Stir Crazy is a pretty cool restaurant chain in the North East mainly. Their food is great and very Riesling friendly. They have a cool video about asian food and wine pairing at http://www.stircrazy.com/company/news.aspx

I could not copy the video but it is the third video down “how to pair with Asian Food”.

Most often when I go to a small ethnic restaurant (I favor Thai, Vietnamese, Chinese, Indian, Middle Eastern, North African and Mexican), I enjoy a bit of spice and sometimes brutal heat. It is always puzzling to find a good drink (with alcohol please) to go along with a good curry, a spicy couscous and other Pad Thais. Often the choice is between the house wine (no thank you, I do not want your white zin…), the beer (not another Kirin or Tsingtao please) or an uninspiring cocktail (likely with Tequila or Vodka that do not taste much of anything). I often retreat to water or, I must admit, a beer (light lagers or pilsners are a favorite if available).

I have found out that most of the smaller ethnic restaurants are likely run by foreign born staff with little wine knowledge. They usually see the wine list as important as the fortune cookies (I would not be surprised if they pay more attention to the cookies at times). The wine is usually provided by the beer salesman of very large wine and beer distributors (they are the only one that really have the time and incentive to visit those smaller accounts). The beer salesman is usually incentivized on beer and his wine book is often dismal. The combination of an uneducated buyer and a sales person that want to push beer is unfortunately an uninspiring wine selection in 99% of small ethnic food restaurant.

If anyone as a solution on how to change this sad state of affair, please leave a post!

PS: Did I say that Riesling (in many forms), can aikido most, if not all, of those ethnic foods…

Thank you to Jancis Robinson for featuring our beloved Riesling book on her blog (http://www.jancisrobinson.com/articles/20080820_4). Hopefully this will bring all the blogosphere and friends to our site and they will enrich our great content evolving our website into the ultimate Riesling resource.

Remember that Riesling rules - Thank you Jancis

This week I was visiting a great restaurant in San Francisco called Sens (http://www.sens-sf.com/) with our local sales person (Jo M.). Jo and I were chatting about the cocktail trends in San Francisco and to demonstrate how good wine cocktail can be he asked the bartender to create a Chenin Blanc based cocktail. I am not sure if it has a name yet but it tasted just perfect with the food and the hot weather. Here is the recipe: 1 part Eldelflower liquor (Use St Germain liquor: http://www.stgermain.fr/), one part Pacific Rim Chenin Blanc and one part club soda - all of it in a tall glass on ice with a lemon twist on the rim. This might be the best wine cocktail I ever had.

One trend that I have been following lately is the use of wine in cocktails. I made a few discoveries during my last trip in San Francisco.

Luna Park’s (http://lunaparksf.com/) “Icebreaker” is one of the best Vin De Glaciere cocktail I have tried. It is one part Riesling Vin De Glaciere and one part chilled ciroq vodka with two frozen grapes in a martini glass. Very dangerous and delicious cocktail. Highly recommended.

Thank you Luna park for this inspirational use of our Vin De Glaciere!!

Thank you to Sharon Kapnick of the New Yourk Times (among others) for her great article about Riesling’s versatility with food: http://www.seniorwomen.com/hs/articles/kapnick/articlesKapnickRiesling.html

It is a very toughtful article with many references to the Riesling world. Riesling is really the greatest food wine.

Duane at WineFoot.com has reviewed our 2007 Wallula. Thank you Duane, you are one of the first one in the country to review the wine.

http://www.winefoot.com/index.php/2008/08/08/2007-pacific-rim-wallula-vineyard-riesling/

Yesterday I got a call asking me if our wines were vegan. Well, first I had to think about what that really meant (from wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegan Veganism is a diet and lifestyle that seeks to exclude the use of animals for food, clothing, or any other purpose. Vegans endeavor not to use or consume animal products of any kind) and then think back about our winemaking and our package. I can think of any animal product in our package at all (glass, aluminum, paper, plastic…) and in the winemaking either, except in the Dry Riesling since we use a microscopic amount of Isinglass (sturgeon bladder) at the end of our winemaking. There might be also some insects (do they count?) that might be picked with the grapes and a few fruit flies that fall in the tank during fermentation. So,can I claim that all our wines are Vegan ( with the exception of the Dry Riesling, though honestly we use about one pint of the Isinglass for the whole blend…)?

This is a one year old video that Andy Perdue from Wine Press Northwest shot during harvest. I finally succeeded in pasting the link here.

NW Winecast for Oct. 30: Pacific Rim Winemakers

If you have 30 minutes and want to learn more about us and me, you can go to the winefoot website and lesson to an interview I gave yesterday:

http://www.winefoot.com/index.php/2008/07/16/winemaker-interview-nicholas-quille-pacific-rim/

It always feels weird to listen to your own voice online…

I was just reading a post on Dr Vino’s blog (http://www.drvino.com/2008/07/10/alcohol-can-it-be-too-low/) about low alcohol wines. Why people love 15% overextracted wines puzzles me! When we (at Pacific RIm) make wines above 13% ethanol I get very uncomfortable as a prefer 11.5% and below. The Sweet Riesling and the Vin de Glaciere at 8-9% are great choice for low alcohol wines in our Riesling world if you want to test lower alcohol content wines. Why can’t folks make 12% light reds in this country is a mystery.

