2012 Artist Series Featured Artist: Katherine Ace

Each year Rick and Darcey chose a painting for the “Artist Series” label. Over the years they have found the artists’ work in galleries, have had friends and customers suggest artists and have had artists contact them to submit work. Katherine Ace was recommended by a previous “Artist Series” artist. The Smalls viewed her work online and were particularly taken with her still-lifes.  When contacted, Katherine was very interested in having her work used for the label and a meeting was arranged in Portland. While viewing the still-lifes at a gallery Katherine mentioned that she was creating a new series based on Grimm’s fairy tales and offered to open her studio so that they could be seen. “Sleeping Beauty” was captivating as is the tale, and the Smalls ended up purchasing her as opposed to a still-life for the 2012 "Artist Series" label. "Sleeping Beauty" is the first “Artist Series” label that depicts a figure.

In Grimm’s tale the sleeping beauty, Briar Rose, is cursed to one hundred years of sleep when she pricks her finger on a spindle. Thorns, depicted in the painting, grow over the castle hiding it from view. Finally a handsome prince comes to the rescue and they live happily ever after. The story can be found at http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm050.html.

Katherine was born in Chicago in 1953 and received a BA from Knox College, Illinois, in 1975. She works in alkyd/oil on canvas.

Between 1974 and 1990 she lived on three US coasts, in two mountain ranges, in remote rural rentals, in major cities and never in one place for long. Her continuing eclectic education consisted of pursuing a smorgasbord of work: a street portrait artist in New Orleans, a potter in Vermont, commissioned copyist, corporate portraitist, advertising/ magazine/ book and textbook artist. In January 1990 Ace moved to Oregon and established a permanent studio. She has had 32 solo shows since 1992.

Katherine will be joining us at the winery for Holiday Barrel Tasting, Dec. 5th - 7th to talk about her work and sign bottles.

It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas!

With Holiday Barrel behind us, we are now focusing all our attention on the upcoming holidays. So as our gift to you, we would like to offer free ground shipping on all wine purchases of six bottles or more. Stock up on all your favorites, like the new release 2009 "Artist Series" Cabernet Sauvignon, the Non-Vintage Red Wine or the 2008 "Old Vines" Cabernet Sauvignon before it sells out. Place your order today to receive your wine before Christmas. 

So grab a glass and let us bring the wine to you! 

Merry Christmas everyone and Happy New Year!

Spring Release 2011

We are gearing up for another busy weekend. Starting tomorrow, Friday, May 6th and running through Sunday, May 8th we will be celebrating Spring Release in our Reserve House. We will be pouring our 2009 Washington State Chardonnay, 2009 Estate Barbera, Non-Vintage Red Wine, newly released 2009 Walla Walla Valley Cabernet Sauvignon, 2008 "Artist Series" Cabernet Sauvignon and 2008 "Old Vines" Cabernet Sauvignon ($5 tasting fee, refundable with purchase). For this weekend only, we will be offering a special library tasting of our 1998 Charbonneau Red for an additional, non-refundable, $5 tasting fee. We will also be selling a limited amount of this wine on a first come, first serve basis, limit of three bottles, no discounts available. You don't have to be present to purchase the 1998 Charbonneau, we are also taking orders over our website or phone.

Hope to see everyone in town this weekend!

Cheers!

Shari

Happy Holidays!

Happy Holidays!

It's beginning to look a lot like a Winter Wonderland outside and just in time for the holidays too!

Holiday Barrel Tasting is just around the corner. This year we will be releasing our 2008 "Artist Series" Cabernet and the 2009 Washington State Chardonnay. Through the month of December we will be offering the '08 "Artist Series" Cabernet at a special release pricing of $44/bottle down from $49/bottle with the additional 10% case discount still applying. Be sure to stock up now and take advantage of this great price! 

Also on special is the 2008 Nelms Road Merlot and the 2007 "Artist Series" Cabernet 1.5L. We are offering the Nelms Merlot for $15/bottle, down from $20 and the '07 "Artist Series" Cabernet 1.5L for $98/bottle, down from $109.

