Woodward Canyon 'Get The Dirt'

I'll See you in Walla Walla

2012-01-24T16:15:00.000-08:00

Are you still looking to plan that trip to visit Walla Walla and all the wineries our little town has to offer? Well right now is the best time to book. Alaska Airlines is currently offering 20% discount on all flights to and from Walla Walla from anywhere Alaska flies, excluding Mexico and Hawaii, if you book before February 6th and travel before March 31st. Alaska has also partnered up with the Walla Walla Wine Alliance to offer special savings for those who fly into Walla Walla, including waived tasting fees at over 75 Walla Walla wineries, special lodging and restaurant offers and 2-for-1 skiing and museum ticket offers. Just show your boarding pass at participating locations. And if all that wasn't a good enough reason to visit, after you spend the weekend purchasing wine the Alliance and Alaska has partnered up to offer no baggage fees on the first case of wine you check! All cases after are charged the usual baggage fees.

So book now and hope to see you in Walla Walla sometime soon!

Cheers!

Shari

It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas!

2011-12-08T11:09:00.000-08:00

With Holiday Barrel behind us, we are now focusing all our attention on the upcoming holidays. So as our gift to you, we would like to offer free ground shipping on all wine purchases of six bottles or more. Stock up on all your favorites, like the new release 2009 "Artist Series" Cabernet Sauvignon, the Non-Vintage Red Wine or the 2008 "Old Vines" Cabernet Sauvignon before it sells out. Place your order today to receive your wine before Christmas.

So grab a glass and let us bring the wine to you!

Merry Christmas everyone and Happy New Year!

Woody Harvest 2011

2011-11-09T09:48:00.000-08:00

My "harvest has begun" blog quickly turned into a "harvest is finally winding down" blog with the craziness in the tasting room the past couple of weeks. But instead of giving an update and then waiting a week or two for the next, everything will come out at once. Here's the full rundown on harvest at Woodward Canyon!

The 2011 harvest was definitely one of those hurry up and wait seasons. We were one of the first wineries in the valley, if not the first, to bring in fruit, our Estate sauvignon blanc, on September 15th.

Estate sauvignon blanc through the press

Next in was our Estate chardonnay, harvested eleven days later, on September 26th.


Estate Chardonnay

Then our cellar crew played the waiting game until the reds and DuBrul Riesling were ready for harvest. DuBrul Riesling was harvested on October 13th and then crushed first thing the following morning. The first of the reds harvested was roughly two tons of syrah out of the Champoux Vineyard on October 14th.


Champoux Syrah

After that things picked up to a steady pace. 9.3 tons of Weinbau merlot came in on October 18th. 5.5 tons of Sagemoor cabernet and 8 tons of Woodward Canyon Estate cab franc was brought in on October 21st. And we brought in the last of our whites, a bit of Celilo chardonnay on October 22nd.


Celilo Vineyard Chardonnay

The cabernet grapes were the last of the grapes to ripen and be harvested. We brought in Champoux Vineyard cabernet sauvignon blocks 1 and 2 (typically designated for "Old Vines") on October 27th. Canoe Ridge (block 7 and 16) and Spring Creek cabernet came in October 28th. Champoux cabernet, blocks 4 and 2 lower, came in October 30th.

Champoux Vineyard Block 1

The last of the cabernet we brought in was from Les Collines and Hedges Vineyard on October 31st and November 1st and an additional 3 tons of Les Collines cabernet on November 4th.

All in all we ended up with right around 109 tons of fruit for the 2011 vintage. Both Rick and Kevin seem to be excited about the fruit we did get from this cooler, later vintage, and are excited about the wines we will see down the road.

"This vintage reminds me most of 1984 followed then by 1991 and 1993. The wines are sure to be different but they will be good from good producers. I believe I told someone else that the wines will be more like the wines we used to make 25 years ago; like left bank Bordeaux possibly" - Rick Small

Day in the Woody Vineyard

2011-08-08T12:26:00.000-07:00

So I finally made it up to the Estate Vineyard to check and see how things were progressing and just like predicted, we are anywhere from 10 days to 2 weeks behind. There weren't any signs of veraison on the cabernet franc yet, which in normal years usually starts around the first of August. Now that we've had about a week to a week and a half of consistently 85+ days of sunshine it'll be interesting to see if we catch up in the vineyard and how quickly.

Not a bad way to start the day!


Grape clusters


Great view of the valley from our vineyard

Because of the freeze last winter, we had to cut back most of our vineyard. Everything except for the cabernet franc, sauvignon blanc and chardonnay was cut back to the ground and will not produce a crop this year. Earlier we let the vines grow in fairly wild and now we are going through the vineyard and thinning down to what we will use to retrain as the trunk and the cordons.

Chicken parmigiana

2011-05-27T10:59:00.000-07:00

Since we haven’t really gotten into spring or summer weather I decided that for this month’s recipe I was going to do a staff favorite comfort food - chicken parmigiana. This one is a staple for myself and my co-workers and I would eat it once a week if I could get away with it. Lately at the winery, we have been making chicken parmesan sandwiches (or grinders as they are called in New York) a lot. So here is the recipe we use to make them.

Chicken cutlets:

4 boneless chicken breast halves (approximately 2 pounds) – have butcher thin-slice them or pound per instruction #1

2‑1/4 cups seasoned breadcrumbs

1/4 cups grated parmesan cheese

1‑1/2 cups all purpose flour

3 large eggs, beaten with a fork

Salt and pepper

1/2 cup olive oil for frying (approximate)

PREPARATION:

1.) (Do only if butcher hasn't thin-sliced them.) Place chicken breasts between sheets of plastic wrap or waxed paper, and pound with a kitchen mallet or rolling pin until they are evenly about 1/4-inch thick.

2.) Set up a dredging station of flour, eggs, beaten with a tablespoon of grated parmesan and the breadcrumbs. Get a large sauté pan to medium on the burner. Lightly salt and pepper the chicken pieces on both sides. Coat first in the flour, patting off extra, then egg, allowing excess to drip into the bowl. Dredge in breadcrumbs. Set the chicken pieces on a plate.

3.) Heat the oil in the hot pan. When hot, add chicken cutlets, cooking to a golden brown on each side -- no more than a couple of minutes each. Set on paper towel-lined plate to drain a minute.

Pre-heat oven to 400. Take your pieces of French bread (or other crusty bread) and place them in the oven for a few minutes until they become crispy. Top one slice of bread with a cutlet and homemade tomato sauce (see below for that recipe) and slices of mozzeralla and bake until mozzarella is melted, about five minutes. Enjoy!

Homemade tomato sauce:

2 small onion, chopped

2-3 cloves garlic, chopped

1 green bell pepper, chopped (optional)

1 small carrot, chopped

2 28 oz can crushed tomatoes -- san marazanos are the best

1/4 cup red wine

basil

oregano

1 - 2 bay leaves

Salt

Pepper

Red pepper flakes

Saute veggies in olive oil in a large saucepan over medium heat. Once tender, add crushed tomatoes. Stir. Add wine. Stir. Add seasonings. Lower heat to low or simmer, and continue cooking for minimum of 30 minutes. Flavors develop best when the sauce has been on the stove for a long time, so if possible start early and allow 2- 3 hrs to cook.

Until Mother Nature gets on board with my wishes for summer (sunshine and heat, please and thank you) I will be posting comfort food recipes in defiance.

Spring Release 2011

2011-05-05T14:32:00.000-07:00

We are gearing up for another busy weekend. Starting tomorrow, Friday, May 6th and running through Sunday, May 8th we will be celebrating Spring Release in our Reserve House. We will be pouring our 2009 Washington State Chardonnay, 2009 Estate Barbera, Non-Vintage Red Wine, newly released 2009 Walla Walla Valley Cabernet Sauvignon, 2008 "Artist Series" Cabernet Sauvignon and 2008 "Old Vines" Cabernet Sauvignon ($5 tasting fee, refundable with purchase). For this weekend only, we will be offering a special library tasting of our 1998 Charbonneau Red for an additional, non-refundable, $5 tasting fee. We will also be selling a limited amount of this wine on a first come, first serve basis, limit of three bottles, no discounts available. You don't have to be present to purchase the 1998 Charbonneau, we are also taking orders over our website or phone.

Hope to see everyone in town this weekend!

Cheers!

Shari

Growth in the vineyard

2011-05-05T11:04:00.000-07:00

Cabernet Franc buds, April 12th

I did a quick trip up to the Estate Vineyard earlier today to see how the growth in the vineyard was coming along. It's been a little over three weeks since I was up there last and things have really seemed to have taken off. The vineyard crew has gone through and pruned most of the cabernet franc, sauvignon blanc and chardonnay. What were tiny buds, barely noticeable when I was up there the middle of April, are now full bloom buds.


Cabernet Franc buds, May 2nd

Now we just have to be concerned about the late Spring freezes that we seem to be getting more regularly. If we can keep the buds from becoming damaged at this point we may just have a nice harvest, in sauvignon blanc, chardonnay and cabernet franc, after all.


Tomato starts in the green house

Genaro, our vineyard manager's father

On my way up to the vineyard I stopped to check out the Estate Garden that is planted just below. Genaro, Juan's father, who is a retired vineyard worker likes to spend his time in the garden taking care of things. I also stepped into our greenhouse to take a look at the tomato plant starts. Because of the cool spring the starts are a little smaller than they were last year. We're hoping for a bit of warm weather so they can catch up before we transplant them outside.

On the way back to the winery, I stopped to take a couple of pictures and came across a kestrel falcon that had been injured. Concerned about the other birds of prey in the area, I had Juan help me catch him and then took him to Animal Clinic East, in Walla Walla. They did an initial evaluation on him and then sent him on a shuttle to Blue Mountain Wildlife in Pendleton, Oregon where they specialize in the care and treatment of injured or orphaned animals, specifically birds of prey. I spoke with Lynne this afternoon and our kestrel is doing fine. She hopes to bring him back to the Estate Vineyard to release him back to the wild sometime this week.

Field trip to the Estate Vineyard with Rick Small

2011-04-23T16:49:00.000-07:00

Last week I got a chance to leave my office and head up to our Estate Vineyard with Rick to check out the vineyard and get his thoughts on the upcoming 2011 vintage. Because the 2010 vintage was such a late one with a fairly substantial freeze the middle of November, we lost a lot of the vines for the later ripening varietals.

Here's some pictures.


Sauvignon Blanc buds

Rick looking over the sauvignon blanc block

Rick getting a closer look at the sauvignon blanc buds

sauvignon blanc buds

cabernet sauvignon cut back due to winter damage

Brussel sprout and bacon recipe

2011-03-23T11:57:00.000-07:00

If any of you know me, outside of work, then you know that I have been on this brussel sprout kick lately. I can't seem to get enough of them. Whether I'm roasting them, sauteing them with bacon or cooking them with pasta, they have become a large part of my diet in the past two weeks. I guess it just goes to show me that my mother really did know what she was talking, about all those years ago, when she kept telling me to eat my brussel sprouts because I would love them one day.

This is one of my new favorite recipes. I’ve tweaked it a bit from the recipe found on the ZaZu Restaurant and Farm page. ZaZu is a sustainable restaurant down in the heart of the Sonoma wine country. Last time I was in California I happened to stumble across this place. A cute little find with wonderful food and a surprise find of our 2007 “Artist Series” Cabernet Sauvignon on their wine list!

Brussel sprouts and bacon salad

4 ounces pepper bacon, cut into chunks

4 cups brussel sprouts, cut off the ends and quarter or shred them

1 shallot, minced

¼ cup balsamic vinegar

1 apple, diced

3 tablespoons roasted, peeled and roughly chopped hazelnuts

1 tablespoon quality extra virgin olive oil

3 tablespoons gorgonzola

Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

In a large sauté pan on medium high heat, cook the bacon until browned, roughly five to ten minutes. Add the brussel sprouts and cook until tender, I usually toss with the bacon in the drippings and then cover and let steam for ten minutes or so. Add the shallots and open up their fragrance, about 1 minute. Take off the heat and add the balsamic vinegar, apples, hazelnuts, gorgonzola and extra virgin oil and toss. Season to taste with salt and pepper. I ended up pairing this dish with our 2009 Estate Reserve Chardonnay.

Enjoy!

Shari

Sustainability

2011-03-09T16:22:00.000-08:00

Sustainability is best defined as the capacity to endure and to meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs. It integrates three main goals - environmental health (minimal and safe chemical use), economic profitability (being profitable), and social and economic equity (being a good neighbor and employer).

With people paying attention to labels such as sustainable, organic and biodynamic, wineries are starting to incorporate these practices into their every day farming. We, at Woodward Canyon Winery, have been utilizing sustainable practices at the winery and in our Estate Vineyard for years. In fact, Rick was one of the pioneers in the Walla Walla Valley when it comes to sustainable farming.

In 2004, Woodward Canyon was a founding member of VINEA, the Walla Walla Valley Winegrowers Sustainable Trust. VINEA is an organization made up of volunteer winegrowers and wineries that have embraced the concept of “ecologically sound, economically viable and socially supportive.” VINEA has also partnered with Oregon LIVE for third party certification. LIVE is a not-for-profit organization that provides education and certification for vineyards.

In February of 2008, after a two year certification process with VINEA and LIVE, we were certified sustainable by the International Organisation for Biological Control. The IOBC was established in 1955 to promote the use of sustainable, environmentally safe, economically feasible and socially acceptable control methods of pests and diseases of agricultural and forestry crops. This organization sets the protocols from which LIVE draws its standards. Additionally, LIVE applies with the IOBC for international endorsement each year.

Here are just a few ways that we are sustainable at the winery and in the vineyard.

Up in the vineyard we utilize all organic fertilizers and chemicals. We also re-introduce natural cover crops back into the vineyard and hillside as we try to prevent erosion. We use drip system watering to help reduce the amount of water that is wasted to evaporation.

At the winery we are using eco-friendly wine bottles for roughly 90% of all our wines. These bottles are lighter, take less energy to produce and are less expensive to ship both when empty and filled. We have also joined forces with the Walla Walla Wine Alliance and ReCORK by Amorim in recycling all of our used corks. We’ve also offer a location where our customers are able to drop off used corks for recycling.

And the socially supportive runs true for all the employees. Everyone receives sick and vacation leave, along with medical and other benefits. Family is always stressed to come first no matter what. And if you’re from the Walla Walla Valley you’ve probably heard about our pizza lunches, which we’ll sometimes whip together for the employees or other events. For me, pizza lunches are one of my favorite perks to working at Woodward Canyon, though the access to good wine isn’t too bad either!

We will always strive to be sustainable at the winery, however I’m curious what your thoughts are on the whole sustainable movement? When you’re looking for that bottle of wine for dinner - does wine with the ‘sustainably farmed’ or ‘organically farmed’ label entice you to buy?

Slow cooked braised beef over cheesy polenta

2011-02-23T11:24:00.000-08:00

It’s that time of the year where I typically want something fairly hearty and delicious but without a lot of effort. My friend gave me this fantastic crock pot recipe, that I’ve used a couple of times already, and it fits the bill perfectly. As long as you plan the evening before, prep time is around 30 minutes for everything and cook time is 20 minutes for the polenta and 12+ hours for the meat.

Slow cooked, braised beef -

Rump roast – want a cut of meat that has a little bit of fat on it or it will turn out too dry.

1 – carrot, roughly chopped

1 – medium onion, roughly chopped

1 clove garlic, chopped

1 can diced or crushed tomatoes

1 bottle of cabernet sauvignon, or other big red with tannins

2 tablespoons Italian seasoning

2 bay leaves

½ tablespoon olive oil

Salt and pepper to taste

Cheesy polenta –

4 cups water

1 ½ cups cornmeal

4 oz mascarpone

4 oz bleu or gorgonzola cheese

Salt and pepper to taste

Start by warming the olive oil in a frying pan on medium heat. Rub the roast with salt and pepper and brown in the pan - don’t cook all the way, just long enough for the sides to brown, roughly five minutes. While you’re waiting, chop the carrot, onion and garlic and put aside. Once the meat is done browning move it to the crock pot and cover with the chopped vegetables and canned tomatoes. Then pour the red wine over the meat until it’s fully covered. Turn the crock pot on low and cover. I usually start the meat process the night before I’m going to eat it, typically right before I go to bed.