Yesterday I have received an email from a national restaurant chain announcing that they will now only purchase wines that have received 90 points plus from the Wine Spectator, Wine Enthusiast or Robert Parker. This is very sad news because all of this score madness is truly pushing winemakers to make wines that will please their local Wine Spectator, Enthusiast or Parker journalist. It is a bit of a self fullfilling prophecy, the “specialist” rate wines according to their taste, the buyers wanting to offer the best to their customers buy those highly rated wines, the same wines with the same styles end up everywhere forcing winemakers to compete with the same style if they want to get a score and sell their wines.

Do you buy on score? How much impact they have on you?

We are now releasing our 2007 Gewurtz. This year we made a blend of one Oregon Vineyard (Dauenhauer near Dayton in the Willamette Valley from which we also get some Riesling for one of our single vineyard Riesling) and two Washington Vineyard (Pearson on Snipe Mountain and Solstice on the Snipe road bench both in the Yakima Valley). The intent was to bring some cooler climate (Willamette Valley) element in our Gewurtz thus reducing the final alcohol in the wine, increasing acidity and increasing varietal flavors. I think we got it right and the wine is much closer to my vision than the 2006 vintage. By the way, the 2007 just got Best Of Class at the LA wine and spirit competition, so others are noticing…

I am curious, what is your favorite Gewurztraminer?

kudos to Adam Lechmere (Decanter) for the vote of confidence toward screwcap closure: “It’s official: screwcap is the best closure for the vast majority of wines, both red and white.”

Why are folks still sticking to cork especially for fruity whites? Not sure. Many times I have heard from winery principals: “the consumer is not ready”. Soooo you are knowingly giving the consumer an inferior product because some market data tells you that you won’t sell as much wine… Mmmm what should I think about all your talk about quality now?

Well, we do screwcap and I find it just perfect for our wines. Screwcap is the only closure that always guaranteed 100% freshness to the consumer and they are rated to last for 20 years (at least the ones we use).

Now we have our new web site up and running I can get back on the blog. One improvement over the version 1.0 is the ability to get feedback from readers and for them to leave comments. Please feel free to drop me a note. Notes are private until I review them and post them. It feels good to be back on line.

We are now releasing our 2007 Sweet Riesling. This is our first released wine made in our new winery in Eastern Washington. Because it was made in Washington, we can finally display a vintage (2007) and an appellation of Origin (Columbia Valley) on this wine. OK, now for the numbers:
- 100% Riesling, 100% 2007
- 68% Yakima Valley, 25% Horse Heaven Hills, 5% Mosel
- 25% Wallula Biodynamic grapes (HHH), 25% Blackrock Vineyard (YV), 22% Boast Vineyard (YV), 21% Selenium Vineyard (YV), 5% Mosel from our dear friend Johannes Selbach
- 9% Alcohol, 7% Residual Sugar, 2.99 pH, 0.81 Total Acidity

The wine was fermented at 75% with native yeasts that came on the grapes; this is a fantastic addition to our winemaking book leading to wines with greater sense of place and minerality. Overall the Sweet 2007 is an exceptional wine, very balanced with a great acid/sugar ratio. We have tried a bit of Mosel fruit this year in the blend to see if we could spice it up a bit (I think we did). Same great profile as the 2006, very refreshing and made to go well with a very wide range of food. I had it over Easter with a cold Salmon and beet salad and it was delicious and the low alcohol was nice for lunch (all that to say that it is not only good with spicy food).

This week end I was reading my favorite newspaper and came upon an article about a certain wine producer in California that, due to the insane domestic demand for Pinot Noir, had decided to supplement his sourcing of Pinot from France and Italy. The multiple and consecutive blends have somewhat different origins and probably different flavor profile. I find this practice very disturbing and potentially damaging to our industry mainly because the winery is not disclosing fully (ie clearly on the package) that the blend is changing during the year due to different sourcing hitting the bottling line at different time. Talking about taking wines down the commoditization path…

I strongly recommend you visit Gary Vaynerchuk’s daily video blog on http://tv.winelibrary.com/.

It is always great enertainment and this fellow is making some good progress trying to bring up front the insanity of our dear wine industry.

Go Gary (and sorry for the Giant’s victory)

The 2006 Chenin blanc will soon have so many medals and awards (including a best white wine at the Houston rodeo, a double gold at the Tri Cities festival and a top 100 “best of the West” by the San Francisco Chronicle) that you won’t see the label anymore. Why is this wine receiving so many awards? I am convinced there is something to do with the old vines we are harvesting our Chenin from. Most of the Chenin in Eastern Washington were planted in the late 60’s to the early 80’s. No Chenin has been planted since then. The vineyards are mainly located in the Yakima Valley where the viticulture first started in Eastern Washington. The acreage is scattered because often Chenin was planted by growers wanting to diversify their crop and it was never intended as a large commercial planting at the time. The acreage survived to time and the lack of commercial interest sometimes by sentimental attachment as Chenin vineyards were often the first blocks of vinifera that the family planted. It surely did not survive because of the popularity of the varietal which is a pity. Chenin is a very noble varietal and probably one of the most complex and interesting in the world with Riesling. Our Chenin is quite dry (about 1.2% RS) and fermented very anaerobically. We keep the wine in stainless steel at all time with little contact with the lees, no oak and of course no malolactic fermentation. We are looking for a fresh style with just enough sugar to coat the varietal grapefruit rind finish that Chenin often displays. The 2006 was spot on in my mind with flavors of citrus and fresh cut grass.

