Sikes Vineyards

Red Wine & Chocolate weekend in Lake Chelan 2012

2012-02-10T18:02:00.001-08:00

Published with Blogger-droid v2.0.4

Image for a bottle of wine?

2011-05-18T16:25:00.001-07:00

How about using this image on a bottle of our wine? I drew it while on the plane to that other wine state, California.

Our First Crush (Orchardists Turned Wine Makers)

2010-12-16T13:24:00.000-08:00

Sikes Orchards Inc. has officially started crush under the "Stormy Mountain Winery and Distillery" name. Our first wines are Cabernet Sauvignon, Malbec and Pinot Gris. The actual crush date was October 30th 2010.

Transition to All Grain Brewing

2010-12-16T13:21:00.000-08:00

I have partnered up with a National Guard buddy I work with to do some all grain brewing. We recently bottled an Australian IPA made from extract.

Our fruit hauling truck burns down. Old Smokey's Last stand

2010-10-27T20:36:00.001-07:00

Old Smokey Burns to the ground

2010-10-27T20:21:00.000-07:00

Distillery Class of 2010'

2010-10-27T20:20:00.001-07:00

2010-10-27T20:12:00.000-07:00

Artisan-Craft Distilling School

2010-10-27T19:43:00.000-07:00

We spent one week learning craft distilling from Rusty Figgins, owner of the Ellensberg Distillery in Eastern Washington. The course was very comprehensive. It was held in collaboration with the CBIS or Center for Business and Industry Services.

L'Ecole Winery Video

2010-03-15T11:56:00.000-07:00

L’Ecole N° 41 Winery

Video:
L’Ecole N° 41 is a family-owned winery located in the old Frenchtown Schoolhouse Walla Walla, Washington.

http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid53961500001?bclid=53688140001&bctid=56313791001

San Francisco

2010-02-15T23:04:00.000-08:00

Trade show

2010-02-08T19:51:00.001-08:00

I went to the WAWGG trade show at three rivers convention center in Kennewick and it was a blast. I met up with Karl Koester of Four Lakes, Ron V and they both shared some of their Bordeaux wines that were fantastic. I also collected two bags of marketing materials and cards from every vender there. I hope that my talking is going to start us down the right path towards a future winery and vineyard. Lets get this going!

Photos

2009-11-28T09:23:00.000-08:00

Sikestonian IPA!

2009-11-10T18:16:00.000-08:00

A genuine batch of beer! We build these things never knowing what will come of it. I am proud to say we have a success...

Micro beer is a nice distraction.. Made with passion!

2009-10-23T20:46:00.000-07:00

Working in Wine

2009-10-23T11:22:00.000-07:00

2009-10-12T22:21:00.000-07:00

J & M Winery in Woodinville

2009-10-07T11:18:00.000-07:00

J&M winery is a fantastic winery with great tasting reds, never tried the whites. These are great wines big and tasty. I met some great people and showed them around the winery as if I was an employee.

Rave Reviews

2009-09-27T12:26:00.001-07:00

Bottled and ready to go

2009-09-23T17:55:00.000-07:00

Mead on left, Concord on right, Experimental stuff

2009-09-15T17:00:00.000-07:00

Almost Ready

2009-09-15T16:44:00.000-07:00

Riesling Clarification in kegerator

2009-09-15T16:35:00.000-07:00

6 gal carboy before clarification

2009-09-15T16:03:00.000-07:00

Washington Riesling after first racking

2009-09-15T15:49:00.000-07:00

Making Lemberger '09

2009-09-08T15:46:00.000-07:00

Kenny got his van lettered. It looks great.
Using the crusher/de-stem-er, is quite the process. This equipment is so old and antiquated it makes it really hard to control what ends up in the wine.

Making Lemberger wine. This should be good.

The thickest trunk for a vine in Chelan. These vines have been in production for over 35 years.

Lemberger in bulk. We got a sugar of 23.5 on average when tested.

Grandpa testing sugar and leading the charge to pick the grapes.

SIKES Winery and Vineyard site

2009-09-08T15:35:00.000-07:00

It looks like barren land, but this is the site of Sikes, Vineyard and Winery. There is a lot of rock and the soil is well drained but the views are great. This will make amazing grapes and my brother and I will craft those grapes into the nectar of the gods (wine). I will take one of these pictures and overlay the vision of the winery in phases in the future.

Tsilan Cellars

2009-09-08T15:16:00.000-07:00

I picked up a cluster of grapes that were thinned earlier in the week. Cluster thinning helps the remaining clusters to produce better quality fruit.Tsilan Cellars, this winery is moving towards all estate produced wines and is exceptional in quality and experience. I especially like the attention to the landscape, restaurant and having the wine staff and the ambition to do it right. Bob, the owner is the most genuine and nice guy that makes you feel right at home. My aunt loves to come to this winery, she has been there 10 or more times. I have eaten at the restaurant twice and it was really good but too expensive. For those kinds of prices I want top notch service with hand made salad dressings in front of me and banas foster flaming from the cart. You will enjoy this experience.

