Dom Perignon is tossing an entire vintage

 1. Dom Perignon is tossing its entire 2023 vintage. It's just not good enough. This is one of those lessons that most of us winemakers may not be sensitive enough to. After years of making rose wine from Leon Millot (and winning lots of silver medals for it), I've finally decided I just don't like it enough, and won't make it again. This is partly because my abler winemaker friends are making killer-good reds from both Leon and Foch. I used to make Leon red, and yes I would let it spike to 85F to remove some of the herbaceous notes,  but people didn't like it unless it was aged a few years. But these younger winemakers are adding oak to the primary ferm, and removing the wine and cap from the seeds as soon as they can, and their wines are amazing. Leon is such a perfect grape for here that I simply must find some ways to use it. It was 25% of my red blend that won Gold this year, so that is one good way (blended with Valentin Blattner's Labelle, Ukraine's Golubok, David Johnson's Mindon, and Germany's Regent).

https://robbreport.com/food-drink/wine/dom-perignon-2023-scrapped-vintage-1235853717/

2. I went to a friend's Golubok vineyard y'day, and was amazed to see row after row of PM-ruined clusters. And he sprays (sulfur)! What? I have seen some PM on G'bok before (at a vineyard not far from mine at our farm), but my own G'bok has never had PM on it and I've never sprayed. A friend told me that if PM gets established in a vineyard, it will turn into a monster. Maybe that's what happened to my friend. Very sad. See point 4, below.

3. Grape harvest is running about 1-2 weeks late in SW WA. This is bad, because the first significant rain comes early, tomorrow. But then we return to dry weather for a bit, so fingers crossed. It's always a crapshoot. I can take Jupiter and Monastery Muscat for a great white muscat wine by this Friday, and I can take Mindon (one of my red wine blenders, and it's a great one because of its bright red fruit notes, which complexify the bigger, darker grapes) by this Sunday maybe. But the Labelle and Leon aren't there yet. 


4. A wise friend (a winemaker recovering from cancer) told me y'day that nobody should start growing grapes and making wine as a retirement activity. First, it takes too long to get good at it, and second, it becomes too much physical work just as our physical strength is fading. Truer words never spoken. I downsized my already-tiny winery and grape biz, partly because in order to grow I'd have had to hire staff and I didn't want all the regulatory and psychological headaches associated with that, but partly I knew how much I am slowing down and breaking down physically. And you know what? There is just as much joy in making 10 gallons of a fantastic wine as there is in making 1000 gallons of fantastic wine.







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