A taste for the grape

QUINCY - The tour starts with a bumpy ride up a gravel road through the White Heron vineyards.

This is one of the tours, Chet Pedersen, the Farmer-Consumer Awareness Day Committee chair, said form the heart of the event. Farmer-Consumer Awareness Day is an annual celebration in Quincy and took place over the weekend.

Once the bus comes to a stop, about 10 people walk out into the middle of the vineyard which overlooks the Columbia River. Cameron Fries, the winery's owner, said he chose this spot because the river and the hill keep the vines warmer in the winter, when a cold night could kill the plant back to its root.

"You want to be on a hillside because cold air is heavier," he said. "You could purchase land around here, before Crescent Bar (became popular), for $1,000 an acre."

He said the land wasn't irrigated when he arrived there, and that cost another $1,000 an acre, putting the price about $800 more than what land was going for at the time.

"I decided an $800 premium was worth it," he said.

The grapes needed a bit more time to ripen, he said. They usually wait until the juice has a 26 percent sugar content. To tell whether the grapes are ready, they crush the berries and look through a lens. Then they double-check in a lab, Fries said.

"I get to work in a lab, so it makes me feel intelligent," he said.

Fries leads the group around the side of the winery. Behind it stands a machine where the stems are taken off of the grapes, and they are crushed. Depending on the type of wine, the skins are either left with the juice, or they are taken off.

Either way, the juice is then placed in casks. He then leads the group into a storehouse, where oak casks are piled, all of them containing wine. Fries said he uses old oak barrel, which don't flavor the wine because he likes it better that way.

As the wine ferments, it lets off carbon dioxide, which fills the enclosed space that the wine is stored in, he said.

"In the morning, I have to open the doors and let it air out," he said. "Every year, some people die from carbon dioxide poisoning."

In the corner, is the bottling station, which can produce as much as 400 cases of wine in a day. The number can change depending on how quickly they're working, he said.

"Bottling is the only job that everybody volunteers for," Fries said. "Because they get to take home a bottle at the end of the day."