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W i n e s & V i n e s n O V e M B e R 2 0 1 4 91 W I N E M A K I N G only use water up to 100° F, and no high pressure, ozone or caustics. Alkalines are all we can clean with. We do use soda ash to burn off tartrates and sodium percarbonate products to help with sanitation. We have yet to put a drop of red into our two tanks, but maybe in the future we will look at a designated red concrete tank. W&V : The Buty wines generally have modest alcohol levels. How do you achieve that? Dowsett: Buty has always been known as a winery that aims toward balance, com- plexity and richness in our wines, without sacrificing acidity or bringing excess alco- hol heat. Most of our work to keep alco- hol levels in control is in the vineyards. We chose sites that produce grapes with our concept of ripeness, without having to go to 27° Brix (and beyond). We do not add water, acid or sugar, or use any mechanical alcohol-reduction methods. We also handle fruit from differ- ent areas with individual methods. Our Cabernet Sauvignon from the Horse Heaven Hills tends to produce some of our bigger, riper wines. These wines we ferment in wooden Taransaud upright tanks. We believe that the warmer fer- ments we get with these wines not only help with tannin control, they also blow off some alcohol from the large tank openings. We also use a food-grade com- pressor to inject air into the fermentors of Bordeaux varieties to do the same. We use the air to soften tannins, feed the yeast some oxygen, drive out excess carbon dioxide and help break up the cap—but we do believe it does help blow off some of that alcohol. The wines we make from the Stones area of the Walla Walla AVA tend to reach flavor maturity at much lower Brix. We find that these vines growing on deep cobblestones can often have brown seeds at 19° Brix, and the flavors we are look- ing for at 21°-24° Brix. We ferment these reds cool in small fermentors to hold in aromas and flavors. Our Rediviva of the Stones blend (Syrah, Cabernet Sauvignon and, lately, Mourvedre) has only once in the recent vintages ended up finishing over 14% ABV. We have also found that it is important for us to keep our cellar from drying out too much. Our Columbia Rediviva sees two years in barrel and can creep up in alcohol from concentration if the humid- ity gets too low. W&V : Do you filter any of your wines? Dowsett: The white wines made here at Buty are almost always only partially complete with malolactic fermentation. This is one of the ways we can balance acidity to make a consistent acid mouth- feel on wines that may come from very different vintages. For this reason, we do filter all our whites to make them biologi- cally stable. We have a lenticular filter from Filtrox that uses the stacks of media discs. We prefer the sealed environment to open pad filters for keeping oxygen pickup down. Our reds we try to filter as little as pos- sible. We are not anti-filtration, we just prefer to interfere as little as possible with the wine. Our Conner Lee Vineyard Mer- lot and Cabernet Franc bottling is always the first wine of the vintage bottled, at about 13 months in barrel. This wine may need a bit more polishing to be pretty in the glass than our Columbia Rediviva blend that sees over 20 months in barrel. With the advances in cross-flow filtration technology, we have been researching some of the machines available from mobile ser- vices. The newer machines run at very low pressures, and are all done under inert gas. I find the lenticular filter very gentle, but if I need two different grades to get a wine stable, it means two passes. Cross-flow fil- tration is now a one-pass process. We may be cross-flow filtering in the future. W&V : You're working with Cabernet Sau- vignon and Syrah from both The Rocks District of Milton-Freewater in the Walla Walla Valley and from Horse Heaven Hills, which are very different areas. Do you vinify the fruit differently? Dowsett: One of the initial intentions of Buty Winery was to make a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon and Syrah from dis- tinctive Washington state sites. After working the first year with fruit from Champoux Vineyard in the Horse Heaven Hills, and Christophe Baron's Cailloux Vineyard in Walla Walla, we in search of Muscadelle o ne relatively obscure variety that Chris Dowsett works with at Buty is Musc- adelle, a traditional but minor component of the white wines of Bordeaux. "One goal from the founding of the win- ery was to use all three of the white grapes of Bordeaux," Dowsett says. But that was easier said than done, because there's not much Muscadelle in Washington state. It wasn't until 2007 that the Buty team was able to find some: 1.3 acres of clone 1 Muscadelle in Yakima Valley at Lonesome Spring Ranch. "At the time, it was the only vineyard in Washington state with plantings of Muscadelle, all of which was going to Buty," Dowsett says. He explains that the vineyard is on a sloping, south-facing hillside, and the Muscadelle is planted in sand and silt on top of basalt rock. "This free-draining section of Muscadelle produces an incredible expres- sion of the varietal, offering high-tone floral perfume notes and amazing acid that can balance with the richness of the Semillon," he says. "Because Yakima Valley is some- what cooler, and Lonesome Spring has excellent air drainage, our Muscadelle retains wonderful natural acidity." L.D.