L’Ecole No. 41 Takes Us To School

Recently, we sat down to taste through some vino from L’Ecole No. 41, three bottles from the heart of the Walla Walla Valley. We’ve come to expect good things from Walla Walla grapes, and the ’07 Cabernet Sauvignon was nice, but L’Ecole’s Perigee and Apogee are, shall we say, stellar examples of what can be done with the fruit of the earth. Shazaam!

Located in historic Frenchtown just west of Walla Walla, L’Ecole No. 41 resides in a schoolhouse built in 1915 (“L’Ecole” is french for “the school”). Producing 30,000 bottles of barrel-aged wine every year, the winery is operated by Megan and Martin Clubb, daughter and son-in-law of founders Jean and Baker Ferguson. Martin is something of a colossus in the Washington wine community. Not only is he the head winemaker for L’Ecole, he is also a partner in Seven Hills Vineyard along with Leonetti Cellar and Pepper Bridge Winery. He was a Director for the Washington Wine Commission for ten years, and was the President and a Director of the Walla Walla Valley Wine Alliance. Now he represents Washington as a Director of WineAmerica and is President and Director of the Washington Wine Institute. You would hardly think he would have time for wine-making, especially for a production level as large as L’Ecole’s, but the Perigee and Apogee show the care and attention to detail of small-lot artisan wines.

Trust Cellars 2007 Columbia Valley Syrah

Trust Cellars in Walla Walla is, by definition, a one-man show. Trust’s Steve Brooks doesn’t have bells on his feet, a symbol between his knees, an accordion barreled to his chest or a harmonica wired to his jaw, but he is the janitor, dishwasher, tasting room associate, solo winemaker and owner of Trust Cellars.

Rumor has it, through a genuine leap of faith, Brooks left his Atlanta-based job as a CNN journalist for the rolling agricultural fields of Eastern Washington after reading a New York Times article on the booming new industry. After playing in other people’s wines, Brooks took hold of his first vintage in 2005 at the Va Piano Vineyards cellar, to do his own cork dorking with their juice. Not a shabby start, considering Va Piano’s acclaim and vineyard sourcing connections.

After taking classes at the Center for Enology and Viticulture in Walla Walla alongside of his cellar experience and the connections he had made, Brooks took his show on the road – down the gravel road, to be exact – to open Trust Cellars.

News from Gramercy Cellars

In February, we showed you a hilarious video by winemaker Greg Harrington of Gramercy Cellars, which quickly became an Internet sensation, and others have followed to the same effect. A serious winemaker with an less-than-serious attitude, Harrington puts the fun back in fundamentals, the cult back in viticulture. I got a chance to interview Harrington at Taste Washington, where he explained his lighthearted approach to marketing, and he told me that he was essentially tired of people taking themselves too seriously. Words to live by.

His vids certainly have gained a zealous following, and for good reason; they’re friggin’ hysterical. Cheeky, self-deprecating, and coarse, you can’t help but to laugh, especially if you’re familiar with the trials and tribulations of winemakers.

His latest, by way of making an announcement, is no exception. I’ll let the video speak for itself, and offer our congratulations to Harrington and his team. Cheers, mate.

Laurelhurst Cellars: Gettin’ It Done

Making wine is a lot of work. Some of it has that tinge of romance, out in the vineyards with clusters of berries in your hands. Some of it is geeky, testing alcohol, acidity, and other chemical components in the juice. And, some of it is just laborious and mundane, like bottling. But, the Laurelhurst Boys know how to turn any job into a good time.

In May, we headed down to Laurelhurst Cellars at their new location in Georgetown. That night, they were bottling their new Cab Franc, and Gabe, Greg and Dave invited us down to lend a hand. We were happy to oblige.

The Laurelhurst triad is a genial bunch, and time spent with them is filled with stories and laughs. Helping out with the bottling meant eating a dozen kinds of grilled sausage, drinking beer and wine, and shooting the breeze. Not one to miss a party, Clive Pursehouse from the Oregon Wine Blog arrived, and a night of labor felt more like a backyard barbecue than a work session. However, we did finally get down to the business of bottling, and had a great time on the assembly line. Washing, filling, corking, boxing, we all had a go at it, and I could just imagine how the vino we were drinking out of a giant beaker was going to taste after some time in the bottle. We’ll get to that soon enough.

