WHAT’S NEW . . . as of
4/20/17
BBC delivery 4/25—order
soon to ensure delivery
Home or office
delivery to Puget Sound area and beyond (Bung it in the Boot of your Car)
Sale
Wines
B’s Blend,
Sangiovese, Baby Barn Owl Red
Special
Events
Earth Day, Spring
Barrel Tasting, Vineyard Tours
Words
from the Winegrower
Lions in the
Vines
Wine
with Friends
Wine tasting in
your home
If the sun
seems to be lacking where you live, come to where we live.
Wine is half price
if it’s raining when you purchase it in our tasting room.
**** Virtual tour video here ****
BBC
delivery 4/25—order
soon to ensure delivery
Home or office
delivery to Puget Sound area and beyond (Bung it in the Boot of your Car)
I am going over to Seattle on
Sunday, 4/23, for a quick wine run and to see some family and friends. I jump
at any opportunity to visit my mum.
No amount of wine is too small
or too big to deliver. Ordering instructions and the price list are here.
Order soon and it will be Bunged in the Boot of my Car (BBC). Give us a call
(509.829.9000)! You will want to know about our sale wines before you order.
Read on . . .
Sale
Wines
B’s Blend,
Sangiovese, Baby Barn Owl Red
We discovered a couple of
cases of the 2009 Cabernet Sauvignon in
our cased-good storage area. So, if you have been pining for this wine, here is
an unexpected chance to pick up a few more bottles. After this is gone, then we
are totally out of Cab until the 2013 vintage matures. Grab some now or you
will need to wait for a few years.
Wine Specials
Special price continuation on B’s
Blend, Sangiovese, and Baby
Barn Owl Red
50% off 12 bottles B’s Blend $84
($7/bottle)
50% off 12 bottles Sangiovese $84
($7/bottle)
50% off 12 bottles Baby Barn Owl Red
$99 ($8.25/bottle)
And of course, you can do any
sort of mix and match and get case prices. We are running low on the Baby Barn Owl Red. There is plenty of
the B’s Blend
and the Sangiovese (previously
called Under 10 Buck Red).
Live Owl Cam
The Barn Owl Cam is live! We have
a pair of barn owls roosting there. We are growing another lively parliament,
brood, diss, nest, looming, flock, stare, congress,
glaring, hooting, bazaar, sagaciousness, or wisdom of baby owls that we are
watching this spring. Whoooooo knew there are so many
names for a bunch of owls? Pun intended. So far there are five hatchlings and
five eggs to go. Last year six hatched out of nine eggs, not sure how many she
will hatch out this year. We will just have to wait and see.
We use ten cents from every
bottle of Baby Barn Owl Red that we sell to make more barn owl boxes. So far we
have built five and have plans for four more.
Special
Events
Earth Day, Spring
Barrel Tasting, Vineyard Tours
Earth
Day April 22
Celebrate Earth Day
2017 at America's only pesticide-free wine estate. This is the start of our
fifth year with zero pesticide use in our vineyard.
Paul has been an organic gardener for over 50 years, his knowledge and
experience has evolved his vineyard to the point where the ecosystem is stable
and free of pest eruptions. So no need for pesticides.
Join us at 9 am Saturday or Sunday for a tour of the vineyard.
Paradisos
del Sol Spring Barrel Tasting 2017 4/22-23, 4/28-30
We at Paradisos are passionate about making barrel tasting an
educational experience. Paul, the Man in the Wild Pants, comes up with a
different presentation every year, and he has been doing this for over 30 years!
This year we will be tasting exotica. White exotica?
We don't actually make white wines, we make golden wines. Our wines have color.
Blanco, Blanc, or white refers to the absence of color, like pure water. Not
what we do. Colorless that is, not pure, purity is one of our paradigms,
ingredient labeling, no pesticides, it's Our Way.
Wines we make are shades of gold, salmon, and ruby. Not white, pink, and red.
Does color really even matter? The black glass says "not so much."
But, there is a backstory to colors.
Exotic? Golden wine? What is
this Wacko (the Man in the Wild Pants) going on about!?
