Golden October light rakes over the grape vines. 

A breeze flutters the yellow and blue tablecloth, as our hostess sets down a tray of artisan cheeses. 

Friends yammer in French, raise glasses of ruby-red wine, toast the host.

Provence? Côtes du Rhône? No, it’s Maury Island, and we’re here to harvest Bill Riley’s Pinot Gris grapes.

Bill Riley retired from the EPA a couple years ago, determined to “finally get serious about this grape-growing/winemaking thing.” Back in the 70s, he’d come to the West Coast from New Jersey with his friend Rudy Marchesi to work in the wine business. Rudy’s efforts didn’t take immediately—he returned to Jersey for awhile—but today he owns and runs Montinore Vineyards in Forest Grove, the fifth largest vineyard in Oregon. 

Meanwhile, Bill met his wife, moved to Seattle, bought property on Maury Island—and by 1980, had planted a quarter-acre in 13 different varieties of wine grape.

In 2000, tired of “really lousy wine”, he ripped out all the vines, took a viticultural course, and replanted his acreage in Pinot Noir and Pinot Gris. Both are grapes that prefer cool weather, which is what the Island usually gets. The results have been good, and now he has plans to grow the vineyard by a half-acre a year. Maury Island Winery got its official winery license from Washington State in July, 2008.

But on this Indian Summer afternoon, October 4th, it really felt more like an afternoon in the French countryside: a day to enjoy with friends, good wine, and slow dining en plein air. 

We arrived to “bon joir!” from a tall, slim man who turned out to be Beaudoin from Belgium, an old friend of the Rileys. Soon Bill Freese the baker and his partner Bea Mann arrived, laden with a big round of cassoulet and a pan of bread molded into a grape cluster. Add Cory and Jason, Larry and Larry to fill out the crew.

Riley had his equipment set up on the sunny deck: a red steel crusher with a funnel top, a wooden-slatted press that could handle about four gallons of grapes at a time, three five-gallon glass carboys standing by to receive the juice, and a tractor loaded with shallow yellow plastic crates for we pickers. 

Around 3pm, the “crew”—some reluctant to be parted from their wine glasses—walked uphill to the top of the original vineyard, where six rows of Pinot Gris vines were planted. We stood around Bill as he handled out red felco hand pruners. “You’ll looking for grapes that have taken on red and blue tints—leave the clusters that are mostly yellow.” 

Two or three to a row, we pickers spread out, crouching next to the fan-espaliered vines to snip the crowded clusters of grapes. Unlike the trellising in a “T” that I’d seen at Monument Farm, Riley had chosen to keep his grapes closer to the ground—a technique taking advantage of ground-reflected heat. The grapes were small, tender of skin, with seeds that, if the grape was ripe, had turned brown. We were done before half an hour was up. 

Beaudoin drove the loaded-up John Deere back to the house, where the rest of us resettled around the “groaning board” of food and drink. Freese had brought a duck confit he’d made as part of the quest for a authentic cassolet: it was salty, a little chewy, edged with fat and made me thirsty. Luckily, there were several bottles and plenty of volunteers to open them. “Ooo, we’re into the Vacqueyras already,” said Cory, leaning in for a glass. 

Before the crush, somebody weighed each yellow tray of grapes on a scale and noted the weight on a clipboard. The total yield was close to 300 pounds of grapes. Then he or Beaudoin hoisted the crate over the crusher’s feed and let the grapes fall, all a bangety-clang, into the crusher’s maw.

To my surprise, the grapes came out the bottom barely cracked open, not “crushed” to a pulp like I’d imagined. The stems went through the crush as well: Bill said this was to hold the mashed grapes open within the press so that there would be channels for the juice to run out and through the press’s oaken staves. 

Beaudoin scooped the slightly-mashed grapes and coaxed them into the tiny press. When Bill knuckled down on the first grapes, the juice ran free and thick into one of the kitchen’s stew pots. As the juice ran into one kitchen kettle after another, Bill filled a small glass and held it into the sun. This is the precious “must” that will ferment: it was a milky amber, glowing apricot. 

It tasted like an unusual apple juice, and I asked him about its sugars. “The brix had reached around 20,” he said, “which is a little less than the traditional Pinot Gris. But since I want to turn much of this in to crémant—that’s a champagne-style wine—I want less sugar and more acid, more tannin, so it won’t be as explosive as a regular champagne.”

Once the first run had dribbled to a drip, round blocks were set upon the press’s wooden plate. A pipe, fed into a ratchet and turned, applied enough extra pressure to squeeze every drop of juice from the grapes.

We left in the late afternoon, after the pressing had slowed and three carboys had been filled. The juice will spend a week or two fermenting in the carboys; once the fermentation has thrown off most of the carbon dioxide gas, Bill will transfer the juice to oak barrels to age for a year. 

By next spring, he’ll sample the developing wine and decided whether to bottle it as is or re-ferment it into a sparkling crémant, which will require another year to mature.

Once he builds up an inventory of bottles, Riley hopes to open the winery occasionally (and by appointment) starting in spring 2010. A web site should be up by then. And he’ll have another half-acre of Pinot Noir ready to harvest next year, with new half-acre plantings planned.

Watch for my article on new Vashon vineyards either here or in the Beachcomber soon.

To read about an earlier bottling of Pinot Noir grapes from Monument Farm, see the May 28, 2008 article  ”In Search of the Holy Grail…” and here’s the link:  http://www.pnwlocalnews.com/vashon/vib/lifestyle/19295354.html