While the new vintage wasn’t ready, we did go home with three bottles from ’06, and a few weeks later, spent a rewarding evening tasting through them. Look for these in restaurants around Seattle, at your local wine shop, and at the winery.

2006 Red Mountain Cabernet Sauvignon

Roiling dark fruit on the attack sends you into a defensive parry. The mid-palate, with a structured body driving you backwards with a intense ferocity, forces the acceptance of a fate to which you succumb. In the end, a stark and resolute finish washes over you, like the final moments of a fallen steward in a land with no king.

Blend: A New Kind of Wine Event

Jamie Peha is doing it again. Or, rather, she’s doing something that she hasn’t done before. Or, more precisely, she’s doing something that no one has done before. But, doing what nobody has ever done is what Jamie Peha always does, and we’ve come to expect nothing less from her. I mean, if I were to tell you that Stephen Hawking just made a new discovery and published a theory about how all the tiny bits of matter in the universe play together at recess, you’d rush, I’m sure, to read the details of his groundbreaking (spacebreaking?) idea, but not before an initial, natural shrug of the shoulders mumbling, “Well, of course he did.” So we’ll stick with our original thesis statement and suffice it to say that Jamie Peha is doing it again. Capisce?

This may sound like a wholehearted endorsement of Jamie Peha as if she were a candidate in a local or national election. (“Peha for Prez!” does have a nice ring to it.) Maybe it is, but it’s not unqualified. I’m reminded of the Hair Club for Men commercials, “I’m not just the president of Hair Club for Men, I’m also a client.” Well, we’re not just big fans of the magnificent food and wine events that Peha dreams up and cobbles together; as a matter of full disclosure, it should be mentioned that our enthusiasm has led us to take up our post as media sponsors for damn-near every event she’s done since we met her last year, such as the Seattle Food & Wine Experience, Merlot Gone Mad and Wine Rocks. And “Blend,” on September 12, is no exception.

I sat down with Jamie Peha recently to shoot the breeze and drink some vino. We met at Sixth Avenue Wine Seller in downtown Seattle, and shared a bottle of Sparkman Cellars 2007 Wilderness Red Blend, a delicious and smooth blend of Syrah, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot, Petite Sirah, and Cabernet Sauvignon–a kitchen-sink wine, if the kitchen is in Henry VIII’s Hampton Court Palace.

That’s when she started telling me all about Blend.

Going Pro with Online Wine Science Education

When Higher Learning recently talked to students in the WSU professional certificate program in enology, we learned that they not only come from all over the country, they’re also making connections, starting businesses and getting jobs in wine regions all over the place. Hear what certificate program students have to say in this short video.

The two-year certificate programs in viticulture and enology are continuing education programs offered through Washington State University Extension. These non-credit, professional certificate programs are tailored for people who are seriously interested in working in the wine industry — grape growing and winemaking — but are not interested in obtaining a college degree.

Mapping Complexity in Washington Wine Country

As you read this, a graduate student in Prosser is sitting in front of his computer, for the umpteen millionth hour, bashing his head against the mapmaker’s perennial problem: the map can never be as detailed as the terrain it represents.

But that doesn’t mean the mapmaker doesn’t try. Especially when there is tremendous pent up demand from Washington grape growers for a vineyard site-selection tool.

Ian Yau is the mapmaker, and he’s a grad student based at WSU’s Irrigated Agriculture Research and Extension Center in Prosser. Yau is trying to wrestle a vast amount of information to the ground in order to turn raw data into useful knowledge.

“It’s a lot of spreadsheet manipulation,” Yau said, the wry understatement of his project causing a smile to play across his face.

Consider what you’d want to know if you wanted to plant a vineyard in Washington. You’d want to know, of a given plot of land, how many growing degree days it got at a certain elevation on a particular slope. You’d want to know about the soil beneath your feet: is it going to drain properly so the grape vines don’t wallow and rot? Is there hardpan or some sort of other restrictive layer close to the surface that will prevent the plants from sinking their roots deep into the soil? And what’s the soil’s water-holding capacity and pH?