And our last thank you to all of our loyal customers is free ground shipping for purchases made over the phone or internet, of a case or more (2-day shipping and shipping to Alaska and Hawaii will receive a $40 credit towards the shipping charges). This special does not apply in the tasting room. If you have questions please contact Marlene Steiner, marlene@woodwardcanyon.com.

And don't forget that Lisa Snow Lady, the 2008 "Artist Series" artist, is planning on being on hand to sign prints and bottles Saturday the 4th and Sunday the 5th, weather permitting. Also, Paul Gregutt will be at the winery on Saturday the 4th from 12:30 - 2:30 signing copies of his new book, Washington Wines and Wineries: Second Edition. This would make a great present for those wine lovers in your life so stop in and pick up a copy.

If you're planning on making a last minute trip over to the valley for Holiday Barrel there are still some rooms available at the local hotels. Check www.wallawalla.org for a complete listing of all area hotels.

We hope to see everyone this weekend! Drive safe!

Cheers!

-Shari
 

Calendar of events

I’m sorry that updates have become less and less frequent. I am trying to be better at posting but things at the winery and in the tasting room have become increasingly busier in the last month or two. There are so many things going on in the month of June, that we are involved in, that I wanted to get the word out. Hope to see everyone at one or more of the events ...

·         June 3^rd – We will be joining in on the national Washington Wine (#WAWine) tweetup down at Olive Marketplace Café in Walla Walla from 5:00 to 8:00 pm. Join us and numerous other Walla Walla wineries as we all meet in one central location and collectively taste and tweet about Washington wines.

·         June 3^rd – Join Thomas Woodley, our national sales coordinator, at The Inn at Langley in Langley Washington for an amazing night of food and wine. Chef Mike Costello has put together an amazing 5-course menu and paired it with some fresh whites and vintage reds. Cost of the dinner is $170 per person which includes food, wine, tax and gratuity. Attendees of the dinner will be offered a discounted room rate to stay at the inn as well.Call the Inn for reservations (360) 221-3033.

·         June 4^th – For those that stay the night, join Thomas Woodley and Chef Costello as they dig into their award winning cellar to host a vertical tasting of vintage Woodward Canyon wines accompanied with some small bites prepared by Chef Costello. The tasting will be free to those who attended the dinner the evening before and cost $35 for anyone else.

·         June 6^th – Join Marlene and myself as we descend upon The Davenport Hotel in downtown Spokane for Taste Washington Spokane on Sunday from 5:00 to 8:30 pm. We’ll join around 100 other wineries and 25 restaurants at the event and will be pouring our 2008 Washington State Chardonnay, the 2007 “Artist Series” Cabernet and the 2008 Nelms Road Cabernet. Tickets are still available so get yours at http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/107945.

·         June 13^th – Join either Thomas Woodley or Darcey Fugman-Small, our owner/general manager, at the Seattle Wine Awards hosted at the historic Rainier Club. We will be pouring our award winning wines – the 2006 Estate Red (double gold), the 2007 “Artist Series” Cabernet (gold) and the 2008 Nelms Road Cabernet (silver). Tickets for the event are still available so get your ticket here.

·         June 18^th – Visit the Walla Walla Valley and join in on the festivities of Vintage Walla Walla. Friday evening, June 18^th, join Thomas, Rick and Darcey for the bbq under the stars out at Northstar Winery from 6:00 to 9:00 pm. Tickets are available for the bbq only or as part of the Vintage WW package.

·         June 19^th – The next day, ten wineries, us included, are hosting special tasting events throughout the valley. For more information on the individual events and for reservations, please contact the Walla Walla Wine Alliance office at (509) 526-3117. Later on Saturday join participating wineries for the Vintage pour gala and silent auction that evening from 5:00 – 7:00 pm. It’s a great opportunity to taste vintage wines with the winemakers who make them. It’s also the chance to bid on amazing packages put together by wineries of the Walla Walla Valley.

