St. Josef's Winery

Join us for our new spring 2011 releases!

CarlM — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 20:21:00 +0000

Here are some of our newest releases and family favorites !

Kitara 2007 Barrel Select Pinot Noir-
Don’t be fooled by some snobby ’wine critics’ that call the 2007 Oregon vintages light and without body. This barrel select (from our favorite 6 barrels) is rich, deep and full of dark fruit and mellow tannins. We let it age in the bottle for over 2 years to help it create a new character and soften up. If you like a Pinot Noir with a little bit of punch this is a fine wine for you! Come and enjoy- we made just over 120 cases and it’s currently only available in the tasting room! It’s on special for $20/bottle!

2010 Pinot Rose’-
light, bright & full of fruit this is a fine sipping wine for the summer or spring or whenever. Made with our Estate Pinot Noir in the traditional style, where the juice is drained off from the skins to leave a lovely pink color. Enjoy- we made 79 cases….
available at the winery $12/bottle

2006 KB Winemaker’s Red Blend
This full bodied Cabernet based blend is made from grown by our friends at Layne Vineyard in Southern Oregon- where we have been partnering on making big, bold wines since 1985. Enjoy the lush dark raspberry and vanilla overtones and long tobacco finish. Aged for nearly 3 years on French and Hungarian Oak to settle out and mature.
68 cases made.
available at the winery $25/bottle

2009 L’Esprit Gewurztraminer-
Add a little spritz to your life! Our first ever screw cap is specially made to hold in extra carbonation since this wine has a nice little spritz of bubbles! Lovely tropical fruit aromas and light spiciness make this a winery favorite! Available at the winery and at your local store for around $10 a bottle…

The 2008 St Josef’s Pinot Noir is now on the shelf in your local store. We’ve got these fancy new bottles and labels to go with the beautiful wine. It’s medium bodied, ruby in color, with cherry up front and vanilla on the finish. The San Francisco Chronicle calls the 2008 Pinot Noirs the ‘vintage of a decade’. Pick up a bottle & let us know what you think!

Hello fall- it is wine time!

CarlM — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 21:25:30 +0000

The two weeks that we had for summer have flown by! Now everyone is asking how the grapes are doing this year. As I look out to the vineyard I see that we are starting to develop some nice fruit. However- we are about 2 weeks behind due to the ‘June-urary’ weather. So instead of starting our harvest in mid September we will push it back until the beginning of October.

So keep your fingers crossed for beautiful sunny Indian summer weather from now until November.

What else is new? We have released three new vintages in the past few weeks. Look for the beautiful new 2008 Estate Pinot Noir. Grown from our much sought after 30year old vines this wine is full of ripe berry fruit and very long, smooth finish. Only 5 months in the bottle now- it is drinking nicely and will only get better! We also released our latest Chardonnay- again all estate grown. Lovely light fruit bouquet with crisp finish. Very nice! Last & not least we are now into our 2009 Pinot Gris- and yes- it is all estate grown fruit as well. (are you sensing a theme?). It is quite good- bottled last week it is crisp, light and fun. Probably my favorite Pinot Gris in the past 5 vintages. Come out & enjoy with us!

White wines & roses…enjoy Portland!

CarlM — Mon, 24 May 2010 23:41:53 +0000

It is spring in Oregon…that means little league tournaments in 50 degree weather combined with hail & rain. Many of my friends from across the country think we’re crazy for living here! But we in the wine business know the truth. When we get one sunny day we take advantage of it and we ignore the other days as just being normal weather. And yes- we have great wines to help us ease the pain of living somewhere sunny, warm, crowded and conventional.

We have been working on a blended white wine since early fall & now we have finally released it. Winemaker Josef has put together a crisp, aromatic wine that contains five of the varietals that we grow in our estate vineyards. This lovely combination of Pinot Gris, Chardonnay, Riesling with a little bit of Gewurztraminer & Sauvignon Blanc is everything we’ve hoped for. Layers of interesting fruit & evergreen notes on the nose, subtle fruit & smoothness in the mid-palette and a long dry finish. Great for sipping & sharing. It is called “Lilli” and is named for ‘the boss’ and matriarch of the family.

Currently only available in the tasting room & wine club- come on out & try it!

Spring has sprung- get into some healthy red wine….

CarlM — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 19:47:03 +0000

Spring is here at the winery. The trees are blooming and some of the flowers are coming up. What does that mean for the grapes? Not much yet….we are looking forward to an early spring though. An early spring will usually help the vines ripen early in October or maybe late September. In the Willamette Valley the longer we let the fruit hang- the darker and richer the flavors tend to be on the reds- particularly Pinot Noir. Of course we have nearly 8 months to go until harvest and you can’t count your grapes before they hatch (or is that eggs?).

