the 2020 growing Season

By the numbers, 2020 looked to be a little bit behind recent vintages in terms of heat unit accumulation, which is a very rough way to estimate how the climate and weather contribute to grape ripening. But at the sites I am working with on the eastern fringe of Walla Walla we saw relatively small berry size and lower than typical yields on the vines. This set us up for rapid accumulation of sugar in the grapes during August and September heat waves, and indicated that the harvest might not be delayed much, if at all.

Les Collines Vineyard Semillon was the first to ripen. In the first week of September the berries turned from yellow-green to gold and flavor and aroma began to spike in the juice. I brought in the fruit on September 4th.

While the physiological maturity wasn't as advanced as it has been in some previous years, for the same reasons (low yield, small berries, hot weather) the Breezy Slope Pinot Gris began to pick up sugar in earnest in the last week of August. Flavor was good in the Pinot Noir at Breezy Slope and the Zinfandel at Les Collines, even thought the sugars were still quite low, so I decided to bring in the rest of my fruit on September 8th.

This turned out to be a fortuitous decision; the wildfire smoke rolled in on September 11th.

2020 in the cellar (so far)

All the fruit came in with good acidity and reasonable sugar levels this year. The Semillon came in at 21.4 degrees Brix, a pH of 3.15 and a titratable acidity of 7.1 g/L. Tartaric acid was very high, and malic acid was very low, so apart from loss due to potassium binding, the acidity has remained moderately high. While the grapes toasted great, the stems were pretty artichokey, and I decided to destem the whole lot. Whole berries fermented in a bin with twice daily punchdowns for 14 days before pressing to barrel at about 2 degrees Brix. The wine finished fermentation in barrels (all neutral French oak) and after another month finished Malolactic conversion. For now the wine remains on lees with occasional stirring.

The light red wine ended up being closer to the 2018 blend than the 2019 blend because I was able to get more Pinot Gris than expected this year. The final blend in the fermenter was 78.4% Pinot Gris, 21.6% Pinot Noir, all foot-stomped whole clusters. The chemical analysis skewed to the somewhat less ripe Pinot Noir because I stomped that quite a bit more aggressively to help it extract color: 20.8 degrees Brix, pH of 3.16, and 7.6 g/L of titratable acidity; in actuality I expect the sugar was a little higher and the acidity a little lower because the less well-crushed Pinot Gris was a little more physiologically ripe than the Pinot Noir. We punched down as well as one can in a whole cluster ferment twice daily for one week before pressing at about 12 brix. The wine finished fermentation and went through malolactic conversion in neutral barrels (mostly French, some American). This wine is paler than previous vintages, reflecting the blend skewing more toward Pinot Gris, and has the same sort of juniper and blood orange aromatics that it had at the same stage in previous vintages. For now the wine remains on its fermentation lees with occasional stirring.

The 2020 Red Wine is a new blend for me: 47.8% whole cluster Breezy Slope Pinot Noir cofermented with 52.2% destemmed Les Collines Zinfandel. This came in at 20.3 degrees brix, pH of 3.19, and 8.1 g/L of titratable acidity. The malic acid was moderately high (3.09 g/L), so there was a fairly substantial loss of acidity between malolactic conversion and potassium from the stems binding up some of the tartaric acid, but I think we’re still looking at an acid-structured wine. This wine saw 8 days of skin contact before pressing at around 10 Brix. The wine finished fermenting and went through malolactic conversion in barrel (all neutral, some French, some American). I have less concrete expectations for this wine, but I like what I see so far. The fermenting juice tasted like wild mountain strawberries, and strawberry still dominates the aroma of the wine. After malolactic conversion I added a short chain of Oregon white oak staves to one of the barrels; I expect this will slightly darken the fruit profile and increase complexity without a lot of overt oak flavor in the final blend (I expect the final impact to be in the 10-20% new barrel range).

Bottling for these wines will be staggered over the next five months, and I expect to have any least one ready for a late spring release.

Last update: March 2021