La Vin Vole

Since moving to Oregon, I’ve managed to work crush most years despite having full time jobs elsewhere.  What is crush?  I guess some people call it harvest.  To winemakers, harvest refers to the picking of the grapes.  Crush is when the grapes are then made into wine.  I’ve crushed all over the Willamette Valley and now I’m working my way around Southern Oregon.  Last year, there happend to be a surplus of Syrah grapes left hanging out in the vineyard, which the owner generously let me have to make into wine.  Hubs and I made a rose out of the grapes that were less than stellar and we made a couple barrels of red Syrah with our friend Diane, using the pristine fruit.

The red was easy enough.  In fact, I basically ignored it until it was done.  The rose was a challenge.  First, I’ve never made a rose.  Second, the fruit had botrytis, a mold that negativly affect red grapes, but is desirable in sweet whites.  No problem, I thought, since rose was the goal.  I had to consult another winemaker because we’d need some enzymes to clean up the bot rot and there’s a ton of different enzymes out there that do vastly different things.  The enzymes, as expected, stripped the color out of the wine so I added back finished red Syrah to the rose for color.  It took a surprising amount of syrah to get some color back.  We bottled it unfiltered and I really like the watermelon Jolly Rancher flavors.  We named it La Vin Vole…The Stolen Wine in French… to keep in line with the back story of The Heist, the red Syrah we made from the same grapes.  What is that back story you ask?  I can’t tell you.  It’s a secret.  There are a few out there that know…..Now here’s a silly phone video Hubs made at bottling: