Angevine. After bottling it and letting it rest, both the acidity tests (0.70 TTA) and the taste tests indicated that it was not going to be a pleasant wine. Accordingly, I researched and decided to attempt to de-acidify the Mad Ang. I purchased potassium carbonate and generated from one bottle 3 different treatments and levels, and for comparison I had the unaltered RC 2010 Mad Ang and a commercially produced Mad Ang. One of the three RCMA treatments had only deacidification, and ended up at 0.67 TTA (targeted 0.65). The second treatment was deacidified and "conditioned" with invert sugar up to about 1.0% residual sugar (whereas the original RCMA was fermented to dryness and had residual sugar below the detection limits of the glucose test (that is, <0.25% Residual). The third and final treatment was simple a 50:50 blend of the first two, leaving a calculated 0.65 TTA and a 0.5% residual sugar.

The samples chilled, and after writing the treatment on a card, the cards were turned over and taped to the wine glass bases. I left the room while a helper came in and shuffled the glasses. I returned and each label was given a given letter codes. The two of us then did "blind" taste testing and arranged them, by agreement, in order of "most acidic" to "sweetest", and from among this ranking had these comments (please excuse our novice use of likely improper wine terms - we are by no means professional tasters...) :

A: Good nose, but is way too tart initially, then a flat finish.

B: Not a great initial aroma, then "flabby" on the tongue, with a flat finish

C: is very much like B above. Not great.

D: poor nose, flabby start, a nice finishing taste but way too sweet for our tastes.

E: Our decided favorite of the bunch. Decent (but not great) initial nose, nice "bright" start, and a nice finishing taste.

Now for the code results and acidity and residual sugar:

I was pleased that we were able to readily detect significant differences between the treatments, and more importantly, that I was able to "correct" a vintage that did not turn out that well (what can you expect with only slightly over 1,200 Growing Degree Days of heat here in Puyallup in 2010. Many local commercial vineyards didn't even bother picking their grapes last year - it was that bad.)

Our 2010 Regent was also under-ripe, but had to be picked. We only had two gallons of wine to go to secondary, although I did try a malolactic fermentation mid-way through the primary - trying to bring the acidity down). After putting it on medium toast French oak for 4 weeks, I racked it back to a carboy, but needed additional wine to fill the 3-gallon carboy. Since the 2009 RC Regent was not memorable, I decided to fill off the remainder of the carboy with Syrah. I used about 3 liters of a 2010 Yakima Valley kit Syrah that I had going, and 4 bottles of our RC 2009 Yakima Valley Syrah to top it off. This left a 43% Syrah, 57% Regent blend that tested out at 0.47 TTA - which seems pretty good. The nose is very much Syrah, which I like, especially since the Regent had little. This was bottled in April of 2011 (15 bottles) and from my tasting at that time it seems very promising. The Syrah predominates, so maybe it is essentially using my Regent to dilute a pretty good Syrah. Hard to say.

Besides the kit Syrah mentioned above, (which was actually 2009 grapes), we obtained 2010 harvest Eastern Washington grapes from a source at a small winery in Woodinville. At separate times they brought over and pressed both Sauvignon Blanc and then later Viognier grapes. In both cases I picked up 6 gallons of juice the morning after it was pressed - a very nice way to make wine!

Both whites resulted in very nice white wines. The Sav Blanc in particular is very "bright" and crisp. The grapes were purportedly from the well-regarded Boushey Vineyards in Grandview. I was surprised and pleased to get such quality, and it seems to have paid off well in the resulting wine.

So our 2010 production here at Raven's Call resulted in about 140 bottles total production, nearly filling the new wine rack!

Ice Wine (Eiswein) Anyone?

Brrrr... It's very cold here (compared to any weather we normally get, especially in November. Ice wine can be produced when wine grapes are left to hang and are frozen down to 19 degrees F (Canadian specs). The ice is (essentially) pure water, so if pressed while frozen, the resulting must (juice) is highly concentrated for sugar (and other flavorful constituents).
A couple months ago I wondered how many years, here in Puyallup, we have passed through 19 degrees F, such that the temperature would be correct for pressing ice wines. I found that for the nearby WSU Puyallup Ag weather station readings, every year back for 6 or 8 years there was a cold snap where temperatures were lower than 19 F. Thus, it would have been possible to press ice wine if one still had grapes hanging. Unfortunately, for the prior 4 or 5 years before that, the minimum daily temperatures never got below 20 F, so a saved crop of grapes would have been wasted. (Well, I guess one could press a "late harvest" in late January, after giving up on ice wine).
But no problem this year. The data below shows our recent cold snap.



