Subject: [PV-Friends] May newsletter
Date: Tue, 13 May 2008 11:47:11 -0700

Perennial Vintners In this issue:
 ▪ Winery - New wine - Madeleine Angevine
 ▪ Vineyard - new planting - Morales parcel
 ▪ Vineyard - new planting - at BIVW
Newsletter -- May-2008  ▪ Volunteers desperately needed next few weekends
(Click here to view in HTML on website)
 ▪ Website - Vineyards page updates
http://www.PerennialVintners.com/  ▪ New Seattle outlet - north end

(Click on any image below to go to website with more information/larger image/etc.)

Winery - New wine - Madeleine Angevine
As you may recall from our October 2007 newsletter, last year in working with BIVW, we added a small block (about 160 plants) of Madeleine Angevine to our "holdings" at the Day Road vineyard and harvested our first crop 2007.  The wine is shaping up nicely -- it will be a clean expression of fruit, fermented and finished in stainless steel.  We anticipate bottling this in early June, availability expected in time for Thanksgiving.  (Interested in helping out with bottling? -- please consider joining our volunteers email list.)  Our label artist, Dianne Gardner has consented to do a new piece for this label too!

Vineyard - new planting - Morales parcel
This is the biggest news from Perennial Vintners since our first release of wine!  We have just finished preparing an adjacent block of property for additional vineyard plantings.  This block is easily visible from SR-305 -- it's the "Morales" parcel immediately below our own Melon vineyard.  The property is owned by the City of Bainbridge Island, bought in an open-space bond, and is reserved for agricultural use.  The block we'll be working is approximately a half acre, which almost doubles our area of grapes.  There are other operations on the property, namely two organic vegetable producers.  This will be additional Melon de Bourgogne.

Vineyard - new planting - at BIVW
What's better than a new vineyard?  TWO NEW VINEYARDS, yeah!  We are also starting up on a block on the BIVW property where Akio pulled out a block of raspberries last Autumn.   This is a north-facing slope, thus a little cooler, so we'll be planting Siegerrebe here.  Interested in helping out with planting?  Please read on...

Volunteers desperately needed next few weekends!
As described above, we have a huge task ahead of us in the next few weeks, planting two half-acre parcels.  I'm going to need all the bodies I can get!  We'll be pulling year-old grape starts out of the nursery and planting them, plus putting up the deer fence, setting up an irrigation system, and planting this years cuttings into the nursery bed for next year.  It looks like the weather won't be too hot which is good for the plants and us planters!  We expect to be working all day, possibly both days of each weekend for the next 4, with the exception of Sat 24th as we're at the Bainbridge Farmer's Market that day.  If you're willing to help out, please reply to this email and let Mike know your availability.  As we have many events like this each year, we'd love to have you join our "helpers" email list: "Our Newsletter" click "PV-Helpers".

Website - Vineyards page updates
I've added some photos of this Spring.  It's been an unusually cold an strange weather year.  There's also some photos of the areas for the new vineyard plantings (described above).

New Seattle outlet - north end
We have a new outlet in the North Seattle area as of April -- The Vineyard Wine Shop.  They're in the Greenwood neighborhood (north of the zoo on Phinney Ridge, near Wingdome and antique shops).  They brought our wines in for a casual Puget Sound wines tasting -- this thrills me as it's a chance for people to get to know cool climate wines.  We're honored to be there with other Puget Sound AVA producers.  The shop doesn't have a website; their contact info is: Patrick Anderson, 8218 Greenwood Ave. N. 206-706-7349.