·         June 25^th – 27^th – The 2010 Wine Bloggers Conference has decided on a change of scenery and is moving from Napa/Sonoma Valley, California to the Walla Walla Valley. I was able to attend the conference last year and had a blast. It is a great opportunity to meet with fellow wine bloggers and talk about wine and the importance of blogging and social media. California set the bar fairly high last year but I know that Walla Walla is up to the task. The conference is sold out however they are keeping a wait list in case there are any last minute cancellations.

And a heads up look at what is coming up in the month of July ...

·         July 1^st – Join us as we’re pouring a selection of our wines at Olive Marketplace Café at their weekly wine tasting event. For a $5 tasting fee you can taste through our line up of wines. Splurge on dinner while you are there and grab one of their fabulous flat-bread pizzas. Trust me, you won’t regret it.
 ·     July 31^st – Looking ahead, T-Maccarone's and us have paired up to do a farm-to-table dinner out in our Estate Vineyard. Final details are still to come so check back for more information or send me an email at shari@woodwardcanyon.com and I'll keep you updated.

Hope to get a real post up here soon with the happenings at the winery and a recap on Rick and Darcey’s trip over to England and Germany last month. Thanks for keeping an eye on us and hope to see you in the tasting room soon.

Cheers,

Shari

Staff Education

One of my favorite parts of being involved with the wine industry are the amazing “educational” opportunities that come up. We are big on education here at Woodward Canyon because we believe to be able to educate the consumer we need to know what we are talking about. We try to come up with fun ways to educate ourselves so we can keep up to date, not only what is going on here at the winery but also what is changing in the wine industry in general. Recently we did a comprehensive tasting of all our current releases with Kevin Mott - our winemaker, Darcey – our general manager and owner, and the entire tasting room staff. I have always enjoyed tasting wines with Kevin. He is smart and funny and gives you the chemistry side of wine tasting and blending in a way that that even the most novice wine drinkers can understand where he’s coming from.

Our lineup consisted of both current releases in the tasting room and a couple of special reserve wines that we don’t usually open up. It was nice to be able to revisit all the wines at once, talk them over with Kevin and refresh our palates on how the wines were doing. It was also fun to taste some things that we haven’t opened and tasted since they first released.

Though they were all good, my personal favorites of the afternoon were the 2007 Charbonneau Red, the 2007 “Artist Series” Cabernet and the 2006 Estate Red. The Estate Red, soon to be renamed the Estate Reserve, has always been one of my favorite wines. I find the wine to be supple and rich with the perfect balance between black fruit and firm tannins. Rick always says that he perceives an “expression” or a “sense of place” that is fairly unique to our Estate Vineyard and I’d have to agree with him. That is just one reason that the Estate Red and the Charbonneau Red are two of my favorites - both are Bordeaux-style blends from very different vineyards. The Charbonneau Red is sourced entirely from the Charbonneau Vineyard which is planted at the western edge of the Walla Walla County, overlooking the Snake River. The vineyard consists of very sandy soil overlaying shallow basalt rock. It tends to be a cooler site than our Estate Vineyard and has to deal with the weather as well. The Charbonneau Red is a wine that we only produce when the fruit we receive warrants it. It is rich and elegant with nuances of tobacco and leather perfectly in balance with black cherry fruit and soft tannins. The finish is smooth, generous and long.

If you haven't taken advantage of our Winter Special yet, don't forget that the last day is tomorrow. Pick up your 2007 Walla Walla Valley Cabernet at this fantastic price before it's too late. We are already in talks about possibly doing another special next month so remember to check back to see what we've come up with.

Until next time, hope this post finds you enjoying the sun somewhere and a good glass of wine!

Cheers!

Shari

2009 Vintage Overview

We’re off to a new year and technically a new decade as well and I thought the best way to start 2010 would be to wrap up 2009. Not sure if everyone will agree with me but 2009 seemed to go by in a blur. We ended the year the same way we started it – cold in the valley with snow and ice covering the ground, though not as much as last winter. For a vintage that seemed to take forever to get going (I was still wondering where the sunshine and warm weather was in April and May) it ended up being a rather compressed vintage and warmer overall.



