With the release of our new wines this spring, bearing our recently renovated label, a lot of people have been asking, “Who does your labels?” We’ve been lucky to have our great friend, artist Joan Giannecchini, work with us in designing a label that reflects both the landscape and history of our area. Joan is very knowledgeable about wine, so it felt right to partner with her in this endeavor.
Joan received her B.S. in Art and Science from State University New York, and an M.A. in Environmental Studies from NYU. She was vastly active in the arts in New York City for several years. She is also published on several environmental and social issues. Her most recent project, The Celestials, helps bring to attention Chinese immigrant experiences in the Old American West.
Joan’s love of travel has no doubt influenced her art. She has been around the world and then some, and lived on multiple continents. She enjoys gardening, practices bikram (hot) yoga, and fosters bull terriers and other dogs. She is also an exceptional cook, and her brown sugar cookies can make you weak in the knees.
She, her husband, Stan, and their dog, Tulullah, currently split their time between their farmhouse in Northern California and their home in Tuscarora, where she is also involved in the local art scene. She is an avid taster and critic of Colter’s Creek wines.
For contact info, to learn more about Joan, or to view The Celestials, visit her website at www.joangiannecchini.com.
Yes, we’re at it again this year! We are adding another 4-5 acres of red grape cultivars this spring (or should I say summer already?), bringing our total planted acreage up to 15 acres. We decided to plant live stock this year, as live plants are known to be more disease resistant than dormant stock. Unfortunately, the nursery we source our vines from got hit with a nasty freeze this winter and much of their stock was damaged, setting us back at least 4 weeks. So if you were wondering “Why in the world are they planting in the middle of June?”, now you know. Lucky for us, the weather has been moderate to date, and the vines seem to be handling planting like true champs.
The beginning
We finished planting the first 2500 plants last week, and are now waiting for the remainder from the nursery. What are we planting? Until all 4000 vines are in the ground, I’m not exactly sure. We’re taking what we can get at this point with regards to clones and quantities, but if things work out like we planned, we’ll have a few new clones of Merlot, Cabernet Sauvingnon, Cabernet Franc, as well as vineyard newcomers Petit Verdot (a Bordeaux blending grape) and Mourvedre (typically used in Rhone-style blends). We’re super excited about the latter 2 cultivars.
Over halfway there
The next round of planting starts next week, so if you missed out on the first 2500, there’s plenty more vines to fulfill any unleashed planting desire you may have. Did I mention there’s wine involved…
Over half of the new planting completed in the upper Coyote block
It’s getting to be the time of year for fresh produce, fresh cut flowers, and warm summer mornings in the local farmer’s markets! This year, we will be at both the Moscow and Lewiston markets, pouring and selling our favorite wines.
The Lewiston market is held Wednesdays from 3-6pm, June through October. The market is in the ‘D’ street parking lot downtown. http://www.beautifuldowntownlewiston.org. This is a small but good market and a great place to pick up fresh produce throughout the growing season.
The Moscow market is Saturdays 8am-1pm, May through October in Friendship Square. www.moscow.id.us/art/fm/index.aspx. We will be pouring from 11am-1pm May 28th. Wineries participate the last Saturday of each month, a great opportunity to check out what the local vitners and pouring while taking in a little live music.
Come check out the local eats, arts, and entertainment and support your local farmers!
Though not quite yet on the road to becoming an organic vineyard, we are taking steps towards reducing our herbicide usage to battle weeds in the vineyard. Our newest tractor implement? The Weed Badger. This thing is no joke! It mechanically removes weeds from the vine rows, which beats both having to kill the weeds with synthetic sprays and hoeing the rows by hand.
It took the guys a while to tweak the ‘badger’ so that it ran smoothly, but as Mike demonstrates in this video, I think they’ve got it. The biggest challenge? Not taking out a vine – this requires a lot of concentration and some good focus music on the iPod.
You have to drive along each side of the vine row, so each row requires 2 passes – it takes Mike about 20 hours to do 10 acres. In the below photo, the right side of the row has been weed-badged, the left side is undone and still full of weeds. The result? A beautifully managed vineyard.
After our loooong winter hibernation, things are finally coming alive in the vineyard. We spent most of February and March processing and bottling wine, pruning vines, and assessing winter frost damage (very minimal this year). Our 2009 Syrah, the second installment from the Dallas Vineyard, was recently released, and our 2010 Estate Riesling should be out next month.
Our winter guest in the vineyard
We had bud break last week, starting with Gewürztraminer and Grenache.
Bud break
Bud break is about one week behind average this year due to the cold, lingering winter, but we are banking on the ‘predicted’ warm summer to catch us up to speed. In the meantime, we’re preparing for our spring planting, which includes new varietals Petite Verdot and Mourvèdre. Watch for planting updates for those wanting to come help!
It’s that time of year again – pruning. Pruning can be a zen-like experience; basking in the winter sun, trimming up the vines and preparing them for another season of growth and stellar grape production. Pruning can also be, well, rather unpleasant. Wind, snow, rain, mud, cold, and hail can turn a row of vines into the longest, most arduous task ever.
Hail falling on pruned vines
We’ve had a cold, wet winter here in the Clearwater Valley, making pruning a bit of a challenge. We are still at the mercy of Mother Nature, watching weather forecasts and grimacing at predicted arctic blasts of cold air. As some vines are more cold hardy than others, we prune cultivars according to their ability to withstand cold temperatures (<10ºF). We prune the hardiest vines, such as Riesling and Gewurztraminer, first. We save the more delicate vines, like Cabernet franc, towards the end. Our goal is to prune all vines before budbreak, which usually occurs in early April in our area. With spring not too far off, we’ve got our work cut out – back to the vineyard!
We’ve recently become a collection site for the ReCorkSM program. ReCorkSM focuses on obtaining used and surplus corks which can be reused in various products, including footwear by SOLE, floors, building materials, and well, just a whole slew of things. It’s a really, really good program which we’re proud to be a part of. The Moscow Food Coop is also a collection site, so for all you wine drinkers in the Pullman/Moscow/Clarkston/Lewiston area, you no longer have an excuse to be tossing your corks into the trash!
We accept used, unwanted, and broken corks right here at the winery. We also collect corks from other businesses in the area (ask your favorite bar/restaurant if they are collecting used corks, and if they aren’t, encourage them to!). If you have corks to get rid of, we’re the place! The program only accepts natural cork, not synthetic or plastic corks, so double check your closures before lugging it to the winery. ReCorkSM is close to collecting 15,000,000 corks – let’s all help them get there!
For more info, check out recork.org, or feel free to contact us at contact@colterscreek.com. Happy Recycling!
Above average temperatures and severe rain storms to our north caused the Potlatch river to rise over 16.5 ft. January 16th, the highest the river has been since a 100-year flood in 1996.
While the winery and vines were far from harm’s way, a good share of the day was spent removing irrigation pumps, hoses, and solar panels from the paths of rushing waters and floating debris. Truly an impressive sight!
Solar panels had to be pulled from the flooding waters nearly 10 feet to dry ground.
After a little time off over the holidays, we’re back in the winery, racking, cold stabilizing, and preparing our 2010 whites for bottling. Though we aren’t holding regular hours right now, we are open by appointment for those wanting to stop in.
The vines continue to enjoy their long slumber, and the occasional snow flurry blankets them against the cold.
Winter Vineyard
Sleeping Vine
So far this winter, we’ve experience one arctic cold spell where the vineyard reached 4๐F. We haven’t found signs of winter damage at this point, as most of our varieties are fairly tolerable to cold temperatures. Black flesh in the vine is usually a sign of damage, where green flesh typically means the vine fared nicely through the cold.
Green is Good
We’re hoping to ride out the remainder of January with moderate temps with warmer, pruning-friendly weather in February. In the meantime, the vineyard crew keeps warm by chasing gophers from the vineyard.
We have been enjoying Colter’s Creek Chardonnay at my house quite a bit this month and because I always seem to have a little bit left in the bottle, I wanted to find some recipes using white wine. I don’t know how I stumbled upon this beautiful French food blog but I lucked out. Although it is in French, if you are using Google, it should ask you if you want to translate the text to English or whatever language you prefer. This little chicken recipe looks delicious and simple. Perfect for this very cold January here in Spokane. There is no specification on the white wine used – so I will be reserving a bit of the Colter’s Chardonnay for this one. Click the picture to go to the blog and look through even if only for the photos – it is well worth it – but I have included the recipe below as found on the site.
chicken in white wine
Preparation: 20 minutes – Cooking: 20 min
Cost: easy and affordable
Serves 4
4 chicken thighs
1 tray of smoked bacon nature
200 g of onion slices
1 small can mushrooms Paris
30 cl white wine
2 tablespoons flour
2 cloves garlic, minced
A few sprigs of parsley chopped
2 tablespoons sd’huile
1 tablet of chicken bouillon
pepper
Preparation:
- Gently heat the oil in a large pan and put some bacon to brown, with the sliced onions.
- When everything is lightly browned, drain them and put them in place the chicken thighs.
- Brown them on all sides, then sprinkle them with 2 tablespoons of flour, then moisten with white wine.
- Add the chicken stock cube and 10 ounces of water.
- Add pepper, mix well.
- Reduce heat, add chicken garlic, onions, bacon and mushrooms. Stir again and simmer 15 minutes.
