Freedom Run Winery

New York Post pays us some compliments

David Landsel of the New York Post stopped by our winery last week during his trip to the area. He had been working on a travel story focusing on Lewiston, Niagara Falls and the Niagara area wineries. His objective was to report on winter wines, aka ice wine and late harvest styles but we happily showed him a few of our estate selections we have yet released. We can honestly say that he was impressed. Here are some quotes from the NY post website article:

About our 2008 Estate Riesling…
“I remember the promise demonstrated in the 2005 Semi-Dry that I'd had the evening before, but my hosts steer me past a more recent vintage and towards Freedom Run's 2008 Estate Riesling, which is, of course, still in the barrel, and will be for a little while yet. We taste. It's young, but also beyond its years. There's such a nice balance to it already…I figure I'm down for at least a case.”

About our 2007 Estate Cabernet Franc…
“It isn't until we move back into barrel territory, and Guba breaks into the 2007 Estate Cabernet Franc, that I sense we've hit the jackpot. This stuff is damn near elegant. Spicy, with a nice body on it, but right where a Cab Franc should be - warming in winter, but somehow, also refreshing in summer.”

Overall we couldn’t be happier with David’s visit. We know that the more people who try our wines, especially our estate selections, the more word will spread that Niagara wines are something special and worth seeking out.

Harvesting for our Blanc de Noir Champagne

Last week, we kicked off the harvest season by hand harvesting the champagne clone pinot noir for our first estate grown bubbly. The two main grapes used for champagne wines are usually chardonnay and pinot noir, with pinot meunier also added in some regions. Our bubbly will be a blanc de noir made exclusively from pinot noir grapes. We did have the option of blending some estate chardonnay in with it as well, but for now we are going to use the chardonnay for a stainless (naked) still wine.
 
After bringing the grapes in, we started with a whole cluster gentle press, where most of the free run juice and easily extracted pulp juice was collected and transferred to a vat. We then did a more vigorous pressing, where we collected the juice that sort of clings to the skins and seeds. Since the acidity and sugar level is quite different in the pressed juice, we moved that to a separate vat for fermentation. Each of these stainless vats rested overnight and with the help of some enzymes, much of the suspended particles fell to the bottom of the tank. The next day we racked off that stuff – the process by which you move wine from one vessel to another – and added champagne yeast to get the ball rolling.

As of today, the juice has been fermenting for a week now. Most of the sugar will have already been converted into alcohol. We will let it go for a few more days, where it should keep developing complexity while it converts the last traces of sugar. The color of the juice we started with was orange and the pressed juice was more of a shade of pink. We think most of that color will have faded during fermentation, and in a few days, are going to open it up and rack it off the lees. Then we’ll get a chance to see what will be our base wine for our first estate grown sparkler.

It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like Harvest

Yesterday one of the guys from the vineyard brought in a couple handfuls of grapes, and at first we didn’t know if we were being handed plastic grapes from our events table setup or the real thing – they looked that perfect. Upon closer inspection we were thrilled to find out they were indeed two bunches of riesling and one bunch of pinot noir.

Since this is our first crop of riesling, we didn't really have a reference for what healthy grapes look like at this point of the growing season, but now we know that they look beautiful. The tight clusters revealed berries that are translucent and bright. They looked good enough to eat and we did have a taste. Though obviously still tart, there was some perception of sugar. We then did a brix test with our brixometer, and sure enough, the sugar level is at 11 brix.

The pinot cluster was just as nice as any we harvested last year but what was most surprising was how good they looked this early in the year. Pulling berries from the bunch to sample seemed a sin as we didn't want to ruin the perfect cluster, but for science's sake we had to. We called Kurt, our resident cellar master and pinot-phile to let him know how good the grapes looked and to test the brix with him on the line. Needless to say, he was thrilled to hear that our pinot sample was already at 15 brix.

This growing season has not been the picture perfect, hot and dry one that we had last year. Chip Manning, our agricultural manager, and his crew have been keeping up with the growth all year and it looks like all that work is finally paying off with healthy grapes. We are all feeling the energy of harvest season approaching.