It is much more demanding of the craftsperson to do delicate than robust. Is
not Chenin Blanc the ultimate test of wine? Or is it Xarel•lo?
Hmmm. Both are subtle, delicate, revelatory.
Especially as dry wines, not hiding behind the veil of sugar.
Xarel•lo, from Catalonia, is a new set of DNA for us,
what's it all about? or what does it do here? or what? what? what!?
(I planted it to give me something to practice that wonderful junction of art
and science that results in wine.)
Xarel•lo is new to us and everyone in the US. So
let's organoleptically evaluate it in contrast to our
love of 30+ years, Chenin Blanc, the great revealer.
Two barrels, old barrels so we don't muck it up with flavors of lumber. Side by side. No agenda, no expectations, purely
intellectual exploration of what 2016 gave us to enjoy. Join me on our patio to
seek insights.
Enlightenment in wines of gold?
After the micro-mini seminar, we offer a micro-mini 10-course winemaker
tasting, 10 teensy tiny bites of food to go with our 10 different wines. Sip,
Sip, Bite, Sip!
We start off with our famous Rosé Paradiso and Mushroom Patê,
Brie and our Oyster White, Paul's Peanut Sauce with our Sève, a bit of
Wasabi-Ginger Rice as an accompaniment to our Riesling, and Pasta Arti-Pesto for our B's Blend. Next are our reds—with our
Sangiovese we are serving Glondo's Pepperoni, our
ever famous Bleu-Cheese Dip pairs with Baby Barn Owl Red (under our second label
Naked Chick Wine). Paradisos Red is our pizza wine; we would love to have
pizza, but it just doesn't seem to work as a small-bite option, who can eat just one bite? So instead, we use another great Glondo product, Salami. And now we are ready for dessert,
two of them! With the Zort, we have a tiny bite of
dark chocolate; we suggest you melt this in your mouth rather than bite. Last,
but not least, is our Angelica SR. We have a skosh of
Vegan Pumpkin Custard to go with that.
We know it is hard to choose which wineries to visit, we hope you come to visit
us. Our $10 tasting fee is applied towards a purchase of at least $20. Part of
every tasting fee paid is donated to the Yakima Humane Society. Passport and
Premier Pass holders receive 10% off your purchase of 2 or more bottles; 30%
off bottles and 50% off case purchase on selected wines. We have three wines
that are under $100 a case. For Spring Barrel Tasting, groups of eight or more
will be turned away if they don't have a reservation. Come Taste Paradise!
Vineyard Tours
Paul offers vineyard tours
every Sunday morning at 9. It’s only $20 per person and includes our wine
tasting at the end. He visits four different vineyards and talks about what is
going on right now. They are very educational and fun. I learn something new
every time I tag along. The vineyard tour takes about two hours and then
another chunk of time for the wine tasting. Click here to reserve your spot: Book
Vineyard Tour
Words
from the Winegrower
Lions in the
Vines
Or the argument for better trellising.
They aren't there. They, Cougar, Puma con color, do live in our vicinity. Or at
least are occasional visitors, but, they don't live in
our vineyard. I'm sure at some point one or more has walked across our farm.
They didn't stay.
Grape Leafhopper, Erythroneura elegantula,
is also an animal hard to find in our vineyard. They are regular visitors and
occasionally resident for a time, but don't survive long and reproduce often.
We don't shoot cougars and we don't poison leafhoppers. We simply do not
provide the habitats they need.
Cougars need deer for food. No deer here. Thickets and forest
for shelter. No forest here and thickets are small and few. No cougars
to see.
Leafhopper needs grapevines to feed on, we have plenty of those, but they also
need shelter. THAT, we don't provide.
Our management view is that leafhoppers and Powdery Mildew are both signs of
inadequate canopy management for the production of Vitis
vinifera for wine with highly desired characters. At least in the Yakima Valley and similar climatic regions.
If we accept the premise that a low vigor canopy structure is optimal for top
tier wines, if we accept the principles of Dr. Smart in his treatise "
Sunlight Into Wine", then we view PM and leafhopper as indicators of
failure.
