Welcome to the inaugural post on the Brothers Rawn Blog, sponsored by Two Mountain Winery. Yes, it is true the internet has finally made it to Zillah, WA and in DSL now too, (seriously, we only got high-speed less a year ago). We thought we would use the debut of our new website as an opportunity to keep you all updated on the ins and outs of the winery.
Both Matt and I will be writing; Matt about winemaking and myself about grape growing, I promise not to bore with you with the really cool costing variance revenue impacting spreadsheet I just finished building). Both of us will do our best to keep you informed about exactly how things are going at Two Mountain Winery.
Life on the 'wine farm’ has been extremely busy this summer. In addition to tending the vines at Two Mountain Vineyard, we are now managing a couple of other vineyards which is keeping us on toes. After a long, cold spring the grapes have come alive with a vengeance and do not appear to be far behind schedule. Verasion (color change) is happening very quickly with the heat wave we have just come out of, so we should be harvesting with in 50 to 60 days (maybe a little earlier for some varieties). Overall things look really good with great canopy growth, good fruit set and nice, small berries.
The vineyard crew has finished most their pre-harvest work and most are taking some well-earned time off. We are just mowing and getting ready for the fast-approaching harvest.
On the winemaking front, we just bottled our 2005 Port made from the famed Portuguese variety of Touriga Nacional. I do hate to give Matt a pat on the back (who actually likes to compliment their older sibling?) but it is really good. We are excited to release it this fall and see what the world thinks.
Today Matt was racking the 2007 vintage and we are extremely excited about the vintage as a whole. I tasted four lots of Merlot - two from our vineyard, one from another Yakima Valley vineyard and one from the Waluke Slope - two Syrah lots and three Cabernet Sauvignon lots. All of them taste really good at this point but I will let Matt tell you more about them when he writes for the first time.
Life at Two Mountain has been going well and we look forward to keeping you posted on some more inside details about our winery, the industry as a whole and perhaps most interestingly, harvest and crush activities.
Until then, live well and drink well!
Patrick Rawn