The first modest crop was harvested a few years later, producing just a few gallons of dark red wine that was very high in alcohol, with disjointed acidity. I wasn’t excited for future harvests. This isn’t to disparage Marquette, but this variety was developed to grow in Minnesota, and even our cool climate in the Willamette Valley is much too warm for it. This mismatch presents multiple challenges. First, when the Marquette blooms in the late spring, we’re still in the rainy season. This leads to poor fruit set. The other issue is with ripening. In too warm a climate, Marquette achieves very high sugars weeks ahead of everything else, and acidity that’s out of balance. Further, this early ripening fruit draws birds.

 

So when my Dad delivered several totes of Marquette grapes before harvest was underway in 2017, I didn’t know what I was going to do at first. It was such a low volume of grapes with wonky chemistry. I was concerned the fermentation would be prone to spoilage, and the wine would be out of whack. Then I remembered that in 2013, when our harvest was small, we combined parcels of Pinot Noir we might not have otherwise for practical reasons. Honestly, I wasn’t invested in the quality of this fruit, so I added grapes wherever I could find them—young vine Pinot Noir, field samples of the Müller-Thurgau, a few buckets of Chardonnay that wouldn’t fit in the press. I figured the chemistry of the other grapes would mellow out the Marquette, and at least I could get enough grapes to punch the mass down properly. By the end of the harvest, I had a bin full of fermenting fruit, with all 9 grape varieties from the 27 Blocks in our estate vineyard.

 

Harvest ended, we pressed the wines and barreled them down for the winter, and I kind of forgot that this mish-mosh even existed.

The making of 27 Blocks starts with our early-ripening fruit—Marquette and young vine Pinot Noir. As the harvest continues, we'll continue to add other grapes as they ripen. This may include clusters we pick to evaluate maturity, fruit from a plant that was passed over by the crew, or the last buckets of the day. If there are grapes that don’t have a place otherwise, 27 Blocks is that place. This is a wine that is cumulative, fermenting a little bit more with the addition of new grapes over the weeks that harvest unfolds. In this way, 27 Blocks is harvest itself. 

 

The distinction between a wine that’s co-fermented and a blend is important here—27 Blocks is a wine where different grapes are fermented together. A cofermented wine is like a stew, where the chef builds layers of flavors that integrate, and deepen with time. This is quite different than a blend, where finished wines are combined. In my cooking analogy, a blend would be more like a salad by comparison.  

 

So, what is 27 Blocks? It’s a wine that taught me to be open to new ideas. It’s the story of our harvest in a bottle. It’s a red wine made from all the grapes that we grow throughout our vineyard. It’s delicious, easy to drink, and great with food. It’s a lot of things, and it’s only something that we can make. And I think that’s pretty great. I hope you do too.

 

For details on the 2018 release, click here >>