Dear Sokol Blosser Wine Drinker,
We find ourselves on the precipice of yet another harvest here at Sokol Blosser. This will be our 50th harvest for our vineyards (we got our first crop in 1974 and sold it to Erath for a few years) and our 47th crush here at the winery. Time flies huh?!?!? This newsletter will start with new distributors and end with a fake Cooper’s Hawk.
Hear ye! Hear ye! We have moved wine distributors in Oregon, Washington, Texas, Florida and Oklahoma as of last month! If you are looking for our wine in Oregon and Washington, please know that Galaxy Wine Company is now representing us. In Texas and in Florida you can find our wines at Maverick Beverage Company, and in Oklahoma you can buy our wines from Armada Distributing. Our team has worked very hard to transition our business over to our new partners this summer and we are very excited to be working with the teams at Galaxy, Maverick, and Armada going forward!
Speaking of new things, we are releasing our 2023 Pedotti Vineyard, Dundee Hills, Pinot Blanc this month in our tasting room and encourage you all to come in a taste it. Luke Pedotti has been managing vineyards for the past 20 years, and he and his family finally decided to plant three acres of Pinot Blanc on their property in the Dundee Hills. When Luke approached us to work with it a couple of years ago, we jumped at the chance as we had lost our previous source of this varietal back in 2019. Robin likes the fruit so much I hear she will try some of it in our sparkling wine program this harvest.
September is also our Cellar Club pick up month! We had a pick-up party weekend here at the winery on the 14thand 15th and will be up in Seattle on the 28th at Agua Verde Marina Cantina for our pickup party. Club members check your email! We will be showing our new 2023 Pedotti Pinot Blanc, as well giving you a sneak peak of our soon to be released 2022 Single Block Pinot Noirs from our Dundee Hills Vineyard: Blackberry Block, Goosepen Block, Orchard Block, Watershed Block, Old Vineyard Block, and 12-Row Block. The 2022 vintage was quite good and was Robin’s first vintage as winemaker. I look forward to sharing these Pinot Noirs with you!
The birds know when the grapes are ripe and start eyeing the fruit around this time of year. We have been fortunate that we have not had a lot of bird pressure since the 2011 vintage. I just jinxed us there so we will probably have huge flocks of English Starlings this harvest. Dang! In preparation for that I put out a kite that is in the shape of a Cooper’s Hawk. This type of hawk is a raptor and birds are quite scared of it since it preys on them. When the wind blows, our Cooper’s Hawk kite flies in between our Orchard Block and Peachtree Block signaling that harvest is here and that hungry, grape eating birds are around. Does it do anything? Maybe, but it sure looks good out there. Who doesn’t like to see a kite fly?
Cheers,
Alex