Both organisms have similar habitat requirements. They require
"thickets", dense foliage to provide shade, humidity and shelter from
predators. Neither thrives on leaves exposed to direct, intense sunlight.
Dense foliage is also sub-optimal for the development of optimal characters in
fruit. Some degree of direct sunlight is desirable.
Can we have both a low canopy environment and harvest 5-6 tons per acre? Yes.
The first step is accept that the design of most
vineyard trellis was obsolete by 1980. Nelson Shaulis
and his many students ably developed and demonstrated the efficacy of
horizontally divided canopy systems.
The apple growers are ahead of us with trellis, the research in canopy
management at Cornell was not limited to grapes.
As a student of Mark Kliewer, I use his nomenclature,
the horizontally divided, quadrilateral cordon to describe our trellis. I also
call it the Crawford Trellis, since the Crawford's of Prosser created the
design details used to construct trellis at Vineyard del Sol.
At Vineyard del Sol vines are planted on 8x5 spacing. Each vine has 4 cordon
arms for a total of 10 feet of cordon or roughly 3 meters.(3.08) With a shoot
density as low as 10 per meter, we still have 30 shoots per vine. These are
highly effective shoots. Almost every leaf is well exposed to direct
sunlight, at the least, it is only blocked by a single leaf layer. They do not
lose their photosynthetic abilities due to shading.
We have fewer cm₂ leaf area per vine than most
vineyards in our vicinity but a much higher photosynthetic rate per cm₂
leaf area. Oh, also no habitat for PM or GLH. Oh, yeah, the fruit gets direct
light, bloom to harvest. No sunburn, low pyrazines, little bunch rot. No leaf
plucking. Shaded leaves, those with two or more other leaves between them and
direct sunlight are non contributors to
photosynthesis. They become consumers. I believe they become hosts to PM and
GLH.
Any grad students working on theories that senescent leaves are more readily
parasitized?
We have not used a fungicide or insecticide at Vineyard del Sol since 2012.
Some blocks have had zero sprays since 2007. Temprañillo is our biggest
challenge. Susceptible to PM and planted next to pasture.
The most humidity and dew at night. Sprayed twice in 2011 and
3/4 in 2012, yes about 3/4 of the vines, once. Think about that, 2011, a
tough year for PM. How many "extra sprays" did y'all
use that year? What do you budget to douse your vines with materials your
consumers would prefer you avoid?
2011 taught me that we need lower shoot density on Temprañillo. Big leaves, big
clusters, so 15 shoots per meter is too much. 2012 taught us that 12 is sometimes excessive. Same with
Zinfandel. 12-15 per meter is working well with Riesling.
Zinfandel is also a challenge, sprayed with Stylet oil twice in 2011 we dropped
about 10% of the crop due to the bunch rot. We consider that acceptable,
we are quite rigorous in our selection. In 2012 we used stylet oil once, we were caught by a week of warm, rainy, humid
weather. Our experiment in yielding 10 ton/acre was sort of a mess. We lost
about 55% to bunch rot and the grape quality was deemed average. (We did
achieve 22 Brix in mid- October and 10T/A )Our
experiment in yielding 7 tons/acre was better about 35% loss, our control, goal
of 5 ton / acre, was about 25% loss. We found grape qualities the same, above
average. We used those grapes to make wine we sold for $2/oz. The high yield
stuff made wine that sold for about $.30 per oz..
We were depressed about these high losses to bunch rot, until we chatted with
other growers. They reported losses of 40-100%, in Zinfandel. After multiple applications of fungicides.
That experiment led us feel 10lb. per vine or 5 T/A, in a low vigor canopy
environment is our best target for Zinfandel. It gives us fruit valued at
$5,000 a ton. Without pesticides.
I suspect that trellis is most or all the issue for PM, I don't believe it is
the whole story for the more complex organisms.
Biodiversity is a contributing factor in the control of Grape Leafhopper. It
has many predators, most not specialists, but eager to consume any little
Critter. But they need other prey to sustain populations to stay effective at
keeping the GL under control.
We need other plants in our vineyards. To feed small insects that feed
predators. The deer to the cougars we desire. Also to provide for the adults that produce some of our best predators.
