Back then the screwcap (Stelvin, or ROPP) was still a pretty renegade way of closing up a bottle, but the last decade has seen a huge jump in its acceptance and popularity – for good reason, namely that the wine tastes fresher, brighter, more fruit-driven and shows off absolute bottle-to-bottle consistency even with age. I owe a big thanks to Elaine Smith who had the vision to recommend that I use the Stelvin on Velo from the beginning.

But what about the wine? Finally Velo joins its big brother Velocity as a varietal Malbec bottling (although there is a tasty addition of Cabernet Franc here, at about 20%) and achieves that bright, spicy, intense blackcurrant character which is starting to define Rogue Valley Malbecs.

And, of course, well done by Fred and the crew at Pallet Wine for the flawless (well, nearly) bottling process. We are now sold out of the last bottling of Velo, except what the stores and restaurants have managed to stash away, so look for this new Malbec to become available before the end of the month.

Fred was good enough to do a careful filtering the day before…

…as the wine had been reluctant to finish malolactic (just like last year).

Fred sparges the empty bottles with a healthy dose of nitrogen to chase the oxygen out, then the GAI filler does the rest.

Meanwhile, I wait for the bottles to emerge so I can drop a fresh screwcap onto each one, trapping a little nitrogen in the bottle’s headspace (thanks, Linda, for this picture).

Then it’s off to the screwcapper and we’re home free!

See those two white things just before the wine enters the labeler?
It’s too tempting to mention that this wine already has some big fans.

In this case the 2010 Malbec has had a long, long secondary fermentation, not completing its conversion of its high levels of malic acid (due to the cool vintage) until mid-May. Towards the end of the process, it was clear the wine was getting tired of being cooped up in barrels with a bunch of ML bacteria, no matter how beneficial they were.

The wine needed to breathe! So out of the barrel it came – gently, at this stage. A few days later, though, we took the unsuspecting wine and aggressively splashed it out the racking valve into a Brute, then pumped it back over into the top of the tank, agitating and aerating for about 7-8 minutes. I tasted every minute or two and enjoyed the evolution from a tight, brooding, closed-in style to a wine expressive of blackcurrants and black tea, reviving the freshness and intensity I remember enjoying in the vineyard.

The wine is a blend of Viognier (72%) and Marsanne (28%) and is named after my great, great grandfather, William Augustus White. That’s his silhouette on the bottle, from a 1923 photograph depicting him atop New York State’s highest peak, Mt. Marcy, on his 80th birthday. He was both a great book-lover and an enthusiastic outdoorsman, and I suspect that at even half his age I would have had some difficulty keeping pace with him on his birthday ascent.

The idea for this wine took hold two years ago, after I had made various whites in the Rogue Valley for eight years under several labels, from a range of varietals such as Pinot gris, Pinot blanc, Chardonnay, Roussanne, Grenache blanc, Marsanne and Viognier. As I brought the grapes in and made the wines in a variety of styles for clients or employers, I couldn’t help but be impressed by how consistently Viognier performed. Bursting with flavor, with a mouthfilling richness and an ability to stand up to barrel fermentation and lengthy lees contact, it promises to be one of the wines with which our little fledgling valley can really make a name for itself.

There are, however, some challenges to making Viognier here: it has a tendency to have higher alcohol and lower acidity than I think are appropriate for a good white wine. My approach was the same as with my other winemaking projects: select a site that yields balanced fruit. As it happens, Gold Vineyard came through again for me. With its higher elevation, easterly aspect, and Randy’s meticulous farming, we have so far been able to harvest two successive vintages (the ’09, bottled last month, and the ’10, just harvested last week) with moderate sugars, balanced acidity, and rich, mature flavors. No de-alcoholization, no acidification, just the straight deal from vineyard to glass.

And the Marsanne? To be honest, I was hedging my bets. I liked what I had seen of Marsanne so far, and was planning on using its lower sugars (below 22 Brix both years) and higher acidity to further correct Viognier’s potential problems of alcohol and balance. From a chemistry standpoint, my choice was unnecessary, since the Gold Vineyard fruit came in so nicely. However, the Marsanne brought a beautiful melon character to the wine, and further fleshed out the midpalate while slightly toning down the overtly floral nature of the Viognier. The grapes are grown on a west-facing slope out at Crater View Vineyard, near Jacksonville, Oregon.

