November 19, 2009 The 2009 harvest marks the last year that the wines made under the Ransom label were made in cooperation with Dai Crisp of Lumos Wine Co. in the historic granary district of McMinnville, Oregon. The two companies have been working in the same space with mutually shared equipment since 2004. In 2008 Tad of Ransom purchased seventy acres in the direction of the coast hoping to consolidate his distillery and winery on the same piece of ground. While that project nears its completion date nature's schedule demands close attention during winemaking season, especially when making three companies' wines in a two-company space.
Patrick of Dominio IV replaced Tad in the granary district this year and the harvest crew did their best to foster an environment of cooperation and peaceful coexistence. Patrick brings new perspective from his path to winemaking that includes a functional use of biodynamic principles and a serious commitment to having fun in the most stressful season of the year. He also works with grapes not normally grown in the Willamette Valley including viognier, tempranillo, and syrah. His wines are not yet distributed in Illinois but we would love to have him on the shelves of the retail shop.
Since the majority of the locally-grown fruit was picked in one manic week this season rather than spread out over two the grapes went through the process of soaking, fermenting, and pressing together. Once the raw fruit is sorted, de-stemmed, and isolated in 2-ton bins it is allowed to cold-soak in its own juice for a few days to stabilize the vital compounds in the skins. After a few days of soaking a difficult punch-down is performed in order to tenderize the fruit in preparation for the introduction of yeast. As soon as the grapes are inoculated with the specific strain of yeast chosen by the winemaker the 'yeastie-beasties' get to work converting the sugars in the grape flesh to alcohol. As this process continues for anywhere from 5-8 days the skins rise to the tops of the bins leaving the infant wine beneath. At this stage the winery resembles a sort of gym with bleary-eyed crush labor balancing precariously on top of tons of precious fruit while performing the delicate business of isolating the color, texture, and tannins from the skins. When one loses balance at this stage it is best to head straight into the fruit as the landing is much softer than the concrete floor.
This is when the grapes begin their second life, brought back from the brink of death by intended and wild yeasts in the air. The fruit is full of life, noisily gurgling as the byproduct of fermentation, carbon dioxide, fills the air threatening to separate one from standing consciousness. As the yeast settles down after converting the fruit sugars to a completely dry wine the juice is pumped from underneath the skins through a stainless steel wand straight into a settling tank. The remaining skins left in the fermenters are dumped into one of the two presses and then gently squeezed for the last drops of juice. Once the dry skins have been removed from the press they are dumped into the county compost pile as the last refuge for the season's yellowjackets and ladybugs.
The new juice is allowed to settle for a few days in stainless-steel tanks in order for the particulate matter or lees to settle on its own without human intervention. The lees make beautiful patterns when dumped out onto the crush pad and hosed down the salmon-safe drain. The next step for the juice is into freshly rinsed neutral barrels which will hold the Pinot Noir safely for at least the next year. By this point in the season the crew was exhausted and as the work slowed down so did our bodies, finally allowed to get sick and rest for the first few days of November. The wines are all sleeping in as well, developing and growing stronger with each day that passes. After a final feast and the climactic arm-wrestling showdown between Julia and Genevieve, which ended in a definitive tie, my harvest was over. A successful harvest two years in a row is a bit of a rarity in Oregon and we counted this year as a major blessing.
To see photos of this year's harvest - including our own beer-specialist Kyle after falling into a fermenter visit Ransom Spirits on Facebook
Cheers!
October 23, 2009 This year my harvest experience began on October 4th with an early morning escape from Chicago. From Portland, Ransom Wine and Spirits owner Tad and I dropped by his new ransom in the hills outside of Sheridan, OR twenty miles west of the current winery in McMinnville. Having paid off his original ransom of a space and enough equipment to produce 8000 cases of wine per year he did not go straight to Mexico as we all thought but rather reinvested everything into 40 acres in the hills. The long held dream to combine his distilling operation, the winery, and the beginning of his own vineyard is very close to fruition.
This is a man who left the moral wilderness of a Manhattan law firm to seek a higher happiness in the early stages of the Willamette Valley wine industry that was a ragtag collection of farmers, alchemists, and cultural desperados. Tad studied under many masters of the hills, worked inhuman hours, ate unspeakable things, and was often found sleeping on the floors of the wineries for whom he was apprenticing. Twenty years later he is soon to be in a position even he could not imagine at that time.
After a year of nauseating bureaucratic wrangling with the state - much much less painful than dealing with Chicago - Tad moved his distillery from Portland to the farm. When we arrived on the 4th the new winery building was up but empty and trenches for drainage into the soon-to-exist pond were being dug. I sliced my right wrist open on the first piece of sheet metal I carried and if it were slightly deeper may have been quickly in trouble but after hearing how tough my female crew members were this year I quickly tore up my favorite t-shirt, washed off the surprising amount of blood, sterilized with the ready supply of high-proof spirits, and went back to work.
This year the crew leader is Julia Cattrall, Tad's apprentice and head winemaker. Julia is the fifth generation of Cattralls living on their land in the Eola Hills and the second generation to embrace winemaking. Her father planted his Pinot Noir vineyard in 1971 just four years after the first in the valley planted by Eyrie's David Lett. She is able to keep the entire operation running smoothly while holding everyone in good spirits all the while looking like an Oregon backcountry supermodel. She is greatly feared in the annual end of harvest arm-wrestling competition and loved like a daughter by the older generation that continues to teach her so much.
The rookie of this year's crew is Genevieve Joy of Westchester, New York. A recent graduate of Colombia University in New York Genevieve is soaking up everything this place can teach her in the effort to round out her excellent education and east-coast experience. She was captain of Columbia's crew team and seems more than able to make a run at Julia's arm wrestling title. Genevieve is on her way to replicate her crush experience in New Zealand this year as both regions share similar climate and grape varietals.
The trick of the harvest is to receive all of your fruit before the rainy season arrives in the valley and when it does it is sudden and final. In the rush to ready the winery, schedule the pickers, arrange transportation, and feed the tired crew nerves get frazzled in the high energy. If you are off by hours or god forbid a day fortunes can be lost to botrytis, the fungus that loves the tight Pinot clusters and moisture of the valley. This year we pulled it all off thanks to many loud playlists, calorie dense meals, the help of amazing volunteers including my own parents Steve and Mary Malinsky, and the general bond of the crew. Working until 2am a few nights and setting new records in the winery - 6 varietals crushed on one day and 35 tons in one day respectively - our fruit made it in with twenty minutes to spare.
When we slept in on Tuesday the 13th and struggled into the winery the grapes were sleeping restfully in their own cold-soak and an air of peacefulness hung over everything. Struggling to make some meaning out of the raging harvest that looked like a ten day party in retrospect we glanced at the Biodynamic calendar hanging on the wall and noticed that it was Perigee, the one day of the monthly lunar cycle dedicated not to flowering, rooting, or leafing but to rest. With that good omen we rested our bodies and prepared for the next stage of the winemaking process.
All is well in the valley.
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