Peter Cole

Disgorging some nice sparkling today for mostly internal consumption (employee case sales and some client sampling). Much math was still mathed and QC was fairly exhaustive for these small <100 case runs. Proved to be a good warm up for a multitude of upcoming external SKU’s.

Knocking out a 14,000 case tirage bottling this week. 504 bottles per cage = 330 cages to store. This is still a much simpler task than the 21 different disgorgements and labelings with 10 different dosage liquors currently being prepared for next week. My life consists of Excel sheets #sparkling

Sometimes while at work in the afternoon your boss tells you “Hey! You need to go upstairs and drink champagne”. Fine… Cuvée 4+5 was the winner but all 3 on the right were unique in their own way.

Nice to see but not surprising. Hamill has always been a standup guy. Like many, I cancelled Disney+ earlier in the week. More loud boycotts of Disney/ABC and other organizations that bend the knee on free speech will unfortunately have to follow. I’ve spent a lot of money at Disney Parks.. no more.

Huge Muppet fan. Fuck Disney until this is fixed.

Done

Right in the middle of packaging 17 different SKU’s over 10 days…Feels like it. White grapes are over half in and most reds are still looking a week or two out. The calm or tasting COA’s in the afternoon is nice!

20,000 cases of Cab getting bottled this week and 2,000 cases of sparkling being disgorged. Rinse and repeat for next week. Oh, harvest too. First handpick grapes (Chard) of the season coming in today and being pressed tomorrow for sparkling. …And just like that.. Harvest 2025 is underway!

I am never more like a guy that was just handed the nuclear launch codes and asked to verify them… than I am when making a copper addition to a tank. Perhaps doubly so when it is my own booze and money on the line. Luckily, great success!

1500lbs of honey became 300 gallons of Mead this weekend. 32.4 Brix, pitched with much go ferm and 2 nutrient additions of Fermaid O thus far. Bubbling nicely and will get some O2 tomorrow. All of this is destined for a secondary ferment in the bottle with a 50/50 Cider mix after filtering.

Went out and visited the vineyards in Mattawa this week (pocket cherries were purloined)

“Some People” couldn’t get the brite tank to target and fought with it all day. I knocked it out in 90 minutes and it’s now at the perfect CO2 with a chef’s kiss amount of head pressure. I shall be smug about this the rest of the evening with only the slight fear that it will all go wrong tomorrow.

Finally made it over to see the new cherry line in operation. The speed at which the cherries are unbunched, optically sorted and then packed is pretty cool. Feels like a Disney ride with all the boxes floating around. Anyway, these organics should be in your local store in Europe in a day or two?

Lots of graduates on my fridge this year. I figured the parents should maybe get something fun?

Bought random stuff at auction for the cidery today - topping wand, bulldog, racking cane, 5 Tri clamp butterfly valves, sanke valves, various blanks, etc. $280 I’ll take it. Should have bought a few more things but I was too cheap.

Lots and lots of packaging lately with more to come. 3 different ‘23 Cabs tomorrow and then switching over to Tirage starting next week for 14 different SKU’s. Getting hot out here, cherry harvest starting Monday on the other side of the facility. Might sneak over for a peek at the fancy new line…

Sometimes you just have to go play rugby with your best family for a weekend. Always good to recharge the emotional batteries. Throwing in the lineout with a giant ball is harder than you think! Alaska Oosiks Rugby in Montana.

4,000 cases of cab sauv going into bottles and boxes today. Rinse and repeat for the next few weeks. Despite what you might hear there are still folks drinking wine out there it would seem.

Disgorging day! First bottles from this run are done, around 40,000 more to go!

I have been down a rabbit hole looking to further lower oxygen pick-up in canning various products. Much math was mathed and experiments are ongoing. Short answers will surprise no one: as few clamps as possible, short connections, fast run speeds, and still wines same temp as cans in most cases.

The Anton Paar and Cbox set-up was giving screwy numbers on and off this week. While I knew we were not getting 7,800ppm C02 in the can (target 1,400) this needed to be proven… “Hey what happened to those Carbodoseurs I saw around here somewhere…” So I sprayed streams of liquid everywhere - worked.

Many improvements (not shown because I suck) were made to the kegging table today, Cbox numbers are good and forced carbed sparkling run is on for tomorrow and then a quick turnaround for another run of a different carbed product Thursday. Finished disgorging, lots of movements. A busy day!

Spent 8 hours today writing a grant proposal that would help the homeless and others that need help to navigate the paperwork and eventually obtain sub-par healthcare from a broken system. Something that is not needed in any civilized nation with universal healthcare. America is broken. Full stop.

Sundays are more weird. I’ve been nominated by my wife to be her grant writer - $150K to help the homeless population in Eastern Oregon. 49 pages of instructions. In a past life, I’ve done some large grant work and she’s my wife so… Narratives, FTE’s, plans, budget, 3 hours in. Just a quiet Sunday.

Fridays are weird. Today I was a Winemaker, Packaging Enologist, Allocationist, Cellar master, Cellar Hand, Lab Tech, Packaging Line Operator, and Packaging Line worker. I wrote, executed, submitted, and approved all of my own work orders. It was a day but a normal day in the real winemaking world…

A reminder that there is no substitute for spending time in the cellar and observing, using the equipment for yourself, and seeing the processes people are actually using. A multitude of issues were addressed that I could not possibly have uncovered or even have imagined from behind my desk.

Had a dedicated kegging table fabricated today. Still need to add a tray underneath for paracetic but it’s coming together and should work once we lengthen the hoses. We don’t keg a ton yet but this should work for 80-160 kegs at a time for now and be a little easier. Velcorin on everything.

Back from over the pond and into the snake pit waiting for me at home. Tirage runs, bag in a box, blends, all the things!