The Wine Knows

On Friday, we toured Spofford Station Vineyard, owned by Lynne Chamberlain. One interesting detail I noticed was the size of her Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot clusters: They were vastly smaller than my Sangiovese grapes just 50 miles to the west.

There are a couple of reasons for this:

-- The Brunello clone of the Sangiovese grape is a "grosso" clone, meaning the grapes are quite large, compared with the "piccolo" clones, which are medium to smaller in size. Thus, this particular Sangiovese is larger than usual. Additionally, it buds and blooms earlier than many varieties, so it's had a big head start over many other grape varieties grown in Washington's Columbia Valley.

-- The Walla Walla Valley is cooler and wetter than the center of the Columbia Valley. While we get about 5-7 inches of rain here in the Tri-Cities, the Walla Walla Valley gets two to three times that much, partly because it's up against the Blue Mountains.

Spofford is another of those vineyards just south of Stateline Road in Oregon. Thus, while the grapes are from Oregon, the winery is in Washington. Lynne said she has to pay an additional tax to "export" or grapes to Washington to be made into wine, then another tax to bring the wines back into Oregon, where she lives at the vineyard.