When you go to plate the meat after cooking, usually ten to twelve hours later, the meat is so tender it will just fall apart. Remove and discard the bay leaves. If you’d like a thicker sauce pull some of the liquid and vegetables out of the crock pot and blend it with either a submersion blender or in a regular blender (be careful not to put too much hot liquid in or you could blow a lid).

For the polenta, you’ll need to start about 20 to 30 minutes before you’d like to eat. Add one and a half cups cornmeal to four cups of water and bring to a boil, adding the cornmeal before the water boils helps keep the lumps to a minimum. Once it starts to boil, turn down the temperature to low and simmer, while stirring, for about 15 to 20 minutes. Once the polenta is thickened, remove from the stove and add the mascarpone, bleu cheese and salt and pepper for a little flavor. I add the salt after the bleu since bleu can be salty in its own and you don’t want to add too much.

I usually just plate the polenta and scoop the beef on top with a little sauce. I paired this with our new 2009 Estate Barbera and it turned out wonderfully. Enjoy!

Upcoming Events

2011-02-16T12:21:00.000-08:00

Looking ahead at the calendar and February and March are going to be busy months for the winery. Kevin, Rick, Darcey and Thomas will all be out doing events throughout the Pacific Northwest. Check out the list and find the one closest to you! Rick, Darcey, Thomas and Kevin always enjoy catching up with old friends and meeting new ones.

February 23rd - Ponti Seafood Grill wine dinner with Rick Small at 6:30. Five course menu with wine pairings, $95 per guest (tax and gratuity excluded). Call 206-284-3000 or click here for reservations.
February 28th - Taste Walla Walla in Portland at the Venue Pearl. Trade tasting 1:30 - 3:30 pm and consumer tasting from 5:30 - 7:30. Advance tickets are $50 for one or $90 for a pair or $65 at the door. To purchase tickets click here. For details please visit www.wallawallawine.com/taste or call the office, 509-526-3117.
February 28th - Lumiere wine dinner with national sales manager, Thomas Woodley, in Vancouver, BC. $95 per person, seats are going fast so please call 604-739-8185 to reserve. For details, please visit them online.
March 13th - Taste Walla Walla consumer tasting in Seattle at Sodo Park from 4:30 - 7:00 PM. Advance tickets are $50 for one or $90 for a pair or $65 at the door. To purchase tickets click here. For details please visit www.wallawallawine.com/taste or call the office, 509-526-3117.
March 14th - Taste Walla Walla trade tasting in Seattle at Sodo Park. Limit access trade from 11:30 - 1:00, open trade from 1:30 - 3:30. Trade admittance is open to qualified trade and media. A valid business card will be required at registration. Non-trade attendees will be turned away. To register go here.
March 26th - From 10:00 - 4:00 The Seminars at the Bell Harbor International Conference Center will feature wine experts from around the industry leading in-depth explorations of Washington wine. Click for more details and/or to purchase tickets.
March 27th - Taste Washington in Seattle at Qwest Field Event Center. VIP tasting from 2:00 - 4:00 with general admission tasting staring at 4:00 and going through 7:00. For more information go to the Taste Washington website.

If you can't make it to one of these events, don't forget that Spring Release Weekend is the weekend of May 6th and 7th. Watch for an e-newsletter in the next month or so letting you know what to expect and the wines that we'll be releasing.

Hope to see everyone soon!

Cheers!

Shari

Lowden Flood 2011

2011-01-26T15:51:00.000-08:00

Know the saying, there are no such things as a dull moment? Well that seems to ring especially true at the winery. Last Monday we arrived to a lake in what use to be our parking lot, production buildings and back yard. The little irrigation ditch behind the winery breached in the night and water flowed everywhere!

Rick, Kevin and the cellar crew went into damage control mode and started diverting water right away. We're lucky that we keep everyone on pallets and didn't lose any wine. It could have been much worse! I guess this is what I get when I start wishing for warm weather in the middle of winter with snow all the way down the Blues.

Merry Christmas!

2010-12-25T10:57:00.000-08:00

Peace, love, joy and great wine on this day and always!

Joyeux Noel. Mele Kalikimaka. Feliz Navidad. Merry Christmas!

-The Woody Crew

12 Days of Christmas - Woody style

2010-12-09T10:57:00.000-08:00

On the first day of Christmas my true friend gave to me ... a Special Selection Red Wine.

On the second day of Christmas my true friend gave to me ... two Holiday mags and a Special Selection Red Wine.

On the third day of Christmas my true friend gave to me ... three "Artist Series" mags, two Holiday mags and a Special Selection Red Wine.

On the fourth day of Christmas my true friend gave to me ... four Woody fleeces, three "Artist Series" mags, two Holiday mags and a Special Selection Red Wine.

On the fifth day of Christmas my true friend gave to me ... five Chardonnays, four Woody fleeces, three "Artist Series" mags, two Holiday mags and a Special Selection Red Wine.

On the sixth day of Christmas my true friend gave to me ... six etched glasses, five Chardonnays, four Woody fleeces, three "Artist Series" mags, two Holiday mags and a Special Selection Red Wine.

On the seventh day of Christmas my true friend gave to me ... seven Woody coasters, six etched glasses, five Chardonnays, four Woody fleeces, three "Artist Series" mags, two Holiday mags and a Special Selection Red Wine.

On the eight day of Christmas my true friend gave to me ... eight CV Merlots, seven Woody coasters, six etched glasses, five Chardonnays, four Woody fleeces, three "Artist Series" mags, two Holiday mags and a Special Selection Red Wine.

On the ninth day of Christmas my true friend gave to me ... nine "Artist Series" Cabs, eight CV Merlots, seven Woody coasters, six etched glasses, five Chardonnays, four Woody fleeces, three "Artist Series" mags, two Holiday mags and a Special Selection Red Wine.

On the tenth day of Christmas my true friend gave to me ... ten Estate Reds, nine "Artist Series" Cabs, eight CV Merlots, seven Woody coasters, six etched glasses, five Chardonnays, four Woody fleeces, three "Artist Series" mags, two Holiday mags and a Special Selection Red Wine.

On the eleventh day of Christmas my true friend gave to me ... eleven "Old Vines" Cabs, ten Estate Reds, nine "Artist Series" Cabs, eight CV Merlots, seven Woody coasters, six etched glasses, five Chardonnays, four Woody fleeces, three "Artist Series" mags, two Holiday mags and a Special Selection Red Wine.

On the twelfth day of Christmas my true friend gave to me ... twelve Artist prints, eleven "Old Vines" Cabs, ten Estate Reds, nine "Artist Series" Cabs, eight CV Merlots, seven Woody coasters, six etched glasses, five Chardonnays, four Woody fleeces, three "Artist Series" mags, two Holiday mags and a Special Selection Red Wine.

Happy Holidays from the Woody Crew!

Shari/Guest Services

Happy Holidays!

2010-11-29T15:34:00.000-08:00

Happy Holidays!

It's beginning to look a lot like a Winter Wonderland outside and just in time for the holidays too!

Holiday Barrel Tasting is just around the corner. This year we will be releasing our 2008 "Artist Series" Cabernet and the 2009 Washington State Chardonnay. Through the month of December we will be offering the '08 "Artist Series" Cabernet at a special release pricing of $44/bottle down from $49/bottle with the additional 10% case discount still applying. Be sure to stock up now and take advantage of this great price!

Also on special is the 2008 Nelms Road Merlot and the 2007 "Artist Series" Cabernet 1.5L. We are offering the Nelms Merlot for $15/bottle, down from $20 and the '07 "Artist Series" Cabernet 1.5L for $98/bottle, down from $109.

And our last thank you to all of our loyal customers is free ground shipping for purchases made over the phone or internet, of a case or more (2-day shipping and shipping to Alaska and Hawaii will receive a $40 credit towards the shipping charges). This special does not apply in the tasting room. If you have questions please contact Marlene Steiner, marlene@woodwardcanyon.com.

And don't forget that Lisa Snow Lady, the 2008 "Artist Series" artist, is planning on being on hand to sign prints and bottles Saturday the 4th and Sunday the 5th, weather permitting. Also, Paul Gregutt will be at the winery on Saturday the 4th from 12:30 - 2:30 signing copies of his new book, Washington Wines and Wineries: Second Edition. This would make a great present for those wine lovers in your life so stop in and pick up a copy.

If you're planning on making a last minute trip over to the valley for Holiday Barrel there are still some rooms available at the local hotels. Check www.wallawalla.org for a complete listing of all area hotels.

We hope to see everyone this weekend! Drive safe!

Cheers!

-Shari

2010 Harvest

2010-11-04T13:48:00.000-07:00

What an incredibly challenging vintage 2010 has turned out to be. From the beginning, nothing about this vintage has been easy. The year started off promising enough with some abnormally warm temperatures in January, February and March that had the valley thinking early harvest. Many vineyards showed early signs of bud break and harvest was on its way. However early spring turned into a summer no-show, where we had a few days of weather over 95 but the majority of the season was spent in the 80s. Not only were temperatures lower but we were also compounded with more rainfall than normal which lead to the possibilities of mildew and rot in the vineyards. Then to cap off the vintage with fruit ripening so slowly harvest was at least three weeks later than in previous years. We brought in the Woody sauvignon blanc, the first fruit of the harvest, on September 16^th, three weeks later than it was brought in for 2009. Everything else started to trickle in after the sauv blanc. With picking going into the last week of October it then became a rush against the freezing temperatures at night.

Here's a quick harvest note from Rick -

Typically, I remember something unique or special about almost every vintage, but yikes, I almost do not know where to begin this year. I made my first home wine in 1976 and my first commercial wine in 1981 and in those 30 plus years I never seen a vintage like this. Let’s see, we’ve had unseasonably cool weather, more rain than I can remember and an uneven set and yes, we are several weeks late but……………..this is agriculture people; it’s farming! I grew up with this. A vintage such as this doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with wine quality and yet, it has everything to do with wine quality.

Do I still have your attention? Good, let me explain. This year there are going to be incredible grapes grown and wines made; and there will be grapes not fit for harvest and there will be wines dumped down the drain and here’s why. The best vineyard owners (farmers) will produce extraordinary fruit this year which will subsequently be made into extraordinary wine by the best winemakers. The best growers did all the right things as the year progressed. The heavy crop, surely not to ripen, was thinned back to one cluster per shoot no shoulder, laterals were removed and canopy opened allowing needed air movement to prevent rot or mold or mildew. The best winemakers are doing the same thing in the cellar. The correct size and shape of tank to ferment in and enough of them, the appropriate method of cap management, when to drop the tank, how much older wood to use this year and the wisdom to realize that less is more!

Did someone say cooler vintage? Great, that means more expressively bright fruit, unbelievably dark, inky color and lower alcohols. Damn, I thought that’s what we have been trying to do for the last decade. So let’s do it!

-Rick Small

Everyone I talk to keeps mentioned how this is going to be a difficult vintage. Not only has the farming aspect of things has been difficult but wineries are facing much lower yields than normal. So far many wineries throughout the Walla Walla Valley are commenting that production will be down about 30%. We are no different (we picked roughly 1 to 1.5 tons per acre in our Estate Vineyard) but so far it looks like the vintage has the potential to be a great one. Sugars are lower than they have been in the recent past but the acidity is still high, which in turn will lead to well balanced wines that should have the ability to age longer. Everyone keeps talking about this moving trend to high alcohol wines and how we should move away from them; well like Rick said, this just might be the perfect vintage for that.

With the craziness of harvest behind us, we are now focusing on getting ready for Autumn Release Weekend. This year we will be pouring in the Reserve House where we'll be featuring a couple new releases, a couple additional older vintage pours and some current releases. Starting the lineup of wines will be the new releases the 2008 Charbonneau Red, the 2009 Estate Barbera and the 2009 Dry Riesling, a special pour of the 2009 Estate Reserve Chardonnay, the 2006 Columbia Valley Merlot the 2005 Estate Red Reserve, the Non-Vintage Red, and a special magnum pour of the 2006 "Artist Series" Cabernet.

Also coming up in November is 20something - the new vintage at The Fremont Studios in Seattle on November 20th from 6:00 to 10:00 pm. Join Thomas Woodley and enjoy a pour of the 2009 Estate Sauvignon Blanc. Visit http://www.thenewvintage.org for tickets and more information.

Join us for a busy Holiday Barrel Tasting Weekend , December 3rd - 5th at the winery. We will be releasing the 2008 "Artist Series" Cabernet. Lisa Snow Lady, the artist for this label, will be on hand to sign prints and bottles over the weekend. Also around will be Chef Paul as he prepares small bites to pair with the wines - marinated lamb, roasted veggies, tapenades and a few other spreads are always winery staff favorites. For copies of the recipes visit our website www.woodwardcanyon.com. Rick will be baking bread once again to serve with some of Chef Paul's spreads. Also on hand, Paul Gregutt, author of Washington Wines and Wineries: 2nd Edition, will be around to sign copies on Saturday, December 4th from 12:30 to 2:30 pm.

See you at the winery!
Cheers!

-Shari

Marketing Travels Abroad

2010-06-27T15:48:00.000-07:00

Last month Rick and I spent a couple of weeks in England and Germany attending events and marketing Woody wines.

We began with a trade tasting set up by our agent, Wine Treasury, at Gordon Ramsay's Maze in London. In addition to new releases, we presented a vertical of "Old Vines" Cabernet. This was followed by a lovely trade lunch in the Maze View room where the kitchen executed some great food and wine matches.

We spent the next three days at the London International Wine & Spirits Fair which is a huge trade event, pouring wine along side other Northwest wineries from 9:30 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. each day. How those women in the booth across the aisle wore stiletto heels for three days, I will never figure out! We did this same event several years ago and there was definitely more interest in Washington wines this time. However, the majority of people who stop to taste require a 101 on Washington wine starting with which Washington we are talking about and moving on to clarifying that all of the state does not have the same climate as Seattle. It is quite fun though to meet trade and other winemakers from all over the world and to help to educate people on what we are doing here in Washington.

A special treat was running into former Woody intern Timothée Boltz from Alsace who spent a crush with us in 2004. He now works as an export manager for an Alsatian winery and is getting married this summer.

One side benefit of the tasting at Maze was meeting the folks from other fine restaurants, two of which we later visited.

We first went to Goodman, a steak house in Mayfair. The General Manager, David who had recently visited Walla Walla with the Washington Wine Commission's Wine Experience, and the sommelier, Crispin, took good care of us. They have an interesting concept where they feature U.S., Scottish and Irish beef - all perfectly prepared with great side dishes as well. We waddled back to the Tube.

The next evening we dined across the street at Hibiscus at the urging of sommelier Julian. It was absolutely one of the best meals we have ever had. Sleek, calm interior that was a nice change from the hectic city streets. We chose the Spring Tasting Menu – layered flavors and textures, beautifully presented. The chef has a way of combining a myriad of flavors, yet keeping each one distinct. The fresh pea soup inspired me to come home and plant some peas in our raised beds and the tiny jellied cubes of balsamic in the strawberry dessert has got me on a new mission. A very memorable meal.

Finally we ate at the Al Sultan, a Lebanese restaurant, in the Shepherd's Market area of Mayfair which is a last night tradition for those Northwest wineries associated with Hilltop Wines in the UK. After filling up on the extensive Meze, I looked up and saw the loaded plates of the main course headed our way and recalled that last time I had told myself to remember that the Meze was just the first course…….It is a good thing that getting to and from the Tube platform involves a lot of stairs.

London is a great city and I wish we had time to partake in what it has to offer, but the next day we flew to Frankfurt, Germany, then took a train further north to Celle where brothers Bruce and Alan at Kultur Insel-Celle are beginning to bring our wines in. Celle is a charming town with the buildings in the old town center dating back to the 16th century with some 480 restored half-timber houses, a palace/museum and abundant parks and walking paths.

By day we went to the market and toured the sights. In the evenings, Bruce, Allan and Tanja arranged a tasting at wine bar in a nearby town (Buxtehude) and at their wine bar/music club in Celle where Alan plays. Tanja speaks English better and faster than any foreign speaker and most native English speakers that I know, and for me to say that is something if you know how fast Rick and I speak.

