Vineyard Decisions Being Made!

The past few days have been full of vineyard strolls tasting grapes and evaluating ripeness. It looks as if things are getting ready and we have pegged Monday as the day for our first pick. Muscat will come off of the Hendsbee Vineyard and our own. The flavours are incredible and our kids haven't eaten too much of them yet (Muscat are their favorite) so we look forward to some tasty grapes. We are also looking at Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonnay this morning from just down the road at Blind Creek Vineyard. We have a designated block of chardonnay there and it tasted great yesterday afternoon in the hot sun but I want to revisit it in the cool of the morning to better evaluate the flavours. They are more true in the morning. The Sauv blanc is most likely good to go as well so it looks as if Monday could be busy here! The forecast is for sun and heat over the weekend and then some rain next week. Lets hope the rain holds off.
Over the next few days we are looking forward to the Fall Wine Festival and more crush preparation. Our time will be spent between looking presentable and smiling as we pour our wines for customers both here at the winery and at events on the weekend and getting wet and dirty as we clean crush equipment. We will be at the Coast Capri's People's Choice Awards in Kelowna on Friday and at Oliver's Festival of the Grape on Sunday. 

2009 Macon-Uchizy, Climat La Martine, Bret Brothers

My mother and sister were visiting today from opposite corners of the world, so we pulled out all the stops and steamed lobster in shallots and white wine (Carly picked up the lobster in Halifax a couple days ago). We served it with a cream of corn (in season) and butter sauteed Chantrelle mushrooms that were freshly foraged and delivered today from our mushroom guy. Yes, that's right, we now have a mushroom guy. The food was really fresh and a blast to pick at. To go with, we opened the 2009 Macon - Uchizy, Climat La Martine from Bret Brothers. A white Burgundian wine that comes from East facing, 50+ year old vines, hand picked and oak aged for 11 months. Toasted hazelnut and pear of the nose, with lots of fruit, acidity and minerality on the palate. Lush mouth feel. Very balanced. Fun all around.

Another sunny day in the Similkameen...

Orofino Vineyards... end of September... 33 degrees Celsius... not a cloud in the sky... crisp glass of Riesling in hand... enough said.

Vancouver after hours

Virginia and I just got back from a couple of days in Vancouver. The business end of the trip included a very successful trade and media event hosted by our Similkameen Wineries Assocation and a sold-out SWA Winemaker's dinner at Eric Pateman's super cool Edible Canada restaurant on Granville Island. A couple of days in the city is not wasted on us and we enjoyed some of those things we love but are rare in rural Cawston!

David Hawksworth's food. Wow!

Sean Layton serving up his finest at L'abbatoir. Sommelier and friend Jay Whiteley enjoying a night off!

Grape Sampling in the Vineyards

We enjoyed yet another day of sunshine and 30+ degrees today. That prompted us to walk around a few of our vineyards tasting and evaluating the ripening grapes. We focussed on the earlier ripening varietals today and ended up taking proper berry samples of Pinot Gris and Chardonnay. The canopy looks healthy and should be plenty powerful to push through for a great harvest.


Blind Creek Chardonnay: 21.2 Brix, 10.5 g/litre acidity, 3.15 pH
Blind Creek Pinot Gris: 22 Brix, 11.5 g/litre acidity, 3.11 pH


These grapes are on the Cawston Bench and have benefitted from all of the sunshine in the last 6 weeks. The flavours are ultimately what will determine when we pick but we will continue to sample and monitor. Picking next week? Stay tuned. More samples from different blocks and varietals will happen throughout the next week.

Tawse 2009 Grower's Blend Pinot Noir

Carly and I had the Tawse 2009 Grower's Blend Pinot Noir the other night with fire-grilled chicken thighs. The pairing was excellent and the wine delicious. Located in the Niagara peninsula, Tawse winery practices organic and bio-dynamic methods of grape growing and wine-making. The production for this wine was 1000 cases. 2009 was a cool and long vintage for them, resulting in balanced amounts of acidity and tannin., sweet and complex fruit, and a delicate, smooth mouthfeel. Retails for $32. Tawse is doing it right.

