Harvest 2023: Tempranillo

Steve and I holding one of the first clusters we picked.

We did it. Our first harvest. Tempranillo from Freed Estate Vineyard, Umpqua Valley, Oregon.

We got the word that the brix was where it should be and the birds were being relentless, so we drove down on Wednesday, 9/20.

Tempranillo clusters.

Tempranillo cluster.

We had a hiccup in our plans the day we left. Although we signed a contract with AVP, got insured, and had been assured that we were good to go, there was some chitchat behind the scenes that we were not privy to, and the powers that be decided we should make wine under someone else who contracts with AVP. We were assured that everything would remain the same, but we learned later that this was not the case. In any event, we didn’t have time to think about any of this. We were on our way to go harvest our grapes. We had no other place to make our wine. So we felt we had no choice but to agree to the changes and keep the peace. We were very concerned about pissing everyone off right from the beginning, so we went with the flow and believed that everyone here had good intent.

We drove down to Winston feeling a little uneasy, but still excited about this adventure we were embarking upon. We spent the night at my mom’s house and woke up early in the morning to pick. It took way longer than we anticipated, as we couldn’t just simply pick clusters and throw them in buckets, but we had to examine each cluster to see if it had rot or raisining. So we ended up staying overnight again and leaving to go back to Portland on Friday morning.

Steve picking. The nets are to keep the birds away.

Steve with a bin of our grape babies.

Me with a bin of our grape babies.

Dumping buckets into the field bin.

We got back to AVP around noon on Friday and helped to process the grapes—putting them through the destemmer and crusher and into their fermentors.

Everything about the AVP setup feels weird now. We understood that we would be able to make our own wine and direct the process of making it, and that the winemaker we were contracted under would be there to answer questions we had and show us how to use AVP’s equipment and whatnot. But it became clear in text messages between us that our questions were annoying to the winemaker and that she wanted to direct the process as if we hired her to make the wine for us. Our whole thing was that we wanted to make our own wine. It was increasingly difficult to be able to ask questions without getting annoyed responses back. I tried to remember that harvest is a stressful time, and that people may not be at their best right now. Plus, there may be things lost in translation over text.

We were told when we got back that we wouldn’t even be allowed on the property if the winemaker we were contracted under wasn’t there. This was really hard to swallow, and I expressed that it felt like I got tricked into a situation I never wanted. The winemaker basically told me I could accept it or I could move my wine somewhere else. We didn’t have anywhere we could move it, so I had no choice to accept it at this point. I could sue for breach of contract, but to what end? Being blacklisted in the Portland wine community? I figured I’d just chalk this up to a lesson learned and hopefully we’d be in our own place the next year.

But what started out as something sweet and magical was slowly starting to feel sour.

Here are some photos of some of the winemaking we got to do over the days and weeks following harvest:

Punchdowns.

Taking wine samples to check fermentation progress.

Preparing yeast for inoculation.

You can see where the yeast slurry was poured, in that corner with the white stuff.

You can see how the yeast are really taking off.

Racking the free-run (unpressed juice) wine into barrel.

Little peek into the barrel at he pretty color.

Dumping the fermentor of grapes into the press.

Here’s a video of wine coming out of the press and into the pan: