Last week I picked up Riesling juice from Westport Rivers for what I hope will be the first Travessia Riesling bottling. So how do we describe the 2009 growing season? Bill Russel, winemaker at Westport Rivers summarized it perfectly “It’s a miraculous year”. Indeed it is. If in the middle of August someone had told us that the region’s vineyards would be harvesting Chardonnay at 21+ brix of sugar with ripe flavors and great acid balance, I would have said that they were crazy. In the end, the quality of the fruit is in some cases superior to 2008, a year that weather wise was not nearly has challenging as 2009. The credit goes to the vineyard managers who put in the extra effort needed to keep their vineyards healthy and for their courage to let the fruit hang on the vine pretty much until there were no leaves left. Credit also goes to mother nature that after beating us with above average rain throughout the year, gave us a little hand with a very decent October. Now, it’s up to the winemakers to make the best possible wine with this miraculous year.
Though I’ve been fairly quite on the “internets”, a lot has been happening at Travessia. I’m taking steps to position Travessia as an healthy business as we’ll soon enter the second year of having our winery open to the public. Some steps will be “visible” soon, some later in 2010. Stay tuned… really exciting things ahead.
Looking *very* forward to a Travessia Riesling! Thanks for the update.
Posted by: Robert Dwyer | November 16, 2009 at 10:14 AM
Riesling is certainly a welcome surprise – I look forward to the others!
Posted by: Ben | November 16, 2009 at 07:29 PM
Bob and Ben... thanks for the comments. I'm pretty excited at taking a first swing at a locally grown Riesling. Thanks again!
Posted by: Marco Montez | November 17, 2009 at 11:14 PM
Hooray for riesling! Glad to hear the harvest turned out better than expected.
Posted by: Mike | November 19, 2009 at 03:04 PM
Really looking forward to tasting the 09 Riesling Marco, I get real excited over new local wines.
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Posted by: Rooster Shamblin | February 08, 2010 at 02:10 PM