The first bud break in our Estate Vineyard in the Walla Walla Valley was towards the end of March which starts the process to try to assure that the best possible grapes are harvested. Shoot positioning, leaf stripping, lateral removal and finally cluster thinning are all part of that process. Because of the cooler, wetter spring veraison did not begin until mid July. However, a couple of really hot weeks towards the end of July and into August quickly made up for lost time.


We brought in our first fruit of the vintage, the sauvignon blanc and the chardonnay from the Estate Vineyard, at the end of August. Harvest was a bit compressed as well. Everything seemed to ripen at once which had vineyard crews scrambling to bring everything in at the same time. We have a good crew that finished in our vineyard early and then went with Rick to the Champoux Vineyard to pick our grapes from the Circle Block.

We brought in the last of the fruit the first part of October, which was just in time before the first freeze of the year swept through the valley. It was on the earlier side, the middle of October, and caught some wineries off guard. I hope those that still had fruit hanging were able to pick it shortly afterwards. Now everything is safely tucked in barrel and the wait is on.

Rick is already (or constantly, depending on how you view it) thinking about the vineyard and our next vintage. He is hoping to plant a new cover crop on the terraces next time there is snow on the ground. While he is not overly worried about damage in the vineyard due to the freeze, he won’t know for sure until he checks buds later this month.

Here’s a quick peek on what we’re looking at for the 2009 vintage.

• The cabernet franc from the Woody Vineyard (our Estate Vineyard) is coming along really nicely. It was cropped back to single cluster per shoot this year and should be a great backbone to the Estate Reserve (formally the Estate Red) program.
  
• The cabernet sauvignon from the old hillside out of the Estate Vineyard is also very promising. Almost 20 years old and planted in shallow soil this cabernet will most likely be used to enhance the Estate Reserve and Walla Walla Valley Cabernet programs.
  
• Kevin and Rick are considering a separate bottling of around 100 cases of the Woodward Canyon Estate Chardonnay. As they have tasted through the wines both are pleased with all our chardonnay and feel that a few special barrels can stand alone as an Estate bottling.


• The cabernet from Champoux Vineyard Circle Block and Sagemoor Vineyard Block 3 is looking great. The fruit from those two blocks is what we normally used as the anchor for the “Old Vines” Cabernet program.


• Rick and Kevin are also excited about what we have in barrel from Champoux Vineyard Block 2.

There’s still a lot of time before the 2009 vintage is in the bottle but it looks like it’s shaping up to be another fine vintage for us. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

In the meantime I’m enjoying the current releases we have available at the winery. Check out our website for a list of the wines and order online. Also, last week while doing inventory we came across a number of cases of the 2006 “Artist Series” Cabernet in magnum form. If you missed out on purchasing some of the 750s now is your chance to get some of this vintage before we completely sell out of it. We do have plenty of the 2007 "Artist Series" Cabernet available and it's pouring beautifully! And if you have older vintages of the "Artist Series" Cabernet and "Old Vines" Cabernet and aren't sure about opening them, don't forget to check out our drink/hold page on the website. It will give you an idea on when the best time to open them would be.

Sounds like we just had some people come into the tasting room. I’m going to stick my head out and say hello. If you come through the valley this year, stop in and say hi and I’ll pour you some wine. Happy New Year everyone! Hope your new year’s resolution somehow include drinking some amazing wine this year.

Cheers!

Shari

Get Ready ... it's Holiday Barrel Weekend!

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving yesterday filled with family, friends, food and great wine! I know that as I sit here and write this I’m still stuffed from yesterday’s feast. The food was wonderful so of course I ate more than I should have. But Thanksgiving would not be Thanksgiving if you did not over eat. So I'm just keeping with the tradition.

Now that one holiday is behind me it’s time to turn my attention to next weekend’s Holiday Barrel Tasting. This week will be spent decorating around the winery and making things look festive. We will once again be pouring all the wines in our production building and just hold the sales in our regular tasting room. We will be showcasing our new releases the 2007 “Artist Series” Cabernet, the 2008 Estate Barbera and the 2007 Columbia Valley Merlot along with a barrel sample of next year’s release, the 2008 “Artist Series” Cabernet.