BC Wine Appreciation Society Lunch

The BC Wine Appreciation Society stopped in today for a tasting and lunch on their annual bus tour through the Similkameen Valley. We started with a tasting of our current releases and a walk through the vineyards and proceeded to the two-course lunch in the sun (its always sunny on the Cawston Bench), prepared by our dear friends from Joy Road Catering. There are worse ways to spend a sunny afternoon.

The Menu:

First Course: Homemade charcuterie, Alsace style onion tart with thyme, creme fraiche and bacon, and baked in the Orofino wood oven. Pairing: 2010 Orofino Riesling

Second Course: Local braised lamb shoulder, duck egg pasta, roasted pepper relish, heirloom tomatoes, herbs, Gabby's fabulous French beans with black olive tapenade. Pairing: 2009 Orofino Red Bridge Merlot.

Wine, music and Mike Angus

Aaron, Mike, Carly

After much wine, delicious food, great music, delightful and sometimes straight-up hilarious conversation, our visit from our dear friend and uber-talented musician Mike Angus has come to an end. Tears. All good things come to an end, they say. Make sure to check out his music in our latest "what we are listening to" or the following link on cbc radio... http://radio3.cbc.ca/#/bands/Mike-Angus

Sometimes you just have to say "lets buy 'em!"

For a few years now Virginia and I have bought grapes from Murray and Maggie Fonteyne at Scout Vineyards just 8 km south of us. We have happily contracted their small blocks of riesling, pinot gris, and syrah. Every year  about tis time I walk around tasting their delicious grapes and marvel at the consistency of the vines. Each one looks exactly like the next. I've also had the opportunity each year to taste the cabernet sauvignon grapes that grow next to the syrah. These were always sold to another local winery and I couldn't help but think they would make some tasty wine here at Orofino. So when Murray offered them to us this year, we were very keen but had to see if we could afford them first, had room for them second, and if they would be a boost to our portfolio of wines. We just had to make it happen and now we are thrilled to say we are contracting everything Scout grows. I'll give updates on the cabernet as we follow them through ripening to barrel. Should be fun!

Anticipation grows...

This 2011 season has flown by. It is hard to believe that it was a year ago now that the Weber family so graciously welcomed my wife and I to be a part of Orofino Vineyards. I arrived thirsty for knowledge, and wine. John and Virginia are naturally teachers (i.e. patient), so not a day has gone by without learning something new. It started off a cooler season than usual, but I have learned to not get worked up about the weather when John reassuringly responds, "That's farming". And surely enough, we have had plenty of sun and heat over the last two months and look forward to this warm September. Weeks and weeks of tending to the vineyard by hand, of pruning and tying in the spring, the constant weeding, fixing plugged irrigation, the long days of tucking, leaf thinning and bunch thinning, ... have all wisped by and culminated in the anticipation of harvest. It truly is a labour of love. An entire year’s work, time, patience, frustrations and joys will all end up in that bottle. We are but a few weeks away. The grapes are nearly all turned to their rightful color and I am as excited as I am nervous to taste the end result.

Veraison

Veraison in our 22-year old Pinot Noir vines, Orofino Vineyards, Cawston Bench

Visiting Vineyards

Now that Labour Day has passed us by and the world was righted again with a Rider victory over Staggerville I have been busy visiting the vineyards where we source our grapes from.  Generally speaking I think things are about a week or so behind where we usually are at this time. Colour in the red grapes is coming but varies depending on the soil types of the site. Lighter rockier vineyards like Scout Vineyard is more advanced than our vineyard where heavier soils exist. The rockier lighter soils warm up quicker in the springtime and get an earlier start which really starts to show results in seasons like this one. The Passion Pit vineyard shows this dramatically as the rocky soiled top section of the Cabernet is fully purple already while the flat heavier section still has about 50% green clusters. Fortunately for us the weather has been amazing for the past 5 weeks and the forecast is for more sun and heat.  Nets go on later this week and then we wait.....