FAQs about NW Grapes and its Central Coast grape operations
5. Are frozen grapes as good as fresh?
6. Are there any special issues with making wine from frozen grapes?
7. How good are these Central Coast grapes?
8. How exactly does your Central Coast operation work?
9. What’s the most difficult part of the job for NW Grapes?
10. When can we expect the grapes to arrive in Nanaimo?
11. What happens if I am unhappy with the grapes?
If you have others questions, please let Rod Church (rod.church@shaw.ca) know.
1. Who or what is NW Grapes?
The NW stands for Nanaimo Winemakers, a group of home winemakers on Central Vancouver Island. NW Grapes is the grape-procurement arm of the Nanaimo Winemakers Club. NW Grapes has been active for years and currently arranges for the purchase of over 20 tons of grapes per year. The focus used to be fresh Okanagan grapes, but this had now shifted to grapes from the Central Coast region of California. We buy premium grapes from the Paso Robles and Santa Barbara areas, have them crushed and frozen, and then have the pails of frozen red must and white juice shipped directly to Nanaimo. We also still get some grapes fresh from the Okanagan and we also source some varieties from the North Coast and Washington through Brehm Vineyards. Currently, Rod Church and John Taylor are the Club members who manage NW Grapes.
2. Who can buy these grapes?
The option of buying grapes from NW Grapes (f.o.b. Nanaimo) is open to any member of a club affiliated with BCAWA (the British Columbia Amateur Winemakers Association). If you are not a member of such a club, you must join the Nanaimo Winemakers or another club in order to be eligible to order grapes. NW Grapes is a non-profit operation, primarily for the benefit of the Nanaimo Winemakers, and does not sell to the general public.
3. Why the Central Coast?
In 2004 we began to shift away from the Okanagan because of price and quality issues. Our first California venture was Lodi, but the grapes from there proved disappointing. So in 2005 we ventured further south. On previous vacation visits to Moro Bay, John Taylor had been impressed with the wines from the Paso Robles area and he made a cold call in search of Edna Valley Chardonnay. This led to no Edna Valley Chardonnay, but it led to an offer of another Chardonnay that "might be even better" and to the suggestion that we could probably get other grapes from the region. For some reason the idea that a club of amateurs on Vancouver Island would come all the way to Paso Robles to get grapes struck a sympathetic response. When we said we were thinking of freezing the grapes before shipping them north, we became even more interesting. Freezing grapes—what a great idea, people thought. They had not heard of Peter Brehm and Brehm Vineyards.
With several season behind us now, we are adjusting and refining what we do. We are now centered on the Santa Barbara area rather than Paso Robles area, but we could go anywhere. We are constantly impressed by the reception we get in this region. Almost everyone has been friendly and helpful—often amazingly so. Being from Vancouver Island certainly does not hurt. It is fascinating how many people we have met who have visited or intend to visit the Island.
NOTE: As an appellation, the Central Coast extends from San Francisco to Los Angles, in the coastal counties connected by Highway 101. The most extensive vineyards are in the three central counties of Monterey, San Louis Obispo (which includes Paso Robles and the Edna Valley), and Santa Barbara.
4. Why frozen grapes
The Central Coast is a long way from Nanaimo. And although we can get truck transport directly to the Island, we feel that the best way to ensure grape quality is to get the grapes crushed and frozen as soon as they are picked. We have copied the technology that Peter Brehm developed to see that top-quality North Coast and Washington grapes get to customers across North America in excellent condition. Our Club members also find frozen grapes to be convenient. There are no crushes, which can get to be a pain when they number a dozen or more in a season, especially when the weather turns cold and rainy. Instead, all grapes come at once, and people can leave their grapes frozen for an extra month or two if making wine in the fall is not convenient. (The Club has arrangements with a freezer in Nanaimo.) Even when the Club used to get all its grapes fresh from the Okanagan, about one-quarter of these grapes went directly from the crush to the Nanaimo freezer to be made into wine when the time was more convenient.