Hard Row to Hoe

2009-09-08T15:04:00.000-07:00

Hard Roe To Hoe, This winery and vineyard has a racy theme built around a whore house that existed in Stehekin up lake about 55 miles. The Joke is it was a Hard Row on the row boat to get to the whore, hence the name Hard Row to Ho. It also works as a hard row to hoe in regards to hoeing the soil prior to planting. I know that the winemaker here is a really great guy named Rudy. He also works at the Vogue in downtown. I did not get to try this winery because it was too busy and grandma was waiting in the car.

Four Lake Winery

2009-09-08T14:57:00.000-07:00

Four lake winery in Manson, Washington. The proprietors live next door to Sikes Orchards in Howard flats adding a certain amount of prestige to this winery. They haven't completely finished their tasting room yet but they have a great view. Look at the pictures below. This is a beautiful place and they make excellent wines including a Syrah that had an extremely earthy taste unlike those standard Syrah's I have had from California.

Tildio Winery, Manson, Washington

2009-09-08T14:03:00.000-07:00

Visited Tildio Winery in Manson Washington. The winer maker is Katy Perry and she creates some lovely wines. I have heard her name several times as I asked who would be the best to get to train under for the next season. I am hoping she will impart some vision into my wine making to ensure that I can bring my product to the quality that Chelan Wines are becoming known for. Her website is http://www.tildio.com/.

Karma Vineyards

2009-09-08T13:46:00.000-07:00

Karma Vineyards, I drew this picture from inside the Karma cave. I have visited twice now, once to taste and once to draw. I noticed the wine is really good, I also noticed they have Ray Sandige as the winemaker. He consistently produces great wines from Lake Chelan Winery to C.R. Sandige, to Karma they are all great and I wonder how many winery's is he the winemaker for? Below are several pictures at the vineyard and inside the cave. Karma is unique to the Chelan AVA because of the french style sparkling wine they produce, to the original french style. The bins in the back of the drawing are full of sparkling wine bottles on their side. This is a unique place and only a two minute walk from the house I grew up in. If you walk straight towards the water from the entry road you will run into the embankment behind my childhood home. Cool.

Benson Winery

2009-09-03T20:29:00.000-07:00

This beautiful winery is Benson Winery. One of the few winery's in the Chelan AVA that is entirely estate grown fruit and wine. There wine is excellent. This was a real treat to go with my grandparents and aunt.

2009-08-24T17:54:00.000-07:00

WSU winery tour

2009-08-13T11:40:00.001-07:00

Destemer and crusher, barrels and tanks

Mechanical filter

Small mechanical filter

Fermentation tanks in the new WSU winery

Old WSU Prosser winery
DR. Halbertson explaining how the bladder press works.

Bladder press

Stainless Steel Fermentation tank

Stainless steel storage tanks for white wine and experiments.

Jared posing in front of the fermentation tanks.

Top down press

Continuous filter, does not need to stop because the filter medium does not clog.

The Basics in Grape and WIne Chemistry

2009-08-10T20:18:00.000-07:00

My brother and I went to Prosser and enjoyed a day learning about the basics in wine and grape chemistry. We visited the Washington State University Extension campus to learn and get some hands on experience in the tests used to measure various components of grapes and wines used in the winemaking process. These components included: Sugars, acids, ethanol, and SO2. We completed the following tests:

Brix through use of the refractometer, densitometer, hydrometer, and rebeline methods.

Above is a PH meter, we used this to measure the PH in the grape juice, we coupled this with the titrating process to determine titratable accidity.
This device is the refractometer used to measure the Brix in the grape juice. It gets confused when you are testing wine because alcohol messes with the results.

This glass bobber is a hydrometer and tests brix using the buoyancy of the liquid.
This device is the Anton Bar densitometer, it is the easiest and most accurate way to test for Brix.
Here we have an ebelliometer which measures alcohol content of wine.
This device was used to airate and oxidate the free SO2 out of the sample wine.

The above image is an example of paper chromatography similar to the ones we observed on our trip. This image is from the www.travessiawineblog.com website. This image showl ML fermentation is complete on 4 of the wines on the left but not complete on the 4 wines on the right.

Acids through pH, titratable acidity, paper chromatography.