Spring is here and we are busy again!

Things have started to get busy here again at the winery. Last weekend's May Blossoms wine trail event was a hit. Everyone that stopped in got a potted cinnamon basil plant with their tasting. We've been bottling our 2006 whites and thoroughly sampling our 2006 reds which are still in the barrel. It would sound pretentious to boast that the 2006 vintage is a step up from last year's, but in our opinion that's the case.

Speaking of our first vintage, they continue to collect awards from respected competitions including the latest one, the Finger Lakes International Wine Competition. These wines won the following medals:

Cabernet Sauvignon 2005: Silver medal
Cabernet Franc 2005: Bronze medal
Manning Manor Rose 2005: Bronze medal

Our pinot noir vines of which we have several clones planted in our two vineyard blocks are opening up nicely and really benefited from an early warm up here on the Niagara Escarpment. These vines produced an amazing first crop last fall and everyone that's come in for a barrel sample has considered buying allocations via our barrel club. We can't believe how good that wine has been drinking since we racked it into barrels some four months ago. We're keeping our fingers crossed that 08 is even half as good as last summer was for our reds.

Last weekend we hosted a local meeting of the American Wine Society in our production facility at the winery. We took each guest through a flight of six whites and six reds. The whites included our 05 and 06 Semi Dry Rieslings as well as our 06 Manning Manor Blanc which we released last week as well. The reds included our 07 pinot noir barrel sample and a Bordeaux style blend of our 06 reds from the barrel. We skimmed through their tasting notes afterwards, and the reviews of our new wines we quite high, even when compared to the ringers we through in, which included a 94 point St. Emilion Chateau Quinault Grand Cru from 2005. We promise our blend won't cost even half of what this one did, even with its huge tannins and power!

Pinot Noir Harvest 2007

These pinot noir clusters are ripe for the picking. Mother Nature sure did amaze this season as the hot and dry temperatures on the Niagara Escarpment accelerated ripening and growth in the vineyard.

Our resident pinophile, Kurt, meticulously inspects grape clusters as he clips them from the vine. Even in perfect years you must be aware not to throw in infected, rotted, or lady bug infested clusters in the bins with the grapes.

Chip Manning drives the Bobcat down the rows as brother Larry stacks the pinot noir filled bins on the lift. The dry weather was as good as it gets for harvest making the space between the rows a friendly work area.

One fo our barrel club members, Steve, lends a hand and dumps the first bin of grapes into the crusher de-stemmer.

The grapes are cycled through the machine to separate the grapes from the stems as well as macerate the skins to allow the inside of the grape to be exposed when fermentation is started.

The grape must is the skins, the pulp, and the seeds of the grapes that has been pumped in to the primary fermentation vessel. We are using two 1000 liter stainless steel tanks for this step of the winemaking process. The must receives sulphur to stabilize it and stop any unwanted growth or other chemical reactions. The yeast is then added to induce fermentation, where the natural sugar gets broken down and converted to alcohol.

We were greeted by this harvest moon as we left the winery that night. After a long day of hard work in the late summer heat, this magnificent symbol of the fall harvest season was welcomed by all of us as we took a few minutes to appreciate our connection to the heavens.

Gimmie Some Sugar...or Brix

The 2007 growing season has been extremely hot and dry here on the Niagara Escarpment. While other fruit and vegetable crops might get stressed from these conditions, our grape vines are loving the heat. It definitely shows in the brix levels of our pinot noir grapes. With levels reaching as high as 22 brix ( % of sugar in a grape or juice), the grapes are well on their way to the ripening level for harvest. Typically, grapes with a brix of 24 will ferment into a wine with 12% alcohol, thus making the the brix to alcohol ratio 2:1. What makes this even more exciting is that these are our first grapes grown on our own estate vines.

The sight of the grapes hanging on the vines really adds to the experience of visiting the winery. There's also that energized anticipation in the air for the upcoming harvest and crush. Visitors to our winery won't be kept in the dark about the process either -- our tasting room provides a first hand view of our production area. Although if you can't make it to our winery we are going to make sure you see it here too.