Chef Paul will once again be on hand to prepare small bites for munching during your tasting. Paul and his wife Abby came through over Fall Release Weekend and were already throwing around ideas of how to prepare this year’s pasture-fed lamb from Upper Dry Creek Ranch. Chef Paul’s lamb is always a special treat and we can’t wait to find out what he has planned for us! And don’t forget about Paul’s fabulous toppings and spreads. I’m always a big fan of either the baked artichoke or the baked brie. Both are excellent with Rick’s bread which he’ll be baking all three days.

Don’t forget to take advantage of our 2007 “Artist Series” Cabernet and our Nelms Road holiday pricing we have going on right now. The ’07 “Artist Series” is being offered at a holiday/introductory price of $44 a bottle and both of the Nelms’ (the ’07 Cab and ’07 Merlot) are being offered at a holiday price of $20 a bottle. And since neither is a quote/unquote “special” both offers still receive the 10% discount when purchased as a case or part of a case. Any of the three wines would make a great addition to your holiday table.

Now my stomach is starting to growl at me. Guess it’s time to grab some leftovers. Hope to see everyone this coming up weekend!

Cheers!

Fall Release Weekend!

It’s a cold overcast day that lets me know that fall has officially arrived. I’m sitting at my desk in a fleece vest trying to stay warm and still trying to recuperate from Fall Release Weekend last weekend. Fall Release is a big weekend in the Walla Walla Valley that started as Cayuse Release and Abeja Release Weekend and has grown in numbers over the past few years. I remember working Fall Release Weekend last year in the tasting room with only two other people and it was crazy. This year we wanted to try to eliminate the over-crowded feel and open it up a bit. We decided to do all of our tasting in the “Reserve House” instead of the regular Tasting Room. We poured through a mixture of both current release wines and some reserve wines, including our new release the 2007 Charbonneau Red. Chefs Charles Calder and Jay Entrikin prepared a wonderful Asian-themed spread that complimented the wines that we were pouring. Rick and Darcey were on hand to pour wine, serve food and mingle with guest. It was a really fun weekend and a good chance to catch up with many of our longtime customers and to meet some new ones as well!

And now that Fall Release Weekend has come and gone is time to start planning for Holiday Barrel Weekend. Holiday Barrel is always the first full weekend in December, which does not give us much time to turn around and get ready for it. This year we will be doing barrel samples of the 2008 “Artist Series” and have the 2007 “Artist Series” Cabernet, the 2007 Columbia Valley Merlot and the 2008 Estate Barbera as our featured releases. This is perfect since we are close to being sold out of both the 2006 Columbia Valley Merlot and the 2007 Estate Barbera. We still have some of the 2006 “Artist Series" Cabernet available which means we will have nice sample packs available.

Holiday Barrel will, once again, be held in the production building with sales in the Tasting Room. Chef Paul Williams will be on hand to prepare all the food and Cheryl Cosner-Williams of Upper Dry Creek Ranch will also be around to sell lamb sampler packs. Chef Paul’s lamb creations are always customer favorites. Our newest “Artist Series” label artist, Irene Yesley, will be available to sign bottles and posters.

The 2007 “Artist Series” Cabernet is a new release and will be offered at an introductory price of $44 a bottle. The 10% case discount will still apply to this wine. Also, we are offering both the 2007 Nelms Road Merlot and the 2007 Nelms Road Cabernet for $20 a bottle, with a 10% case discount. All three are excellent wines and will make a fine addition to any holiday meal.

And don’t forget to join Thomas at 20something - the new vintage at the Fremont Studios in Seattle on November 21st from 6 to 10 pm. He’ll be pouring our 2008 Estate Sauvignon Blanc that evening. Come early and grab a taste before it’s all gone!

If we didn’t see you during Fall Release Weekend I hope to see everyone sometime during Holiday Barrel Weekend!