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Going private
Re: "Private Labeling is a Promising Option," by Peter Mitham (winesandvines.com Headlines, March 4). Right in your own backyard! I've been buying from Windsor-Sonoma for over a year, having my photo art put on the labels. Great product, good value and excellent people to deal with.
I suppose I should look into some of the local outfits. I used to live between Kirkland and Woodinville, Wash., cities currently home to innumerable wineries of all sizes. In the '70s, I worked on the grounds that eventually became Chateau Ste. Michelle. I shoot a lot of wine events around here, but your article is the first I've read about vanity labeling in Washington and Oregon. Go figure.
Jef Jaisun
Photographer
Seattle, Wash.
School daze
Regarding "Northwest Schools in Session" in the February 2009 issue: I was thrilled to read the coverage on Chemeketa Community College. This was timely and fitting in consideration of stellar Pinot Noir and Pinot Gris vintages in the Willamette Valley, Dundee Hills, Chehalem and Ribbon Ridge areas of Oregon during the past six years.
I was fortunate to tour the Viticulture Center shortly after it opened--impressive. Chemeketa's vineyard management and winemaking program quickly became the largest supplier of trained industry workers in Oregon.
A $1.4 million expansion project was recently announced to renovate an existing building and erect a new one, hopefully to be completed in time for fall classes.
Linda O'Hara
Instructor, School of Electrical Engineering and
Computer Science at Oregon State University
McMinnville, Ore.
Missing collaborator
I enjoyed your very interesting article, "Wines that Changed the Industry," in the January issue. I was particularly pleased by your tribute to Brad Webb, which he so richly deserves. Sadly, however, Brad's indispensable collaborator ML34 was not treated quite as well. Somewhere along the line, the continuity of its historical thread broke. Let me try to mend it.
Brad was deeply disappointed and frustrated when the first Pinot Noirs he made at Hanzell failed to undergo a malolactic fermentation, a phase of maturation that he well knew to be essential for making the high quality wine he and Zellerbach sought. (On hiring him as his winemaker, Zellerbach gave Brad a bottle of Romanée-Conti, his only instructions and assignment.)
Brad was also perplexed because wines made from the same source of grapes at other wineries all spontaneously had undergone the fermentation. Brad contacted me for advice and help. I (then an assistant professor of enology at UC Davis) had surveyed a number of California wineries in search of resident malolactic bacteria, and uniformly found them. I isolated, characterized and serially numbered about 50 ML bacteria that I had found.
The 34th was from a Barbera in a redwood tank in Louis Martini's St. Helena winery. At the time Louis asked that the strain's source not be made public. I'm passing this along only because I'm sure that now Louis would be pleased that ML34's place of origin, where it had most probably been a long-term contributor to his red wines' high quality, be known.
At Davis and Hanzell, Brad and I induced malolactic fermentations in small experimental batches of wine. The ML34 strain seemed clearly superior to the others, so we propagated and added this one to Brad's Pinot Noir at Hanzell under conditions that I reasoned were favorable for its growth. A malolactic fermentation quickly ensued with favorable results. Brad and I believed that we were the first to induce a malolactic fermentation from a pure culture. During preparation of our manuscript, we learned that Peynaud and Domecq had also been successful.
John Ingraham
Professor of microbiology, emeritus
University of California, Davis, Calif.
Re: "Private Labeling is a Promising Option," by Peter Mitham (winesandvines.com Headlines, March 4). Right in your own backyard! I've been buying from Windsor-Sonoma for over a year, having my photo art put on the labels. Great product, good value and excellent people to deal with.
I suppose I should look into some of the local outfits. I used to live between Kirkland and Woodinville, Wash., cities currently home to innumerable wineries of all sizes. In the '70s, I worked on the grounds that eventually became Chateau Ste. Michelle. I shoot a lot of wine events around here, but your article is the first I've read about vanity labeling in Washington and Oregon. Go figure.
Jef Jaisun
Photographer
Seattle, Wash.
School daze
Regarding "Northwest Schools in Session" in the February 2009 issue: I was thrilled to read the coverage on Chemeketa Community College. This was timely and fitting in consideration of stellar Pinot Noir and Pinot Gris vintages in the Willamette Valley, Dundee Hills, Chehalem and Ribbon Ridge areas of Oregon during the past six years.
I was fortunate to tour the Viticulture Center shortly after it opened--impressive. Chemeketa's vineyard management and winemaking program quickly became the largest supplier of trained industry workers in Oregon.
A $1.4 million expansion project was recently announced to renovate an existing building and erect a new one, hopefully to be completed in time for fall classes.
Linda O'Hara
Instructor, School of Electrical Engineering and
Computer Science at Oregon State University
McMinnville, Ore.
Missing collaborator
I enjoyed your very interesting article, "Wines that Changed the Industry," in the January issue. I was particularly pleased by your tribute to Brad Webb, which he so richly deserves. Sadly, however, Brad's indispensable collaborator ML34 was not treated quite as well. Somewhere along the line, the continuity of its historical thread broke. Let me try to mend it.
Brad was deeply disappointed and frustrated when the first Pinot Noirs he made at Hanzell failed to undergo a malolactic fermentation, a phase of maturation that he well knew to be essential for making the high quality wine he and Zellerbach sought. (On hiring him as his winemaker, Zellerbach gave Brad a bottle of Romanée-Conti, his only instructions and assignment.)
Brad was also perplexed because wines made from the same source of grapes at other wineries all spontaneously had undergone the fermentation. Brad contacted me for advice and help. I (then an assistant professor of enology at UC Davis) had surveyed a number of California wineries in search of resident malolactic bacteria, and uniformly found them. I isolated, characterized and serially numbered about 50 ML bacteria that I had found.
The 34th was from a Barbera in a redwood tank in Louis Martini's St. Helena winery. At the time Louis asked that the strain's source not be made public. I'm passing this along only because I'm sure that now Louis would be pleased that ML34's place of origin, where it had most probably been a long-term contributor to his red wines' high quality, be known.
At Davis and Hanzell, Brad and I induced malolactic fermentations in small experimental batches of wine. The ML34 strain seemed clearly superior to the others, so we propagated and added this one to Brad's Pinot Noir at Hanzell under conditions that I reasoned were favorable for its growth. A malolactic fermentation quickly ensued with favorable results. Brad and I believed that we were the first to induce a malolactic fermentation from a pure culture. During preparation of our manuscript, we learned that Peynaud and Domecq had also been successful.
John Ingraham
Professor of microbiology, emeritus
University of California, Davis, Calif.
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