Les Blog

I finally had a chance to shoot our current stable of wine releases, which — holy crap — are kind of numerous. Who snuck into our basement and made all this wine, anyway?

From left to right, ya got yer:

• 2008 Aldercreek Syrah
• 2008 Cowan Cabernet Sauvignon
• 2009 Peugeot Nouveau (Coyote Canyon)
• 2008 Porto (piloted by Aldercreek Merlot)
• 2008 Cowan Cabernet Franc
• 2008 Aldercreek Merlot
• 2008 Oracle Vineyard Pinot Noir

The new label design was driven by a need to capture a little more of the Garagistes’ essential subversiveness, while still presenting a fancy enough front that we can continue to pretend we’re real winemakers. So I dug through some archival clip art to find tools and other gewgaws you might find in a French garage, then tried to pair them with the personality of our various wines.

Some are more successful than others, to be sure. I think the caliper for the Cab Sauv is the shakiest, in part because its essential P shape is a bit of a miscue. Its first home was on the Pinot, actually, but then I fell in love with how racy and devil-may-care the goggles felt on that wine. But calipers do suggest some sense of precision, so I suppose they’re not inappropriate for a Cabernet (though our Cabernet? Well…).

My most brilliant stroke, of course, was using a tricycle for the just-out-of-swaddling-clothes Nouveau, because that gives us a chance to finally break into the child market.

More pics and a frantic disavowal of what I just said after the jump…

Read more

Outside of Georges DuBoeuf’s Beaujolais Nouveau marketing scam, it’s unheard of: releasing a wine in its vintage year. But here in our basement lair, we’re always hearing the unheard (dear Santa: tinfoil hat patch kit, please), so we thought we’d try it, too. The result: last Thursday night, a small group of us got together to bottle the first expression of the 2009 vintage — a “second wine” (or “piquette”) of Cabernet Sauvignon — which we’ve pithily christened “Peugeot Nouveau.”

A second wine is kind of like “small beer”: you take the leftovers from the first round of winemaking (in this case, the cake left over after pressing), and reconstitute it with water, sugar, and sometimes tartaric acid. Since the yeast still lurk within, nursing hangovers from their first binge, the party starts again within a few hours.

Unfortunately for them, there’s a catch: the good times may be rolling again, but the bar’s now only pouring well drinks. Because the vast majority of a red wine’s flavor comes from, essentially, an infusion of juice with grape skins, the first press has carried away the bulk of the good stuff — or so you hope. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t some oomph left in the skins, especially in our case, since our press isn’t pro enough to squeeze the daylights out of them. So for us, a second wine is aptly named: a second chance to capture all the flavor packed into the grapes we bring in.

Still, what you get isn’t exactly a Robert Parker, stand-a-spoon-in-it wine (“I had to use a knife and spread it on pain grillé — 100 points!”), so we decided to embrace its essential, uncomplicated nature. Like Beaujolais Nouveau, it’s fruity and easy drinkin’, but with enough verve and flavor to brighten a dark winter night.

We’ll be “releasing” it New Year’s Eve, just under the wire to taste 2009 in 2009. Happy new year, everyone!

Somehow amidst the frenzy of crush, we managed to bottle last year’s Syrah and Port. Actually, “managed” isn’t quite the right word; “had to or else” is closer to the truth. I’d been thinking we’d try aging both wines for another few months, but we simply needed to free up some space for the 2009s heading pell mell toward the end of fermentation all around us.

Luckily, we had enough people to make it go smoothly, and for our trouble, walked away with a surprisingly luscious Syrah — pure and rich but rewardingly complex. I’d think this one will unclench from its traumatic journey into bottle sometime around the new year, but that said, I won’t do any significant dipping into my stash until late spring at the earliest.

More pics and a bit on the port after the jump…
Read more

That’s right, go ahead. No one’s looking: scratch the screen. Doesn’t that Pinot Noir smell incredible? Good god!

For those of you with older monitors, let me try to describe what it smells like. First, I should say I’ve made Pinot Noir before, and I’ve loved the wine for years. I was even on the Board of the International Pinot Noir Celebration for a while. So I understand why people like it, and I’ve smelled my share of it, during and well after fermentation.

But I don’t think I really understood how it can become an addiction, something winemakers throw their entire lives into, until this began to overwhelm my senses. Holy shit: this is ambrosial.

Some of it is surely how much is packed into this fragrance: ripe cherries, but not just cherries; their delicate stems, the branches holding them, a light breeze gently riffling them on a warm fall afternoon, coaxing out the fragrance of the entire orchard you kick up a little earth walking beneath. There’s tea, maybe a pekoe; and roses, a mixed garden of them, and along with a nearby raspberry bramble, warmed by the sun and transported on the air. And there’s something darker, richer, more earthy, maybe some tobacco, and a whiff of lavender bees are happily hovering through.

But what really takes it past a mere perfume counter it is the balance of all these fragrances, which play in and out of one another like the honey bees I just mentioned, their gentle buzzing, like the CO₂ wafting above the cap, adding yet another sensory layer and sharpening the whole experience just so.

Incredible. Think there’s any way we can bottle this? Oh… right!

Last night we pressed the Syrah, sending it barreling toward French oak and malolactic fermentation. It was the first red to finish this year, and the first real test of our reconditioned wine press, so we weren’t totally sure what would come out the other end.

Luckily, what emerged was an inky purple blacksmith of a wine, burly but agile, if not kryptonite for any white garments or pearly teeth nearby. As we loaded it into the press, it filled the basement with an enthralling animal, dark-berry fragrance, and as it cascaded off the trough into the bucket, it tasted full and juicy through the mid and beyond. Wow.

(All images for this post courtesy of our guest photographer, Layla Grice) Read more

For the first time in a dozen years, a white wine is brightening the basement: Pinot Gris from Oracle Vineyard in the Dundee Hills. After pressing and letting it settle for a day, I took a halogen shop light and lit the side of the fermenter to see where the lees-line was (“lees” being the skunge the precipitates out of a wine after fermentation). Man, bask in that warm, golden color: I plan to bring this photo up every time I need a hit of vitamin D through the long, dark Oregon winter.

Today I drove out to the Dundee Hills and Oracle Vineyard to pick up our Pinot Gris. It was a beautiful but bone-chillingly cold morning, as co-owner Amy confirmed when I got there, wrapped in all the clothes she could find and still freezing. By the time I left, the sun had started to break out of the clouds (perhaps for one last encore before heading south for the winter), Amy was finally warming up, and we had all our fruit in hand for 2009. That makes me one relieved Garagiste.

Now that the Gris has been processed, we have 7 wines downstairs in various stages of completion, from the Syrah which we’ll probably press Tuesday, to the Cabernet which isn’t even thinking about fermenting yet.