SEQUIM — It’s the exciting time of year for winemakers such as David Volmut, who is crushing thousands of pounds of grapes to make wine that will see its sipping time in 2013.
“Wine really teaches you patience,” Volmut said while watching the mechanical grape “bladder press” slowly and gently crush the juice out of Primitivo grapes, a large bin of which was waiting nearby Monday for the annual press.
“This is the fun part,” he added. “This is Day One going forward. You’re working for the grapes.”
He is crushing about 15 tons of grapes, a mixture of Barbera, Dolcetto, Nebbiolo, Orange Muscat, Pinot Grigio and Viognier.
It has involved a lot of planning and 14- to 18-hour work days, he said.
It is Volmut’s first crush on the North Olympic Peninsula — his fourth time in Washington — and he is doing it at Olympic Cellars, 255410 U.S. Highway 101 near O’Brien Road.
Kathy Charlton, owner and manager of Olympic Cellars, is to thank; she loaned him the equipment.
Volmut, owner of Wind Rose Cellars of Sequim, periodically tastes the juice to make sure there is not too much astringency — that harsh, bitter taste that comes from grape seeds.
The juice is pumped out of the bottom of the press into a portable 330-gallon tank on the back of Volmut’s pickup truck.
He will truck the future wine to age in barrels at his home in Sequim.
But he had to find a location and equipment for the crush.
“I was looking for a place to do it, and Kathy was open to it,” he said.
Charlton said she was happy to loan the equipment to Volmut because her own winemaker was away on sabbatical leave, and the equipment was not being used anyway.
Charlton’s grapes are being crushed in Walla Walla, she said.
But even if they weren’t, she would help Volmut, she added.
“Making wine takes a lot of time and a lot of money,” she said, adding that she would continue to help Volmut.
“It’s just great that [the equipment] is getting used.”
Volmut will continue crushing Primitivo grapes at Olympic Cellars today, he said. Anyone interested in watching the process and asking questions can drop by.
His winery will be the ninth member of the Olympic Peninsula Wineries group from Port Angeles to Port Townsend by the time of the Red Wine & Chocolate event Feb. 11-12 and Feb. 18-20, Charlton said.
The other eight wineries in the group crush grapes from Eastern Washington, Charlton said.
Volmut is unique this year in that this is his first crush on the Peninsula.
After letting the grapes ferment almost nine days, Volmut started dumping grapes into the press for crushing over the weekend.
It drew a number of questions from curious visitors to Olympic Cellars.
Volmut, who learned the craft in Eastern Washington at Yakima Valley Community Colleges viticulture and enology school in Grandview and interned at Olsen Estates Winery in Prosser, is producing Italian-style wines.
Those are what his family drank when he was growing up, he fondly recalled.
Volmut, who along with his wife and winery partner, Jennifer States, moved in January to Sequim from the Tri-Cities area in Eastern Washington, joined other wineries and cideries now established across the Peninsula.
States, who worked for the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, now works for PNNL’s Sequim Marine Research Operation, also known as Battelle, in relationship management for renewable energy.
Wind Rose Cellars’ tasting room is at 155 W. Cedar St., Suite B in Sequim, and Volmut said his Bravo Rosso, made from grapes grown at vineyards on Wahluke Slope and Coyote Canyon-Horse Heaven Hills, and the Barbera Rose, from Wahluke Slope, Columbia Valley and Red Mountain grapes, are selling well in Seattle.
Volmut opened the Wind Rose Cellars tasting room in July.
He said he hopes to market his wines more locally and is releasing two new wines Nov. 12: a 2009 Barbera of grapes from Red Mountain and a 2009 Nebbiolo from Wahluke Slope. Both wines are being aged for 22 months in oak barrels.
“Both have a big, bold flavor and are good with food or just to drink,” he said, calling them “the Cabernet of Italy.”
Wind Rose Cellars now produces about 700 cases a year, and Volmut said he plans to produce a maximum of 1,200 cases a year.
The tasting room’s hours are from noon to 6 p.m. Fridays through Mondays, and Wind Rose sells online to Washington, Oregon, California and Washington, D.C.
The tasting room will remain open until Christmas.
More information can be found at www.windrosecellars.com, at the winery’s Facebook page or by emailing wine@windrosecellars.com.
The wineries in the Olympic Peninsula Wineries group are Olympic Cellars, Harbinger, Camaraderie Cellars and Black Diamond in Port Angeles; Fairwinds, Sorensen Cellars and Eaglemount Wine & Cider in Port Townsend; and Finnriver Farm & Cidery in Chimacum.
For more information on the Olympic Peninsula Wineries, visit www.olympicpeninsulawineries.org.
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Jeff Chew can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at jeff.chew@peninsuladailynews.com.
