Weather Watching / Cordon Group

It has rained two of the last three days. I canceled the Merlot I had scheduled to pick today. We will look at the weather in the morning and decide whether we will pick tomorrow or not. The forecast looks decent for the week with a slight chance of rain each day but as long as the weather stays clear we should get quite a bit of fruit picked this week.
Friday night, the 27th we hosted our distributor, Cordon Selections annual trip to Eastern Washington with members of the trade from Western Washington. This is the fourth year we have started the weekend with taco's and wine on Red Mountain. Our neighbors, Tim & Kelly Hightower have co-hosted this event since it's inception. This is a great chance for key members of the industry to get a chance to see wineries in action and for many a chance to see ripe fruit on the vine. Saturday is spent with a visit to wineries that Cordon represents that are located in the Walla Walla Valley. I spent today on the bus touring vineyards north of the Tri-Cities with the group. I enjoy the contact with these key players in the industry and find the questions they ask very stimulating. Often times this interaction puts some of their preconcieved ideas to the test, which I find great. Crop level was one of the topics we touched upon today that had some of these people scratching their heads. It's great to get these people over to Eastern Washington and see first hand where it all happens.

Harvest Update - 2007

As we approach the end of September I am starting to get a good feel for how this vintage is stacking up compared to other vintages and it looks fairly promising. The weather has been nothing short of perfect so far this fall, with day time highs in the upper 70's to low 80's. Temperatures at night have been cooling off into the 40's. These temperature consistently have enabled us to slowly ripen the crop over a period of time. This type of ripening reminds me of 2005 which is considered by many to be a very good vintage from Washington. It is still just the end of September and we have a whole lot of fruit yet to bring in, so as I have said before I am not ready to declare a great vintage yet.
We will finish bringing in all of the Merlot we will be taking by Sunday, with Boushey and Conner-Lee Vineyards picking. We have started bringing in Semillon from Stillwater Creek Vineyard and have picked a little Cabernet Sauvignon from Champoux Vineyard in the Horse Heaven Hills. Next week we will really start bringing in a good portion of Cabernet Sauvignon from warmer sights such as Red Mountain and the Horse Heaven Hills. Malbec, which I am finding out has many followers should start coming in next week as well.
This weekend, September 28-30 is the Columbia Valley Winery Association's "Catch the Crush" event, we hope to see many of you at the winery.
Cheers!
Charlie Hoppes - Winemaker+Owner

Growers - The Real Winemakers

I had a chance this past weekend to spend some time in the vineyard with a few of our growers for Fidelitas and was I ever impressed. I think all too often, that winemakers get too much of the credit when it comes to wine quality when the real heroes are the growers who get us consistently great fruit. As I visited vineyards this past weekend I was struck by the dedication of Roger Gamache. He is sincere about trying to get me the very best fruit that his vineyard will provide so that I can make the very best wine possible. I saw the same dedication and attention to detail from Miguel Rodriguez at Weinbau Vineyard on the Wahluke Slope as well. The list of growers that we use at Fidelitas is a list of some of the best grape growers in the state and in each and every vineyard we see this type of dedication. The next time you read about how great a wine is from a winery, think about the growers and there immense contribution to the overall process.
Cheers!
Charlie