Violet Vines’ 2023 Vintage Summary
October 19, 2023
That’s a Wrap
What a whirlwind six weeks! Grapes arrived at the Violet Vines winery from August 27th through October 16th, and the good news is that the 2023 vintage fruit is fully processed and doing their thing in the winery!
By processed, that means hand-sorted and at a minimum, fermentation’s started. Some wines are already through primary and secondary fermentation and are already in the barrel, whereas a few are just getting started.
People are asking – how much and what type of wines will you be producing during this vintage?
In summary, we received 51.9 tons of grapes – all from Oregon. To be exact, we processed 103,808 pounds grapes, 80% of which were red grape varietals and 20% were white grape varietals.
Varietals, styles and/or clones we received included:
- Pinot noir
- Clone 777 (from our estate vineyard and two other vineyards)
- Clone 113
- Clone 114
- Clone 115 (from our estate vineyard and one other vineyard)
- Pommard (from our estate vineyard and two other vineyards)
- Clone 828 (our first estate harvest)
- Wadenswil (our first estate harvest)
- Rose (Clone 777)
- Sparkling Blanc de Noir (from our new estate Pinot noir Clone 115)
- Chardonnay
- Clone 76 (from our estate vineyard and one other vineyard)
- Clone 95 (from our estate vineyard and one other vineyard)
- Clone 548
- Wente
- Sparkling (from our new estate Clones 76 and 95)
- Malbec
- Cabernet Franc
- Albariño
- Chenin Blanc
- Syrah
- Grenache
- Mourvèdre
32% of our grapes came from our estate vineyard in the McMinnville AVA (our Set-in-Stone vineyard in the Rocks District will start producing next year). In addition to harvesting from our estate vineyard (from our 2008 and 2020 plantings), we also sourced fruit from the McMinnville AVA (Pinot noir), Yamhill-Carlton AVA (Pinot noir and Chardonnay), Chehalem Mountain AVA (Pinot noir), Eola Amity Hills (Chardonnay), the Rogue Valley (Chenin Blanc) and the Rocks District of the Milton-Freewater AVA (Syrah, Albariño, Grenache, Mourvèdre, Malbec and Cabernet Franc). All totaled, we worked with seven growers this vintage and they truly delivered outstanding quality despite the many challenges they faced throughout the state.
With the exception of the Malbec, our goal was to source the same fruit we planted in 2020, 2022 and 2023 so we can gain some experience working with these varietals and share these wines with our wine club members and tasting room visitors. Fingers crossed, we will harvest our first estate Albariño and Syrah in 2024, with the remaining vines producing in 2025.
We literally can’t wait to share these 2023 wines with you over the next 18 months!
Now it’s time for a nap…