Germans are quite fascinated by the American West and steak houses with western themes are fairly common. Our Nelms Road wine is now on the list of the Apache Grill in Celle. The inside of their menu has a map of the U.S., showing the location of the various tribes and lo and behold there were the Walla Wallas!

This trip was kind of a whirlwind, but fun and an important way to make connections and to spread the word about Washington wine and Woody in particular.

Cheers!

Darcey

Travel Changes

2010-06-25T10:37:00.000-07:00

Wine bloggers and non-bloggers alike the first section of the New Highway 12 opened this past Monday. It's a bit confusing and if you're not careful you'll miss some of our great neighbors here in the West End. Here's a great little map of the new road.

For those bloggers that are interested in finding something to do in your down time, head out to visit us for a tasting. Show us your conference badge for waived tasting fees.

Hope to see everyone this weekend!

Shari

UPDATE ---

Here's the most current copy of the West End Winery map. It includes directions on how to get to Skylite as well.

Calendar of events

2010-06-03T15:02:00.000-07:00

I’m sorry that updates have become less and less frequent. I am trying to be better at posting but things at the winery and in the tasting room have become increasingly busier in the last month or two. There are so many things going on in the month of June, that we are involved in, that I wanted to get the word out. Hope to see everyone at one or more of the events ...

· June 3^rd – We will be joining in on the national Washington Wine (#WAWine) tweetup down at Olive Marketplace Café in Walla Walla from 5:00 to 8:00 pm. Join us and numerous other Walla Walla wineries as we all meet in one central location and collectively taste and tweet about Washington wines.

· June 3^rd – Join Thomas Woodley, our national sales coordinator, at The Inn at Langley in Langley Washington for an amazing night of food and wine. Chef Mike Costello has put together an amazing 5-course menu and paired it with some fresh whites and vintage reds. Cost of the dinner is $170 per person which includes food, wine, tax and gratuity. Attendees of the dinner will be offered a discounted room rate to stay at the inn as well.Call the Inn for reservations (360) 221-3033.

· June 4^th – For those that stay the night, join Thomas Woodley and Chef Costello as they dig into their award winning cellar to host a vertical tasting of vintage Woodward Canyon wines accompanied with some small bites prepared by Chef Costello. The tasting will be free to those who attended the dinner the evening before and cost $35 for anyone else.

· June 6^th – Join Marlene and myself as we descend upon The Davenport Hotel in downtown Spokane for Taste Washington Spokane on Sunday from 5:00 to 8:30 pm. We’ll join around 100 other wineries and 25 restaurants at the event and will be pouring our 2008 Washington State Chardonnay, the 2007 “Artist Series” Cabernet and the 2008 Nelms Road Cabernet. Tickets are still available so get yours at http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/107945.

· June 13^th – Join either Thomas Woodley or Darcey Fugman-Small, our owner/general manager, at the Seattle Wine Awards hosted at the historic Rainier Club. We will be pouring our award winning wines – the 2006 Estate Red (double gold), the 2007 “Artist Series” Cabernet (gold) and the 2008 Nelms Road Cabernet (silver). Tickets for the event are still available so get your ticket here.

· June 18^th – Visit the Walla Walla Valley and join in on the festivities of Vintage Walla Walla. Friday evening, June 18^th, join Thomas, Rick and Darcey for the bbq under the stars out at Northstar Winery from 6:00 to 9:00 pm. Tickets are available for the bbq only or as part of the Vintage WW package.

· June 19^th – The next day, ten wineries, us included, are hosting special tasting events throughout the valley. For more information on the individual events and for reservations, please contact the Walla Walla Wine Alliance office at (509) 526-3117. Later on Saturday join participating wineries for the Vintage pour gala and silent auction that evening from 5:00 – 7:00 pm. It’s a great opportunity to taste vintage wines with the winemakers who make them. It’s also the chance to bid on amazing packages put together by wineries of the Walla Walla Valley.

· June 25^th – 27^th – The 2010 Wine Bloggers Conference has decided on a change of scenery and is moving from Napa/Sonoma Valley, California to the Walla Walla Valley. I was able to attend the conference last year and had a blast. It is a great opportunity to meet with fellow wine bloggers and talk about wine and the importance of blogging and social media. California set the bar fairly high last year but I know that Walla Walla is up to the task. The conference is sold out however they are keeping a wait list in case there are any last minute cancellations.

And a heads up look at what is coming up in the month of July ...

· July 1^st – Join us as we’re pouring a selection of our wines at Olive Marketplace Café at their weekly wine tasting event. For a $5 tasting fee you can taste through our line up of wines. Splurge on dinner while you are there and grab one of their fabulous flat-bread pizzas. Trust me, you won’t regret it.
· July 31^st – Looking ahead, T-Maccarone's and us have paired up to do a farm-to-table dinner out in our Estate Vineyard. Final details are still to come so check back for more information or send me an email at shari@woodwardcanyon.com and I'll keep you updated.

Hope to get a real post up here soon with the happenings at the winery and a recap on Rick and Darcey’s trip over to England and Germany last month. Thanks for keeping an eye on us and hope to see you in the tasting room soon.

Cheers,

Shari

Windy Walla Walla!

2010-04-26T13:55:00.000-07:00

The 2010 Vintage is officially under way - we finally started pruning the Estate Vineyard the first part of this month. Rick decided to delay pruning just a bit due to the unusual weather we've had the past couple of months. It's been getting up the low 60's during the day but then dropping back down to right around or below freezing at night. Warm days and freezing nights are always a concern in spring and this year it seemed to have started a bit earlier. Once you begin pruning and the buds get warm, they start opening and become susceptible to damage which can mean no grapes. By delaying pruning, we have hopefully bought us some time in case we do get that early spring freeze.

Because we've held off on pruning longer than most in the valley our bud break has been a bit delayed. We saw the first bud break on our sauvignon blanc (pictured to the left) and our cabernet franc earlier this week. Last year we were at least two to three weeks behind schedule and this year we are almost two weeks ahead. It just goes to show you how different each vintage can be. A couple more weeks of warm weather and we could be further along that that. This should be an interesting vintage!

We have also been busy here at the winery. Our cellar crew has spent the past couple of weeks racking all of the 2009 wines. I'm hearing good things about the '09 vintage from Rafa and Kevin so far. Looks like we'll bottle the '09 whites in May along with some of the '08 reds. I can't wait for the wines to be released yet. The only bad thing about wine is waiting around for it to be released.

Don't forget that Spring Release Weekend is coming up this weekend in the Walla Walla Valley. We will be releasing our 2007 "Old Vines" Cabernet. Our 26th release of this wine is made up of 100% cabernet sourced from the Champoux and Sagemoor Vineyards. We will be doing a special pour of the "Old Vines" Cabernet in our "Reserve House" while all other wines will be poured in Production. We will have our usual $5 tasting fee, refundable with wine purchase, for our flight of wines with an additional $5 tasting fee for the "Old Vines," refundable with "Old Vines" purchase only.

"This “Old Vines” Cabernet Sauvignon is rich and complex yet shows elegance, restraint and sophistication. It expresses the purity of fully mature cabernet sauvignon that one only can get from 35 year old vines. The color is dark red to purple and has complex aromas of earth, cherry, leather and smoke. Flavors of ripe black cherries and cassis married with spicy new oak and vanilla coat the mouth. The texture is soft and silky yet there are mature integrated tannins in the rich, long finish. I love the proportion this red wine displays and with proper storage, it should age for ten years easily." -Rick Small, winemaker.

We are excited to kick off 2010's busy season with the annual Spring Release.We hope to see everyone at the winery!

Cheers!

Shari

Baking Bread with Rick Small

2010-04-05T17:17:00.000-07:00

If you’ve ever been to Woodward Canyon over Holiday Barrel Weekend or have had the chance to meet Rick in person, you would know how passionate he is about his bread. He has become somewhat of an artisan, spending years perfecting his recipe to get the perfect flavor and consistency for each loaf. Walking into the production building during Holiday Barrel Weekend is always a treat. Opening the door, one is met with the powerful smell of freshly baked bread along with the dips and spreads that Chef Paul has cooked up for us. During these busy weekends you can almost always find Rick with his hat on backward, wearing his white wine apron, timer around his neck, flour on his hands and standing in front of the stove. Rick takes great pride in his bread and always enjoys baking loaves for our events or even just one or two for the Woody crew to munch on or to use for pizza dough when we do our pizza lunches. And now that it's beginning to warm up a bit in the valley I'm ready for Rick's pizza lunch!

Ingredients:

2 ¼ cups hot water (no chlorinated water)

1 tablespoon wine yeast or 1 packet yeast

6 cups high protein flour – Wheat Montana’s Natural White (www.wheatmontana.com)

1 teaspoon sea salt

Olive oil

Baking items:

5 or 6 quart mixer

Wood peel. Do not buy an aluminum peel because the dough sticks to it.

Corn meal

Dough knife for cutting dough into smaller pieces

Rectangular baking stone

Bread knife for scoring the top of the loaves and cutting bread

Large mixing bowl

1^st Day:

Take 2 ¼ cups hot water and mix in wine yeast or 1 packet yeast and wait until frothy. Add 4 cups of flour and start mixer. Add 1 tsp sea salt and the remaining 2 cups of flour to the mixer. Mix until the gluten develops – the dough should be dry but moist. Lightly coat mixing bowl with olive oil and transfer bread to bowl; I never ferment the dough in stainless steel bowls.

Cover with plastic wrap and leave it to ferment in a warm place overnight.

2^nd Day:

3 hours before you want to bake the bread, cut and shape the dough into 4 long loaves. Use plenty of flour underneath and on the loaves. Cover with plastic wrap and let the loaves grow for 2 hours or longer.

At the end of the 2^nd hour, put your baking stone into the oven and preheat the oven to 450 degrees F. It will take an hour for the stone to come up to temperature. I recommend using a heavy stone and also recommend an electric oven over a gas oven if you have a choice.

At the end of the 3^rd hours, transfer two of the loaves with the wooden peel (flour/corn meal can help here) onto the stone and score the top of the loaves with the bread knife. Bake for about 20 minutes but check from time to time since every oven bakes differently. Repeat with the remaining two loaves. Watch, smell, touch….and enjoy!

-Rick

2005 Special Selection

2010-03-06T17:20:00.000-08:00

They've done it again! If you're a fan of Woodward Canyon you may have heard or have had a chance to sample one of the three Special Selection wines we have released in the past. This is a wine where Rick only produced it when we've had a spectacular vintage that warranted a bottling. The quality of fruit that we receive must be above and beyond that of even our "Old Vines" Cabernet. We've had years in the past where Rick will think we'll have Special Selection quality from the beginning only to find that it does not make the cut. So far only the 1988, 1993 and 1999 vintages has passed the test and have gone on to be bottled. Well get ready, because Rick and Kevin have just released our fourth "Special" and it has been worth the wait!

2005 was an exceptional vintage and this red wine is truly what "special" means. This wine is why we do this! - Rick Small

The 2005 Special Selection definitely does not disappoint. 75% cabernet sauvignon from old vines out of Champoux Vineyard, 13% petit verdot and 12% merlot from our Estate Vineyard. These grapes were harvested by hand in mid-October and were additionally hand sorted prior to crushing. It was twice-aged in new French chateau barrels and finally bottled unfined and unfiltered in April of 2008.

"Following the development of a red wine such as this through the cellar for nearly five years is amazing. This beautifully structured wine is dark purple garnet in color. Aromas of ripe forest ridge black berry marry with notes of earth, leather, vanilla, and spice. The finish is long and remarkable showing incredible texture with beautifully integrated tannins. Nearly two years of bottle aging has allowed all the extraordinary elements in this wine to integrate, becoming more complex and generous. This is a ten to twelve year wine if cellared properly although it may certainly be consumed sooner. Enjoy with Greek food that includes oven roasted lamb." - Rick

We have a very limited amount of the Special Selection, having only produced 98 cases - with no magnums bottled. Please order online at www.woodwardcanyon.com soon so you don't miss out!

________________________

Here's what Dr Jay Miller's (with Robert Parker's Wine Advocate) had to say about the 2005 "Special Selection".
Review: 94 points "The 2005 Cabernet Sauvignon Special Selection (a cuvee made only in the finest years) is a blend of 75% Cabernet Sauvignon from the Champoux Vineyard and 13% Petit Verdot and 12% Merlot from the Estate vineyard. Opaque purple/black in color, it delivers a brooding bouquet of pain grille, pencil lead, crushed stone, incense, black currant, and blackberry, Layered and thick on the palate, it has tons of fruit and structure but remains tightly wound. Stylistically, it is reminiscent of a high level Pauillac from a top vintage. Give it 10-12 years of cellaring and drink it from 2020 to 2040. Woodward Canyon remains under the leadership of pioneering vigneron Rick Smalls. He has relinquished some of the winemaking duties but remains deeply involved in the estate’s viticulture. The top cuvees are built to last (a 1984 Cabernet from a challenging vintage tasted on the day of my visit was in fine form) and reward extended cellaring."
Reviewer: Dr. Jay Miller
Reviewer Publication: Robert Parker's Wine Advocate

Staff Education

2010-02-27T13:27:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite parts of being involved with the wine industry are the amazing “educational” opportunities that come up. We are big on education here at Woodward Canyon because we believe to be able to educate the consumer we need to know what we are talking about. We try to come up with fun ways to educate ourselves so we can keep up to date, not only what is going on here at the winery but also what is changing in the wine industry in general. Recently we did a comprehensive tasting of all our current releases with Kevin Mott - our winemaker, Darcey – our general manager and owner, and the entire tasting room staff. I have always enjoyed tasting wines with Kevin. He is smart and funny and gives you the chemistry side of wine tasting and blending in a way that that even the most novice wine drinkers can understand where he’s coming from.

Our lineup consisted of both current releases in the tasting room and a couple of special reserve wines that we don’t usually open up. It was nice to be able to revisit all the wines at once, talk them over with Kevin and refresh our palates on how the wines were doing. It was also fun to taste some things that we haven’t opened and tasted since they first released.

Though they were all good, my personal favorites of the afternoon were the 2007 Charbonneau Red, the 2007 “Artist Series” Cabernet and the 2006 Estate Red. The Estate Red, soon to be renamed the Estate Reserve, has always been one of my favorite wines. I find the wine to be supple and rich with the perfect balance between black fruit and firm tannins. Rick always says that he perceives an “expression” or a “sense of place” that is fairly unique to our Estate Vineyard and I’d have to agree with him. That is just one reason that the Estate Red and the Charbonneau Red are two of my favorites - both are Bordeaux-style blends from very different vineyards. The Charbonneau Red is sourced entirely from the Charbonneau Vineyard which is planted at the western edge of the Walla Walla County, overlooking the Snake River. The vineyard consists of very sandy soil overlaying shallow basalt rock. It tends to be a cooler site than our Estate Vineyard and has to deal with the weather as well. The Charbonneau Red is a wine that we only produce when the fruit we receive warrants it. It is rich and elegant with nuances of tobacco and leather perfectly in balance with black cherry fruit and soft tannins. The finish is smooth, generous and long.

If you haven't taken advantage of our Winter Special yet, don't forget that the last day is tomorrow. Pick up your 2007 Walla Walla Valley Cabernet at this fantastic price before it's too late. We are already in talks about possibly doing another special next month so remember to check back to see what we've come up with.

Until next time, hope this post finds you enjoying the sun somewhere and a good glass of wine!

Cheers!

Shari

2007 Walla Walla Valley Cabernet

2010-02-01T16:19:00.000-08:00

If you haven’t already heard we decided that we would run, as I have nicknamed it, a “beat the fog” or “beat the winter blues” special during the month of February. Rick typically likes to offer a special online and in the tasting room in February. So after sitting down and brainstorming on what we could do for this special Sue and Rick brought up the idea about doing an offering on the 2007 Walla Walla Valley Cabernet. Since this is a great wine that is mostly sourced from our Estate Vineyard and one that is not typically featured at the winery, we thought this was a great way to introduce the wine to those not familiar with it. So we are happy to offer you the 2007 Walla Walla Valley Cabernet at the discounted price of $27 a bottle, no additional discounts.

