Composition: 100% Pinot noir
Alcohol: 10.2% by vol
Production: 349 cases (375 ml)
Cellaring: Recommendedanywhere from 5-8 years, optimal storage temperature 55-60° F

“Even with this sweet wine, we stay true to
our winery philosophy that a wine’s highest
use is in pairing with meals. That means
retaining enough of the grapes’ natural acidity
to ensure that the wine never becomes too cloying.
Our Deglacé has amazing strawberry,
nectarine and orange blossom flavors that should
prove to be a perfect match with red berry tarts,
pumpkin cheesecake, and a wide range of other
desserts.”
Dave Paige, Winemaker

WINE BACKGROUND
• Dessert wines from red-skinned grapes - especially Pinot noir - are relatively rare in the world. We produced our first Deglacé, almost as an experiment, in 2001. Initially, the wine was created for use at the end of winery dinners.
• Neither of the two ways in which dessert wines are traditionally produced - using grapes that have been desiccated by Botrytis cinerea (“noble rot”), or pressing after the grapes had frozen on the vine - would work for us. A Pinot noir producer would never want Botrytis in its vineyards (it ruins red wines), and we can’t remember a fall when a freeze came before the rains of winter.
• That year, winemaker Dave Paige selected one block of grapes to take to a freezer instead of the winery, and then followed the traditional approach to producing an ice wine. (Well, not entirely traditional. He didn’t have to do any of the work in the middle of the night.)
• Our Deglacé dessert wine has a soft pink color produced from contact with the Pinot noir skins. The residual sugars are on the low end as compared to traditional ice wines, resulting in a consistently balanced wine.

GROWING SEASON
• The 2008 growing season began slowly with a cooler than normal spring for the months of March and April. Buds began to open around April 26th, giving the growing season a bit of a delayed start.
• Temperatures picked up considerably in May and the vines accelerated shoot growth, but bloom was still slightly later than normal.
• The favorable conditions surrounding bloom near the end of June continued well into August. Veraison became apparent in mid-August, followed by gorgeous ripening conditions in September.
• Hand-picking occurred on October 1 and 15, allowing the fruit to fully ripen and bask in what could be called a textbook Indian summer for Oregon.

WINEMAKING
• We used post-harvest freezing of grapes (57%) and juice (43%) to create this unusual sweet dessert wine.
• After the grapes were picked, over half were quickly trucked to a cold-storage facility and frozen. During a two-week period in early February, they were brought back to the winery in small batches and allowed to partially thaw so they could be pressed. The pressed grapes averaged 40º Brix.
• The juice component was obtained from a saignée process (bleeding off a portion of red wine after only a short period of contact with the grape skins). The saignée juice was frozen in tank to remove water and concentrate the sugars, flavors and other components that remain, bringing the Brix to 35º.
• Yeast that would allow an especially cold fermentation (which retains the maximum possible fruit esters) was added to the juice to start the six-week fermentation.
• When the wine was bottled on April 17, 2009, it carried a residual sugar level of 20%.

VINEYARDS
• Most of the grapes for this wine were grown at our Ribbon Springs Vineyard (Ribbon Ridge AVA), where we chose several blocks that have given us in past vintages the intense strawberry flavors important for this wine. Small amounts of fruit from Lia and Ellis Vineyard (Chehalem Mountains AVA) also contributed to the wine.
• These blocks were picked on October 8, 12 and 13, averaging 24° Brix.

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