What is Auxerrois?

We grow Auxerrois in our vineyard. Many people are not familiar with this grape variety, so I thought I would do a little research and blog about it. The name itself can be pronounced as either "awk-ser-WAH" or "oak-sair-wah" or even "oh-sehr-WAH". Genetic testing suggests that Auxerrois is a sibling of Chardonnay, both being offspring of Pinot Noir and Gouais Blanc.
Auxerrois can be found in France, Germany, Austria, Italy, and Luxembourg with a handful of plantings in North America and South Africa. In the United States, Auxerrois has found a home in Oregon and on the Leelanau Peninsula located on the 45th Parallel.
In our vineyard, the Auxerrois is not the first variety to budbreak in the spring. However, the Auxerrois is the first to ripen and the first grape that we harvest. We watch the Brix and when it gets to around 17, we also test for the pH and the total acidity. We want to be able to keep the acidity so that the Auxerrois is nicely balanced.

As far as we know, we are the only vineyard and winery on the east coast growing and making Auxerrois wine.
References:
1. Layla Schlack, Understanding Auxerrois Wine, Wine Enthusiast, October 17, 2023.
2. Aurora Cellars, Discovering Auxerrois: A Hidden Gem in the World of White Wine,

Racking Our 2022 Auxerrois

This past week, we racked our 2022 Auxerrois from the four stainless steel barrels that they were in, into a 240 gallon IBC tank with fittings. Before racking the wine, we tasted the wine from each barrel and they were slightly different in aromas and flavors so racking and blending the wines is a good thing to do.
The 2022 Auxerrois had the following numbers:

Variety	Harvest Date	Weight	Volume of Juice	Brix	pH	TA
Auxerrois	September 2, 2022	3097 lbs	248 gal	20.0	3.16	7.1 g/L

The wine coming through the site-glass was clear and light yellow in color. The racking of the four barrels took about one hour. We think we ended up with approximately 225 gallons in the holding/mixing tank. The cleaning of the barrels took another 3 hours. As is always the case, the cleaning takes much more time than the time spent actually working with the wine! While we cleaned the barrels, I noticed that the tartrate crystals coming out of the barrels were the largest that I have ever seen!

Of all of the vintages of Auxerrois that we have harvested and made into wine, the 2022 has been the most abundant. We are crossing our fingers that this year we will have another year as good as our 2022.