In The Vineyard

The Cycle Begins
The vintage cycle begins for us coinciding roughly with the beginning of the calendar year. In the winter months pruning the vine and selection of a new fruiting cane. The vines are spaced one-meter apart in rows six-feet apart (at a density of about 2200 plants to the acre) and are trained in the single-Guyot method, with one fruiting cane per vine tied horizontally along the fruiting wire at about 24 inches above the ground. This is the season that we break open the soil to let it breathe. Compost and various soil amendments may be spread during this time.

Bud-Break
Bud-break occurs shortly after the arrival of spring weather in the Willamette Valley, mid-April or so on average. We will hand-rub off excess buds, selecting of the 8 or 10 or so preferred shoots.

Trellising
Following this is the time of the principal period of growth with the vine establishing its canopy. We take this opportunity to selectively remove grasses and weeds from beneath the trellis, remove suckers, and position the shoots so as to direct their growth upward within our vertical trellising system.

Flowering
Flowering will normally occur at a point coinciding generally with the Summer solstice or about the third week in June. This is a critical time, as the size of the crop is determined by the success or lack thereof with the pollination of the flowers, the eventual berries. Here our technique involves a wing and a prayer, as we are left to hope for mild, dry and not too windy weather for a successful fruit set.

Canopy Management
After this time, 'canopy management' is the rule of the days. We pull leaves on the morning-sun side of the canopy and further train the canopy upward within the trellising system to allow for optimum exposure of the emerging bunches of fruit to the sun's rays. The canopy will also be hedged back to avoid excessive vegetative growth and encourage the vine to focus its energies on its fruit.

Veraison & Harvest
Veraison, or color-change, will typically occur beginning in late July to mid-August, when the grapes are transformed from small and green to full dark clusters. During this time we may further thin the crop as necessary to manage the yield toward our goal of around 2 pounds of fruit per vine. The fruit of The Beaux Frères Vineyard is harvested by hand in the cool of early fall mornings (usually beginning just after sunrise and ending well before lunchtime) and placed into quarter-ton picking bins. The bins are removed from the vineyard by tractor and transported down the hill to the winery.

Processing
The bins are hoisted up and the fruit is slowly, gently tipped out over a sorting table. The fruit is then sorted by hand by a crew of six to eight to remove any unripe or undesirable berries, bunches or leaves. The remaining fruit is then moved down the table into the destemmer and then directly into various small fermenters.

In The Cellar

Handling
Beaux Frères cellar technique is characterized by minimal 'handling' of the material. After an initial "cold soak" fermentation is typically allowed to occur spontaneously (usually within five or so days) with indigenous yeasts though we will intervene and inoculate with cultured yeast strains under certain conditions. The cap is punched-down the old-fashioned way, that is, by hand, typically twice per day - once in the morning and once in the evening - or more frequently as may be necessary during fermentation. This process, though labor intensive, allows us to remain intimately familiar with the various cuvées, monitoring their progress and affording us the opportunity to intervene in time if necessary.

Pressing
After fermentation has completed, we empty the tank into our press and the new wine is then moved without settling to oak barrels, a high proportion of which are new three-year air dried François Frères oak barrels from various forests in France.

Transformation
Malolactic (also called 'secondary') fermentation is allowed to occur naturally. Beaux Frères cellars being quite cool, this can occur at a rather relaxed pace by comparison with the 'norm'. We feel that a long, slow malolactic fermentation gives greater complexity of flavor, transforming raw young wine into a thing of liquid beauty.

Blending
Finished wine is eventually racked (pushed under inert gas rather than pumped) into stainless steel tank to amalgamate and achieve a consistent blend then allowed to settle as a natural clarification process. The wine is then bottled using gravity in the Winter season of the following vintage.

Reductive Winemaking
We receive numerous questions about the way in which we make Pinot Noir. It's no different than what cutting edge Burgundians have been doing for decades, and what other top Oregon as well as California wineries do. Pinot Noir is very fragile and needs to be protected from excessive exposure to oxygen. Hence, the winemaking style once the wine is in barrel is called reductive; meaning its exposure to oxygen is intentionally reduced to the bare minimum. The traditional racking process of transferring a wine from barrel to barrel in order to aerate it is not practiced at Beaux Frères. Our only racking occurs at the end of the 10-12 month period our wines spend in barrel, when it is racked out of barrel into a holding tank, from which it is bottled. This is the only time the wine is exposed to air, and even then it is minimal since we transfer the wine under an inert gas to protect the perfume as well as fruit intensity.

Aging
All of this is aimed at preserving the character of our terroir, the personality of the vintage, and the quality of the wine. We also age our wine on its lees for this entire period. The wine is never clarified after fermentation, but is moved quickly into barrels with what the French call gross lees. The percentage of new French oak utilized varies according to the strength and concentration of the vintage. In 2001, it was approximately 50%. In years of great richness and ripeness (2002 for example), it is closer to 80-90%. The young wine stays in contact with its lees for 10-12 months, and its only exposure to air is when the bungs are pulled and the barrels topped due to evaporation or we taste the wine to follow its evolution. Our underground wine cellar is refrigerated, humidified, and kept extremely cold as we want the wines to evolve slowly, without any bruising because of extremes of temperature or unnecessary movement. Aging on lees, the cold cellar, and the fact that there is no movement of the wine (racking) until bottling results in a build up of CO2, a natural by-product of the secondary fermentation, called malolactic (which converts sharper, more tart malic acids into softer lactic acids). This CO2 serves as a natural preservative and allows us to use far lower levels of sulphur than most wine producers in the New World.

Decanting
Our experience in talking to the best winemakers in both Burgundy and the United States consistently has shown us that the less Pinot Noir is moved, the more its fruit will remain intact and the greater the potential for a complex perfume. The trade-off is that our young wines are often backward, young, and immature when first bottled. Sometimes they are even effervescent and disjointed. But after well over a decade of experience, we have observed that our wines develop exceptionally well in the bottle, which is our primary objective. Some time spent swirled in the glass or vigorous decanting will blow off most CO2. Moreover, the wines become far more complex, nuanced, and layered with bottle age, one of the magical things about unmanipulated, uncompromised Pinot Noir.

Cages for storing wine after bottling