May 2009

Time has flown since the last post (once again!) and so has the progression of our 2008 wines in the cellar. 

In February we bottled up our small batch summer wines; the 2008 JV Chardonnay and the 2008 Pinot Noir Rose. 

The JV Chardonnay was entirely fermented in stainless steel in three small batches using two different yeasts.  In the end it was blended to create the crisp and fruit forward style we have been offering the past several years. 

The Pinot Noir Rose was a fun challenge as it is every year.  We made 4 separate batches of Rose; using different yeasts and some neutral barrels along with steel fermentation, and different extraction levels to blend into the final wine.  It has been very popular from the start and if Kristie our business manager saves some, there may be some left when you get here.

The 2008 wines are all exhibiting great balance and rich flavors as a result of the long hang time the grapes had in the vineyard.  The cool and sunny fall allowed intense fruit flavors and mature tannins to develop while preserving acidity.  A combination that leaves a smile on the face of winemakers all across the valley. 

 

Noah and I have been busy working with the handful of coopers (barrel makers) we source our oak barrels from. Each cooper brand offers a signature flavor profile that contributes to the wines, and it takes careful study to determine what flavors work with each section of the vineyard.  This is the only time of year to examine this, as all of the 2008 Pinot Noir is finally through with its secondary fermentation and can offer a true glimpse of what it tastes like before the need to move out of barrels into blends.  So for the next two months that will be our primary focus; tasting and blending.  We are planning to make a few new small blends of Pinot Noir this year in addition to our JV, SV and Cathy’s Reserve.  The idea is to make fewer than 200 cases of block designates to offer the individual characters of thevineyard.  More to come on that…

Spring time is in full swing in the Willamette valley.  The fruit trees are blooming, the spring bulbs have come up, and the vineyards have begun another beginning with bud burst.  It looks similar to last year’s spring; cooler temperatures has caused budburst to occur late April versus the more average time of early April.  It isn’t really cause for concern at this point as our warm summers tend to catch the vines growth up in no time.

 

We are trying to get together as a group and update our site more often.  It seems like yesterday that I was writing with my huge belly about taking maternity leave, and now my second son Wyatt is almost 11 months old! 

Hopefully if we all work together on updates, we can accomplish a lot. 
Check back with us.  And more importantly come visit us, it’s just the start of the most beautiful time of year here and we have a great property, nice people and some lovely new wines to share with you.

 Cheers, Melissa

 

November 2008

Today looks like a typical fall day at the vineyard: yellow leaves on the trees and vines shrouded in fog. We are tending the Pinot Noir ferments in the winery, which are at various stages due to staggered picking this year. All of our fruit is in the winery, and the vineyard is picked entirely.

In terms of tonnage, the 2008 harvest looked like this: 138 tons Pinot Noir, 17 tons of Chardonnay, and .7 tons of Tempranillo. Yes, Tempranillo! Its huge clusters and fat round dark purple grapes are just starting to ferment in a 1.5 ton fermenter. It will be fun to see what the wine becomes.

Thanks to Mother Nature, we were blessed with a sunny, dry and cool October. The threat of rain loomed early in the month, but never fully materialized. Instead we had days in the mid-60s with light winds, allowing the grapes to have the very important hang time on the vine to develop flavors. This was just what the grapes needed this year, since the summer time was cooler and the grapes still clearly needed more time to ripen compared to average. Historically we harvest Stoller vineyard starting the last week of September through the first or second week of October, in a 10-day span. This year, we started picking our first blocks of young vine fruit on September 30th and finished with our upper most planted Pinot Noir on October 22nd.

The wines are top-notch this year, and range in color from intense purple to ruby, with lovely aromatics thanks to the cool and slow growing season. We maintained a comfortable pace with processing the grapes; the four-week spread felt like four different harvests.

We have a large, very talented, hard working and peaceful crew this year, resulting in the most organized and well-executed harvest at Stoller to date. Much of this is attributed to our cellarmaster Noah's skills and contributions directing this strong crew through the changing maze of harvest activites.

Here is a glimpse of our crew, from across seas to across town:

Rocco Vallorani ~ Rocco joins us from Colli del Tronto, in the Marche region of Italy. He has been in the wine industry for 10 years. His family owns 10 hectares of vineyard in Italy that was started by his great grandfather, growing Sangiovese, Montepulciano, Passerina, Trebbiano, and Malavasia. Rocco enjoys traveling, he has worked vintage in France and New Zealand before joining the Stoller crew. He studied enology in Perugia and is studying for his EMAVE (European Master in Viticulture and Enology). He is also a great cook, and recently made us some delicious pasta and bruchetta for lunch.

 

Andrew Wisniewski ~ Andrew grew up in Oregon, Florida and in between. He developed an interest in wine and took UC Davis courses before taking a job at a large production winery, Lakeridge, in Florida for several years. His passion for Pinot Noir lead him to seek out Stoller, and he joined our team early spring of this year. He will stay on and help with cellar work until late February, when he will take an internship in New Zealand. Andrew and his fiancé Lindsey live in Tualatin with their energetic boxer named Riley who keeps them busy in their free time.