Wasp species, for instance are often vegans as adults. They hunt and
anesthetize insects to feed the young, but adults feed on pollen and nectar.
Many consider Anagrus species as the top predators of
GL. Biodiversity is essential to their life cycle. They need other species of
leafhopper to host them through winter. They need pollen and nectar to sustain
adults as they hunt for eggs.
So at Vineyard del Sol we have planted roses, oregano, and blackberries
specifically to ensure environmental needs of Anagrus,
though I suspect we would be fine without them. Cheap insurance,
and, it adds beauty. One of our goals is beauty in wine and life.
Roses and blackberries planted to host Rose leafhoppers, so they can host Anagrus through the winter. Oregano
because an astonishing number of species come to the blossoms, and it will
survive in our arid vineyards.
Even better are our naturalized mustards. Our trellis has also proven to be a
key in maintaining vegetation in our row middles. It lets us use Alternate Root
Zone Deficit Irrigation in an effective manner.
It allows two drip lines a meter apart.
The entire soil horizon at depths of 1-3 meters becomes available to the
vine roots. The shallow rooted annuals are largely limited to a half meter
surface area where they are easily mowed.
Our cordon wires are 0.4 meters or 16 " offset from the row center. We do
not drip between vines but off to the side. Our drip zone, which is a
vegetation zone from mid-summer on, allows us to manage mustards to keep them
in bloom till November. Occasionally December. Some
start to bloom in February.
The soil directly under vine doesn't support much vegetative growth most of the
season. Once the winter grasses and mustards bloom and the soil is dried out,few summer season plants grow.
Mowing in June is as much for fire control and worker safety (stumbling hazard)
as weed control. In the drip zone, mowing causes mustards to regrow and rebloom, if you cut before they all die.
With ARZDI the frequency of irrigation to one zone is 14-20+ days,
the grasses and forbs survive but not thrive. Seeds sprout, but seedlings
mostly dry and die. We maintain two green strips in the middle of the rows.
There are usually blossoms within a 20 feet radius, 7 meters, with bugs
buzzing.
The end result is student interns need to focus on atypically vigorous vines to
see a GLH.
I don't know about mealy bugs. I haven't found them in our vines. I have found
them in nearby vineyards. Maybe I need to search harder.
I have more concerns about fruit fly species. Very mobile and I'm surrounded by
cherry, apple, and peach. They are very involved in bunch rot. Our best
strategy is keeping cluster berry counts low. We remove berries in July from
large clusters to keep them open. No habitat, no critter. Thin skinned varieties
with large, dense clusters need attention. Looser clusters may make better
wine. Certainly clusters that don't have flies fleeing make better wine.
Our biggest pest issues are birds and pocket gophers.
With birds, our solution is netting. As a small vineyard, surrounded by
orchard, birds would devour our entire crops of Temprañillo and Zinfandel. Our
trellis actually makes netting cheaper and easier. We can cover two rows with
each 16 foot width. We go over the top, covering the whole vineyard. We can
work, drive tractor, and harvest without moving the net.
Pocket gophers, despite raising many Barn Owls, remain an issue. Every? plant missing in the
vineyard is due to root loss. Traps are our answer. They are our zero tolerance
pest. I try and walk a few rows every day. I look for
mounds, mushrooms, trash, plant activity,(watching
mustards and members of our biodiverse community, not just the vines). I do
accept the premise "the farmers footsteps are the best fertilizer ".
Perhaps the little buggers are an asset? They get me in the vineyard, walking
rows, paying attention. I see a lot of stuff I might miss otherwise.
Our goal is not "the best", that is heifer dust. "Best" is
a marketing myth, with less substance than most myths. It only exists on
magazine covers. And only fairly recently? Our goal is
the 99th percentile. Simply being an average to above average vineyard in
Washington will put you in the 95th.
( OK, stop, analyze, think, ain't
that amazing?) 14 Hands? Think abbbouddd
it! Amazing!
Winter. It is one of our biggest challenges and I'm
convinced, our key to success. Just as monitoring gophers
keeps me monitoring the entire vineyard, farming for winter also makes us farm
for optimal qualities for wine.
