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June 2018 WINES&VINES 51 WINEMAKING are picked by hand to retain the whole clusters. Farming cost in Knights Valley is about $8,000 per acre. Seidenfeld said Rodney Strong completed a new production win- ery in 2014 and outfitted it with square, stainless steel fermenta- tion tanks by La Garde because they offered a good juice to skin ratio that resulted in wines with structure and soft tannins. It also allowed him to work small-lot fermentations. "We were able to keep all the blocks separate and found something quite special," he said. After a cold soak of about five days, Seidenfeld said he initiates a spontaneous fermentation by warming the tanks. The caps are managed with an automated pumpover system that alters the number and duration of pumpov- ers by Brix. Seidenfeld said he'll run a pumpover every 8 hours until the must hits 15° Brix and then dial that back until around 2° Brix when the wine will get just one 20-minute pumpover. Once dry, the wine then goes through an extended thermal maceration in which the must is kept at 86°F until it's ready to be drained and pressed. Following pressing, Seidenfeld lets the wine settle for 24 hours then splash racks it into barrels. He said the oak program is 100% French with about half new and most of those are the new Vicard Generation 7 barrels built with staves analyzed for tannin content. Seidenfeld said they do seem to offer a more consistent oak impact. "We really like what those barrels do so I took a gamble, and so far we're pretty happy," he said. All of the wine is filtered be- cause Seidenfeld said he's had too many bad experiences from not filtering and his main responsibil- ity is to provide the best product possible. Walla Walla Cab at $50 Adding a little perspective from the Northwest was Casey McClel- lan, winemaker and founder of Seven Hills Winery in Walla Walla, Wash. McClellan produces around 21,000 cases per year and his 2014 single vineyard estate Cab- ernet retails for $50. While Eastern Washington en- joys abundant sunshine and 16- hour days during the growing season, McClellan noted the win- ters can be severe and it's not un- common for ravaging frosts to strike in November. "The balance we have to get at is to grow an adequate crop that is fully ripe by no later than mid-October to avoid the risk of a severe frost event that ends the growing season before you want it to," he said. "In recent years we've experi- enced 76 degrees one day in early November and the next day it was 15," McClellan said. "No vine likes that, and your season is over when that happens. We do a lot of thinking about managing that risk and paying very close attention to heat accumulation during the sea- son and we will aggressively thin to make sure we ripen a crop to Ryan Decker, Rodney Strong Wine Estates