5. Are frozen grapes as good as fresh?
Yes, we certainly think so. The route to good wine is good grapes. If we lived in California, we would make our wine from fresh grapes, just like the wineries do. But we don’t live there. And so we get grapes from good vineyards and have them crushed and frozen as quickly as possible. This increases cost, but it does mean we can get good grapes in the best condition possible. Wineries like to pick their grapes in the morning and have them crushed within hours. We like this arrangement too—only our crushed grapes go to a freezer.
There are even some winemaking advantages to frozen grapes. With whites (we get settled juice) you can easily manage a little cryo-extraction while thawing if you want to raise the sugar level a bit and increase flavor intensity. With reds, the freezing and thawing process provides the ultimate cold soak.
Club members have been buying Brehm Vineyard grapes for years and freezing grapes from our own crushes. We would not be going to all the trouble and expense of sourcing and freezing these Central Coast grapes if we did not think the results were worth it.
6. Are there any special issues with making wine from frozen grapes?
The only one we have found is the difficulty of getting accurate measurements in very cold, previously frozen, musts. Acid (TA) readings seem particularly suspect. We have learned to be very careful about adding acid at the beginning of the fermentation. Our experience is that there is more acid in our frozen grapes than is first apparent. In 2008 we started to get some laboratory analysis of our red grapes before they were frozen. This has been very helpful, especially the results for TA and YAN (yeast available nitrogen). We usually have good data on our whites, because the settled juice comes from winery tanks and wineries have done the analysis on exactly what we are getting.
7. How good are these Central Coast grapes?
With the reds, we are just beginning to find out for sure, but are certainly winning medals in competitions. It is fair to say the Nanaimo Winemakers are very happy. Members of the Saanich Sommeliers and Vinovan have also got these grapes over the years. If you are in BCAWA you should be able to get an informal opinion from someone you know.
In the great California grape market, Napa and Sonoma rank number one in quality and price (and if you want a wide selection of these grapes they are available through Brehm Vineyards and Bosa Grape & Juice in Burnaby). The Central Coast areas where we get grapes represent a second tier of quality and price in the California market. Average prices are generally in line with places like Mendocino. Central Coast grapes are only grown for quality wineries—the region has almost no low quality grapes and by far the overwhelming proportion of the grape acreage is owned and operated directly by wineries. These grapes are a significant step up in quality over what is available from Lodi and a huge step up on grapes from the Central Valley, the two primary commercial sources of fresh grapes for the home winemaking market.
If you have seen the movie Sideways, you have seen the area where most of our grapes come from, and you know others are enthusiastic about grapes from this area. We find even the Merlot is very good!
Of course, there are always differences in local terroir and vineyards. We are very mindful of this and spend time each year seeking out the best sources we can get. We think we have some excellent vineyards. In most cases we are getting only a very small portion of a harvest that is otherwise going to some pretty select wineries. It turns out to be an advantage that we only want a ton or two of a particular grape variety. We are often dealing with large vineyards, where it is a relatively easy matter to direct a ton or two our way.
8. How exactly does your Central Coast operation work?
We take orders from members and then make arrangements with growers. The standard practice in this Central Coast area with hand-picked grapes (our grapes have to be hand-picked) is to use half-ton bins, so we cannot always match exactly our orders with our purchases. We have to work in half-ton increments and we like to have a one-ton minimum. Of course, there are always some last minute disappointments. For example, in 2006 were were expecting to get some Tempranillo from Monterey, but the bird damage to the crop was so extensive that even the small winery we were going to share the crop with got none.
People pay in advance for their orders—50% on placing the order, another 50% at the beginning of September. This allows us to give the growers a good advance and to pay them immediately after harvest. We may be interesting to growers as Canadians so far south, but we are extra trouble nonetheless and the least we can do is to pay them promptly.
At the moment all our grapes are processed in Santa Maria at a small winery (McKeon-Phillips) that has agreed to do small scale crushes for us. We buy the standard 6 gal (23L pails). Then a crew crushes and destems the red grapes and puts the crush into pails. With whites, the same crew gets settled juice from winery tanks and transfers it from a larger tank to our pails.