The Walla Walla Valley Cabernet is a wonderful wine that really expresses a sense of place. Composed of 81% Cabernet Sauvignon (Estate Vineyard), 11% Syrah (Dubrul Vineyard) and 8% Cabernet Franc (again Estate Vineyard) this is a great wine to showcase what our Estate Vineyard is all about. Here’s what Rick had to say about it -

“This wine has a beautiful nose of subtle tobacco, complex spiced oak and clove that integrates beautifully with ripe black cherry/cassis fruit. The wine tastes almost sweet. A rich mouth feel begins with black cherry leading towards a chocolate/mocha finish that is exotic, enticing and long. While this wine may be enjoyed now, it will benefit from additional cellaring and should continue to develop for six years or more with proper storage.”

We plan on running this cab special through the end of February so get yours while you can!

If you’ve been into the tasting room on one or more occasions over the years I’m sure that at some point you have encountered Kellie Berg. She has been a fixture behind the tasting bar for the past eight or nine years and has helped countless of visitors make their trip to the Walla Walla Valley and Woodward Canyon a memorable one. Kellie has recently turned in her notice and has informed us that she will be moving on to new challenges the middle of this month. I know that all though this is a great move for her, I am sad we are losing her and will personally miss her in the future. Help me in wishing her congratulations and all the best in her future endeavors!

As I'm sure you've all heard Punxsutawney Phil has once again seen his shadow, so it's six more weeks of winter. The warm weather a couple of weeks ago really got me hoping for an early spring. The longer winter would be ok if this fog would just lift. I don't remember the last time I saw the sunshine. But fog or sun regardless, I hope to see everyone in the tasting room sometime in the near future!

Cheers!

Shari

There's No Place Like Home!

2010-01-26T15:34:00.000-08:00

I love my job. I really do. And I know just how lucky I am in it. I happen to have a job where I get to talk about wine all day. I recently returned from my second trip down to Sonoma Valley/Napa Valley in less than a year. This time around I was sent down with a co-worker so that we could attend the Direct to Consumer Symposium that was being held in Santa Rosa. It was a great symposium that covered the topics of social media and mobile marketing; issues that we, here at Woodward Canyon Winery, are trying to stay ahead of the curve. We have both a Facebook and Twitter account and we are obviously a member of the blogging community. It was a thoroughly enjoyable day that will help us take our social media presence to the next level.

The one draw back about being down in California this past week was the torrential downpour the entire three days! I should have been expecting a bit of rain since it is winter, but I wasn’t and certainly not the amount that we saw. I thought I was getting out of the cold, foggy, wet Pacific Northwest for some warmer weather and sunshine. I’m not sure the last time I was that mixed up about a situation. And if that wasn’t bad enough it was sunny, 60 degrees and gorgeous when the plane landed back in Seattle! Now how’s that for being in the wrong place at the wrong time?

Santa Rosa is a cute city that reminded me of Walla Walla. The area we were in had a couple of streets filled with restaurants, wine bars and shops that reminded me of Walla Walla's Main Street. It was easy to see where Walla Walla could potentially end up down the road. To me, one of the most interesting facts about Santa Rosa is that the population sits around 161,500 residents which is close to 4 times the size of Walla Walla's population! When I first read that I couldn't believe it. It definitely did not feel that big while we were down there.

The one thing I really appreciated about our little valley is the Walla Walla Valley Wine Alliance and the Walla Walla Valley maps they put out each year. Maybe I was just looking in the wrong places but in all the tasting rooms I visited in both Napa Valley and Sonoma Valley I never once saw a map of either AVA. It made me realize how lucky we are and how hard our Wine Alliance works for us.

For me, one of the nicest things about visiting California was a renewal of my passion for the tasting room and the customer relations part of my job. I had forgotten how much fun I have talking to people and trying to educated them a bit on Woodward Canyon, the Walla Walla Valley and wine in general. The past couple of days back behind the bar have been fun, refreshing and a nice change of pace. And really visiting other areas always reminds me just how much I love living in the Walla Walla Valley

And now I'm off to enjoy some of this nice winter fog! I'm crossing my fingers for some sunshine this weekend. Hope to see everyone soon!

Cheers!

Shari

2009 Vintage Overview

2010-01-04T14:47:00.000-08:00

We’re off to a new year and technically a new decade as well and I thought the best way to start 2010 would be to wrap up 2009. Not sure if everyone will agree with me but 2009 seemed to go by in a blur. We ended the year the same way we started it – cold in the valley with snow and ice covering the ground, though not as much as last winter. For a vintage that seemed to take forever to get going (I was still wondering where the sunshine and warm weather was in April and May) it ended up being a rather compressed vintage and warmer overall.

The first bud break in our Estate Vineyard in the Walla Walla Valley was towards the end of March which starts the process to try to assure that the best possible grapes are harvested. Shoot positioning, leaf stripping, lateral removal and finally cluster thinning are all part of that process. Because of the cooler, wetter spring veraison did not begin until mid July. However, a couple of really hot weeks towards the end of July and into August quickly made up for lost time.

We brought in our first fruit of the vintage, the sauvignon blanc and the chardonnay from the Estate Vineyard, at the end of August. Harvest was a bit compressed as well. Everything seemed to ripen at once which had vineyard crews scrambling to bring everything in at the same time. We have a good crew that finished in our vineyard early and then went with Rick to the Champoux Vineyard to pick our grapes from the Circle Block.

We brought in the last of the fruit the first part of October, which was just in time before the first freeze of the year swept through the valley. It was on the earlier side, the middle of October, and caught some wineries off guard. I hope those that still had fruit hanging were able to pick it shortly afterwards. Now everything is safely tucked in barrel and the wait is on.

Rick is already (or constantly, depending on how you view it) thinking about the vineyard and our next vintage. He is hoping to plant a new cover crop on the terraces next time there is snow on the ground. While he is not overly worried about damage in the vineyard due to the freeze, he won’t know for sure until he checks buds later this month.

Here’s a quick peek on what we’re looking at for the 2009 vintage.

The cabernet franc from the Woody Vineyard (our Estate Vineyard) is coming along really nicely. It was cropped back to single cluster per shoot this year and should be a great backbone to the Estate Reserve (formally the Estate Red) program.
The cabernet sauvignon from the old hillside out of the Estate Vineyard is also very promising. Almost 20 years old and planted in shallow soil this cabernet will most likely be used to enhance the Estate Reserve and Walla Walla Valley Cabernet programs.
Kevin and Rick are considering a separate bottling of around 100 cases of the Woodward Canyon Estate Chardonnay. As they have tasted through the wines both are pleased with all our chardonnay and feel that a few special barrels can stand alone as an Estate bottling.

The cabernet from Champoux Vineyard Circle Block and Sagemoor Vineyard Block 3 is looking great. The fruit from those two blocks is what we normally used as the anchor for the “Old Vines” Cabernet program.

Rick and Kevin are also excited about what we have in barrel from Champoux Vineyard Block 2.

There’s still a lot of time before the 2009 vintage is in the bottle but it looks like it’s shaping up to be another fine vintage for us. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

In the meantime I’m enjoying the current releases we have available at the winery. Check out our website for a list of the wines and order online. Also, last week while doing inventory we came across a number of cases of the 2006 “Artist Series” Cabernet in magnum form. If you missed out on purchasing some of the 750s now is your chance to get some of this vintage before we completely sell out of it. We do have plenty of the 2007 "Artist Series" Cabernet available and it's pouring beautifully! And if you have older vintages of the "Artist Series" Cabernet and "Old Vines" Cabernet and aren't sure about opening them, don't forget to check out our drink/hold page on the website. It will give you an idea on when the best time to open them would be.

Sounds like we just had some people come into the tasting room. I’m going to stick my head out and say hello. If you come through the valley this year, stop in and say hi and I’ll pour you some wine. Happy New Year everyone! Hope your new year’s resolution somehow include drinking some amazing wine this year.

Cheers!

Shari

Happy Holidays!

2009-12-24T11:14:00.000-08:00

From our family to your family,

Happy Holidays!

I hope this post finds everyone someplace warm and surrounded by those they love. Have a wonderful holiday season and hope to see everyone sometime in 2010!

Cheers!

Shari

Get Ready ... it's Holiday Barrel Weekend!

2009-11-27T16:12:00.000-08:00

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving yesterday filled with family, friends, food and great wine! I know that as I sit here and write this I’m still stuffed from yesterday’s feast. The food was wonderful so of course I ate more than I should have. But Thanksgiving would not be Thanksgiving if you did not over eat. So I'm just keeping with the tradition.

Now that one holiday is behind me it’s time to turn my attention to next weekend’s Holiday Barrel Tasting. This week will be spent decorating around the winery and making things look festive. We will once again be pouring all the wines in our production building and just hold the sales in our regular tasting room. We will be showcasing our new releases the 2007 “Artist Series” Cabernet, the 2008 Estate Barbera and the 2007 Columbia Valley Merlot along with a barrel sample of next year’s release, the 2008 “Artist Series” Cabernet.

Chef Paul will once again be on hand to prepare small bites for munching during your tasting. Paul and his wife Abby came through over Fall Release Weekend and were already throwing around ideas of how to prepare this year’s pasture-fed lamb from Upper Dry Creek Ranch. Chef Paul’s lamb is always a special treat and we can’t wait to find out what he has planned for us! And don’t forget about Paul’s fabulous toppings and spreads. I’m always a big fan of either the baked artichoke or the baked brie. Both are excellent with Rick’s bread which he’ll be baking all three days.

Don’t forget to take advantage of our 2007 “Artist Series” Cabernet and our Nelms Road holiday pricing we have going on right now. The ’07 “Artist Series” is being offered at a holiday/introductory price of $44 a bottle and both of the Nelms’ (the ’07 Cab and ’07 Merlot) are being offered at a holiday price of $20 a bottle. And since neither is a quote/unquote “special” both offers still receive the 10% discount when purchased as a case or part of a case. Any of the three wines would make a great addition to your holiday table.

Now my stomach is starting to growl at me. Guess it’s time to grab some leftovers. Hope to see everyone this coming up weekend!

Cheers!

Food and wine pairings

2009-11-24T13:49:00.001-08:00

We’re going into the holiday season where one of the most asked questions is which wines pair best with which food? For holiday dinners, Thanksgiving in particular, it’s always a hard question to answer. These dinners are usually served in more of a buffet style and there hundreds of different flavors to try to pair with. This is not the easiest task for anyone. What I have always done was put out a couple of different wines and let people pair with what they have. This seems to have worked well for me in the past and it’s an easy way for everyone to find something that they enjoy.

This year we decided the best way to inform our customers would be to take a food and wine pairing class that was being offered at the Tri-Cities extension of Washington State University. Andy Perdue from Wine Press Northwest and Christopher with Yoke’s Fresh Market led the class where we learned a little bit about different varietals and what they paired the best with. If you are looking to pair something with turkey a pinot noir is always a good match but here at Woody we like a good chardonnay or even a merlot or sauvignon blanc. A holiday ham goes well with similar wines also. There are times, with the right ham, that I’ll go out on a limb and pair it with a nice syrah. For those who serve roast beef as their main course you can never go wrong with a big hearty red, usually big cabs or merlots.

A few key things to remember when trying to come up with a pairing with red wine …

Versatile wines are always going to show better with acidity playing an important part. A wine that is high in acid will stand up better against food than a wine that is lacking.
Fruity wines tend to have versatility and they don’t compete with flavors.
Wines can be enjoyed with spicier food, they just need to be a bit higher in acidity and usually with a little residual sugar.
To tame a big red, pair it with a food that is high in protein. Proteins help to bind and smooth out tannins.
Wines can be an ingredient in foods – and when done well a good ingredient too. If you add wine to the food plan on serving it with dinner also.

And a few key points to remember when pairing with a white …

Sweetness does matter. Some desserts are better off enjoyed by themselves some can be paired very well with a wine.
Acidity is one of the most important things.
Bubbly is very versatile and (in my opinion) a very essential part to any holiday meal.

And when in doubt, pork and poultry are great matches with whites! If I have questions the website that I frequently check is http://www.winewebcentral.com/winepairing/. It’s a great one that suggests different wines to pair with most main dishes.

I hope everyone has a wonderful Holiday season! Happy Thanksgiving and hope to see everyone through for Holiday Barrel weekend!

Happy Thanksgiving from the Woody team!

Fall Release Weekend!

2009-11-13T11:10:00.000-08:00

It’s a cold overcast day that lets me know that fall has officially arrived. I’m sitting at my desk in a fleece vest trying to stay warm and still trying to recuperate from Fall Release Weekend last weekend. Fall Release is a big weekend in the Walla Walla Valley that started as Cayuse Release and Abeja Release Weekend and has grown in numbers over the past few years. I remember working Fall Release Weekend last year in the tasting room with only two other people and it was crazy. This year we wanted to try to eliminate the over-crowded feel and open it up a bit. We decided to do all of our tasting in the “Reserve House” instead of the regular Tasting Room. We poured through a mixture of both current release wines and some reserve wines, including our new release the 2007 Charbonneau Red. Chefs Charles Calder and Jay Entrikin prepared a wonderful Asian-themed spread that complimented the wines that we were pouring. Rick and Darcey were on hand to pour wine, serve food and mingle with guest. It was a really fun weekend and a good chance to catch up with many of our longtime customers and to meet some new ones as well!

And now that Fall Release Weekend has come and gone is time to start planning for Holiday Barrel Weekend. Holiday Barrel is always the first full weekend in December, which does not give us much time to turn around and get ready for it. This year we will be doing barrel samples of the 2008 “Artist Series” and have the 2007 “Artist Series” Cabernet, the 2007 Columbia Valley Merlot and the 2008 Estate Barbera as our featured releases. This is perfect since we are close to being sold out of both the 2006 Columbia Valley Merlot and the 2007 Estate Barbera. We still have some of the 2006 “Artist Series" Cabernet available which means we will have nice sample packs available.

Holiday Barrel will, once again, be held in the production building with sales in the Tasting Room. Chef Paul Williams will be on hand to prepare all the food and Cheryl Cosner-Williams of Upper Dry Creek Ranch will also be around to sell lamb sampler packs. Chef Paul’s lamb creations are always customer favorites. Our newest “Artist Series” label artist, Irene Yesley, will be available to sign bottles and posters.

The 2007 “Artist Series” Cabernet is a new release and will be offered at an introductory price of $44 a bottle. The 10% case discount will still apply to this wine. Also, we are offering both the 2007 Nelms Road Merlot and the 2007 Nelms Road Cabernet for $20 a bottle, with a 10% case discount. All three are excellent wines and will make a fine addition to any holiday meal.

And don’t forget to join Thomas at 20something - the new vintage at the Fremont Studios in Seattle on November 21st from 6 to 10 pm. He’ll be pouring our 2008 Estate Sauvignon Blanc that evening. Come early and grab a taste before it’s all gone!

If we didn’t see you during Fall Release Weekend I hope to see everyone sometime during Holiday Barrel Weekend!

Fall is in the air

2009-10-24T16:40:00.000-07:00

Sorry that posts have been so sparse lately. October has been a fairly crazy month here at the winery. Not only have the guys been bringing in fruit like mad and trying to wrap up harvest, but we’ve been busy in the tasting room and out on the market. With all the fruit ripening at once and then the early freeze the first of October, we actually finished a bit ahead of schedule. In fact, Colin, our French intern, had the distinction of being one of the only interns to make it all the way through harvest. He also has the distinction of, hands down, eating the most food and also having the best knowledge of American slang. Colin joined us from the Purpan University in Toulouse, where we get an intern from each harvest. With school starting back up for him next week he has already left us to return to France, and we wish him the best of luck!

