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Featured Articles - Bud Break Is On Its Way Our lives as wine growers and winemakers follow a cyclical path through the year paralleling the growth of the vineyard through harvest and the beginnings of the next vintage. The wines hadn’t been in the barrel last Fall but a few weeks before we started talking about vintage ’08. In January we started pruning off the old wood from last years growth and training the new that will produce the 2008 vintage. Even though the skies were cold and grey each newly pruned vine brought images to us of a sunny vineyards and the fruit to come in October. Right now we are on the edge of the new growing season when the new tender buds are just opening up to start their amazing rapid Spring growth. We call this “bud break”. This is the time of year, much like the weeks approaching harvest is when I am constantly checking weather reports and getting up at 5 AM to look at the vineyard temperatures. A hard frost at this time could kill off our tender young buds, reducing the size of our crop and delaying it by as much as two weeks. Two weeks can seem like an eternity in October when we are waiting for that point of perfect ripeness to start harvest. We had a little scare last weekend with forecasts of cold weather. We did have some snow flurries, unusual weather for Oregon in April but fortunately the cloud cover stayed low over night both Saturday and Sunday and the temperature didn’t drop low enough to form any damaging frost. We have had a cool wet winter which is just what we like to see for our vineyard. Our vineyard crew did an exceptional job of pruning this winter, the compost is spread in the vineyard and the cover crop is growing beautifully. It looks like we are off to a very good start for the ’08 vintage but you can bet I’ll be keeping a close watch on that thermometer for a few more weeks. 2007 Harvest Report One way to summarize the 2007 vintage would be to say that my beard is a lot grayer than it was in August. The growing and harvest season was one of challenges, surprises, anxious anticipation and rewards. The season started out well with no Spring frosts and relatively good weather through bloom and fruit set. Going into July we were looking at a relatively large crop and good weather. Somewhere around mid July the skies turned overcast with regular drizzle and relatively high humidity for a week. This was followed by a period of hot weather, perfect conditions for powdery mildew. We doubled up on our organic sprays to stop the mildew but had some outbreaks anyway. By August we were back to our normal beautiful Oregon Summer weather. We cut off any mildewed fruit and were still looking at an average size crop with high expectation of quality. The rest of the summer was dry, sunny and cool and stayed that way until the end of September. With just a week or so to go before we wanted to start harvesting we had several days of rain followed by a break of sunny weather and then more rain. The grapes were averaging around 21 brix before the rains. We usually start picking somewhere between 22 to 23 brix. Fortunately the vineyards were dryer than usual due to below average rainfalls so the rains were absorbed by the soils and didn’t move up into the vines to dilute the grapes. From that point on it was a matter of staying patient while the grapes slowly finished ripening in the cool, sometimes damp weather. Fortunately we had enough breaks of sunny and windy weather to keep the grapes dry and healthy and moving to ripeness. Well, those of us who waited long enough were rewarded with some very nice wines. Our Pinot Gris and Gewurztraminer are showing some very nice aromatics with a dominance of complex fresh fruit character and balanced alcohols of 12.5% on an average. The Pinot Noir fermented out with nice dark color, beautiful ripe Bing cherry and Black Raspberry aromas and flavors showing surprising depth and complexity for such young wines. The alcohols average out just over 13%. Riesling is always the last to be harvested and we had 10 days at the end of October of near perfect weather for Riesling, sunny cool days and clear cold nights. Even though the Riesling and Muller are still slowly fermenting in the cellar they are showing signs of a good to very good vintage. In general we are all very happy with the wines we have made and are excited to see how they mature and develop. We’ll keep you posted. -Rudy Marchesi New Label - New Look As many of you already know, over the past several years we had made many changes here from the way we grow our grapes to our cellar practices to distribution channels. In preparing for the bottling of the ’06 vintage we decided that we needed to change our labels to better reflect our philosophy and practices. One of the unique and very special aspects of Montinore is that we are always 100% Estate Bottled which means that in every wine, in every vintage we use only grapes we have grown on this farm. There are very few wineries in Oregon that produce over a few thousand cases that can make this claim. This is important for several reasons. First is that we control the quality of our wines from the minute we start pruning the vines in the winter right through the growing season as we tend and care for each vine on the farm. We have a close working relationship between our vineyard and winery teams and all are working toward the same goal, the best wine we can possibly produce. Another aspect of “Estate Bottled” wines is that every wine is a “portrait” of our farm. We know this is a beautiful and unique vineyard site that produces wines with a distinct character and “personality” and we work hard to reflect this in the wines we offer. This is a very important part of our winery and we want to express this in our label design. In creating our new logo and labels we spent hours discussing with the graphic artists our feelings about this farm, this place in the Willamette Valley, our Laurelwood soils, our biodynamic farming practices and all the things that make up the “terroir” of this unique place. We feel that they captured our message in the new designs and are very excited to get the new labels out to you. If you haven’t been to our web site lately this is a whole new look and layout. We will be releasing our ’06 whites in April and the ’06 Pinot Noirs starting this Fall. Here is a preview of the “new look” coming your way. We hope you like it as much as we do.  This Month's News and Events
We invite you and your favorite Mom to Joins us for Brunch in our Foyer Gallery on Mother's Day, Sunday May 11th from 9am to 1pm. We will be opening our doors at 9am and serving brunch until 1pm. The Menu will have something for everyone, including a glass of wine, locally baked goods and regional specialties. Directly following brunch local musician Lew Jones will be playing in the tasting room, and we will be open for tasting. And, weather permitting, enjoy a stroll around our grounds, take in the beautiful views or play a game of croquet. For further information contact Liz at 503.359.5012 x 106 or email her at liz at montinore dot comBecause of this Brunch , the tasting room will open for regular business at 1pm on May 11th.
 2005 Reserve Gewurztraminer featured 2005 Reserve Gewurztraminer named one of the top 80 wines for "Luxary on a Budget" in April 30th edition of The Wine Spectator. Montinore's owner featured in Bloomberg article Click on the link below to read the December 15th Bloomberg article about Biodynamic farming featuring an interview with owner Rudy Marchesi. link Wine Press Northwest Chooses Gewurztraminer at Wine of the Week Wine Press Northwest names our 2005 Gewurztraminer as the December 12th wine of the week. For the review and complete newsletter, visit their website link Winery Dogs Featured In Book  On a visit to the winery in the last year you may have seen Maybel or Paco in the tasting room or just sniffing around in the vineyards. We were so excited to have our cute pups included in the Wine Dogs USA Edition, we couldn't be more proud. This book is a great gift for dogs lovers and can be purchased in our tasting room or be shipped to the recipient of your choice. For more information call, 503.359.5012 or 888.359.5012. Chuck Hill choose the Estate Pinot as his Wine of the Week For more information visit Chuck's website, http://www.winesnw.com/chuckhill_winesofweek.htm view link Recent Wine Spectator Reviews In the December 15, 2006 Wine Spectator, Montinore received the following reviews: 90 points- 2003 Parsons' Ridge Pinot Noir 89 points- 2004 Winemaker's Reserve Pinot Noir 88 points- 2005 Reserve Gewurztraminer 87 points- 2003 Graham's Block 7 Pinot Noir |
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Learn More Click on the links below to find a listing of other wineries in the area www.willamettewine.com www.comeplayyourway.com www.sip47.com Get Involved Join our wine club to receive home deliveries of limited releases, get invited to members only events and more... >> Find out more.. Tasting Room Performance Calendar |
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