The drive

The questions this harvest were always about the drive and how I was moving my wine production from the city to the country.

How's the drive?
Do you miss making wine in Portland?
Do you live at the winery during harvest?

The answers, for the record, are fine, not really, no.

Looking east across the valley from Eola Hills Road

Yes, I live in NE Portland and after six years at winery facilities in the city of Portland, I now drive all the way to the Eola Hills between Dundee and Salem to make my wine.

So how was the drive? Marvelous, mostly.

I grew up in Los Angeles, maybe I'm just used to driving. The hour+ commute each way to my winery home at Grochau Cellars was often just the time I needed to clear my thoughts, listen to my muse, occasionally respond, and generally make sure the countryside and each harvest day and night passed marked.

Willamette River in September from the Wheatland Ferry

The route was mostly the same. Interstate 5 south to Exit 263, then west and a bit north to the Wheatland Ferry, the only car crossing between Newberg and Salem. From the west side of the Ferry, it's just a few minutes up the hill to the winery.

On late nights after the Ferry stopped running, I'd drive back through Dundee and Newberg to Portland. Too busy during the day, late at night the route is quiet and direct, and one September night anyway the stars bright over the Dundee Hills after midnight took my breath away.

A bouquet of fresh hop flowers found on the roadside one morning

Mostly it was a freeway drive without much traffic, then two lane roads through the hop yards of the Willamette Valley, the old school car ferry and my thoughts. And occasionally stopping on the side of the road to finish a conversation before losing cell service.

The sunsets this harvest were exceptional almost every day

I thought I'd spend more nights at the winery, just for convenience. I found I liked getting back home each night, and without proper camping gear (which is changing) I only spent one cold night on the crush pad, under the stars and more thoughts

More on that soon enough.

Red ferments, waiting, punchdowns, doing nothing

Last time I wrote about making white wines. Essentially, that means pressing the grapes right away and fermenting the juice on its own. This method keeps the white wines pale in color and free of astringency that the skins and other solids would give to the wine.

With red wines, you ferment the juice in contact with the grape skins, pulp, seeds, maybe even the stems depending on your preference. The point is to extract lots of things from the grape solids to provide color, flavor and texture to the red wine. Only after fermentation is done do we separate the new red wine from the grape solids.

A fermenter bin full of destemmed Pinot Noir grapes

I'm not sure how to describe my wine making methods other than to say I take a simple approach. I don't add yeast, nor do I add any yeast foods, texture enhancers, and whatever else you can find in the winery supply catalogs. I don't cook that way and I don't think the best wines are made with the intention of totally controlling the outcome.

This harvest, fruit quality was exceptional, meaning there was so little rot or other issues in the grapes that you knew right away on each harvest day that things were going to go well. Think of the nicest fish you've ever cooked - perfectly fresh, like a dream, so you know all you need to do is prepare it simply and the meal couldn't be better.

Making wine is no different. Not every lot of grapes may have the integrity for such a simple approach. Rainy years are particularly difficult as molds and other things can start growing in the grape clusters, potentially hurting the quality of the wine. In 2015, the story of the harvest for me was a consistency of fruit quality from every site I work with so that, as usual, nothing really had to be done.

Pigeage or foot treading the gapes for gentle extraction the old fashioned way.

What does that mean? Fruit is sorted and destemmed (in most cases) into well cleaned fermenter bins. The next day I will do one pump over, or remontage, where I pump the grape juice from the bottom of the vat and spray it gently over the surface to mix and aerate things, much as you are adding oxygen to bread dough in the kneading process. That oxygen feeds the yeast to promote a strong native fermentation.

Then I do nothing. For days.

Ok, I wait, and of course I check on things each day, take temperatures, smell, generally assess how things are going. But I don't punch down the grape skins, mixing things in the fermenter. Instead I'm waiting for fermentation on the surface to build to a point where carbon dioxide production from that activity is strong enough to really make you notice.

The view as I punch down a fermenter of Pinot Noir

Only then do I punch down the fermenter for the first time. In some harvests that can take up to 10 days of waiting. This year, fermentations took off after 5 or 6 days, most likely because even with our cooler than expected September weather, ambient temperatures were higher than you'd see in a normal year of harvesting in early October. Even slightly warmer temps means slightly faster starts to fermentation, one of the many little attributes of each vintage.

