A big shout out to my sister Lore Mayr who designed our very cool Chorus Frog label. Our label won the People’s Choice Award for the Open Wine Division at The Washington State Fair for 2014. We’ve gotten a ton of compliments on it. Our good friends Mary and Jerome Robbins also tied for first place with their label – with a picture of their laughing dog Mitzi.
If anyone would like to join us for some fun with winemaking this weekends here’s the plan.
Friday 10/10 – Michael and Dawne are going to be working in the winery during the day bottling some of the 2013 Malbec, Merlot and Cab Franc. At about 630 pm we’re going to have a pressing party to press the syrah – and maybe the malbec depending on how its coming along. Leann’s going to pick up some pizza and munchies if anyone wants to come by and help with the pressing. Its really not much work – and involves a lot of fun and tasting of both food and wine.
On Saturday and Sunday we’re going to be helping out Dawne at Moose Canyon Winery ( a short 1.8 miles from our house and Michael’s winemaking buddy). On Saturday we’ll be pressing her syrah and likely the malbec too. On Sunday we’re going to be bottling about 25 cases of her bordeaux blend. She got a cool little multi-bottle bottler this year to play with, and will also have “stations” set up for corking and “foiling”, plus the typical eating and drinking support of the winemaker assistants.
Stay tuned for the following weekend plans as we’ll be needing to press the malbec (if not done this weekend) and the cabernet.
This past weekend we had a great time with our wineclub crushing/destemming the cabernet and crushing/destemming/pressing the viognier for the club competition.
Just as we think we have a plan, this year’s crazy harvest changes it once again.
The cabernet sauvignon and the viognier we’re getting for our winemaking club competition is ready.
Michael will be picking up on Friday Oct 3. Saturday am we will be crushing the cabernet and crushing/pressing the viognier.
We are going to follow this up with a little tasting and blending party. We’ve got to get some of the 2013 vintage into bottles to make room for the 2014. We’ll be tasting and playing with blending the malbec, cab franc, and merlot. Anyone interested is welcome to join us.
The syrah looks like it may have another week yet on fermenting, so we’ll keep everyone posted on the schedule for pressing that.
This picture of “baby puke or poop” is sauvignon blanc and pinot gris going through primary fermentation. In 3-6 months it will be lovely and tasty – we promise! The second photo is the pinot gris from last year in the spring before bottling if you don’t believe.
Next up on the winery schedule is “likely” pressing the syrah.
We will also be picking some local grapes this weekend (10/4-5) and crushing/pressing those.
It looks like the cabernet sauvignon and viognier will be 1-2 weeks out yet for picking, crushing, destemming – so we’ll keep you posted with specific dates to join the fun.
The season is crushing this year! The schedule is a bit insane due to the hot weather. All the grapes are ready in a short amount of time so we’ve got lots to do.
Here we are processing our first Syrah grapes of the year.
yum!
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