1983 was our breakout year in Washington. Early (9-30-83) frost put some
vineyards out of the equation. Then winter freezes and spring frost put poor
sites and growers who did not listen to Walter out of the game for two
vintages.
1988 showed our progress, 8 Washington wines on the Spectator's top 100. Eight. Eight. With
only 88 wineries operating versus 800+ in California and 8,000 just in
Bordeaux, and then, 80,000 in Italy.
To endure our freeze events we have to be very careful with vigor. You can't
survive many winters if you try high vigor, high yield viticulture. I have seen
20 T/A Müller Thürgau. Once.
I even made wine from that fruit. It was decent stuff. It was decimated that
winter, which only went to -2. 4 1/2 of the 5 acres fed starlings because the
fruit was only decent, decent didn't make the grade 20+ years ago.
Winter keeps us operating in the low to moderate vigor range. That does have a
pretty strong correlation to the production of highly desirable wines. Looking
at top 100 lists makes me realize what astounding company I keep. Isn't CSMWE
the best large winery in the World? Jeez, talk about competition on the home
field!
So what else does the Crawford's Trellis facilitate? It makes effective ARZDI
possible, it reduces or eliminates PM and GLH, facilitates bird netting, in
addition;
Pickers love it except for Celia who is under five foot in height.
Shoot thinners prefer it. It is designed with ergonomics in mind. But yes it
can be machine harvested.
Increases productivity by 50-100% on a tons per acre basis,
while maintaining or improving characters desirable for fine wine. But I
suggest y'all quit thinking acres and start thinking
meters and Km. I prune rows not acres.
Provides the possibility of zero pesticide use.
Makes better wine.
Wine with Friends
Wine tasting in
your home
Having a few people over? Want to do something fun before a book club
meeting? Don’t know what to do with your house full of relatives? Want to do an
employee-morale event? Want to make Barbara happy?
We have a
program that we think you will really enjoy. It is called Wine with Friends.
This is where we bring our tasting room experience to your home. We do all the
work, you have all the fun (well, we have lots of fun also). We have several
under our belt now and we are hoping that many more of you sign up to do one.
Here are
a couple of many possibilities:
1.
Our Regular Tasting
Wine for
tasting
Little food plates
(35-calorie micro-mini Lilliputian winemaker dinner)
$10/person,
waived with $30 purchase each (on average)
Minimum six people
Host gets
15% off 1-11 bottles or 30% off 12+
(Or special pricing,
whichever is better)
Leftover wine is
removed at end
2.
A Wine Party for You
Full
bottle of each wine (at 50% off retail)
Minimum of five
wines up to all that we produce (your choice)
Little food
plates (35-calorie micro-mini Lilliputian winemaker dinner)
$5/person,
waived with $20 purchase each (on average)
Minimum six people
Host gets
15% off 1-11 bottles or 30% off 12+
(Or special pricing,
whichever is better)
You get to keep
opened wine
You provide any
extra food for the party
At the
end of the event, we are thrilled if you and your friends want to order wine
(and pay for it). It will be delivered the next trip over. Either event
involves our usual kind of educational and fun wine tasting (Sip Sip Bite Sip) that we do in our tasting room, but it saves
you the drive over to Zillah (think of all that gasoline and money you would
save).
The Wine
Party option would be great to do in conjunction with a book club. We usually
even read the book!
We can
drive almost anywhere. Contact us via phone or email and see what we can put
together. We can’t wait to meet your friends and have wine with them: Wine with
Friends!
By the
by, we have checked out the pricing of other people doing these wine parties at
private homes and ours seem to be the least expensive by far. Plus you get our
decades of experience and the fun of a Paradisos del
Sol party right in your living room. Give it a try!
Futures
to build our future
Build a Building Futures
Inspired by the experiences of
family and friends with Kickstarter and similar “crowd sourced” experiences, we
are offering a change to get wine in the future at a big discount for money
today. Time is to money sort of like energy is to matter. Join the patrons who
have started the ball rolling.
We need more space to make
more wine. We are maxed out and the vines are still not at full production. All
of this is making Paul a bit anxious.
