Les Welcome
Whether by intent or tragic mis-typing, you’ve landed on the home of Les Garagistes winery collective. If you’re new to our dark cabal, a rich and heady stew of bad French grammar and subterranean winemaking awaits. But where to start? Here are a few suggestions:
- First, you might take a quick stroll through last year’s vintage escapades, accumulated over the two critical months of September 2009 and October 2009 (remember that the posts are presented with the earliest at the bottom of the page).
- Then, who are these Garagistes and where do they get off? And didn’t I hear they were dead?
- We sully the fine pages of Fine Cooking Magazine
- Winehenge: the movie. If that’s not enough to get you to click…
- A French oak barrel primer
- Red, Rex Sox (Yankees fans, be forewarned)
- Plastic capsules and why we switched to paper
- Lastly, mourn with the Moody Blues as they appear to lament the end of a Les Garagistes harvest.
Thanks much for stopping by. We’ve got fruit lined up for 2010 — with new varietals ensuring we’ll be making even more up as we go along — so another exciting vintage is just ahead. Hope you can join us for it, and let us know what you think of what we’ve cobbled together.
Blending (and, much later, bottling) the ’06
Last weekend, we got together for what we thought would be a relatively quick blending and bottling session. Our mission: blend the 2006 Peugeot and squirrel it away until March; blend the 2006 Deux-Chevaux and bottle it; and then bottle the remaining Merlot.
Unfortunately, we discovered too late that we aren’t quite set up to blend that much wine at one sitting: we need a much larger blending vessel. So we had to divide the Peugeot blend in half which slowed us to an escargot’s pace. In fact, I don’t think we got to bottling until 10:30 or so. That’s just too long, despite the good spirits and ample, lubricating vino.
So here’s a general call for a used, stainless steel blending and fermenting vessel, open-topped if possible, somewhere in the 750 liter (~200 gallon) range. In the Willamette Valley area and got one you want to unload? Send us an email, a few photos, and what you want for it.
Despite the long night, however, I think we were all amazed at the quality of the Peugeot going into the bottle: deep, ruby color; lovely nose; nice richness and fresh fruit in the mouth but well-integrated tannins and backbone. Can’t wait to enjoy it.
And happy anniversary to Brian and Liz, who spent a bit of their magic evening with us studiously sampling the blend for any flaws (there were none, natch). Yes, when it comes to romantic ambiance, our basement lair is unequalled.
More photos below the waterline…
A few images from the evening:
Things began smoothly enough as we siphoned Cabernet out of tank into the blend:
The problem was that our vast facility has damn low ceilings, so the difference in liquid levels from source to vessel moved sloooooowly.
Ultimately, however, the Peugeot found its final resting spot in a few comfy barrels.
Winning lottery ticket? Robert Parker’s cell phone number?