The first of October, we hosted dinner for the 2009 Road Trip Washington Wine. For the past couple of years the Washington Wine Commission and 65 wineries throughout the state of Washington have joined together to put on a wonderful opportunity to bring in 40 wine buyers from throughout the United States and show them what Washington and Washington wine is all about. Here's a link to a local news station's clip on the trip. Notice which vineyard they are shooting the footing at and who is in it! “Road Trip” this year started with a reception in Seattle Sunday evening at the Space Needle. The group was then up bright and early Monday morning for the bus ride over to Walla Walla for a full day of wine tastings and educational stops that concluded with a wonderful dinner here at Woodward Canyon that was hosted by us and our next door neighbors, L’Ecole. Chris and Island Ainsworth, Saffron Mediterranean kitchen located in downtown Walla Walla, were gracious enough to come in with the staff from Saffron, on their night off, to prepare the meal for us. And they did an amazing job! The meal was beautifully paired with wines from L’Ecole and Woody that culminated with dessert and library wines from all the wineries in attendance. It’s been awhile since I’ve seen that many older vintages from big producers in the same place. The next three days took the group back through Washington with stops in the Tri-Cities (Pasco, Richland and Kennewick), Yakima, Red Willow and finally Woodinville.

The tasting room staff has been gearing up for Fall Release weekend, November 6th, 7th and 8th. This weekend has progressively become a busier and busier weekend for the wineries here in the valley. We’ve decided to do a couple of different things for Fall Release this year. We will be releasing the 2007 Charbonneau Red this year. If you haven’t had the Charbonneau Red it’s a wonderful Bordeaux-style blend that we produce, sourced entirely from the Charbonneau Vineyard which overlooks the Snake River outside of Pasco, Washington. Rick started making the Charbonneau Red back in 1985 and we’ve been producing one whenever we get a vintage that yields excellent fruit. The 2007 is no exception – soft and subtle, with a typical Charbonneau Red nose of sweet pipe tobacco and complex spices, integrated with cherry and cassis. I’ve always said that the Charbonneau Red has a softer side to it, one that on the first sip, invites you in and holds you captive. Black cherries and leather lingers on the palate and with it’s lush mouth feel, it’s another great showing of the Charbonneau Vineyard.

Also new Fall Release weekend is the fact that we are hosting most of it in our new “Reserve House”. Starting Friday, November 7ththrough Sunday, November 8th, we’ll pour through our flight of wines next door and we’re accompanying the wines with specially matched bites. If you haven’t visited the “Reserve House” yet, now’s your chance without having to make an appointment.

One last quick note of interest, is that we are running a Fall Special featuring the 2006 “Artist Series” Cabernet and both the 2007 Nelms Road Merlot and 2007 Nelms Road Cabernet. We are offering a 20% discount if you purchase a full case of any of the three wines or a mixed case of any combination of the three. You can either order online or call the winery at (509) 525-4129.

Hope to see everyone through the winery in the next few weeks. It’s going to be a fun fall!

Harvest 2009

2009-09-20T15:23:00.001-07:00

So harvest is well under way for us here at Woodward Canyon. The end of August saw us bring in all of the sauvignon blanc and chardonnay from our Estate Vineyard. Since then we’ve moved right along, bringing in almost all of the merlot, some of the cabernet franc and the grenache, and then the American clone of the barbera, all from the Estate Vineyard. We also source from a number of different vineyards throught Washington State. Yesterday we brought in merlot from Weinbau and today it was syrah from Champoux. So far everything looks good and the boys are excited.

With the start of harvest around the winery comes the start of “crush lunch” for the cellar boys. Rick and Darcey have made it a point to feed the guys every day, and since none of us are huge fans of deli sandwiches we get to experiment a bit with food. Rafa (our cellar master) and Manuel and Kiko (our cellar guys) are huge assets to this winery and a large part of our success. Rick and Kevin get the credit for making the wines and then those of us who sell the wines gets some recognition as well, but those three receive none of it. And really, they should probably get a lot of it. They do the every day things around the winery to make everyone’s life a bit easier. They do everything from pruning and picking in the vineyard to sorting grapes when they come in to cleaning the tasting room and moving wine for us. We're pretty lucky. I don’t know if we could ask for three harder working guys.

Every year, around this time, we also receive an intern from the Purpan School in France. We have been very lucky in the past having hosted some great students. This year is no different. Colin, pictured in blue, will be with us until the last of October. He's a fantastic worker and a really nice guy.

Speaking of lunch, last Tuesday we hosted a pizza lunch for the buyers from W2U out at the winery. We ended up making about 20 pizzas for 45 people, which included the wine buyers, local winemakers and drivers. Thomas and I got to put the pizzas together while Rick cooked them, before he took off to drop bins at Sagemoor. I also found a new favorite pizza – red sauce, fresh basil, sautéed onions, yellow peppers, artichokes, ground sausage and bleu cheese. Delicious!

Harvest Time!

2009-08-28T16:01:00.000-07:00

Today we kicked off the 2009 harvest at Woodward Canyon. Rick and the guys brought in two loads of chardonnay grapes from our Estate Vineyard this morning and sent them through the whole cluster press. This is where the entire grape clusters are pressed very gently to extract the juice. Whole cluster pressing is often used in the production of high quality whites and minimizes the amount of malic acid and tannins that are naturally found in the skins and stems. From there we will move all the juice into stainless steel tanks overnight before it is moved again into new French oak barrels and neutral barrels where the yeast is added and fermentation is started.

And our first day of harvest coincides very well with the pre-harvest party put on by the Walla Walla Valley Wine Alliance for all the members in celebration of the upcoming harvest. So we’ll get together one last time before winemakers’ wives become harvest widows for another year.

Woodward Canyon's Vineyard Tour

2009-08-03T14:26:00.000-07:00

Can you believe it’s August already? And, can you believe that we are going on almost 10 straight days of pushing into triple digits on the thermostat? I remember, what seems like only a month ago, sitting around thinking Mother Nature had forgotten us and dreaming about sunny weather. I’m not complaining though, I’d much rather have 100 degree weather than the rain and snow that seemed to drag much farther into the spring than I would have liked. The one day I wouldn’t have minded the weather being a little cooler was last Tuesday.

On Tuesday, Rick took the tasting room staff on a tour of some of Woodward Canyon’s primary vineyards. At 7:00 AM, with coffee in hand, we headed out for the Charbonneau Vineyard, which is located just East of the Snake River and about 12 miles East of Pasco, Washington. Started in 1981, it is roughly 40-acres of cabernet sauvignon, merlot, cabernet franc, riesling, chardonnay, semillon and sauvignon blanc. We source cabernet sauvignon and merlot, from blocks that were planted in 1981, that we blend together to make our Charbonneau Red (sorry, currently sold out) during select years.

Leaving Charbonneau Vineyard, we drove around Pasco heading for Sagemoor Vineyard. Sagemoor was founded in 1968 by Alec Bayless and is one of the oldest producing vineyards in the state. It is just North of Pasco and overlooking the Columbia River. We source a large amount of our “Old Vines” (sold out of our current vintage, older vintages available in magnums) and “Artist Series” fruit from Sagemoor. We made a quick stop to look at the grape clusters and the vines, where on some of our older blocks, Blocks 3 and 9, planted in 1972, the trunks looked more like little trees than vines. I was pleasantly surprised to see the first signs of veraison (where the grapes turn from green to purple) on some of the clusters in Block 3, which is primarily used for “Old Vines” Cabernet.

Next on the tour was the Champoux Vineyard in the Horse Heaven AVA outside of Alderdale, Washington. The original, older blocks of Champoux were planted in 1972, making them some of the older vines in Washington. Rick, a partner in the Champoux Vineyard along with Quilceda Creek, Andrew Will, Badger Mountain/Powers and Vineyard Manager Paul Champoux, started using fruit from the Champoux Vineyard, known then as Mercer Ranch Vineyard, in 1977 for his own personal wine. Today, we pull fruit from Block 1 and 2 and from Circle Block for the “Old Vines” and from Block 3 and Baby ‘Poux for the “Artist Series”. My favorite part of Champoux was the Circle Block, named for the method of irrigation for that one particular block. It is a form of overhead irrigation with a central pivot that rotates over the crop to irrigate.

Then it was an hour and a half drive to White Salmon for lunch before heading up to the Celilo Vineyard. Celilo was probably the most impressive vineyard on the tour because of the view. Looking out East was a spectacular view of the Columbia River Gorge and to the West, on a clear day, you can see all the way to Mount Hood. Unfortunately for us, it was a bit hazy and the view to Mount Hood wasn’t as clear as it normally is. The vines, themselves, were much taller than the other vineyards we had visited, having been trained that way using the Scott Henry trellising system. Scott Henry, from Henry Estate Winery, designed this method to help encourage his vines to ripen more fruit rather than more shoots and leaves. Rick has been using Celilo fruit for close to 20 years, sometimes bottling a single vineyard designated chardonnay but more often blending it with fruit from our Woodward Canyon Estate Vineyard to produce the Washington State Chardonnay. Celilo, which is normally much cooler than our Estate Vineyard and sees more rainfall annually, produces fruit with higher acidity that blends well with our Estate fruit to produce a wine that is beautifully balanced.

Leaving Celilo, we then trekked the three hours back to Woodward Canyon. I have a new found respect for Rick and Kevin who take turns making that drive to check on the vineyards numerous times throughout the year. Stopping at all the vineyards made for a long day, and we didn’t even have to do any grape sampling. But it was fun to get out of the tasting room for the day and to actually see the vineyards that we talk about all the time and use in our wines. I now have a much better understanding of where our wines come from before I ever lay eyes on them. And a quick thanks to Bob Pruett, our weekend tasting room associate, for all the great pictures throughout the tour!

Cheers,

Shari

2009 Wine Bloggers Conference

2009-08-03T12:21:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago, I was lucky enough to attend the North American Wine Bloggers Conference, or the WBC, which is the second annual conference that is attended by wine bloggers, wine industry, wine media and those just interested in wine. And, I am still trying to catch up on sleep from my weekend in Sonoma. It was three fantastic days of nothing but food, wine and blogging about food and wine. And the good news for those who have not heard yet, is that the WBC is coming to Walla Walla next year, June 25th through June 27th. I can’t wait to introduce some of the bloggers to our wines for the first time.

I started my journey to Sonoma Thursday evening, by flying out of Walla Walla and through Seattle on my way to San Francisco. It turned into quite the trip when I just about missed my connecting flight in Seattle because the boarding gate had changed from what was printed on my boarding pass in Walla Walla. A quick ride on the airporter and an even quicker run through the airport got us to the gate just in time to board for our final destination. Two hours later, an hour and a half flight and thirty minutes of circling, and we were in one of my favorite cities, San Francisco! Too bad I didn’t have a free day to spending roaming the streets.

It was up early the next morning so that I could catch my shuttle that would take me the two hours to Santa Rosa and the Flamingo, where the conference was being held. Upon checking in, it was time to meet and greet, catch lunch and do some wine tasting. Then, it was time for live wine blogging, which is basically sixty seconds to taste a wine and blog or “tweet” about it to the online masses. Next up was the 2009 American Wine Blog Awards and then dinner with Chris Alden as the keynote speaker. The day ended with the after-hours party hosted by the Russian River Valley Winegrowers. The after-hours party was really just Russian River Wineries showing up to pour their wines for us to taste. Every where I looked were pinots. It’s always fun to try something different and that we aren’t producing anymore.

Saturday morning was a fantastic day to be at the WBC. It started off with breakfast and seminars by Barry Schuler of Meteor Vineyards and Jim Gordon of Wines and Vines Magazine at the Culinary Institute of America at Greystone, or as it was called that morning, the Original CIA. Then it was time to play the lottery and board the shuttle for the days travels through Napa. I really do believe that it was playing the lottery, because each shuttle had a different route for the day. I think I lucked out when I got on to shuttle #2! I really don’t know how anyone’s day could have beat ours!

Lunch, for us, was at Stags' Leap where we had a beautifully catered lunch around their fire safe pond, while listening to Vineyard Manager Kirk Grace speak on “Napa Green.” After a quick walk through the vineyard we hopped back on the shuttle for our next destination, Palmaz Vineyards, where Palmaz, Madonna and Viader hosted us to a nice tasting and covered the topic of family-owned and generations in the wine industry. The facility at Palmaz is pretty spectacular. Carved out of the side of Mount George, the height of the wine cave is equivalent to an 18 storey building. Next stop on our day was at Quintessa for the Napa Grand Tasting, where 40 wineries showed up to pour their Cabernets for us. Thankfully, there were a few whites and bubbles mixed in, that helped me refresh my palate.

Final stop on the tour was dinner at Domaine Chandon, in the Etoile Restaurant, which was hosted by Parry Cellars, Louis M. Martini, O’Brien Estate, Newton and of course Domaine Chandon. We had a wonderful three-course meal paired with eight different wines. The meal was amazing! We were greeted at the door with a sparkling cocktail, made from their dry sparkling wine, ice and a little lime. Our first course was the corn chowder with Dungeness crab and paired with the O’Brien Chardonnay and the Newton Chardonnay. Next we moved onto the roasted beef tenderloin with summer legumes, chanterelle mushrooms and Umbrian black truffle all paired with the Domaine Chandon Pinot Noir, Louis M. Martini Lot No 1 Cabernet, Louis M. Martini Cabernet, O’Brien Merlot and the Parry Cellars Cabernet. We finished off dinner with a Valrhona chocolate pate with summer berries paired with the Domaine Chandon Pinot Meunier. I was so full I was afraid that they were going to have to roll me out to the shuttle. After the bumpy and curvy two hour ride back to the Flamingo, I must admit, that I had to skip the after-hours party which was hosted by ViniPortugal and the European WBC.

Sunday, I spent the day traveling back to Walla Walla, which I finally got in at 9:00. It had been a really long day, but well worth the trip! It was great to see the difference between Napa and Walla Walla. As much as I loved being down there though, it was so nice to see home. It made me really appreciate my little comfortable tasting room and lack of traffic on the roads. It was also good that I got to see how the WBC ran and what we were going to have to do to make WBC10 a success in Walla Walla next year. I know that I, for one, can’t wait until we are invaded by bloggers!

Private Tasting at Woodward Canyon!

2009-07-21T14:24:00.000-07:00

Now that our Reserve House is up and running, we are happy to offer the opportunity to make an appointment for an intimate, private tasting with a knowledgeable Woodward Canyon staff member. Sit down with your group to both current releases and some limited-reserve wines that aren’t available for tasting through the regular tasting room. Light fare is included with the tasting. We have a couple of options, so for more information please visit the Woodward Canyon website or contact me at reservehouse@woodwardcanyon.com.

Last Friday, we held our first of many private tastings here in our Reserve House. I had the pleasure of hosting a great group of people from Walla Walla, North Carolina and Ohio, who had all gathered here in the valley for a little wine tasting before taking off on a cruise. I couldn’t have asked for a better group of tasters for my first private tasting. They were wonderful! We tasted through three current release wines and three limited wines. Everyone seemed to really enjoy themselves and really enjoy the wines. I can’t wait for the next group now. I just hope it goes as well as the first one did.

Also, I wanted to let everyone know about the great summer special we are running right now on our Non-Vintage Red Wine! Normally $19 a bottle, we are offering it at $15 a bottle up to a case and then anything over a case we’re offering it at $12.50 a bottle. That’s a case of great wine for $150! Visit our online wine shop to order yours now or for more details or email myself at shari@woodwardcanyon.com or Marlene at marlene@woodwardcanyon.com . This is a limited time offer, so get yours now!

I also wanted to let everyone know that I’m getting ready to head down to Sonoma Valley and Napa Valley, California at the end of the week for the 2009 Wine Bloggers Conference! I can’t wait. It is going to be a great opportunity to visit California and network with other wine bloggers. And, to tell you the truth, I’m also really excited to visit California! So if you are also planning on being at the conference, please say hi, I would love to meet you.

I'm off now, time to get ready for Orca International, our Japan Distributor to come in for a tour and tasting this evening. Oh how I love the summertime around the winery. There is always something going on!

Cheers!

Shari / Guest Services

Summer Days in France

2009-07-14T16:08:00.000-07:00

Rick and I recently returned from three weeks in the south of France – part just relaxing and part work (I know, tough job….but hey, it has taken us almost 30 years to get to this point).
We first spent a few days in Avignon on our way to the Riviera. While there, we visited Châteauneuf-du-Pape (pictured here on the right). It is quite rural and not as much on the tourist map as some other wine regions. The actual town is small and in contrast to other wine regions in France, it has tasting rooms in the town apart from the wineries, just as we do in Walla Walla. While we enjoyed the reds, we really were excited by the whites – something that you do not necessarily associate with Châteauneuf. We allocated some space in our luggage to bring a few bottles back. By the way, not to add a sales pitch, but those bubble-wrap Wine Skins really do protect the wine and the things in your suitcase, take up very little room, and are inexpensive.