Borrowing money is bloody
expensive! Bankers keep talking 10% to us. That means after seven years you pay
the bank double. You have to sell a lot of wine to make enough money to pay
them back.
So! How about we borrow from
you for one to three years and pay you double or more in wine?
Our vineyard has finally grown
too big for our facilities and we need a bigger building to grow to our goal of
3,000 cases a year (about three times our size now).
So! Instead of paying bankers
a bunch, we would rather give a bunch of our customers a bunch of wine deals so
we can have homes for our bunches of grapes that will
eventually go to bunches of our customers. A new 2,400-square-foot, all-steel,
well-insulated, above-ground “wine cave” is about $80,000. Plus we need some
more tanks and barrels.
This is like a Kickstarter or
Indiegogo project, the difference being we are not using a third-party
aggregator to facilitate the transactions, i.e. we are doing it ourselves with
no middle person taking a cut.
Here are a variety of options
for you if you wish to participate:
1. Pay $50 now
• In 2018
get 3 bottles
• Buyers choice, Retail = up to $126
2. Pay $100 now
• In 2018 get 6 bottles (2 each of 3 wines)
• Buyers choice, Retail = up to $252
3. Pay $200 now
• In 2018 get 12 bottles (3 each of 4 wines)
• Buyers choice, Retail = up to $504
4. Pay $250 now
• In 2017 get 12 bottles (3 each of 4 wines)
• Buyers choice, Retail = up to $504
5. Pay $500 now
• In 2018 get 12 bottles (3 each of 4 wines)
• In 2019 get 12 bottles (3 each of 4 wines)
• In 2020 get 12 bottles (3 each of 4 wines)
• Buyers choice, Retail = up to $1512
6. Pay $750 now
• In 2017 get 12 bottles (3 each of 4 wines)
• In 2018 get 12 bottles (3 each of 4 wines)
• In 2019 get 12 bottles (3 each of 4 wines)
• In 2020 get 12 bottles (3 each of 4 wines)
• Buyers choice, Retail = up to $2016
7. Pay $1000 now
• Get twice as much as option #5 OR
• Half price on all wine for 5 years
• Buyers choice, Retail = skies the limit!
8. Pay $2000 now
• Get twice as much as option #5 OR
• Half price on all wine for 10 years
• Buyers choice, Retail = skies the limit!
(Plus sales tax, delivery may
be extra.)
Like all wine purchases at
Paradisos, you can mix and match or get creative!
In our 16 years of business we
have offered specific wine futures twice, but on a much smaller scale.
We would love to have you
commit as soon as possible. We need to get this building raised and ready.
Cash, Dwolla,
checks, or charge—we will take it any way you want to give it to us, any
amount. If you want to discuss an amount not listed, just give us a call.
Dwolla
or Checks are preferable to
charge cards (just so we get all of the money without giving the banks any of
it), but please do what is easiest for you. If we can add to your airline miles
to get our building built then we both win.
You give us money, we give you
wine (later), what could be easier?
Historically in America,
business was done by a handshake. We are embracing this business model for growing
our business and all of our futures.
Please contact us however you
want - email, phone call, text, in person, or carrier owl.
Thank you for your continued
support of our winery!
For our
regular readers, this is where we pitch the plea to help us grow our business
and review us on Yelp or Facebook or TripAdvisor.
We really appreciate all of you who have giving us reviews. Please note: Yelp
has a policy of not posting reviews unless the person reviews at least three or
four other businesses. Crazy, huh? So we encourage you
to review away! Us, our neighbors, your barber, your local.
Thank you for continuing to
buy wine from us! Give us a call if you don’t want to deal with the order form,
we are happy to do whatever it takes to continue to get our wine to you. If you
didn’t keep drinking our wine, we couldn’t keep doing what we love (which also
includes drinking our wine). So, we raise our glasses to you!
Cheers!
Paul & Barbara
COME TASTE PARADISE!
Paradisos
del Sol Winery
www.paradisosdelsol.com
3230
Highland Drive
Zillah,
WA 98953
509.829.9000
Home
Updated
2017-02-17