Ethanol using the ebulliometer

Free and total Sulfur dioxide through aeration/oxidation

The course was taught by James F. Harbertson jfharbertson@wsu.edu

Resources:
CAWGG California association of wine grape growers
WAWGG Washington association of wine grape growers
winebusiness.com
Vitis journal
Australian tech conference

Instrument resources:
Fisher scientific
VWR
Hanna Instruments

Best lab book available:
Techniques for Chemical Analysis and Quality Monitoring During Wine Making by Patrick Iland

Other good books include:

Handbook of Enology vol. 1 and 2 by P. Ribereau-Gayon

Magazines Wine business monthly
wines and vines

People to know in the industry:

Grandall Grahm Bonny Doon www.bonnydoonvineyard.com/
Professor Markus Keller, PhD. Viticulture at WSU.
Katie Perry at Tildio www.tildio.com

Sanitizer used at WSU Winery:
Poroxiclean

Maximizing Malolactic Fermentation Seminar

2009-08-10T19:10:00.000-07:00

MLF SEMINAR

At the Novelty Hill Januik Winery in Woodinville Washington on July 1st 2009 I attended the Maximizing Malolactic Fermentation for wine quality and style seminar presented by Dr. Sibylle krieger-Weber and Dr. Thomas Henrick-Kling. The purpose of the seminar was to understand MLF management and how various fermentation factors effect the ML process including

PH
Alcohol
SO2
Temperature
Pesticide residue
Polyphenol content
enological tannins

An important factor is the timing of inoculation how to promote or eliminate various compounds within the wine including acetaldehyde and diacetyl.

Some of the highlights are outlined below:

Oenococcus oeni is the preferred bacterial culture to use as an ML starter culture because it is acid tolerant to below pH 3.5 and tolerant to ethanol up to 14%. It also has no flavor defects.

Important factors in Malolactic Fermentation:

ML is limited by

pH - less than pH3.2
SO2 - Free sulfur dioxide concentrations above 10 mg/L
Total sulfur dioxide concentrations above 30 mg/L
Temperature - Low
nutrients
bacteriorphange
micorbial antagonism
spray residue
polyphenols

Yeast produces SO2 and SO2 will stop MLF. For co-inoculation of yeast and ML use a yeast that doesn't produce too much SO2. Lalvin W27, W46 and W15 will allow spontaneous fermentation 10-20 days after completion of primary fermentation.

The basic message from this seminar that I got was to buy Oenococcus oeni bacteria for the best results for ML fermentation, control the environmental conditions listed above, and use nutrient additives recommended by Lallemand to ensure effective MLF. Avoid spontaneous ML due to the formation of brett and other off flavor causing compounds.

Also there was a section of Biogenic amines.

Biogenic Amines originate from the metabolism of living cells from animals, vegetables and microbes.
They are present in many different foods: Fermented sausages Fermented fish, cheese, fermented olives, chocolate, tomatoes, strawberries, nuts, and wines.
The main compounds are : Histamine, Tyramine, Putrescine and Cadaverine.

Various free amino acids will create biogenic amines.

Role of Biogenic amines in human health

Histamine in low doses: contraction of muscle fibers, stimulation of neurons, activation of the gastric secretion, reaction to allergies

Histamine in High doses: Migraines, fever, some sensitive individuals may react with the formation of cancerogenous nitrosoamines.

The degradation of Biogenic Amines removes these from the body. This happens either by Monoamine Oxidases or diamine oxidases this process is inhibited by alcohol. This will give you headaches and a hangover after drinking these biogenic amines and not being able to remove them because of the alcohol in the wine. To ensure your body can degrade these biogenic amines in an effective manner take Vitamin B6 prior to consumption of the wine. Biogenic amines are also found in beer but in much less concentration 20-50 mg/kg vs up to 3,800 mg/kg in red wine.

The seminar included much more info and was frankly over my head but I think this summation of the highlights is good for the general public. For more information contact the seminar presenters listed above.

Thanks,

Nathan Sikes
Resources:
www.lallemandwine.us
winegrapes.wsu.edu/
Scott laboratories nicholah@scottlab.com

Lake Chelan Winery Review

2009-07-24T10:02:00.000-07:00

Lake Chelan Winery
Tasted on July 23, 2009
Tasted the following Wines:
Stormy Mountain Red Blend
Pinot Noir
Cabernet
Syrah
Syrah
Falling Cow Red Blend
Merlot
Hard Cider

Tyler and I visited this winery for the first time and were extremely pleased with the quality of the wines. We did not stop for the bar-b-q but we did wait out a thunderstorm/flash flood. I bought a bottle of the Stormy Mountain Red Blend and Tyler purchased the Pinot and the Hard Cider.

Although the wines were superb the layout and use of the land and buildings left room to be desired. Although this winery is located across the road from the lake and from the parking lot you have a wonderful view of the lake the wine tasting room and the bar-b-q area are oriented inward toward the mountain and vines. The vines are beautiful but you can see from the pictures they lack a focal point and you don't get the advantage of seeing the rows because they are not oriented to the restaurant to allow that view.

I have noticed that winery's don't promote lounging and socializing. I have not seen a living room seating area that someone could get a glass of wine and a piece of food and socialize with other patrons and oenophiles.

This winery is open the latest and the Bar-B-Q smells so good it makes your mouth water from 50 feet away.

Check this place out, you won't be disappointed.

Idea Generation

2009-06-26T22:06:00.001-07:00

Fireside Dining
Green Tours
Live Music
Cellar Tours
Wine Making Classes

Press
Destemer
SS tank
Bottler