We then spent two weeks in a hilltop village between Nice and Antibes. Our routine most days was to wander down the hill (pictured left) to get a petit café or Orangina and a Financial Times, shop at the fresh market, the boucherie or poissons monger, fromage monger, boulangerie and maybe the fresh pasta shop or patisserie. We also had to stop at the grocery store to get stocked up on vin rosé and the few things you could not find at the fresh market. Then we would lug it back up the hill (if you climb the hill instead of taking the bus – you can eat more) and enjoy the rosé with lunch. We went through a lot of rosé – particularly since it was less than $5.00 a bottle. We also sampled the other wines of the region.

One thing became clear very soon: with that type of eating and drinking, you have a pretty small carbon footprint. We ate melons from Var, Dorade and gambas from the Mediterranean, vegetables, herbs and cheese all locally grown or made, and drank the local wines. They all married beautifully which is why the cafes and restaurants all serve those same seasonal products; just with their own twist.

Many Northwest chefs here in the States have been at the forefront of that kind of dining and while we have always embraced that notion here at Woody, we are taking it even further. For several years we have been organically growing a garden at the base of the vineyard with tomatoes, potatoes, beets, and carrots for our staff. Any excess is sold to local restaurants. Last year we experimented with drying tomatoes and packing them in olive oil so we could avoid the nasty faux tomatoes found in the stores in the winter. Our oil-packed tomatoes on wood-fired pizza or in pasta sustained us through the winter. This year we added Walla Walla Sweets and several varieties of cucumbers to the mix. The cucumbers are ripe and Rick has already been using his Mom's pickle recipe (see finished product above), as well as one for Asian pickles he found online. Later this summer raised beds and berry trellises will go in between our new Reserve House and the parking lot so that next year we can expand our plantings with the idea being that we serve as much of our own produce and that of other local farmers as possible when we do events here at the winery. The idea of being "locavores" resonates with us.

Now back to France. After leaving our village on the Mediterranean, we stopped in Narbonne and Toulouse to meet the family of last year's crush intern and to meet the intern who will be arriving later this month and his family. Their families were gracious and fed us very well! Both interns come from Purpan University in Toulouse.

Then onto Bordeaux where we stayed with another former intern – this one came to us through Experience International 15 years ago! He is now the international managing director of Chateau Haut Brion's "Clarendelle" – their version of Nelms Road. He and his family were wonderful hosts and arranged a tour of Haut Brion for us one morning – lovely wines with great restraint that will age well. A very traditional winery in one sense, but very modern in their use of technology and in their approach to marketing.

While in Bordeaux, we attended VinExpo, a huge wine exposition with wines from China to Israel to California - in fact there were 2,400 exhibitors from 48 countries. In addition to tasting there in general, we participated in a tasting of the 2006 and 2008 Grand Cru Classé St Emilion. It was very interesting to compare the two vintages. One thing that struck me was the tannins – strong, but well balanced with the fruit. At that tasting, we ran into another past intern who was pouring for his family's Chateau Guadet.

Finally it was time to get on the TGV and head for the Paris Airport and home. We had a great time, ate and drank delicious things, saw some old friends and didn't even gain a pound - thanks to that hill!

Darcey

The Dirt on Dolcetto!

2009-06-29T12:06:00.000-07:00

It’s finally summertime in the Valley and to celebrate this we’re getting ready to release three wines that are great for summer sipping: our 2008 Estate Sauvignon Blanc ($26), the 2008 Estate Dolcetto ($21) and the 2008 Washington State Chardonnay ($44).

For those of you not familiar with dolcetto, it is an Italian varietal traditionally grown in Northwestern Italy, in the Piedmont region. The area is also known for barbera and nebbiolo. Rick, after a trip to the Piedmont in the ‘90s, fell in love with both barbera and dolcetto and decided to plant some in our Estate Vineyard on his return home. The first vintage for these two wines was 2000, and the only vintage we have missed since then was 2004 due to the freeze that swept the Valley.

Dolcetto, which means “little sweet one” in Italian, is simply that. A red wine that is full of fruit and naturally low in tannins, which makes it perfect for summertime drinking. It is pretty much the every day table red in Italy where they are known to chill it just slightly, although it can also be enjoyed at room temperature. I love the Woodward Canyon Estate Dolcetto, with aromas of blackberries and currants which mingle with just a slight hint of sweetness from the puncheons we use. This wine is also perfect for summer fare and anything grilled – including pizza, burgers, chicken and vegetables! Yum. I can’t wait to get a bottle home.

The release of the 2008 Estate Dolcetto couldn’t have come at a better time. We have a large group of our Oregon distributor coming in today for a tour of the Woodward Canyon Estate Vineyard, tasting of the wines and a wood-fire pizza lunch. It is the perfect compliment to the pizzas Rick bakes outside. And I love pizza lunches because I get to be creative when throwing the pizzas together. Of course, I can’t complain about getting to enjoy the pizzas after they are done either.

My favorite pizza is filled with lots of fresh veggies and some meat and cheese. Here's a recipe for the pizza dough and don't forget to use plenty of cornmeal before the pizza goes on the stone or you'll have a huge mess! I usually start with red sauce and then throw on the meat and cheese. I tend to stick to just spicy Italian sausage and chunks of fresh mozzarella. It doesn't need much more than that. Then it's all the veggies I can fit on it. My favorites are roasted red peppers, caramelized Walla Walla Sweet onions, fresh mushrooms and fresh basil. Once everything is piled up on the dough I usually throw some goat cheese on for flavor and then top it off with a few shavings of fresh parmesan cheese. It's perfect! Gosh, it’s good to work out here!

And a special treat for all our readers/subscribers of this blog. Leave a comment with a way to contact you for a special one time use of a 10% discount on any wine that normally receives a case discount (“Old Vines”, etched bottles and older vintages not included in discount.) No minimum purchase applies.

Also, check out the website for information on how to sign up for one of the private tastings we'll be hosting this month in our new "Reserve House."

Now it's time to get ready for the holiday weekend! I hope everyone has a fun a safe Fouth of July! The tasting room will be closed on Saturday July 4th, but we will be open our regular hours on Friday the 3rd and Sunday the 5th. Come see me one of those days if you're in town!

Thanks for reading! Hope to see you all in the tasting room sometime soon!!

Cheers!

Shari / Marlene

Study Time?

2009-06-17T13:46:00.000-07:00

As a college student I spent a lot of time in the library. I would pack up all my books and notes and meet up with my friends to “study”. Oregon State University was awesome and had private study rooms at the library, where you didn’t have to worry about the rules of keeping quiet. So we would put our name on the list and hope to score one of those. When we did get one of the rooms we would go in, spread our books out over the table and then proceed to talk and gossip for the 3 hours we were allowed. Then, we’d pack everything up and head out into the night. I remember those nights fondly. Nights with my friends and not using the library room as it was intended. Sometimes we’d munch on pitas from Pita Pit if someone was willing to run across campus to pick them up. Sometimes we’d listen to music when one of us would bring in a cd player and speakers. All too often, though, I wouldn’t study one word while in the library rooms. So these memories are what I think of when I hear the word ‘library’. Fortunately for us in the wine world, it also means a collection of really nice older wines! Which brings me to our newest building at Woodward Canyon – our Reserve House.

We first broke ground for the Reserve House back in August of 2007 and the project wasn’t complete until this May – well, we are actually still doing the finishing touches on it but we can use it. One of the reasons it took so long was the full sized cellar we built below ground for our wine library. A good 8 feet below the ground, it is the first cellar Rick has had since he bonded the winery in 1981. Thomas, Rafa, Kiko and Manuel worked for almost two weeks to move all the library wines into it and it looks great. The only scary part is most of the cellar is already filled up. I’m not sure where we are going to put any future releases. Guess we’ll have to start drinking some of the older vintages now. What a rough job that would be!

The finishing of the Reserve House and the cellar came just in time for Vintage Walla Walla weekend. We were able to use the building to host a wine dinner after the Vintage Pour. It is a fun two-day weekend filled with educational classes, library wines, a silent auction and of course more wines! Friday night kicked off the weekend with the Library Pour at the Reid Center at Whitman College, where 20-plus wineries came in and poured wines from their libraries from 2002 and older. Kevin Mott, our winemaker, poured the 1996 “Artist Series” Cabernet at the event.

Attendees had the option of doing a wine dinner and as mentioned, we were one of the participating wineries. Rick and Darcey were out of town for the evening, so Thomas (National Sales), Marlene (Marketing and Web), Jordan and myself (Shari, Guest Services) took care of the dinner and the guests. The dinner went smoothly and the guests seemed to enjoy themselves, especially when we pulled out a magnum of 1999 “Special Selection”!

We had a great group of people for our Vintage Dinner. The evening started with appetizers on the back patio - Vietnamese spring rolls and grilled pita with baba ganoush, paired with the 2007 Estate Sauvignon Blanc (which we are now sold out of here at the winery, check back for details on the 2008 release).

From there it was time to walk down into the cellar and grab a glass of the 1999 “Special Selection” Red Wine out of a magnum. WOW, if you haven’t had a chance to taste some of Rick and Kevin’s “Special Selection” then you are missing out. It is absolutely delicious! The “Special Selection” is one of those wines that we only make when we’ve had an exceptional vintage. In the entire time that Woodward Canyon has been producing wines, there have only been four vintages of the “Special Selection” - the 1988, 1993, 1999 and the 2005. Don’t worry – you haven’t missed the 2005 yet! It is due out later this year. We only produced about 157 cases of the 750ml and 30 cases of the magnums so if you want some please contact us at getthedirt@woodwardcanyon.com so we can make sure you receive the release email. It is made up of 69.5% cabernet sauvignon, 25.7% merlot and 4.8% cabernet franc.

After trading white wine glasses for red wine glasses and grabbing their taste of the “Special Selection", the guests headed upstairs where the meal started off with a light salad made from local greens and fresh herbs from the Woodward Canyon herb garden. This was paired with the 2007 Washington State Chardonnay (also recently sold out). Moving onto the main course, guests enjoyed a top sirloin roast grilled outside on the wood-fired grill with roasted red potatoes. The dinner was paired with both the 2005 Charbonneau Red and the 2006 “Old Vines” Cabernet. Dessert was light and fresh - we simply topped lemon curd with hand picked strawberries (picked by myself earlier that morning) and freshly whipped cream and a sprig of mint. Everyone seemed to really enjoy themselves, the dinner and the wines. It is great to know everyone who works at Woodward is a self-proclaimed foodie – which makes it so much fun to cook together!

Thanks for reading!

Shari, Guest Services

It's About the Place

2009-05-22T12:29:00.000-07:00

We are into dirt here. Not sure why; maybe for me it was the mud pie making as a kid, maybe it was seeing strangers walk up to our secluded yard to admire my mother's flower garden because they heard about it from someone else or maybe it was the time I spent on my grandparents’ farm with the cows, chickens, timothy hay and creek to play in. In all likelihood, the fact that both Rick and my grandparents on both sides were farmers probably has a lot to do with it. Rick himself was raised on and drove combine on the Woodward Canyon farm where our Estate Vineyard now grows. One of my favorite cinematographic moments is in “Gone with the Wind” when Scarlet holds up a handful of her beloved Tara to the heavens and essentially declares "Bring it on, I have my dirt!"

The dirt here is unique. That was one factor in the government's approval of our Walla Walla Valley appellation. Not only is there the wine appellation, but there is also an officially designated growing area for Walla Walla Sweet Onions – Walla Walla Sweets grown elsewhere are not Walla Walla Sweets. There is a taste of place here.

In addition to our dirt, we love the Walla Walla Valley. It too is unique and has a sense of place. Walla Walla is an authentic small town with character and history. It and the wine industry have developed organically over time - not part of some master plan or by trying to imitate Tuscany or Bordeaux.

Those places have developed the same way over time. That is what the "romance of the vineyards" is all about. It is more than the wine; it is about the landscape, the people and their culture. People make pilgrimages to wine country to drink the wine, eat the food and soak in the atmosphere. Bordeaux is not Burgundy and Napa is not Paso. This is what makes wine different from other agricultural products. How many people have ever collared you at a dinner party and told you of their amazing trip to Kansas where they ate this fabulous corn and how different that corn is from the corn they recently sampled in Pasco, Washington? My guess is not many.

So, where the heck am I going with this you ask? We recently have been receiving offers to open a tasting room in the Puget Sound –which is another appellation. In fact, during Spring Release a very nice woman asked me if she could get a brochure about a "wine village" being built there out of her car for me and informed me that a number of other Eastern Washington wineries were interested. I did not say it, but the first thing that came to my mind was my mother repeating the old adage that "you don't have to jump off the bridge just because everyone else is". I just began shaking my head "no".

I told her that we are a Walla Walla winery and while not all of our fruit is grown here, we grow an increasing proportion and we produce all of it here. We are defined by being a Walla Walla winery. We are not here just to use the name; we are a part of the fabric of the Valley and it of us. The Bordelaise do not have tasting rooms in Alsace or Champagne – they are Bordelaise. Stag's Leap wineries do not have tasting rooms in Carneros – they are not of Carneros. We don't want to become a mere storefront, minus the romance and essence of wine country. I politely declined the nice lady's offer.

It all comes down to the fact that this is our "place". We are a Walla Walla winery and we are damn proud of it.

Darcey / Woodward Canyon

A windy day at Woodward Canyon Estate Vineyard!

2009-05-12T14:06:00.000-07:00

I just got back to my desk after checking the vineyard and the wind is blowing as I hard as I can ever remember. And I’ve lived here all my life! While spring is a fabulous time to be in the vineyard, with new shoot growth of green and pink, it is also the time of year when the wind can blow incessantly, especially after rain. It once again reminds me how appreciative I am of our vineyard crew and how hard they work even on days such as this.

Well, the vines are truly growing now and I believe that we will probably have our first application of organic sulfur (mildew prevention) on by the third week in May. It is also going to be a year where a great deal of hand work will need to take place. In fact we will probably start this process tomorrow if the weather is better. Shoot positioning, leaf stripping, lateral removal and finally cluster thinning is all part of the seasonal process leading to perfect physiological vine and grape maturity. The flavor of grapes grown this way is superb; complex, purity of fruit and with vine age, minerals. One bottle of wine per vine is our reward and yours.

Here’s to a great 2009 vintage!

Rick

The Woody Team Rocks!

2009-05-08T13:22:00.000-07:00

We always knew that the Woody crew rocked but let me tell you, they really ROCK!
Getting ready for and executing any event like Spring Release Weekend always takes coordination and a lot of work, but this year we also had a new building (our Reserve House - pictured above) to get open for the tasting and then the following Wednesday we hosted the Washington Wine Commission's export tour – 8 members of the foreign trade for lunch and then a tasting for 60 with 15 other wineries present.

The week of Spring Release we were pretty ready for the usual tasting, but due to the finishing of the floors we could not get into the new building until Tuesday – meaning no furniture was in place, appliances were still being installed and the building was very dusty.

Zero landscaping was in place too. Monday, Kiko and Manuel from the cellar and I hauled and spread gravel for the new garden and Jorge and Hermenegildo from the vineyard laid the gravel paths and prepped for the sod.

Tuesday morning dawned and it was raining cats and dogs, so absolutely nothing was accomplished in terms of moving into the building or installing the landscaping. Things were getting a little tense since the clock was ticking.

On Wednesday and Thursday it was all hands on deck! The cellar crew and vineyard guys laid sod like pros, moved plants from their temporary homes, mowed, trimmed, weeded and then got the tank room ready to great visitors on Friday. Rafa, our Cellar Master and Kevin took on preparing for bottling as well as moving furniture and doing whatever else was asked. Kellie, Tasting Room Manager, deadheaded daffodils all morning and then started in on cleaning the new building. Thomas, National Sales, helped assemble shelving, packed stuff around and stocked the buildings with wine for the weekend. Shari, Guest Services, cut cheese for hours, readied glasses and helped organize the new building as well. Marlene, Marketing/Web, held down the tasting room and handled the organization of the weekend while the rest of us ran in 50 different directions. Sue and Lori in Accounting/Compliance answered phones and Sue planted our barrel planters.