In other news the 2008 Pinot is a month or two away from release. Nice dark fruit, with cherry overtones and lighter oak was our style for this vinetage. A very nice wine and we are all looking forward to it! Also we have are just about to release the Kitara barrel select 2007 Pinot Noir and will be tasting during our St Josef’s Day Fest on April 10 & 11th. While we were worried that the 07 wouldn’t hold it’s own with the other barrel selects- I have to say this is one of my favorites! Really elegant, burgundy style (red subtle fruit with great oak balance & long finish)- not new world fruity & slight.

Come on out & join us…

Also- if you didn’t know that RED WINE is EVEN HEALTHIER than BEFORE- check out the attached article. Red & White wines actually can help you keep from putting on a few pounds (I guess that’s why you don’t see large french people).. This is from wine spectator but also published via NPR, NY Times and even the Bombay (India) News.

http://www.winespectator.com/webfeature/show/id/42294

News Years Wine resolutions- let’s barrel through

admin — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 17:22:14 +0000

As it says in the old commercial- we will sell no wine before it’s time. The 2008 Pinot Noir has been bottled after carefully aging it for just over 12 months in French and Hungarian Oak. (we even tested one barrel of homegrown Oregon oak). The 2008 wines are darker and fuller than 2007- with much more black ripe fruit and vanilla textures. 2008 is a totally different wine – mother nature sure is interesting-otherwise we’d be making & selling the same thing every year- which isn’t as much fun. We will start to release the 2008 vintage around May- after tasting the bottles on a bi-weekly basis to see when they are ready to go….get ready!

But not all barrels are the same. For the 3rd year in a row we are making some fun & fantastic special ‘batches’ of Pinot that are not normally available to the general public. In 2003 we made 4 barrels of “Starling Hill” which we just released this fall. Rich, dark & jubilant! For the 2007 vintage which was generally light & more fruity we made 2 barrels (that’s right – just two) of a really exquisite ruby red which we will release in this fall to our wine club & special guests. This year we convened a fun crew of ‘expert’ tasters to run through our favorite 24 barrels out of the 200 in the cellar. We’ve come up with 9 barrels of lovely, full ‘cherry bomb’ Pinot for the 2008 Kitara Reserve. That’s only a couple of hundred cases of really special wine.

In addition the tasters found out about our special lot from one section of our estate hillside vineyards. Since we keep track of these grapes we know when & where the barrels were harvested, how they were fermented & aged. Well rows 2-11 in the ‘Starling Hill” vineyard have struck again!

Our tasters were fixated on how different- richer, fuller, more unique a couple of barrels were for the 2008 harvest. So we’ve decided to do two special bottlings- each just two barrels or about 20 cases each. These will be bottled in a week to be released in 18 months or there abouts. (remember the wine let’s us know when it’s ready- not us).

The fun thing about having a small family business is that you can do things that people suggest that you do- and have fun with it. Hopefully you will get a chance to come by and taste some of these wines.

Coming up- Valentines Dinner with 5 course wine pairing on Feb 13th

Thanksgiving is over- now it’s time for holiday wine & cheers….(and Syrah)

admin — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 18:02:03 +0000

Yeah! We lived through the H1n1 AND the Thanksgiving weekend all while enjoying some good times & good wines! While many folks tour the Willamette Valley and get soaked in tasting fees and crowds- we are lucky enough to be off the beaten path. Meaning fewer folks and more time to hobnob. The family ‘worked’ the tasting room this past weekend- as we always do. And when I say ‘worked’ I mean its a privilege to be able to have an alternate lifestyle than what corporate America allows. Here we are- chatting up visitors from all over the place while sampling our Estate grown wines and enjoying life.

Over the past year we have watched our small bottlings (most in the 100-300 case range) grow & develop into new wines. The 2004 Kitara Syrah started out as a deep, tart, peppery wine. Now it has matured and mellowed in the bottle creating a rustic, Rhone style wine with complex dark fruit & long tobacco finish. A different wine from just a year ago- and it will grow to be a different wine next year. Syrah is a fabulous grape and grows into a different character based on the soils and climate. Our cool climate here in the Willamette Valley is nicely suited to a more earthy version and does more than compliment it’s Syrah cousins grown in the hotter locals of Paso Robles or the Columbia Valley. If you haven’t had a Willamette Valley Syrah yet- try one. We aren’t the only ones that have planted some Syrah to take advantage of a great grape in a great growing region. So try some - before they get too popular.