We’ve been enjoying the wine at home, certainly, and I have released it in the Bay area through my excellent broker down there, Real Wines Company, so now I need to release it in Oregon and get it up on my website. The website thing may take a month, so be patient, but the wine is only improving since September’s bottling. Can I just say that I am very, very happy with it?

Two days later Vernon Rollins at New Sammy’s Cowboy Bistro in Talent, a few stones’ throws from where the grapes are grown, paid me a high compliment by taking a case of the new wine as his house rosé pour.

Now, more than a month after bottling, the wine is really showing its stuff, with fabulous aromas of grapefruit and strawberry-rhubarb, and a now signature racy acidity against a bone-dry finish with vibrant flavors of wild strawberries and cream.

How does a winery just pick up and move? In my case, the advantage of being a winemaker with neither buildings nor equipment comes through in just this sort of situation. I hired a big truck and we moved eighty barrels across town in one morning with the help of Les (the driver), Peter (loading at Roxyann) and Linda and Josh (unloading at the other end).

Pallet Wine Company, my new home, is located just across town from my old digs at Roxyann, in an historic industrial building which has found a new life as a winery under the direction of Dan and Olivia Sullivan and their talented winemaker/partner Linda Donovan. Besides the lovely new paint job, they have transformed the interior into a full-scale production facility, complete with underground barrel storage, state-of-the-art crush equipment, and even a ROPP head on their bottling line (that’s industry-talk for a screwcap applicator, of which I am a big fan).

Why move? It is never an easy decision to make a big change, and in this case I was certainly in the enviable position of having a choice between two excellent facilities. In the end, the driving force had to be wine style. Pallet will permit me to undertake three significant shifts in my production: native yeast fermentation, micro-lot fermentation, and on-demand bottling under a screwcap, all of which will, I hope, allow me to better pursue my goal of truly regionally distinctive wines.

Thanks, Roxyann, for eight great years. Thanks, Pallet, for the opportunity to share your great facility in the coming years. And thanks, Linda, for a flawless job unloading barrels!

Since coming to the Rogue Valley I’ve made Chardonnay, Pinot gris, Pinot blanc, Viognier, Roussanne, Marsanne and even a little Grenache blanc, but always for wineries and labels other than my own. Settling on a style for my own white, I started with Viognier, which I feel has demonstrated a real affinity for the dry, sunny growing conditions here, and supplemented it with a bit over 20% Marsanne, which is a relative newcomer to the region.

The Viognier is from Gold Vineyard in Talent, where Randy Gold has been reliably growing the Malbec and Cabernet franc for Velocity since 2002. Having nibbled some grapes the previous fall, and having tasted some of Trium Winery’s Viognier bottlings from the site, I felt confident that the moderate elevation and easterly aspect, combined with Randy’s skillful farming, could yield the kind of fruit I was looking for. The 2009 vintage did not disappoint me; we were able to bring the fruit in at a civilized 23.0 Brix, with plenty of tropical and stone fruit flavors, sufficient natural acidity, and the kind of balance I am looking for when trying to produce a moderate-alcohol wine.

We harvested the Marsanne on the same day from Crater View Vineyard over by Jacksonville, and went ahead and pressed the fruit from both vineyards together into one tank. I just closed my eyes and trusted that the blend would work. As I had hoped, the Marsanne brings some additional roundness to the wine, and a pleasant melon character. I had expected the Marsanne would also provide some additional acidity, since my experience with the grape from the previous vintage was that it held onto a nice low pH well into maturity, but for this year it wasn’t to be, and I had to be satisfied with the natural acidity of the Viognier.

My goal with the wine is to bottle it unfiltered, and to give it plenty of lees contact for mouthfeel, complexity, and stability. So right now it is moving slowly through malolactic fermentation in barrel, has yet to be given any SO2 (even at crush I avoided SO2) and is, as the picture suggests, in 100% two and three-year old French oak barrels. I bought the barrels from Far Niente winery in Napa, where they were used to make a three-year barrel aged late harvest Sauvignon blanc called Dolce, which explains the filigreed decoration on the barrel heads. I am just happy to have some clean, fairly neutral barrels to age my new project in.

Now come the two toughest questions. What should I call it, and how much should I make next year?