Purple Cow Vineyards

Today's Menu

2009 Muscat
2007 Sophie Pinot
2007 Kelsey Pinot
2008 Primitivo
2006 Tempranillo Reserve

Mention this post and try the 2008 Sophie Pinot that Galo is hiding under the bar. Cheers!

More exciting products coming soon

I'm excited for our winter bottling day. One might think we're ready to bottle the 2008 Pinot Noirs or Estate Tempranillo, but we're going to hold onto those in barrel longer. We selected the 2008 Marechal Foch, 2007 Durif, 2007 {censored secret}, and 2007 Tempranillo Reserve.

2009 Harvest Complete

We had 3 wonderful days of picking that spanned 3 weeks.  The weather cooperated better than usual.  Here's an inventory of what we collected:

Kelsey Pinot - 6 barrels
Sophie Pinot - 6 barrels
Estate Tempranillo - 2 barrels (yeah!)
Marechal Foch - 1 barrel (hooray!)
Pinot Port-style - 2 barrels (ooooohhhhh)
Muscat - 300 gallons - ~130 cases

I am really excited about the future of trying these out as they mature.  Now for a round of thanks.

Doug & Cheryl Barlow, Ardna, & Basil
Rob & Renee Herb
Dave Sandage
Navindra Gunawardena
Lin Silver
Willie & Sari Ashe
David & Carol Kaysen
Don & Carol Stearns
Matt Talley
Briana Rogers
Marc & Kari Inness
Wendy Armstrong
Dave & Jolyn Rasmussen
Cathy Riecke
Elena Galindez
Jose & Milagros
Graham Keavney
Wilmer Morales
Neil Frederickson
Bob Jones
Brent & Katie Hudgins

These stalwart bee swatting, heat ignoring troopers picked the ripest and cleanest fruit to bring you a fabulous 2009 vintage.

Announcing Q3 Wine Club Shipment

September 12 & 13 will be the weekend for the next wine club pickup.  We will be open 11-5 both days. 

What's in it, you ask?  The 2006 Kelsey Pinot Noir & the not yet released 2006 Tempranillo Reserve.

Growing Season Begins

Today is the day that the first bud broke out at the Cow.  Marechal Foch has decided to peek out and start working on another wonderful vintage.  Some of the Pinot Noir is wooly, as is the Tempranillo.  Muscat always likes to sleep-in, don't worry. 

On a down note, looks like we lost the majority of the Tempranillo we planted last year.  The weight of all that snow and ice seemed to be too much for baby plants.  We're working to get it replaced as soon as possible.

Here's to the hope of a fabulous 2009 vintage.

Thanks for a great 2008

Perhaps it is a little early for annual post-mortems, but aside from a wine club event, we're all done for 2008.  The tasting room will be closed to the public until Valentine's Weekend.  Check our list of retailers or hit us up online if you've run dry.  Upon reflection, it's been good year.

• We had a fantastic result in the vineyard that promises to be the best wines yet.
• We had a great year selling some incredibly good Pinot Noirs. 
• Wendy started a successful wine club.  Heck, it's almost like extended family.  I admit not liking the idea at first and continuously challenging it.
• We created what promises to be really nice wine from one of the most difficult growing seasons (speaking of 2007).
• We actually grew the business despite the Q4 economic collapse.  
• We discovered and put in motion 2 new experimental vineyard ideas, gems for future years. 

It wouldn't be Purple Cow unless we admitted our failures, here's the ones that come to the top of my head:

• I wish we had delayed planting the new Tempranillo field because the 90 degree weather on the day we planted seemed to cause great mortality.  I can attribute it to this because there's a clear trend where the areas planted early in the morning are fine while the ones planted late in the afternoon have the high mortality rate.  With careful consolidation, it will work out fine (see next bullet for reason).
• I also wish I changed which clone of Tempranillo we planted in the new field.  After the 2008 harvest, I have some new concerns about clonal variation in ripening characteristics.  We conducted our experiments with clone UCD 3 and then mass planted Duoro.  Given that the sugar on the Tempranillo was lower than the Pinot Noir this year, I'm now wondering if UCD 3 ripens eariler.  Maybe we're lucky we lost some plants in the new field because that's space that can be recycled.
• I wish we ordered a little less Tempranillo because we moved the intended plot for the winery over the top of the planned vineyard expansion.  We really had to be creative to find spots for all the new plants. 
• I wish we left 2007 Kelsey's Edition Pinot Noir in the barrel a little longer.  The Sophie's Edition is doing very well in the barrel and the Kelsey is going to be great, but we actually delayed it's readiness by early bottling.  We were fooled by 3 things. 
  • Supply stress.
  • Light color fooling us into thinking it wouldn't barrel age well.
  • Habit of bottling after 10 months.
• I wish we'd hired a bookkeeper at the start of the year.

That's about it.  In light of the fact that a couple nearby businesses didn't make it, I'd like to thank you for helping us be one of the survivors for another year.  I look forward to earning the opportunity to grace your table again next year. -Jon- 

When are we going to pick? - part 4

Weather forecast changed again.  Now the next system starts a little later and extends much longer.  No nice weather forecasted on the back side of the rain.  So it's probably going to play out that we pick the Pinot Noir in the Bowl on Friday, the Tempranillo and the Pinot Noir across from the winery on Saturday, finishing up with the Muscat on Sunday. -Jon-

When are we going to pick? - part 3

Got some readings today:

Pinot Noir 21.2 brix, 3.2 pH.  Color is very dark, pips (aka seeds) are brown.
Tempranillo 18.0 brix, 3.0 pH.  Birds and bees eating the good stuff like crazy.
Muscat 20.2 brix, 3.1 pH.  Very mature looking (russet gold color), ripe pips.

Clearly the Tempranillo is going backwards based upon the rain splitting some grapes and luring in the birds and bees.  I also took a smaller sample of Tempranillo since we're barely going to make the 1000lb minimum, so the results have a higher margin of error.  Nevertheless, I think we'll pick that before the next rain so that no more fruit explodes.  Giving your best fruit to pests during a cool/dry period just about offsets the ripening progress of the rest.

The Pinot Noir is in pretty good shape.  This isn't going to be a high sugar year.  It is, however, going to be a very well-developed year because we'll have good acidity and good physiological maturity.  Based on the expected acid drop, we'll want to pick that before it rains too.

Muscat is a different beast.  It develops its Muscat-ness very late in the season so we want to hang on.  The fruit is all perfect and untouched; the acidity still high.  This we will defer.

Bottomline, looking like Pinot Noir and Tempranillo on October 17th and 18th.  Muscat probably on October 23rd.  All based on the weather forecast.  Remember the rule of thumb, reds before first rain, muscat before 2nd rain.

2007 Pinot Noir, cellar update

Jon and I sampled the ’07 Sophie and Kelsey Pinots this weekend and thought it would be a good idea to share the findings with you….

First, some background about the climatic differences between the ‘07 and ’06 vintages - the '06 harvest being one that resulted in the multiple award-winning ’06 Sophie and Kelsey Edition Pinots.

’06 was about as good as it gets in the northern Willamette Valley.  The middle weeks of September were unusually warm with the grapes picking up almost one Brix (roughly equivalent to a percent) sugar every other day - unusually fast maturation.  Our structured sampling and assaying program resulted in Purple Cow being among the first to harvest in the Forest Grove area with harvest taking place between the 24th and the 26th of September. The grapes were harvested at 24.7 Brix and a pH of 3.19 –a perfect combination of high sugars and high acidity.

’07 was the coldest summer since we have been keeping records at the vineyard. Harvest was delayed until the second week of October with the grapes at 21.5 Brix and a pH of 3.5 –much lower sugars and acidity; a result of the constant rain. Our winemaking knowledge was tested with this vintage, requiring the use of techniques such as concentration of must, the addition of small amounts of sugars prior to fermentation (chaptalization) and a reassessing of our cooperage choices. Even then, we were worried, knowing full well that a few winemakers turned some of their ’07 Pinot Noir into Rosé –that’s how ‘soft’ the ’07 vintage could be.

We’re happy to report that our ’07 is progressing beautifully…..our efforts paid off and we’re very, very pleased with how it’s tasting right now, even before the last three months of barrel aging and the warm days of summer which will result in additional concentration as water evaporates from the barrels.

The Kelsey in particular was quite the revelation, with the wonderful dark berry, plum and licorice nose and palate that characterizes our Pinots along with a surprisingly spicy finish –a much more structured, complex and refined wine than we thought we could get from the ’07 grapes.

We increased the % of new oak on the Sophie Edition as it tasted a bit more ‘citrusy’ than we liked, though again, were very favorably impressed with it.

We definitely look forward to bringing these wines to you….Galo.

Vineyard FAQ: late spring

I know I'm getting older (or killing some brain cells) because I thought I wrote a post last year about the effects of late budbreak.  Couldn't find it in the archives.  Then I remembered that I had started a separate blog about the life of a Tempranillo vine (which I discontinued because I didn't keep it up).  All I have to do is change the date, and the post is correct, check it out:

"April 14, 2007: Some years bud break starts on April 15th, but that's not going to happen this year.  It's been cold and rainy so far this spring.  While it might seem intuitive to hope for an early start, at Purple Cow Vineyards we are happy with the delay.  We'd rather lose a few days at the start than risk the frost.  No worries, April does not determine the day we pick.  There is so little heat to be had in April that we can be a week late at the start and end up ripening on the same day.  Regarding pests, there are no threats at this time.  Rust mites are a common pest this time of year, but we have not seen any.  There is some powdery mildew on the canes retained from last year that we'll watch closely."

Pretty much works still.  However, we're later than last year, and last year was rough.  We'll be fine if we avoid the horrible August/September of 2007.  I hold to the belief that a late budbreak is a blessing in disguise because it reduces frost risk.

I looked at our vines again today.  Anything in a grow tube is opening.  Tempranillo is next in line and only a few days away.  Pinot Noir and Muscat aren't showing much interest in budbreak yet.  It's supposed to be nice this weekend so come check it out, the Tempranillo might open before your eyes.