Friday morning, we were ready and open for tasting in both buildings; plants and lawn were in place and art was hanging in the new building!

Then we all poured wine for 3 days. Except for Kevin who poured wine for 2 days, flew to Chicago on Sunday, did a trade tasting Monday and flew back on Tuesday to finish preparing for bottling. Bob and Kelsey joined us on the weekend to haul and wash glasses and to pack up sold wine.

This Monday, the guys broke down the tasting tables and they and Tasting Room ladies got everything cleaned and put away. Sue crunched numbers for the weekend and Kevin resumed getting ready for bottling. On Wednesday, the tables went back up, glasses were set out and Thomas and the Tasting Room staff shopped for, prepped, and made wood-fired pizza lunch for 8 foreign trade members and our staff. More clean up, and then preparation for a tasting for 60, followed by working the tasting and more clean up.

WHEW! These guys are "awesome" to use Kellie's favorite word. They work their tails off, are willing to do a whole lot of things outside of their job descriptions and are fun to be around. Rick and I are lucky, lucky dogs – thanks everyone!

-Darcey

Busy, Busy, Busy!

2009-05-06T16:22:00.000-07:00

Whew! This is going to be just a quick update. It was a crazy busy weekend for Spring Release and then with the WSWE (Washington State Wine Experience) buyers here last night. And with Balloon Stampede here this weekend I can already tell that it’s going to be a crazy summer. But I just love when it starts to get busy around here. Makes things move that much quicker.

We all made it through Spring Release this year. We had some awesome customers come through, like always, both new and old. It is always fun to see new faces mixed in with some of our longtime friends. We did our normal tasting in our production building, where we were pouring our 2007 Dry White Riesling, 2007 Estate Barbera, Non-Vintage Red Wine, 2007 Walla Walla Valley Cabernet, 2006 Columbia Valley Merlot, 2006 “Artist Series” Cabernet and our new release the 2006 Estate Red Wine. What a fun line-up of wines. We also held our first event in our brand new Reserve House, where we poured the 2006 “Old Vines” Cabernet and the 2002 “Old Vines” Cabernet from a magnum as a bonus. We were so excited to get in there after all this time. The building is going to be a great addition to the Woody grounds.

Right after Spring Release we got to turn around and get things ready for the WSWE, which we hosted here yesterday afternoon. There were 16 different Walla Walla Valley Wineries pouring and around 60 buyers. Talk about a crazy event. I met Rick at the WWCC Enology and Viticulture Center at noon and we brought 8 of the buyers out to Woodward for wood-fire pizza lunch after a quick trip through the Estate Vineyard. Then it was off to Walla Walla Wine Works for their next session before all 60 buyers were back here to taste with the 16 WW Valley Wineries. Due to Mother Nature not cooperating with us, we had to do the event in our production building. We had more wine flowing than I’ve seen in a really long time. It was crazy. It reminded me of a swarm of bees at the speed everyone went through and tasted everything. Then it was off to L’Ecole #41 for a bbq dinner.

This weekend brings us the Walla Walla Balloon Stampede. We’ll have balloon enthusiasts coming to the valley as early as today to start taking trial runs and getting ready. As a local in this valley I’ve always enjoyed this weekend. I remember as a kid getting up early in the morning to see if I could spot any balloons in the sky. Though, if the weather stays like it is today, I’m not sure if we’ll see any this weekend. With the wind blowing like it is, who knows where the balloons would land if they ever got up.

For those of you in Seattle, check out Daniel’s Broiler this month. They are showcasing Washington wines and one of their features is Woodward Canyon! Also, if you’re in the Coeur D’Alene area, Rick and Darcey will be doing a winemaker’s dinner at Beverly’s the Coeur D’Alene Resort on May 17th. Call Beverly at 208-765-4000 directly for more information. And here’s a sneak peak of the menu if anyone is interested. Looks like they are pairing some great food with some older vintages of Woodward Canyon wines, which we're sold out of here at the winery.

Amuse Bouche: Tuna Nicoise – 2007 Estate Sauvignon Blanc
Salad: Tropic Salad – 2006 Washington State Chardonnay
Appetizer: Smoked Copper River Salmon Carpaccio – 2006 Columbia Valley Merlot
Intermezzo: Washington Apple Granite’
Entrée: Veal Osso Buco, Seared Yellow Fin Tuna and Roasted Squab with Smoked Tomato Compote – 2004 “Old Vines” Cabernet, 2001 “Artist Series” Cabernet and 2005 “Artist Series” Cabernet
Cheese: A trio of the world’s fine cheeses – 2003 Charbonneau Red
Kiss Goodnight: Chocolate Chipotle Cupcake

See you all in the tasting room!

Ciao,

Shari / Woodward Canyon

Spring Release is here!

2009-04-30T15:15:00.000-07:00

I hope this finds everyone on their way to Walla Walla. Spring Release Weekend is no longer right around the corner, it is here! I’m writing this blog quickly in between trips over to our Reserve House as we are busily trying to clean and get it ready for use this weekend. Can you believe that it’s finally ready!?! I know that we are all still shocked that we are going to be able to get into it. If you had seen it earlier this week you would be as well. It’s amazing what the Ketelsen Construction guys have been able to accomplish in this short amount of time since we decided to go live with it. And it’s gorgeous. Darcey and I hung our Red-Tailed Hawk painting by Todd Tealander, which was the 2004 “Artist Series” Cabernet label, earlier today and it looks great. I can’t wait to show everyone.

And don’t forget about the Winemaker’s Dinner at the Marcus Whitman tonight. Join Rick and Darcey from Woodward Canyon and Marty Clubb from L’Ecole #41 in their joint dinner. Chef Bear has been working closely with Darcey trying to get the menu just right. And the wine list looks pretty amazing as well. Hope you have already made your reservations because I'm not sure if there is any room left.

I hope to see each one of you in the tasting room this weekend! Come join us for the release of the 2006 Estate Red! It’s a great blend of 42% cabernet franc, 35% merlot, 14% cabernet sauvignon and 9% petit verdot all from the Woodward Canyon Estate Vineyard. And don’t forget to swing by the Reserve House for an additional tasting of the 2006 “Old Vines” Cabernet and the 2002 “Old Vines” Cabernet from the magnum (additional tasting fees apply). See you guys soon!

Cheers!

Shari / Woodward Canyon

Spring has finally sprung!

2009-04-20T14:27:00.000-07:00

OMG! Spring has finally descended on the valley. It is gorgeous and sunny out and I don’t know about you all but it’s a sight that couldn’t have come soon enough! I was starting to think that Mother Nature had taken a permanent vacation and wasn’t going to be around this year. But she’s back and so is my sunshine! And it couldn’t be soon enough for the valley and the grapes. I spoke with Rick the other day and he was thinking that we’re a couple of weeks behind schedule in the vineyards. It will be interesting to see how it plays out for the vintage. Of course, a week or so of hot weather and we could be all caught up. It’s funny how weather will play such a huge part in the wines we produce.

Darcey is excited because we finally have flowers in the garden again. She’s been busy outside, pulling up weeds and trimming bushes. As I sit here and write this I see bees pollinating the bushes outside the window. Ahh … I love spring. Now I’m not the gardening-type person. Anyone who knows me at all, can vouch for the fact that I can kill anything green and alive in a matter of 5 days. And the thought of going outside and working my hands in the dirt to grow something that will essentially just die in weeks makes me turn a bit green myself. But that doesn’t mean that I do not love spring time and all the flowers that it brings. Nothing makes me happier than looking at freshly bloomed flowers, well except for the fact that I did not plant them myself.

Everyone at the winery is getting ready for Spring Release weekend. It always seems to get here quicker than we expected. But we love it because it usually signifies the start of the busy season. This year we will be releasing our 2006 Estate Red. It has already received great reviews from both Wine Spectator (91 pts) and Wine Enthusiast (95 pts). This is another great showing from our Estate Vineyard, which is Certified Sustainable, Salmon Safe, LIVE and Vinea. The vineyard has been certified sustainable by the International Organisation for Biological Control (IOBC). The IOBC was established in 1955 to promote environmentally safe methods of pest and disease control in plant protection. The vineyard is also designated as Salmon Safe. This wine is 100% from the Estate Vineyard making it a designated Salmon Safe wine. The ’06 vintage is already showing great! Here’s an excerpt from Rick on the tech sheet.
“The vintage of 2006 gave perfect physiological ripeness. As might be expected with such low yields, the resulting wine is concentrated with generous black fruit and cassis. A breadth of spices and vanilla from new oak integrate beautifully with firm merlot dominated fruit. A nose of roasted game, ripe fruit and shaved chocolate develops in the glass; the color is reddish purple. A soft, generous texture transitions to a supple, balanced mouth feel; the finish is rich, layered and long. In this wine I am again able to perceive an “expression” or “sense of place” from our Estate Vineyard and I love that! With proper cellaring, this wine should age for ten years.”

We are also excited with the possibility that our new Reserve Building will be finished in time for Spring Release. We will still be doing the majority of our tasting in our production building, but we will be offering a special tasting of our 2006 “Old Vines” Cabernet, for an additional tasting fee, in the Reserve Building. We don’t usually taste our “Old Vines” since the production had dropped so low, but we thought this might be a fun time to break it out. Swing by and taste this limited wine and get yours before it’s all gone.

If you’re in town early for Spring Release and don’t have plans yet for Thursday, April 30th, swing by The Marcus Whitman and join Rick and Marty Clubb from L’Ecole #41 at their winemaker’s dinner. It should be a great dinner with two of the pioneer wineries in the valley. The dinner looks to be fantastic and of course they’ll be pouring some great wines! Reservations are required, (509) 525-2200.

If you haven’t heard, we are running a ‘Celebrate Spring’ sale online and in the tasting room. It’s our way of saying thank you to our customers. We are offering a 15% case discount on whole and mixed cases on everything except for our “Old Vines”, large formats, etched bottles and older vintages. This is a limited time offer so don’t miss out!

Well I’m off to go and play in the sunshine a bit before it returns to hiding behind the clouds. Gosh, could this weather be any more perfect?!? The only thing that would make it better would be pizza from our wood-fire oven. I’m gonna have to see if I can’t talk Rick into firing it up and putting on one of our Woodward Canyon pizza lunches. Enjoy your day! Come say hi to me in the tasting room next time you’re in the area!

Cheers,

Shari / Woodward Canyon

Taste Washington

2009-04-11T10:16:00.000-07:00

Hello again! I’m back in the office, rested and rejuvenated after a quick trip over to Seattle for Taste Washington. Mine was much shorter than everyone else from Woodward Canyon but I enjoyed myself immensely. It was really nice to get away from Walla Walla for however short it was. Rick and Darcey left Thursday so they could attend the Washington Wine Restaurant Awards & Tasting Friday night and Rick could attend and lead some of the seminars on Saturday. Thomas flew in Saturday morning after making stops in San Francisco and Chicago. And then first thing Monday morning he was off again, this time to New York. WOW! What a rough life he must lead. I’ve always wondered what life would be like, always on the road. I ended up catching a plane at the Walla Walla Airport at 6:50 in the morning. Let me tell you something, a 4:30 wake up call so you can make a 6:50 flight is not something I enjoy doing. Maybe I don’t envy Thomas’s job as much as I thought, after all.

Seattle was gorgeous! It was bright and sunny and unlike most of the rainy days I've spent there. It was almost difficult being indoors all afternoon. Almost, but not quite, I enjoyed myself at Taste way to much to think about it. There were more people than I could count but it was fun meeting everyone and talking about the wines. And with over 200 wineries and 60 restaurants, there was no way to get around to all of them. I made a point to taste a couple different cabs which were composed entirely of Champoux Vineyard fruit. I thought it would be interesting to see how they compared and were different from our “Old Vines” Cabernet. I love how each wine was similar in some ways but also very different in others. I guess that is what makes wine so fascinating.

Both of our labels, Nelms Road and Woodward Canyon, were included at Taste. We poured the ’07 Nelms Cabernet and ’07 Nelms Merlot and then the ’07 Washington State Chardonnay and the ’06 “Artist Series” Cabernet for Woodward Canyon. The wines were showing really well and people seemed to enjoy them. We, of course, poured out of the “Artist Series” and came close to pouring out of everything else. It was a great event with great response from the consumers.

The Walla Walla Valley Wine Alliance hosted a special “Get a Taste” of Vintage Walla Walla during a 4 hour block once the Grand Tasting started. It was an appointment-only session on some of the older wines in the valley. Rick joined six other winemakers from Walla Walla, and poured our 1998 “Artist Series” Cabernet, to help showcase what Vintage Weekend is all about. I didn’t get to taste any of the wines there but we had opened a bottle of the ’98 a couple of weeks ago and the winery and it was still pouring beautifully. Lots of tobacco and earthy nuances with some black fruit on the palate, this wine still had some cellar life on it.

We poured through just about everything and headed off to Seastar in Seattle for dinner that night. If you haven’t been to this restaurant before you should definitely visit on your next trip. We had an amazing dinner. We started off the night with a couple bottles of champagne paired with fresh oysters shooters right out of the sea. Then we moved on to our white for the evening with fresh seared ahi, calamari poppers and crab cakes. Then it was a pinot noir from Burgundy which I paired with my halibut provencal and spring style asparagus. We finished off the evening with crème brulee, white chocolate coconut cream pie and passion fruit panna cotta with tropical fruit. All the desserts were amazing, though I’m gonna have to admit that the crème brulee was my favorite. Once again, I’m so glad that everyone at Woodward Canyon is as much of a foodie as I am. I am so lucky to be working at a place where us employee are treated so well and we are constantly surrounded by great food and amazing wines!

If you're in Walla Walla today come see Marlene at the Woodward Canyon table at Feast Walla Walla between one and four. We'll be pouring our '05 White Riesling, our '07 Estate Barbera and our '07 Walla Walla Valley Cabernet. If you can’t make it to Feast, swing by the tasting room and we’ll share some wines with you out here!

For those of you who will be in town the first weekend of May come visit us for Spring Release Weekend, May 1st through the 3rd. We will be pouring some of our favorites. And we might even have a trick or two up our sleeves. Hope to see you all through the tasting room at some point during the spring / summer!

Salut!

Shari / Woodward Canyon Winery

Notes from the Rollerbag

2009-03-24T10:04:00.000-07:00

Travel, to someone working at Initech that spends their perfunctory eight hours puttering away in a cubicle, must seem like a non-stop world of delight: nights in plush accommodations with room service, luxurious dinners with adoring distributor reps, strolls in Central Park.

Not quite so.

The world of sales is highly unglamorous.

To wit, exhibit A:
I am on a middle seat on a 757 from Las Vegas to DFW, sleeping peacefully, headphones in, some death metal blaring away.

The hum of the engines lowers in pitch, and the familiar sequence that tells me we're making our initial descent into the city du jour begins, and I awaken slowly, like a wood elf from a midsummer afternoon idyll.

My left leg is warm and damp. I touch my jeans. And now chunky, as well.

I open my eyes to a three year-old with matching chunks on his chin being held by a sheepish mother that shrugs and gives me an underwhelming "sorry."

Sorry, indeed.

Note: if your child pukes on an unrelated passenger on the airplane, and said passenger is sleeping, do not hesitate to wake the stranger up. He or she will not mind, or at least, will mind far less than discovering the remains of baby's lunch spattered upon them.

A few other bits of advice, when traveling:

1) Be aware of the limits of your personal space. I won't go into detail on this one but use your imagination.

2) You may have just gotten out of bed, but don't dress like you're still in it. Velour sweat suits and plush furry slippers may be de rigueur for Saturday cartoons and Cheerios, but they do not make for appropriate travel wear.

