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Just heard from our second grower with an update: sugars are starting to eek into the right range (22.5 – 23.5), but the acids are still high enough that the whole package is simply out of balance. So it’s only time to pick if we have no other alternative, but for now, it looks like we do — no major storms appear to be coming, and no severe frosts are predicted. The grower’s still leery of frost, but feels confident the grapes will make it to next weekend.

By that time, the fruit will have hung another week, cinching up those sugars (though not too much, since it’ll be relatively cool), and bringing acids down to levels we can deal with. With luck, that may actually get us ideal fruit: sugars in the 24-25 range focused by just the right amount of acidity, and true physiological ripeness. We got syrah pretty much at the peak; let’s hope we can make it 3 out of 4.

I got word from our other grower that this weekend the fruit’s coming off his vineyard, ready or not. It’s been a difficult year for him, as it has for a lot of growers in the region: late fruit set in the spring means late ripening in the fall, and this grower is feeling that especially.

I’m still waiting for numbers from him, but I’ll be heading east on Saturday or Sunday to pick up Cabernet Sauvignon and our treasured Cabernet Franc. Late though it may be, I’m hoping we get the same luck we got with Westrey’s Oracle Pinot this year – not jammy ripe, but physiologically ripe, that special interlocking sensation when everything’s in balance and the fruit lasts and lasts on your tongue. Some of that’s due to extra hang time during cool fall nights, which keeps the acid intact even as ripeness progresses during the day. We’ll know soon enough!

In other news, the syrah is mighty happy to see us. So happy, in fact, that it’s overflowing its fermenter. In the interest of retaining thermal mass (the same principle as huddling together for warmth, I’d guess), I decided to divide one of the extra 30-gallon fermenters of syrah between another 30-gallon and the stainless steel tank. Was it close to the top? Oh, sure, a little, but what could go wrong? Now I know.

There’s nothing quite like the first run of the season. It’s early and dim, but it isn’t long before you’ve shaken the Portland traffic and the sun starts to rise, raking across the suede hills on the other side of the Columbia and shimmering the mist rising off of it. On the second, third, and fourth runs… well, it’ll still be stunning, but the season will then be a little older, a little more corporeal, not quite as lush with promise — its ineffability worn thin enough in some places to reveal the eff’ing tedious 8 hour slog up and down I-84 that whizzed right by on the first run.

So I tried to pay attention as I pointed the Ziptruck east toward the Tri Cities and Merlot from Horse Heaven. Unfortunately, I hadn’t thought to pay attention to traffic reports before I set out, so I was also rewarded with a bridge closure at Maryhill and an hour-long detour. It beats working, don’t get me wrong, but also meant the fruit would get that much warmer as the day got hotter.

You want cold fruit for the same reason you keep things cool in a refrigerator: to slow down the inevitable feast by micro- and other card-carrying organisms. That slows down spoilage, of course, but in this case, also helps to put off the drunken riot yeasts will start once they get a taste of the good stuff. We like to crush and give the juice a little quality time with the skins (where most of the flavor comes from), but once the yeasts show up, that romantic evening for two quickly accelerates into table dancing, beer bongs, and karaoke.

I didn’t pull into the vineyard until nearly noon. The affable grower rounded up a crew to gather the yellow totes of fruit, left by the pickers up and down the rows where they’d filled them, but by the time it hit the back of the truck the clusters were easily over 70 degrees…

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It’s official: the Merlot’s clocking in between 25 and 27 brix (a measurement of sugar), so it’s time for us to tear off our nerdy glasses and spring into action.

If those are really numbers pulled from a refractometer (a hand-held gizmo that measures sugar by how much it bends light – space age!), they can tend to be a little high. I don’t have enough experience to say that’s a fact, but if that’s at all true, it’s because the average you get from an entire harvest (across rows and rows of plants) can’t be totally replicated with a few hand-picked samples. And at least when I’ve done it, it’s pretty hard not to veer moth-like toward those nice, riper looking clusters, try as you might to be objective.

Anyway, we’ll know soon enough. My ideal is a total brix somewhere in the 25 range, maybe 25.5, but we can totally work with 27 if we need to.

On to the valley of the Yakima!

Just got off the phone with one of our growers in Horse Heaven, where the Merlot is coming on strong — in fact, it may be ready by the weekend or early next week.

As of the 18th, block samples ranged from 23.7 – 25.8 brix, .64-.53 TA (acidity), and 3.2 – 3.3 pH. Those are still out of balance, so he’s been putting a little water on the grapes to keep the sugars in check and buy some time while the acidity declines. Given the numbers we typically get with Eastern Washington fruit (much higher pHs than Willamette Valley fruit), I’d love to see us in the 3.6 pH ballpark, with sugars right around 24.5-25.

Sounds like the grower shares that objective, so things are looking good for a lovely Merlot to start harvest off just right. Better get the basement winery remodel done!

(btw, he estimates Syrah as still about 2-3 weeks out)

Man, it’s suddenly pretty crisp in the evenings, prompting me to check in with our growers. They confirm what I’ve already heard — that everything’s behind schedule in the Northwest this year because of a cold, rainy spring and late flowering. Nevertheless, Eastern Washington appears to be making up some of that lost ground, though even so, we can’t expect any fruit before the last week of September at the earliest.

With Cab, Merlot, Cab Franc, and Syrah on deck this year — to say nothing of a bit of tasty Westrey Oracle Vineyard Pinot and seignées of some of the above — October promises to be a blur of fermentation.

Life is good.

Looking west from the lower, still-to-be-planted part of Westrey‘s Oracle Vineyard