Gordon Brothers Family Vineyards & Wines Blog

Starting today, we will be taking weekly photos of the same Chardonnay vine so you can see the progress. It's amazing the changes that happen in one short week!

2010 started off with a typical January for Gordon Brothers. We stirred our barrels regularly to build complexity and keep the yeast fresh, and we did our topping of the wines and performed our routine equipment maintenance. Now, the pace of the cellar work has quickened significantly, as we are entering blending and bottling season. Over the course of the last couple of months all of the 2008 reds and 2009 whites have been evaluated and we are beginning to make blend decisions.

We decided to make a Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon based on our hillside Clone 6 Cabernet vines, this is a departure from what we have done in the past, be we feel this will be well rewarded. The aroma and flavor profile of this Cabernet are distinctly different from our other blocks of Cab. We are using it as the base and adding a small amount of a Cab from another block gives us a wine which cut above what Gordon Brothers has produced in the past. We blended the wine and went back to barrels for some additional aging. We’re hoping to bottle this wine in 2-3 weeks.

Spring came early this year as we saw close to record high temperatures in early March. We scrambled to finished pruning the grapes by the end of March in anticipation of an early bud break…it usually takes about 3 weeks to accomplish this once we get started and weather permitting. As bud break on the cherries approached in late March the weather turned and the wind became a constant. This made it rather challenging for the bees to do their job of pollinating the cherry trees.

We use approximately 100 bee hives to pollinate all 30 acres of organic sweet cherries. We are anxiously awaiting the verdict whether or not we have a good cherry crop. As far as the grapes are concerned bud break occurred in early April with the Chardonnay and the other varieties will be close to follow.

We dodged a bullet last week as nighttime temperatures plummeted to nearly 25 degrees F…these kinds of temperatures can kill exposed fruit buds if certain frost protection strategies are not implemented and executed properly. Other current events on the farm include getting the irrigation systems up and running, fertilizing, weed control, field work in preparation for organic sweet corn planting and field preparation of the ground where we will be planting organic watermelons this year.

This video features winemakers, vineyards managers, Washington State University faculty and other experts from the Washington wine industry. They talk about the importance of science to a premium wine industry and why quality education is the cornerstone to insuring that a rapidly expanding industry continues to produce wines of great integrity.

Be on the lookout for our very own, Jeff Gordon in this video!

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Our Spring 2010 Wine Club shipment is coming up in May! We will be sending four great wines for you to sample. As always, wine club members will receive 10% off these wines and through the month of May they will receive 25% off case purchases of these wines. They are: 2008 Reserve Chardonnay, 2008 Sauvignon Blanc, 2004 Tradition, and a new wine for Gordon Brothers called “SIX,” a reserve Cabernet Sauvignon from our Clone 6 vineyard!

For the members in the Tri-Cities area, we will be hosting our Spring Release party on Friday, May 7 from 6-8 PM at the winery. Live music, great hors d’oeuvres, and of course wine overlooking the Snake river! In addition, we will be open to the public for tasting at the winery that weekend on Friday, May 7 from 2-5PM, Saturday May 8 from 11AM-6PM and Sunday May 9 from Noon-4PM. Bring a Mother’s Day picnic to enjoy as you sip our latest releases!

For our Woodinville area members, the Spring Release party will be on Saturday, May 15 from 7-9PM. Come taste the new releases and chat with the Gordon Brothers crew about what’s been going on at the winery!

Over the past several months, we’ve been slowly migrating our old website into a content management system along with a fresh, new design. Many exciting new features have been added such as a Blog and Events Calendar as well as implementing social media such as Facebook and Twitter! We hope you find the content valuable, and as always, if you have any tips or suggestions that would help us to make your experience even better, please don’t hesitate to contact us!

Interview with Katie Nelson from Gordon Brothers Family Vineyards at 2009 Seattle Wine Awards, with the best Washington State Wines from Walla Walla to Prosser, Washington.

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