 

Leigh Brown ~ Leigh grew up in Bloomington, Indiana and moved to Portland five years ago to attend Western Culinary Institute. Her foodie pursuits led to her interest in wines. Leigh worked harvest at La Bete winery, and also worked for Urban Wine Works/Bishop Creek Cellars. Leigh has two border collies Roscoe and Bernie that take her trail running for fun. She lives in Portland with them and her boyfriend Ron, enjoys cooking, and plays the harp. She is looking forward to traveling to South Africa early next year to do vintage and visit her family there.

 

 

Richard Ellis ~ Richard is a New Zealand native, coming from Auckland. He studied enology and viticulture at Lincoln University has worked in NZ with Montana winery for five years. Earlier in the year he worked vintage at Ata Rangi and met Tim Rippa of Ken Wright Cellars in Oregon, who fortunately for us directed him to Stoller. Richard enjoys outdoor activities and co-drives rally cars for fun when he's not working vintage.

 

 

 

 

 

Kyle Kruchok ~ Kyle was indirectly recruited to the harvest team, lucky for us! Kyle grew up in Dayton and attended high school with Bill and Cathy Stoller's twin sons, Kenny and Kyle. Kyle K. started working this fall at the winery, helping in the office and tasting room, and we quickly snatched him up to help with production. He is a talented photographer, developing his skills over the last 8 years. Check out his photo of the crew on the website homepage. Kyle is taking a fast interest in wine production, and will be working harvest in New Zealand this spring.

 

 

 

 

October 2008

The 2008 harvest has officially begun at Stoller Vineyards. This year was a nail-biter from the beginning, with bud break occurring three weeks later than average, and then we had cooler than average temperatures throughout the summer. The upshot is that we began harvesting later than we normally expect to.

We were off and running on September 30th and October 1st when our crew picked and processed 35 tons of our young vine Pinot Noir and 5.4 tons of Chardonnay. The fruit looked great, with nice flavors, an average of 23.5 brix and moderate natural acidity levels.

A few tanks of this newly picked fruit have begun to show signs of fermentation. Our JV Chardonnay has begun its fermentation in a steel tank and will be slowly bubbling away over the next few weeks on its way to turning into wine.

The pace is slow and steady around the winery as we monitor the wines in tank, do lab work, and spend lots of time in the vineyard, trying to figure out the optimal time to harvest particular blocks.

The majority of our fruit is still hanging on the vine. Sugars are slowly creeping up to where we want them and acid levels are dropping to balance the sugar, but the third factor is that of flavor, and that's not there yet. We're hoping for a nice dry stretch of weather (as predicted) to help bring all the parts of this equation together at exactly the right point. If it works out, we will be ready to resume picking again in about a week.

Our harvest crew is large and skilled; our equipment primed and ready to go; our snack cupboard stocked and we've got plenty of coffee on hand.we just need nature to play its part on cue and then we'll be in action.

June 2008

Apparently time has flown by since the last entry in this winemaking log.

Summer is approaching quickly, but one couldn't be certain of this given our spring weather pattern this year. We have had cooler than average weather in April and May and now in the first week of June this trend is still continuing. In the vineyard, the vines are behind in their average growth about 2-3 weeks. It will be up to the rest of the season to determine if this will effect our harvest dates or not. We could very well catch up this staggered growth with a warm summer ahead.

In the winery, we have just completed blending our 2007 Pinot Noirs. The 07 wines are lovely. The Pinot Noir is packed with fruit and floral aromas, is moderate in alcohol (averaging a little over 13 %), and has a nice focus of acidity contributing to its balance.

We will be bottling up these wines later in the summer.

Today is my last day in the winery for awhile. I am expecting the arrival of little boy Burr number two in a week and a half. I will be out for the summer, but staying in contact and leaving the wines in the exceptional hands of Cellarmaster Noah and our new production addition, Andrew. I will be returning this fall just in time for harvest. At least this time I have a valid excuse for a time delay in updating the wine maker's log.

Thanks for all your support with our wines. Please come by this summer and take advantage of our gorgeous setting and bring some friends.

Fall 2007

After a week of steady picking that culminated with a frantic push on September’s last Saturday, we have two thirds of our Pinot Noir and all of our Chardonnay ‘in the barn.’ 25 tons of Pinot and 10 tons of Chardonnay came into the winery on Saturday alone, the product of hard work from our harvest crew and over 100 stellar vineyard workers. The early ripening nature of our vineyard site really worked to our advantage, allowing for mature fruit at a relatively early date.

After the arrival of the first autumn rains, we’ve been concentrating on what has already come in, cold soaking individual blocks of Pinot, beginning the barrel fermentations on our lots of Chardonnay and pressing off our first fermentation of 2007, the 777 Pinot planted in 2000.

It appears that we’ll bring in a small amount of fruit this Saturday while waiting for a break in the weather before attacking the remaining high elevation plantings. It’s definitely shaping up to be a chilly, damp harvest but we’re hopeful that we’ll see one more window of October sunshine.

Cheers!
Melissa