This year we are playing with some Willamette Valley grapes in our effort to broaden our sourcing from the larger Northwest. The idea is to complement the grapes from Eastern Washington. This has worked very well with our Gewurztraminer 2007 which will be about 40% Willamette Valley and 60% Yakima Valley. The resulting wine is much lower in alcohol than a 100% Yakima Valley Gewurzt. The wine is also less phenolic allowing us to reduce the final residual sugar; all in all a better balanced wine.
We also have played with a single vineyard Riesling from the Willamette Valley. The wine is now finished and we have decided to make it as a Kabinett style. The wine is truly refreshing and distinctive from an Eastern Washington Riesling.

This week we started our Vin De Glaciere winemaking. It is a very fun wine to make even though it is quite excruciating. The basic idea behind the making of this nectar is to press frozen grapes, leaving the water iced (in the form of a suburban size ice cube) in the press and releasing only the sugar. The juice coming out of the press is very sweet (about 36 Brix). We will ferment it to about 9% alcohol leaving about 16% of Residual Sugar. We freeze the grapes from a single vineyard in the Yakima Valley in a big freezer and we usually press about 10 tons a day which will be made into 350 cases. It is a long process that will take an entire month. After the pressing we have to ferment the ultra sweet juice which also requires some efforts because yeasts do not thrive in such a high sugar environment. It will probably take another month to ferment and will cause a few dozen cardiac arrest to the winemaking team worrying about the yeast finishing their job. At the end we make a very crisp and focused single vineyard Riesling dessert wine that is just plain delicious.

2006 It is about time to release our 2006 Dry Riesling to general consumption. This wine is our largest bottling and it is also our signature wine. The blend comes mainly from the Columbia Valley of Washington State with a splash of Rheinhessen wine that we bring from our dear Friend Johannes Selbach in the Mosel. We thrive to achieve a dry profile (below the 0.9% Residual Sugar line that the German call “trocken”) with low alcohol (below 12.5%) and plenty of minerality. The final wine is very impacted by the winemaking decisions of low sulfites and sur lies aging for six months. The nose is impacted by the dual fruit sourcing; The riper style from Washington (apricot, tangerine) is blended with the more floral German style (jasmine, lilac). On the palate, the wine is crisp and straight forward with some yeastiness from the sur lies aging. It is a very versatile wine and I have yet to find a dish that does not work with it. 2006 was a great vintage in Washington and in Germany and I think it shows in the quality of this wine.

As some of you might know, one of our main Riesling source comes from Wallula Vineyard in the Horse Heaven Hills appellation. Our vineyard sits at about 1,200 feet of elevation and presents several unique characteristics. The first one is to be planted with high density (about 1,613 plants per acre) allowing high competition between vines. The second characteristic is the ingenious trellis system which creates a micro environment under the vines very conducive to high quality Riesling. The third characteristic is our extensive clonal selection. The last characteristic and may be the most important is that this vineyard is farmed entirely Biodynamically.
The wines from this vineyard are turning so good this year that we are considering a single vineyard bottling from this special Terroir. We have tried to go Biodynamic all the way (ie in our winemaking as well) but we only succeeded with one tank. I understand this is not too bad of an achievement for a Biodynamic rookie that I am. The wine is very exciting. Check this out: No pesticides, no fertilizer what so ever in the vineyard, handpicked, no yeast added (only the one that came with the grapes), no yeast nutrients, no acid, no nothing during the winemaking process. Now, that is as pure as it gets.

Well, harvest 2007 in our new home in West Richland is now completed. We have plenty of wines finishing fermenting, but as far as bringing grapes, we are done.
The wines are turning very well. 2007 will be remembered for its high acids and cool harvest weather. Everything tastes great and is very promising.
This year we really focused on getting the new winery to work and on studying each vineyard lot much more that we have done in the past. One R&D project we’ve conducted was to develop a native yeast fermentation program. The native yeasts worked great and we will do 100% wild yeasts next year. I think we get more complex wines and very healthy fermentation with the wild yeasts (plus it is neat to make the wine with the yeasts that came on the grapes).
I’ll try to be a bit better at posting  on this blog now that harvest is over with.
Cheers.

I think we might be something like 20% through harvest. We have already received a lot of our Sweet Riesling, some Dry and some Chenin. The acids are looking great which should provide us with a great backbone for the wines. I think I have also found some Riesling from Oregon (Willamette Valley) that we could make into a very delicious Kabinett style, very very exciting. The weather is turning a bit sour on us but that might not be that bad especially is we get decent botrytis in the vineyard. May be a year where we will make a TBA??