It should be noted that it is rare, here,  for the daily high not to get above freezing. In fact, for the official SeaTac weather records, the daytime high has never before been below freezing in November. (Global warming? Really?)
Two particular points to note above. First, the cold weather on the night of 22-23-Nov was exacerbated by strong gusty winds out of the north. Blowing snow left rare snowdrifts here. Then it got still and really cold. The 9.8 degrees recorded at the WSU Puyallup station was about as low as I have seen in their records, and it was actually colder here. It was 7.7 F at 3:30 AM.
So I have left the few grape clusters on my Zweigeltrebe, Pinot Noir and Pinot Blanc, and thought I would see how much the sugar was concentrated in frozen berries.

Snowy Frozen Pinot Noir

 The Vineyard is all pruned for next year.

All three of the remaining grape varietals had been stuck at about 15-16 Brix since early November. I decided to do a test pressing on the frozen grapes. Using a chilled garlic press, I was able to squeeze about one tiny drop out of each frozen berry I tested (air temp wa 21.9 degrees F - a bit high but what I had when it was light). All 3 varieties now produced juice with 24 or 26 Brix. Still not high enough to meet Canadian ice wine standards (min 35 Brix), but certainly better than 15. Still, I could have pressed all my remaining grapes and probably not gotten a teaspoon of juice.

On a more favorable front, the Madeleine Angevine, Sauvignon Blanc and Viognier wines were all fined and placed in the cool back porch to clear.

2010 Madeleine Angevine, Sauvignon Blanc, and Viognier

I lightly oaked the Mad Ang with medium toast French oak chips for about 2 weeks, as it was still pretty acidic (0.85 TTA). I decided to medium oak the Sav Blanc with some Hungarian oak cubes I had. I'm going to try 3 weeks on that. No oak for the Viognier.

Our current "wine cellar" (aka back porch) is completely full of bottles, so after these 3 batches are bottled (about 90 bottles) I will really need additional storage space. I decided to build a wine rack that fit the maximum number of bottles in exactly the space I have available. First I built a small pine prototype to fit the largest diameter Burgundy bottles as tightly as practical (2mm clearance between...).

After getting the spacings figured out, I used relatively inexpensive western maple (bigleaf) to build a full-width, but limited height version. The western maple turned out to be too soft.

So for the full-sized version I used Eastern "rock" maple. Here is the full-sized frame, test fit into it's allotted space. With a bit of trimming here and there from shelves, etc. it fits like a glove. It will hold 180 bottles once all the shelves are completed. Just need to finish 16 more shelves...

But I did load up the bottom shelves with my newly bottled Mad Ang just to make sure they all fit.

End of the season

Dark and rainy in the morning, dark and rainy in the evening. Definitely the end of the 2010 grape season. The Madeleine Angevine has been racked twice, fined with Kielesol and chitosan, and I decided to oak it with medium toast French Oak. It has cleared very nicely.

5 Gallons of Madeleine Angevine

We had a very heavy rain last night and it pretty well stripped all the leaves off all the grapevines.

Raven's Call Vineyard Nov-2020

 I am leaving the few clusters on the individual plants that did not have enough fruit to pick and ferment. I'm trying to better understand how long the fruit can hang in this cold rainy climate before it splits and rots, or if it will still get higher sugar content. The Pinot Blanc started splitting in the rain, even though the Brix is not that high (individual berries today tested at about 14 Brix..).

Pinot Blanc Nov-10

The grafted Zweigelt-rebe also seems to have thin skins - many berries are splitting.

Zweigelt-rebe 

The grape that is surprising me is the Pinot Noir. They just keep hanging in there - no splitting, no rot. They are beautiful.

Pinot Noir 07-Nov-10

 Pinot Noir

 Pinot Noir

The problem is... they are not developing any higher sugar content. The Brix is still testing right around 17. Not great, but apparently with temperatures in the 50 to 60's for highs, they are simply not going to do any better. But they sure are pretty.

