Let the Merlot begin...

Friday we brought in our first Merlot. It smells fantastic in the winery. Our first punch down was over the weekend. It was very quiet in the production area as Steffan and I walked out to the 1.5 Ton stainless fermentation bins. I watched as he tried to get the punch down tool, a long stainless steel post with a big flat end on it, through the grapes. In the beginning the new fruit is very hard and not yet broken down. I watched him push, stir, then look at me and smile. He said, "tomorrow will be easier". It was exciting because another harvest is here. Our first punch down was really serene...a good kickoff to the upcoming harvest.

Notice Julie's little cluster...wanted to save all the fruit for the wine!

Our 2007 Harvest is here!

I'll be posting pictures soon but our 2007 harvest is officially here! We will be bringing in Merlot this week and are very excited. It's coming from Mattawa, known officially as the Wahluke Slope AVA.

It is extremely busy this time of year at the winery. Amber and I will both be doing some traveling to promote our wines, hitting Eastern Washington, Chicago, 3 cities in Ohio, Denver, New York and Missoula, MT in the next two months. Can you say frequent flyer/driver miles? You can check out our events section for tastings coming up in your area.

The tasting room has been really busy which is fun for us because we're located off the beaten winery path here in Walla Walla. Even though we're part of the downtown we're still not walking distance to other wineries. Many of the wineries are found in clusters (pun intended) and we're out here by our lonesome on Poplar Street. It's really exciting when folks make the drive to our facility.

We're extremely happy with the most recent reviews in Robert Parker's "The Wine Advocate". Jay Miller tasted through our wines and gave the following reviews: 04 HHH Cabernet Sauvigno - 90 pts, 2006 Calico White - 89 pts, 2004 Intuition - 92 pts, 2004 Syrah - 90 pts, and our 2004 Barrel Select Syrah - 92+ pts, in addition he gave a great mention about our 2006 wine in barrels plus a Petit Verdot we're considering doing a special bottling of he said it would be reviewed 95 - 98 pts if bottled separately. We may see a few cases bottled!

Hope your fall is off to a good start. Football is back, just let us say that our wines pair exceptionally well with Monday Night Football!