Harvest is over- now it’s time for wine tasting in Oregon

admin — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 15:49:40 +0000

The fog is thick across the valley this morning- but thankfully we have just finished picking our 2009 harvest. And it a word- ‘fantabulous’! We started harvesting this year about a week early- and since we had a long dry summer and warm dry fall the sugar is quite nice. It is really something to have both great quality fruit and enough of it to make some really unique wines. In 2008 we had great fruit- however the late spring caused the vineyards in the Willamette Valley to have half the harvest of a normal year.

Next up on the agenda is getting the reds through fermentation- (we’re about halfway) and starting to rack off the whites. Come on out & see what’s happening at our crush pad patio. You can even sample some of our white wines that are halfway through fermenting. In Germany its called Nue-Wine (new wine) and it’s like drinking a NW Heffeweizen beer- cloudy & cool. While it’s sounds weird to many ‘winos’ it is actually a normal occurance in a winery- you need to taste the product while its evolving though it’s life.

Stop on by & enjoy!

What’s going on during the harvest here in Portland Pinot Noir land…

admin — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 09:57:54 +0000

We’ve had a long strange summer here. Not just long because my kids have finally gone back to school, but long due to the incredible heat days that we have had in the vineyard. What started out as a slow wet spring has evolved into a grand summer and fall-so far. We are now about 6 days early for the harvest. We are picking & crushing Pinot Noir all this week, since we’ve picked the Gewurztraminer first as we do in most years. We’ve hit over 23 brix in the sugar content on the Pinot – which is really outstanding and hopefully the weather will continue to cooperate.

We are excited for the crush as we have upgraded our equipment and redesigned the crush area. Our new destemmer is made especially for Pinot Noir and it gently releases the grapes without crushing them. So we have a more gentle touch and extraction. Come on out & watch the ‘action’ on the new ‘crush pad patio’ with a glass of wine & picnic. (please don’t feed the animals- or winemakers). Since we estate grow nearly 90% of our own fruit we can be crushing literally minutes after the grapes are harvested. It makes for a long day- but the payout is great as our affordable wines have continued to win praise and awards from the wine community.

The harvest season lasts through October and we will be sampling some of the fresh white wines – called Neu Wein in German (ones that are still going through fermentation) in 4-5 weeks. It’s like a Hefeweizen beer but better- it’s made with 100% fruit- not water & hops. Give us a call & we’ll keep you up to date.

It harvest time in wine country- that means time to stomp grapes!

admin — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 16:28:26 +0000

Here we are just a half hour south of Portland getting ready for the “crush”. It is a fun, but strenuous time in the winemaking cycle- but it doesn’t have to be too serious!

We were founded by European immigrants Josef & Lilli who knew that getting to harvest is a lot of long hours and hard work. So they brought a little bit of European fun into the season by hosting a “GrapeStomping” festival to kick off the harvest. What started with friends and neighbors having a glass and stomping in a metal milk buckets has evolved into a nearly famous good time. The 27th annual Grapestomping Festival - occurs this weekend Sept 26 & 27thfrom 12-6. The fest is complete with a Bavarian Band playing some great music (it’s not all chicken dancing), 400lbs of St Josef’s special recipe bratwurst, homemade kraut, wine tasting, stomping in an 800 gallon oak barrel and much more.

Come on out for some fun and to taste our special Willamette Valley reserve wines. We will have all of our current releases and reserves open for tasting this weekend including the highly regarded 2003 KB Cabernet and multiple award winning ‘03 KB Merlot. And to make sure everyone knows how good 2003 really was- we are finally ready to sell our ‘03 Kitara “Starling Hill” Pinot Noir. This single block vinetage from one of our southwest facing hillsides was made from an outstanding year- and unfortunately a year that the birds ate nearly everything in sight. We were able to salvage only a few tons of fruit from our best hillside lot and made only 100 or so cases. It has aged nearly 3 years in the bottle and is now fully ripe- great cherry on the nose with a long lingering finish of fine tobacco & smoke. Absolutely lovely.

Come on out & try some Oregon Pinot Noir that is worth the price- not overpriced.

Wine reviews and good tasting!

admin — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 15:50:31 +0000

Yea! We just got a nice write-up in the WIllamette Valley Press- a magazine pullout from Salem. They compared Pinot Noirs- St Josef’s to the French mega-snob super famous winery. And guess who got the better review? THats right- St Josef’s 2007 Pinot Noir. We are proud of our family tradition and we’re glad other people like our style of wine too.

If you haven’t tried the 2007 Pinot Noir- you should. Some people think the 2007 Pinots are really light- and they are. But that’s what makes them fun to drink. They are light, easy on the tounge and not trying to be something they are not. Like Big & Bold. Heck- it’s 90+ degrees at the winery today and a big ol cabernet is a great thing to drink- but not this pm. No Way- it’s a Pinot Day!

The harvest is coming up- look for the next post as we will be harvesting next week!