The filled pails then go directly to the freezer at Frozsun Foods, which is only about a mile down the road, also in Santa Maria. This freezer is huge—acres and acres of cold storage, blast freezing, and the like. It is pretty much filled at certain times of the year with strawberries and other produce from the Santa Barbara area, but fortunately there is room for us at grape harvest time.
When the grape harvest and crushing is over, we have the whole load trucked directly from Santa Maria to Nanaimo. Although trucking operations directly to Vancouver Island have become more limited in the last few years, we are fortunate still to have Island based transport firms with reefer trucks. We pay for a whole truck, so it helps to have a full load.
9. What’s the most difficult part of the job for NW Grapes?
Arranging for less popular grapes is a problem. While some of our home winemakers are eager to experiment with new grape varieties, the basic demand is for the old standards like Cabernet, Merlot, and Zin. Our problem is that the Central Coast, with its many microclimates and adventuresome growers, often offers us the chance to get many other varieties—for example, Tempranillo, Grenache, Touriga Nacional, Nebbiolo, and Petite Sirah. We would like to make these varieties available because we know these grapes produce excellent wine (the one perk of managing NW Grapes is the chance to visit the Central Coast and taste wines!). For us, the ideal situation with a variety is continuing annual demand for at least a ton. But generating a ton of interest in a new grape is understandably difficult, especially when the tried-and-true varieties are working out so well.
Some people have suggested “rotation” for more these more “exotic" varieties—for example, Rhone grapes one year and Italian varieties the next. However, this definitely increases sourcing costs. If we cannot go back to the grower next year we are likely to lose the source. We lose sources for various reasons anyway. Lack of continuity in a market dominated by longer-term winery contracts just compounds the problem.
Another suggestion is that we just line up an exotic grape or two every year depending on what might be relatively readily available, perhaps at the last minute. We could then try to sell them. However, this is a big change to the way we operate. Currently members make their grape buying decisions early in the year and we gear our buying to grapes that have already been ordered and paid for. Changing this business model would produce new complications and have unforeseeable financial implications.
In spite of the challenges we believe creating and pursuing interests in more “exotic” varieties is a worthwhile part of expanding the world of wine for our members. We will continue to look for better ways to make more varieties available, and in the meantime we will continue to muddle along as we are doing now.
10. When can we expect the grapes to arrive in Nanaimo?
In 2005, the arrival date was Saturday, October 29. In 2006, arrival was Sunday, October 29. It was Saturday, October 27, in 2007 and Sunday, November 2, in 2008. We expect arrival this year in the same time frame, but we are dependent on the harvest dates of grapes we are getting, and some varieties (e.g., Mourvčdre or Nebbiolo) can be late. We have to wait until the harvest is over and then we need to arrange a truck. The weekend has its pluses and minuses as a day to receive the grapes, but there is no guarantee that it will be a weekend arrival again this year.
11. What happens if I am unhappy with the grapes?
We have only a couple of incident of unhappiness so far. Some Pinot Gris has not been sufficiently settled before it was put in our pails. The pails arrived with lots of sludge. We complained and got a price reduction from the supplier. However, winemakers who noticed the dirty juice and settled it themselves before fermentation produced very good wine, albeit with about a 30% reduction in expected volume. In 2008 some Chardonnay and Pinot Gris did not get labeled properly during processing and we had to guess at distribution time. Some of us ended up making "Chargris" as a result, but this was still a very good wine!
The bottom line, however, is that you don’t get refunds from NW Grapes if you are unhappy. This is a non-profit operation with voluntary labor and we are dealing with an agricultural product that varies in quality from year to year for reasons that are often beyond anyone’s control. Experienced winemakers understand this. You don’t get charged more if the grapes turn out to be spectacular (and some have), and you don’t get money back if they are below par or there is some other problem.
Answers prepared by Rod Church and John Taylor. Last updated April 23, 2010.