Before anyone worries - what, fast fermentations? That sounds bad! - let's not get ahead of ourselves. I'm saying that my natural fermentations run on their own schedules each year, and this year things started a bit more quickly than usual. However, the most significant difference in my red wine making this year compared to prior years is that fermentations lasted longer than usual.

As fermentation continues, I will punch down (mix) the fermenters only once a day, and then not even every day. Wine making school will tell you this will ruin a wine. Without enough mixing, vinegar bacteria or other issues will take hold. My experience is different, and I've found that punching down only a handful of times over the entire fermentation period allows the delicate texture of the wine to come together. Think of lace - work it too much and it tears. Treat it gently and you preserve a delicate, beautiful integrity that means everything.

Close up of the foamy goodness of native yeast fermentation of Pinot Noir.

Some years, even if fermentation takes 10 days to start, after another 10 days the wine is dry (finished fermenting) and the fermenter is ready to drain and press. But this year, even with quicker starts to fermentation, nothing fermented too fast and many of my fermenters took 24 and up to 28 days from harvest to be ready to drain and press.

The dark, already pretty clear color of free run Pinot Noir.

That extra contact time with the grape solids often gives a wine more savory, complex flavors and aromas beyond fresh fruit qualities. The potential downside of longer "skin contact" could be increased tannin, perhaps even bitterness, and perhaps losing too much freshness. It's a balancing act, but with warm summer and perfectly healthy fruit, I found that the added skin contact time for the new wines helped draw out a vinuos quality in favor of loads of fresh, dense fruit. Some of that is good, too much is not really wine but fruit juice.

By contrast, the lighter colored, murky press wine that needs settling.

As usual, when draining a fermenter and pressing the grape solids, I let the new wine settle for a couple of days before filling barrels. The goal is to allow a good bit of the suspended solids to settle out, so that there's some but not too much lees (sediment) in the barrels as the wines age.

Pressing white grapes

With red grapes, the basic process for making wine is fermenting the grape skins, pulp, seeds, maybe stems and of course the grape juice all together. Only when fermentation is done do you load the press with the grape solids and press out the wine.

Old vine 108 clone Chardonnay from Namaste Vineyard

With white grapes, things are easier and more difficult. Easier in that you typically press the grapes right away to get just the juice – no pulp or seeds or skins – and ferment the juice in tanks or barrels. There are no daily punch downs as with making red wine.

But it's harder to press unfermented fruit. Grapes are pulpy and don't want to give up their juice too easily. Grapes are also sticky and attract lots of bees, so loading the press is a little more dangerous if you don't want to get stung.

Loading Pinot Blanc into the press by hand, one shovel load at a time

This year I worked with Chardonnay from three different vineyards and Pinot Blanc from a single site. Having a small press at the new winery – something we will likely change in the years ahead – meant loading the press several times. By hand, one shovel full of grapes at a time for literally tons of fruit. Forget crossfit, this is body by harvest, good honest work that gives you time to think.

The beautiful inside of a well cleaned, several years old French oak barrel for white wine

As with my red wines, I like to let the freshly pressed white juice settle to a few days before filling barrels. This process allows the gross lees, or sediment, to settle out so the white juice is more pure for its fermentation. Fermentation in always native with my white and red wines, meaning no yeasts added, fermentation happening only with yeasts on the grapes and in the air. After fermentation, the wine stays on the sediment in the barrels – mostly yeast cells, what we call the fine lees – to age and gain richness.

Pulling a sample of fermenting Chardonnay from a barrel

This year the Pinot Blanc fermented dry – no sugar remaining – in just a few weeks, which was fairly quick. The Chardonnays have taken longer, with one barrel just about dry, a few others nearing the end of fermentation, and two barrels still with a few percent of sugar nearly two months after picking. Some producers worry about slow fermenting whites but I like the longer ferment, provided things continue to move.

The yeasty glow of fermenting white wine in barrel

While harvest is now done, the one bit of harvest work that continues is keeping my eye on those Chardonnay barrels, to chart their progress, taste as things go to make sure nothing funny is happening, and wait for fermentation to finish on its own. Sometimes it can take until the following spring, which is fine.

This sample of Chardonnay is nearing the end of fermentation

In life I think the longer the cure, the stronger the bond. I don't mind waiting, though I'll keep checking in to see how things progress. And because I love the perfume of new (and old) wine.