3) Realize that people are at their lowest level of cerebral activity when boarding and deplaning an aircraft (and when merging onto a freeway). It's easy. Locate your seat (hint: it's the alphanumeric quantity in big bold letters on your boarding pass). Upon finding your seat, throw one bag up top and one at your feet, remove yourself from the aisle, and sit quietly. No talking or fun of any kind. Upon landing, do not unbuckle your seatbelt and stand up in the aisle at the first available opportunity. This is both unnecessary and annoying (or perhaps annoying because it is unnecessary). Anyhoo, calm yourself.

4) Read the signs. Yes, there are information kiosks and gate agents, but consider them as a last resort when trying to determine the relatively simple (i.e., the location of your gate, or whether the plane is boarding). Just because they exist to be of assistance does not mean they aren't thoroughly unimpressed with your foolish inquiries.

5) The extra shot with the super size beer is never a good idea, and moreover, it's not that great of a bargain, if you do the math.

6) Never check a bag. Nevah-evah. Going for a whole week, you say. That’s what guest laundry is for at the hotel where you'll be staying. Need seven changes of clothes? No, you don't. Seven pairs of underwear, most would argue, is a necessity, but the person you work with on Wednesday will never be the wiser that the pants you're wearing you wore the day before when working with someone else. Simplify.

Until next time, may all your departures be on time and your arrivals early.

Blessings and cheers,

Thomas the Sales Guy

Our Latest eNewsletter

2009-03-18T16:57:00.000-07:00

We thought it would be cool to share our latest newsletter. A new release, a new wine sale and thoughts on sustainability. Enjoy!

New Release and Estate Wine Sale from Woodward Canyon

New Release: 2007 Walla Walla Valley Cabernet Sauvignon, $39. "This wine has a beautiful nose of subtle tobacco, complex spiced oak and clove that integrates beautifully with ripe black cherry/cassis fruit. A rich mouth feel begins with black cherry leading towards a chocolate/mocha finish that is exotic, enticing and long." 599 cases produced, 10% case discount applies. This is a great example of a Walla Walla cabernet.

Green Beer, Green Wine, Green Wine Sale? We have it - well, at least the wine part. All of our Estate wines come from our certified sustainable vineyard. What does that mean? Scroll down to read more about how we stay 'green' in the vineyard and keep reading to find out all the details on our Estate Wine Sale.

Estate Wine Sale! Purchase at least 6 bottles of any combination of our Estate wines (750ml bottles only) and get 15% off per bottle. Purchase a full case or more of any combination of the Estate wines and get 20% off. What a great excuse to go green! Estate wines available are the 2007 Estate Sauvignon Blanc, 2007 Estate Barbera, 2007 Estate Dolcetto and 2005 Estate Red, which scored 91 points from Parker. All of these come from our certified sustainable Estate Vineyard. Add 6 -11 bottles of Estate wines and receive 15% off those bottles. Full cases of Estate wines will receive 20% off. All non-Estate wines purchased as part of a case will receive 10% off if they normally qualify for a case discount.

'Green' Wine: All of the fruit that we use in our Estate wines come from our Estate Vineyard which is certified sustainable by LIVE, Vinea and Salmon-Safe. These three organizaitons work to help vineyard owners improve and nourish the land that is farmed, making it a better environment for the entire ecosystem. At Woodward Canyon, we have encouraged biodiversity by restoring native vegetation, such as juniper, rabbit brush, green sage and grasses, between the vineyard blocks. Our newer plantings, as well as the vegetables we grow on the vineyard property, have been farmed organically. We utilize grape pommace, green waste from the Tasting Room garden, organic manure and cedar chips for use on the vineyard. To minimize water usage, the entire vineyard is on drip irrigation. We also use sustainable practices in the winery and in the office. In fact, in 2008, by participating in Pacific Power's BlueSky program, we saved the equivalent of 23,252 pounds of CO2, which is equivalent to not driving 23,590 miles in a car. How cool is that? For more information on how we go 'green', click here.

2005 Columbia Valley (Sweet) Riesling, now 30% off! Reg. $14.00, now $9.80. With only about 2.5% residual sugar, this isn't your typical 'sweet' riesling. It has just enough sweetness to enjoy on a warm Spring afternoon or evening. No additional discounts. Limited availability.

We will be busy with events this Spring all over the Pacific Northwest. Check out the events below to see if you can join us or check our click here to check out our Events page.

Upcoming Events:

Wine Dinner at The Ranch Club, Missoula, MT, March 12^th. Thomas Woodley, our National Sales Coordinator, will be on hand for a great five course dinner prepared by The Ranch Club. Expect great Woodward wines as pairings! Call 406-532-1005 or email ejoy@ranchclub.com for more information.

Wine Dinner at The Silver Star, Helena, MT, March 13th. Join Thomas Woodley for a wine dinner pair with the delicious food of The Silver Star. Reservations are required and space is limited. Call (406) 495-0677 for more information. The Silver Star's website is http://www.silverstarsteakco.com/restaurant.php.

Dahlia Lounge, Seattle, March 20th. Join us in celebrating Washington Wine Month. Each week, Dahlia will feature a Washington winery and also offer wines from that winery that are not usually sold by the glass. Thomas Woodley of Woodward Canyon will be in the restaurant pouring and talking about the wines on the evening of March 20th. For more information, contact Dahlia Lounge at (206) 682-4142 or visit http://www.tomdouglas.com/events/view/id/18 to check out the schedule.

Winemaker Dinner with Rick Small, Waterfront Seafood Grill, Seattle, March 26th. Join Rick for an excellent menu paired with Woodward Canyon wines. $125 / person, reservations necessary. Please call 206.956.9171 for more information or to make a reservation.

Taste Washington Seattle, WA, Qwest Field, April 5th. Join Woodward Canyon and many of Washington's wineries for Taste Washington Seattle. For more information go to http://www.tastewashington.org/.

Feast Walla Walla, Downtown Walla Walla, April 11th, 2009. Feast Walla Walla is a Celebration of Fine Food, Wine, and Art. Join Woodward Canyon and a number of other Walla Walla wineries and restaurant vendors from 1 - 4 PM on April 11th. Tickets are $45 and you will be able to purchase wines you have tasted onsite. Look for the "BIG PARTY TENT" on First Avenue in downtown Walla Walla. Visit http://www.feastwallawalla.com/%20for%20more%20information.

Anacortes Spring Wine Festival, April 11th, Anacortes, WA. Mark your calendars now! This is a full weekend of great wines and food. Featured wineries will be Woodward Canyon, OS, Hightower, Woodinville Wine Cellars, Walla Walla Vintners, Tasawik, Mark Ryan, Chinook, JM Cellars, Rulo, Lopez Island Vineyard, Gorman, Sheridan, Sleight of Hand, Des Voignes, Challenger Ridge, Dunham, Whidbey Island Winery, Ross Andrew, Cuillin Hills, Andrew Will and Delille. Add 6 local restaurants, a whole bunch of winemaker dinners and make a weekend of it. Tickets go on sale March 16 through the Anacortes Chamber of Commerce, Compass Wines at http://www.compasswines.com/events.cfm#72 and the restaurants involved.

Spring Release at Woodward Canyon, May 1 - May 3, 2009. Join us for Spring Release weekend! Beginning Friday, May 1st through Sunday, May 3rd, we'll have great new releases and some special pours. We have some surprises for this year's Spring Release, so check this page in mid-April to see what we have going on. Check your inbox in mid-April for our Spring Release eNewsletter to see what we're up to.

Winemaker's Dinner Package at the Marcus Whitman, Walla Walla, April 30-May 2. Join Woodward Canyon & L'Ecole #41 for a Winemaker's Dinner Series at the Marcus Whitman the weekend of Spring Release. Combine it with a weekend stay at one of the Valley's best lodging choice. Packages start at $949 per couple. For more information, please call 509-524-5110 or email wine@marcuswhitmanhotel.com.

Winemaker Dinner with Rick Small, Beverly's, Coeur D'Alene, ID, May 17th. Call Beverly's at the Coeur D'Alene Resort directly at (208) 765-4000 for more details. Hope to see you there!

Perks of the Job!

2009-03-09T11:11:00.000-07:00

I have this really good friend who I’ve known for years. We both went to high school together and then we followed each other to college as well. We even went so far as to having our college graduation party together because we had so many of the same friends and our families knew each other well. Over the years I’ve become friends with his wife, who I also went to high school with, and have fallen in love with their two boys. So I always try to do something special for his birthday. Last year, I did a mini vertical of Walla Walla cabernets from 2000-2004. Not something I would recommend for three people, but it was a lot of fun and the wines were amazing. So this year I decided that I needed to do something even more special. After racking my brain I came across a 1998 “Old Vines” Cabernet from Woodward Canyon and decided that was just what I was looking for.

So the three of us made plans to get together over a nice dinner and crack open the bottle. It was fantastic! We paired the wine with a steak and potato dinner just like mom used to make. In the mouth, the wine was rich and still very powerful, with flavors of muted toasted oak and vanilla as well as raspberry, blackberry and a hint of the terroir that is typical of the Champoux Vineyard. It was well balanced and for being 10 years old it still had years of cellar time on it. The steak was hearty enough that the wine didn’t overpower it, leading to a wonderful pairing. We savored every last drop in the bottle and then wished we had three more to open.

The grapes were harvested entirely from Champoux Vineyard, planted in the 1970’s, above the Columbia River in southeastern Washington. The very warm growing season of 1998 gave incredibly ripe fruit with great richness and concentration. Champoux Vineyard consists of 170 acres of mixed varietals - cabernet sauvignon, lemburger, cabernet franc, syrah, merlot, riesling, muscat, and chardonnay. We, along with Quilceda Creek, Andrew Will, and Badger Mountain/Powers, are all partner wineries in the Champoux Vineyards along with Vineyard Manager, Paul Champoux. We primarily use Champoux fruit for our "Old Vines" Cabernet. The cabernet vines were planted in 1972, making them one of the oldest cabernet blocks in the state. The fruit produces extremely elegant and bright red cherry flavors which was evident in the 1998 vintage.

Then I gave him his “present” of the 2002 Woodward Canyon Estate Red to cellar for later. If you have not had a glass or bottle of the Estate Red you don’t know what you’re missing! This is definitely one of my favorite wines we produce here and the 2002 Estate Red is one of my favorite wines from the valley that vintage. It is a Bordeaux style blend entirely from our Estate Vineyard. This merlot, cabernet sauvignon, cabernet franc and petit verdot blend has a soft generous texture that transitions to a supple, balanced mouth feel with a long and layered finish. This is a wine that can lay down, with proper cellaring, for 10+ years. And even though we are out of the 2002 vintage we still have plenty of the 2003 and 2005 available, both of which are excellent.

Needless to say he was pretty excited about the wines. It was a pretty special night that I will remember for a long time. I wouldn’t give or open a bottle like that for just anyone.

So happy drinking everyone! I hope you are all enjoying something special at this moment. If you are on facebook please friend us and keep up on what's going on out at the winery. And next time you are in the valley come see me in the tasting room!

Cheers!

Shari / Woodward Canyon Winery

Travel Time for Rick and Darcey

2009-02-27T11:23:00.000-08:00

Rick and I made a whirlwind trip to the west side last week. We started in Seattle with lunch with our son at one of our favorites, Tom Douglas' Dahlia Lounge. Rick had the crab cakes, which we think are hands down the best around, I had the curried clams – yum – and Sager worked his way through the burger. It was on a trip to Italy a number of years ago with Tom, Peter Dow and Michael Teer that Rick fell in love with Barbera and Dolcetto, then came home and planted those varieties in our Estate Vineyard.

Rick and I followed with a dinner at Volterra that Tamara Donaghy, the proprietor of the downtown Seattle women's clothing store Sway and Cake, purchased at the Seattle Hotel Association's Evening of Hope auction. Chef Don Curtiss and his crew put together a wonderful menu matched to Woodward Canyon wines. My favorite course was the Braised Pork Cheeks and Potato Gnocchi with the 2006 Columbia Valley Merlot. A good time was had by all and a great charity, the Plymouth Housing Group, benefited.

Then the next morning it was on to Moclips on the Washington Coast. As a young child I had spent time there with my parents so it was interesting to go back after so many years. The Ocean Cre st Resort sits on a ridge above the ocean with wonderful views – particularly sunsets. The restaurant there produces a regular calendar of winemaker dinners and has an award-winning wine list, primarily NW wines, many of them nicely aged. It is always a surprising treat to find such a wine list in an off-the-beaten-path place.

On our day "off" we drove up to the Quinault Lodge at the edge of the Olympic National Park. After a short hike to see the world's largest spruce, we headed to the lodge for lunch. It is a beautifully maintained 1930's lodge that overlooks the lake. If you have not been there, it is worth the trip. For whatever reason, every time Rick and I have been in the rain forest it has been clear and warm and this was no different.

Then back to the coast for a nice long walk on a sunny beach before the winemaker dinner which was paired with many of our older wines from the Resort's cellar. My favorite course there was the Chocolate Chili with Citrus Pepper Puffs matched with the 2004 Merlot. I have to get that recipe!

It was a long haul home the next day to cloudy and gray Walla Walla, but we had met some nice folks, had plenty of good food and got an invigorating dose of salt air and sunshine so it was well worth it.

Darcey / Woodward Canyon Winery.

End of February Already?!?!?!

2009-02-20T13:51:00.000-08:00

Hello from cold and gray Walla Walla Valley. I’m writing this bundled up inside the tasting room in a sweater and my fleece

jacket. I’m soooo ready for spring time! It’s been a long and cold winter and just seems to keep dragging on. And to think on the 2nd Punxsy Phil saw his shadow and so we’re in store for 6 more weeks of winter. But I have some reservations on this prediction. I mean this little groundhog comes out of his burrow to try to predict if we’re going to have a longer winter or an early spring. But with all the people standing around with lights and cameras and everything else it’s no wonder that he ALWAYS sees his shadow! Here’s a fun site I found on the history of Groundhog Day- visit it at www.groundhog.org if you’re interested in this little guy.

So some fun stuff coming up in the next couple of weeks that some of us here at the winery are involved in. First off is the Oregon Wine Symposium down in Eugene, Oregon. This is our first year attending so we're hoping to learn a lot. It has been years since I’ve been to Eugene. If you know of any hot spots to visit or any cool events going on for Fat Tuesday please feel free to share. I would love to get some ideas of where to visit.

Right after we return from that we’re headed out again for Taste Walla Walla in Portland, which takes place on Monday, March 2nd. This is a great event for those of you who haven't been before. Wineries from all over Walla Walla pack up and head down to Portland to pour in one big area. Great for those of you who haven’t made it over to this side of the state yet, and for those of you who would just like to taste a bit closer to home. Tickets are still available and cost is $65 a piece. There are quite a few wines available to taste so please be safe in getting home from the event. This is such a fun event for wineries and consumers alike. For more information, you can visit The Walla Walla Valley Wine Alliance website. To order tickets you can either call (503) 226-0973 or visit the Portland Art Museum at Portland Art Museum. We hope to see you all there!

For those of you who haven’t heard, we have released our 2006 “Old Vines” Cabernet. This wine is gorgeous! Rick is really excited about how this wine is showing already. Here’s an excerpt from our tech sheet …

”This 2006 “Old Vines” Cabernet Sauvignon is a rich and complex red wine. It expresses the purity of fully mature cabernet sauvignon fruit that one only can get from 35 year old vines. The Sagemoor Vineyard cabernet truly expresses itself in this vintage. The color is dark red to purple and complex aromas of cherry, leather and smoke develop in the glass. Flavors of ripe black cherries and cassis married with spicy new oak and vanilla coat the mouth. The texture is soft and silky yet there are mature integrated tannins in the rich, long finish. I love the proportion this red wine displays and with proper storage, it should age for ten years easily.” -Rick Small, director of production

If you would like to order some please feel free to either call us at the winery at (509) 525-4129 or order online at www.woodwardcanyon.com.

Well I hope everyone has a wonderful Thursday! Even though this would normally be my Monday, I’m taking the weekend off to head out to a friend’s wedding. Here’s to a 10 hour drive for an outdoor wedding at the Oregon Coast. Seriously, who gets married outside at the Oregon Coast in February?!?! If, on Saturday afternoon around 3:00 while you are in your warm and toasty house and you get the urge to have a glass of vino, think of me!

Cheers!
Shari Brumbach / Woodward Canyon Winery