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Well, it’s a new year and I am back in the saddle, but with a caveat. The winery will probably never open again. I have gotten rid of all my equipment and let me licenses lapse. The wine business can be a harsh mistress. I am not sad to be out of the business of running a tasting room and cold calling restaurants. Good Riddance. But, I always loved growing grapes.
But, it looks like I am back to farming grapes again. After the 2015 vintage, I literally walked away from my vineyard and threw my hands up. I was done. It was taking up too much time and for very little profit. Luckily, a friend in the wine business reached out and they have been taking care of the vineyard and taking the grapes for the past 4 years. But, things have changed again. They are too busy with their own vineyard and winery to take care of the vineyard, but they still want the grapes. So, I am going to get my hands dirty again. I pruned and tended and made wine in 2015 to great results. I plan on doing that again this year, except the winemaking part. Well, maybe on a small scale.
I have barely pruned a vine in the past 4 years, but I agreed to farm the grapes and sell the grapes to them. That means I have to get off my ass and start pruning again. The vineyard, while not neglected, has a fair amount of dead spots where grapes died off to some type of virus. I will be making cuttings and filling in those holes.
Also, after many years, I finally got my hands on the elusive Blattner varieties that I had been lusting after for 20 years. Someone with more energy than me had imported them legally and I was able to legally buy cuttings from them. These are very disease resistant types that make dark, heavy red wines. We’ll see in a couple of years how this goes. I am especially interested in 48.05.83 from Blattner. It supposedly tastes like a nice Bordeaux blend but with some disease resistance. I have several vines in their 2nd leaf.
I also planted a row of Muller Thurgau, the much maligned grape. I love this grape. It’s the closest thing to Riesling I can grow around here. 40 vines should give me maybe about 15 gallons of wine.
I’ll keep everyone up to date and probably cover old topics on Puget Sound AVA grape growing. Some blog posts are over 10 years old.
