2018 Goodfellow Family Whistling Ridge Chardonnay

We recently received our Chardonnay purchase from Goodfellow Family Cellars located in the Willamette Valley in Oregon. We were looking forward to tasting this Chardonnay and it did not disappoint. It was very pale yellow in the glass and had a beautiful aroma of citrus fruits. It was medium body and the finish had a hint of spice.
Overall, I thought that the wine was very well balanced between the fruit and the acidity. The back label says that Whistling Ridge sits on an exposed ridge top of uplifted marine sedimentary soils. Only 140 cases of this Chardonnay was made.
We paired the Chardonnay with another of my attempts at making Side Street Inn pork chops. Once you've had a taste of this pork chop in Hawaii, all other pork chops pale in comparison. Actually, to call this "fried pork chops" is to deny the magic of this out-of-this-world gustatory delight. Those of you who have had this know what I talkin' bout!
For this attempt, I put the salt, pepper, garlic powder on both sides of the pork, and wrapped it with cling wrap for 8 hours. Just before cooking, I took the pork chop out so that it could come to room temperature. I cut a slit on the fat side of the pork chops so that it will lay flat while cooking (tip). I dredged it in a one-to-one mixture of flour and cornstarch, got the pan piping hot and began searing the pork. When I saw blood, or in about 7 minutes, I knew that I could turn the pork over and cook for another 6-7 minutes. Here is my attempt:

My husband said, "Getting closer". I guess this means that we just have to make a trip to Hawaii to get the one-of-a-kind, original Side Street Inn pork chops to refresh our memory!

Designing a Gravity Flow Winery

We have been interested in using gravity to move our must and wine around for a long time. The research article Layout and Evaluation of Clavey Winery Facility that I referenced in my previous blog, Layout and Evaluation of Clavey Winery Facility had a section on designing a gravity flow winery.
Some of the features of a gravity flow designed winery are:¹

• May lower non-soluble solids
• May eliminate the need for some processing equipment (pumps)
• May use less energy
• May make winery flow more compact
• May enhance tourist view

Gravity Flow Four Level Design:

• De-stemming crushing, filling, and punching open fermentors
• ~11 feet below-press and unloading fermentors
• ~3 feet lower- the barrel cellar, main tank room, lab, wine library, storage
• ~4 feet lower-loading dock

In the Angold research paper, the following diagrams conceptualized the layout:

I thought that this was a nice place to begin imagining how our property might accomodate a gravity flow winery. I did go to the Clavey Winery website, but unfortunately they did not show if the owners had actually implemented this design.
References:
1. Ron Angold, Layout and Evaluation of Clavey Winery Facility, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, 2009.

Layout and Evaluation of Clavey Winery Facility

When we are not pruning in the vineyard, we are trying to figure out how to configure our winery keeping our workflow foremost in our minds. I came across this research paper written by Ron Angold called Layout and Evaluation of Clavey Winery Facility written in fulfillment of his senior project in December, 2009.
This paper is right up our alley because it discusses how to design a winery for a 2500 gallon (approximately 1041 cases) facility with expansion in mind. I realized that I looked at this research paper a while back because one of the layout designs that I put into my own folder of "Winery Designs" came from this paper! So now I know where to attribute the design.
So, in this blog I'm going to abstract the relevant information beginning with the factors that needed to be considered when designing the wine facility layout:

• amount and type of grapes to be produced
• gravity flow design
• equipment needed
• wine storage

Winery design should take into account:

• Raw product handling
  grape receiving
  inspection
  fruit culling
  weighing
  dumping
  de-stemming
  crushing
  pressing
  sanitation
  incoming and outgoing waste
  
• Fermentation
  settling and fermentation tanks
• Storage
  space requirements for barrels can be calculated to be approximately 5.5 square feet per 200L (53 gallon) barrel
• Laboratory
  sample receipt
  sample preparation
  wet chemistry
  sensory analysis
  instrumentation
  microbiological analyses
  wash/clean up
  administration
• Bottling use constract bottling(?)
• Warehousing
• Tourism/tasting room

This research paper is well written and easy to understand. There is a second section on gravity flow that I would like dedicate a separate blog to. See you later!
References:
1. Ron Angold, Layout and Evaluation of Clavey Winery Facility, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, 2009.

Moveable Netting Catchwires

In 2019, we moved all of our netting from a fixed catchwire to a moveable wire. We were hoping to avoid the problems that we faced when the shoots grew and tangled their tendrils into the netting, making shoot positioning an onerous task. This year, we are making use of that feature and moving the nets from their position at the end of harvest, to the lowest possible setting. Our friends came to lend us a hand and this is what the netting position looks like before and after:

Moving the netting to the lower setting facilitates the clean up work that goes on in removing the tendrils, Agfast and the wire holding down last year's lay down cane.

I have to say, though, the Barbera is a tangled mess! But the new netting position makes all the tendrils visible and easier to trim.