We are so excited to announce that, thanks to Doug’s tender loving care, hard work, and vision, our Windrow Vineyard is now approved by LIVE Inc. (Low Input Viticulture and Enology) as an entity that is certified sustainably farmed. This certification entails Salmon Safe, Live and IOBC and was no easy feat to reach.
Caring for the quality of the wines is of immediate interest. Caring for our 2020 crop is a different matter altogether and we are so impressed that Doug has both goals in mind at all times. The juggle is continual and crucial.
For anyone who wants to visit the vineyard, feel free to stop by: 52015 Seven Hills Road Milton Freewater 97862
Call ahead of time if you want to try to meet with Doug, Jan or Ashley. After an especially frosty winter night, the place looks magical, once the buds start peeking in the early spring it is energizing, the summer brings the bightest greens and velvet purples and the harvest in the fall is chaotic and rewarding. The vineyard is, at all times, breathtakingly beautiful and will be for years to come.
The hassle is gone.
For those of you (and who isn’t) who are trying to figure out how to get all of your wine back home from Wally World, Alaska Airlines is now allowing passengers flying out of Walla Walla to check 12 bottles for free. We reccomend packing your wines in the same boxes that we use to ship wines via UPS. We, and many others in town, sell shippers and fiber fillers out of the tasting room.
This fantastic idea was made possible due to some folks with great vision at both Alaskan Airlines and the Walla Walla Valley Wine Alliance.
A huge thanks to them for making this happen.
Happy sipping and flying- the best of all worlds,
Ashley and the TERO and FTW Crews
Happy 2012.
We are pleased to be ringing in the season with our cabernets well cellared and bold, the 2011 wines crackling with the malolactic fermentation coming to a close and the vineyard put to bed.
Our small spot in the world is beautiful, calm, nice and just plain lovely this time of year. Regular customers and friends stop by sometimes weekly and passing drivers honk and wave to our corner store. The new local theatre, the Power House Theatre is ramping up a new season, with “The Four Tenors” playing in February. The Marcus Whitman Hotel is taking down its amazing gingerbread house gallery but is still, thankfully, serving hot chocolate, apple cider and cookies every Friday and Saturday here in the lobby. TERO Estates and Flying Trout Wines will be the featured winery in the restaurant this month. Occasionally, Doug and Ashley will be “guest sommeliers” for the month of January.
Our recent releases are already selling out. Doug finally released the 2007 TERO Reserve Cabernet and it is yummy. It comes in a beautiful 3 bottle wooden box, with each bottle individually wrapped. Only 20 cases are being released at a time and the inaugural 20 are almost all gone. For those interested in TERO’s 2008 Herb’s Block Merlot, 2008 ST Blend, or Flying Trout’s 2009 Old Vines Malbec, we only have fewer than 10 cases of each, so feel free to send us an email at talk@teroestates.com or talk@flyingtroutwines.com or purchase on the websites.
The Flying Trout 2010 torrontes is here. We are so excited that it has arrived and it is tasting great.
At 12.7% alcohol, it is a wonderful marathon wine for the holidays 
We have it available in the tasting room at 6 West Rose St. (open 7 days a week year round) as well as online at www.flyingtroutwines.com
Tasting notes are as follows:
$19. 168 cases made. 100% torrontes. With a mead-like opening, this torrontes rolls into Granny Smith peel, freshly sliced pineapple, jasmine and wisteria flowers and finishes with baked peaches. Huge nose for a crisp and surprising mouthfeel. A great start to any afternoon.
Stop by for a taste or just to say hi.
Thanks, the FTW Crew
Congrats to Alice who made it through her first harvest and a huge thanks to Jan for documenting it. Ashley
Today is the last day of harvest this year for Flying Trout and TERO Estates and it has been short, late and cold.
So what does this mean you ask? It means we are all going to be a bunch of expensive dates come two or three years from now. The wines are all coming in at low sugar levels due to the lack of heat and because sugar turns into alcohol, these wines will be low alcohol across the board.
There are some early ripeners, like merlot, malbec and some syrah that had enough time to sit around and gain a lot of sugar, but it did not come as naturally as it usually does. Cabernet and cabernet franc on the other hand, not so much.
So for all of you who’ve been harping about the booze levels, 2011 is your vintage.
From the winemaking side of things, it was a wonderful year in terms of rainfall- the best I can remember in history. We got all of the rain that we wanted for the plants in the spring and early to midsummer and by the fall, it was dry as a desert and the grapes were able to mature without being watered down. Rainy days are the bane of many winemakers’ existences. Just when you have your week planned out, an inch of rain hits and then you’re back to square one.
The cold allowed us to keep bugs under control and even though there weren’t a lot of growing days (hot days), there wasn’t a lot of fruit hanging due to last year’s November freeze, so the two problems cancelled each other out.
Getting the acids to drop and the sugars to rise was the main problem. On the bright side, it means we’ll have wines that will cellar nicely and we can drink the night away without repercussion.
This is what we work year round to do. We winemakers wait for our one shot each year to make beautiful colors, smells and tastes and we do it right now. There comes chaos and stress, adrenaline and nervousness, excitement and fear and each year, right before harvest hits, total dread. The list of things that can and do go wrong is staggering.
I’ve been stung by bees 4 times in one day, I’ve dented buildings with forklifts, run out of gas hauling 3 tons of malbec- stopping 10 feet from a functioning railroad track, had mold growing on what was supposed to be a lovely vineyard, been rained on, been hailed on, had a stuck fermentation, had tanks leak, barrels leak, gotten the forklift stuck in the gravel, had any number of machinery decide not to work that day, been locked out, seen lower than expected yields, higher than expected yields, gotten sun when I wanted cold, gotten thunderstorms when I needed heat, but then again, there in the middle somewhere, I’ve gotten exactly what I wanted, and it was worth the wait, anxiety and pain.
When it is frigid late at night and your washing buckets in cold water to the howling of coyotes over the hill in a lonely, distance spot in the world and you walk from the crush pad into a warm, crackling fermentation room, with the smell of yeast and juice bubbling, it seems, all of the sudden, so lovely.
We wanted to send a huge thanks out to everyone who came to our Industry Party in the Tasting Room last Monday. The event was a blast and we were able to thank, in person, so many of the people who have sent tasters our way since moving to the downtown location.
This week has been one endless compliment after another and we are delighted.
Seattle Met magazine rated the TERO Windrow Vineyard Cabernet as #63 of Washington’s Best 100 Wines of the year and the Wine Enthusiast just gave the TERO ST blend a 90 point score. Flying Trout sold out of both the 2008 Old Vines Malbec and the 2009 Torrontes this week.
Thanks to everyone who has bought, drank, tried, rated or picked up our wines- it has been lovely.
The Crew
We are pouring wines everywhere for the month of August. Here is the quickie on how to find us. The following can also be found on our websites.
All in August
11: TERO pouring at Olive Marketplace and Cafe in Walla Walla
18: FTW pouring at Olive Marketplace and Cafe in Walla Walla
24: FTW pouring at Vintage Cellars in Walla Walla
26: TERO pouring at Village Wines in Woodinville, WA
27: TERO pouring at Wine World Warehouse in Seattle, WA
28: TERO pouring at 106 Pine in Seattle, WA
31: FTW pouring at W5 in Walla Walla
So if you are hankering for some red wine pours, show up and we’ll take good care of you. Thanks, the Crew
