Les Blog

We picked up our Syrah at the same time we did our Merlot, but as you might remember, we let the Syrah determine the pick date and let the Merlot fall where it might. That decision ultimately showed up in the flavor (more backbone and structure), but of course, in the numbers, too…
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Ah, Merlot, you corpulent, shar-pei of a wine, you. Despised by many, tolerated by few, I alone sense your inner beauty, your generosity of fruit, your gentle tannins…

… but this? 27.5 brix? 4.02 pH?! Girl, how could you?!

Oh, well. Nothing a tummy tuck and boob job can’t fix. Follow along with me as we do the merlot numbers…
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Field samples from our Cab block show brix at 25.8, but pH at 3.4. That pH is down in Pinot country, and at .73, the TA (titratable acidity, a number loosely but not directly related to pH) is also high. So for Cab to have those numbers, something isn’t quite ready yet. The fruit may have enough sugar (that brix is more or less perfect), but the acid’s too high, so the fruit isn’t in balance.

I asked the vineyard manager to taste the fruit for us, and he reported back today that indeed, the Cab isn’t ready yet: seeds are still green, and the jelly-like sac around the seeds is still expansive. So he guesses as much as 2 weeks, though hopefully closer to one.

That’ll undoubtedly put our brix in the stratosphere, but as long as pH continues to rise, we can always add a little water to bring the sugar back into balance once we pick.

So hold on: this one may be a cliffhanger!

It’s official: we’re road-tripping to Yakima (or thereabouts) on Friday to haul back a combined ton of merlot and syrah. Both are in the 25-26 brix range; with luck, they won’t get much higher than that before we can rescue them, but the vineyard manager says they’re both tasting perfect.

It’s the first crush of the season, so there will probably be a lot of head scratching as we try to remember what it was that worked so well last year. But with luck, it’s like riding a sticky, sugary bicycle, and it’ll come back to us once the fragrance of fruit fills the air.

It was a hot afternoon, but five of us coolly assembled to taste through each of our four main wines — Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, and Syrah — to determine what part they’ll play in this year’s Peugeot blend.

First, to get the lay of the land, we tasted through the wines individually. Frankly, I was a little surprised at how nicely the Cab had evolved — last fall, this one came into the winery like a health care protester, barely ripe and a little unbalanced. But my notes now began, “Wow, big fruit!” Amalgamated notes from the tasters:

Lovely cherry/raspberry nose, but maybe a bit on the hot side. Tart, but alive. Ripe raspberry and blackberry, with a touch of pepper. Elegant, generally round and full throughout, but fading quickly on the finish. Grippy tannins on the finish — good for some, a bit much for others. Cocoa and minerals. Maybe a little monotone. [Mike adds] The first Cab I could have with salmon.

All in all, better than we could have hoped for. Next up was the Merlot…
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Just for the heck of it, way too early, I opened an ’07 Peugeot tonight.

A little closed in the nose, but already some Cab Franc joi de vivremach zehnder modulator wafting out. Almost a hint of mint or high-toned grass – maybe the cabernet mumbling in the background? In the mouth, still very unsophisticated, eager to please but without a the language to back it up. Again, the Franc is the melody, and as a wine that peaks in youth, it’s already warming up and playing. It’s a reverse Mullet with class: party in the front, business in the back.

So for now, it’s Franc Plus, though with air, the merlot is already beginning to weave some resonant bass into the background. A lot better than I expected. Sure, it’d be nice to taste the entire concert now, but the Franc has chops, so I’m happy to hear it riff.

My guess is that as the Franc gets a little gray at the temples and embraces wisdom over exuberance, it’ll slow its pace as the other two grapes (Cab and Merlot) pick up theirs. Try it again in early spring ’10. Anyone else?

The early-response team of les Garagistes parachuted in a week or so ago to begin its extraction of our wines from potential bacterial danger. Its thankless mission: to secure one and a half wines, creating a beach head from which rearguard troops could make precise tactical strikes, hounding brett, VA and their terrorist minions back into their caves (pronounced “cah-ves”) and finishing them off for good.

And ladies and gentlemen, here on the aircraft carrier that is our dingy basement, I can unequivocally say, “Mission Accomplished.” Two and a half to go.

The assault began at base camp on the sunny back porch, where we opened the 2008 Rosalie Rosé to war-game its implications. This was the first time I’d tried it since we bottled it a month or so ago, so I was curious to see if its genie was ready to come back out. Jon had reported a slight fizziness when he’d opened one a week or so prior, but if it existed in the one we opened, it was very slight, indeed. The fruit was fresh and clean, and since I’d waited a day too long to drain it from the tank and start it fermenting back in the all, it was full-flavored and a lovely ruby color.

Conclusions drawn, we marched downstairs into battle carrying controversial orders to move some wine to and fro, then back into the vessel from which it came. Luckily, I was not fragged for this seemingly pointless directive. “I’m just following orders from ETS Labs Command,” I explained. My compatriots rolled their eyes, gently suggesting I discontinue the I’m-looking-nobly-into-the-future-from-a-windswept-cliff pose I’d been affecting, and do a lick of work for a change.

We racked the Cabernet Franc out of barrel and variable tank, and back into barrel and carboy. With that variable now free, we were able to move all the Syrah currently spread out across 7 carboys into a single, stainless steel home. Since there’s more Syrah than Franc, this switcheroo earned us 3-4 empty carboys to use as the situation on the ground may dictate in the future.

I was pretty happy with the Franc, actually. The last time we racked it, it was closed and even a bit vegetal in nose and mouth. But now it had regained some of its composure, with nice weight in the mouth and lovely fruit, with no veg I could detect. Perhaps it was finishing malo before? Anyway, something to keep an eye on, since the grapes weren’t super ripe to begin with.

For both wines, we sulfited to 25ppm based on .5 mg/l molecular SO₂, so for now, I’m logging those wines as secured. According to the incredibly informative seminar I took at Chemeketa Community College’s sparkling Northwest Viticulture Center just outside of Salem, we’ll want to monitor free SO₂ pretty frequently to ensue the wine stays healthy and our enemies gain nary a foothold.

Next up, the other half of the syrah, and all the merlot.