Regent Harvest and Crush

2010 Regent Harvest at Raven's Call Vineyard - 23 pounds of grapes.

Although we've had very cool weather, so not much ripening of the Regent grapes here at Raven's Call Vineyard, it has also been rainy, and more predicted, with continuing cool temperatures. There do not seem to be any berries splitting yet, even though Brix by refractometer shows 12-15% sugar. Close inspection of the vineyard shows some clusters have fallen off, a few berries are shriveling or rotting (not many, though), and the birds are getting a few where they found some accessible under the netting. So time harvest, I decided.

Regent crop on best 3rd-year plants

 A nice Regent cluster.

 My field assitant harvesting.

 Total crop - 23 lbs off of about 20 plants vigorous enough to fruit.

 Mysterious "floating-grapes" photo.

 Cleaning clusters and crushing.

 De-stemmed.

 Primary fermenter - just under 2 gallons must.

The Brix, by refractometer, on the free-run juice only tests at 14%, so I chapalitized up to 23. I also warmed the must up to about 80 degrees F to get the fermentation off to a better start (since low 80s are recommended for reds, and my batch is too small to generate enough warmth on it's own to keep the temperature up there). Sure smells good once the fermentation kicked in!

COOL... literally

2010 Grape Growing Degree Days



It’s been a pretty dismal grape growing season here in Puget Sound, and apparently all across the state (and up and down the west coast, so I hear). This chart from the WSU Viticulture site shows that 2010 is about as bad as it has ever been (in 18 years of recorded history, of course..). (The WSU-IAREC headquarters are in Prosser, WA.)

 

Remember that Puget Sound AVA is pretty pitiful, historically, compared to eastern WA AVAs.

And then (at least at Mt. Vernon, which is the reported reference station for Puget Sound on the WSU site), this year has been equally below the long-term average.

But when I download the raw data from the station close to our vineyard (WSU Puyallup station – only 0.90 miles from our place), and compare to Mt. Vernon, it shows we are doing considerably better here than Mt. Vernon.

We are just below 1,600 GDD, and not likely to gain too much more. Unfortunately I have not yet found where to download the long-term average for the WSU Puyallup station, so cannot say specifically how this year compares with average at this location, but I am certain it is proportionally as bad as other locations have been.

Still, after all the charts, it's good to remember that it's all about the fruit:

Pinot noir at Raven's Call Vineyard

 

Madeleine Angevine Crushed!

Time to harvest.

 

Yes, Mad Ang was picked and crushed. I have been chagrined at how rapidly the fruit quality is declining. While they were nicely cropped:

Madeleine Angevine 2010 Crop

 as shown below, with the recent rains, many berries were splitting, then they rapidly rotted. Even though last year I vowed to let them hang longer to get the sugar content up (last year we hit 16.5 Brix),  I decided I had better pick if I was going to salvage anything.

About 10 to 20% of the fruit is rotting on the vine.

 First we picked the 8 vigorous plants that had no cluster thinning. The yield was 24 pounds of fruit. For 3rd year crop, 3 pounds per plant is not bad. Even steady-state mature plants should probably only give about 4 pounds per plant, given what I've read.

24 pounds Mad Ang from 8 unthinned 3-year plants

 Then we picked 12 more plants of similar vigor, but for which I thinned each shoot to just the one main cluster per shoot. This yielded 28 pounds (shown in opening photo), or 2.3 pounds per plant. Logically, less. However, I could detect no difference in size, amount of rot, nor sugar content. Both these first two batches were crushed and measured separately, and they were the same Brix... 16.5, just like last year.  With the 17 pounds more from the straggler plants, the total 2010 harvest was 69 pounds. The rotten berries were tediously picked out by hand, then we crushed.

The crush

Not having a de-stemmer, we did it the old-fashioned way, by hand.

Stems on left, crush in center, must on left.

 The must was left on the skins overnight, then pressed the next morning. This supposedly give enzymes a chance to break down some of the cells, releasing more juice on the crush, but without giving time for bitter components to come of of the skins. The newly-built press worked like a charm! Guess building a prototype was a worthwhile effort.

The press

 All done - must ready to ferment on the right. Just over 4 gallons. Pressed skins on the left go on the compost pile.

4 gallons 2010 Madeleine Angevine must ready to ferment

 The vineyard looks sad without fruits.

Naked vineyard.

 But the Regents are still hanging in there. Should be a couple more weeks before we pick them. They show no signs of splitting, even though the sugar content has been nearly as high as the Mad Ang. Must have thicker skins.

Regent

 The Mad Ang must was pretty high in acid, and low in sugar content. It was chaptalized up to 21.5 Brix, but no adjustment to acidity. We'll see.