Cutter Cascadia Ashes to Ashes Dolcetto Columbia Gorge WA 750ml

Ashes to Ashes, Columbia Gorge AVA, Oregon 2019

Grape: Dolcetto

Vineyard: von Flotow

Region: Columbia River Gorge AVA, Oregon Elevation: 980 ft

Soil: Oak Grove Loam. Alluvial mudflow deposits over basalt.

Vineyard Planted: 2011 Spacing: 6 x 10

Pruning: Bilateral Spur Farming: Practicing an Organic spray program but not pursuing any certification. No pre-emergent herbicides or synthetic fungicides sprayed at any point.

Notes: Surrounded by pear, cherry and apple orchards in the famed Fruit Loop of Hood River, the von Flowtow vineyard is a small block of Dolcetto planted in 2011 and is just surpassing a half acre in size. The elevation here is close to a thousand feet and is located on the western edge of the rain shadow of the Cascade Range, and with that sees a higher than average rainfall for the Columbia Gorge. Dolcetto, a very sensitive cultivar, is put through a trial each season whether it is frost risk, intense winds, drought in the summer or early rains in the fall. A cooler site for Dolcetto than its native Piedmonte, we get what we can get out of this block from a tonnage perspective, but no matter how much it is, it is never enough. While 2021 was the earliest vintage to date with a very dry and hot year, the Dolcetto had more favorable weather at bloom than Hillside in The Dalles. Fruit set was balanced and crop load not too fried by the intense heat in July and August. The weather leveled out in September, and the vineyard was picked on September 28th after a brief rain. The wine was fermented 20% whole cluster and left on the skins for 18 days. Once pressed and settled, the wine was racked into barrel and left on the lees for 9 ½ months.

Bottled unfiltered and unfined. 25 ppm sulfur added at bottling.

MICHAEL GAROFOLA, PROPRIETOR

I'm originally from Indiana and the Midwest and have been a wine buyer and/or in the restaurant business through out my adult life in Portland, OR, Santa Fe, NM and even way back in Phoenix, AZ and beyond.  The interest in the vineyard and wine making has come to me after years of tasting and focusing on the wines of the world both traditionally made and everything but that. All in all, I have been in love with wines that are possessed with energy and purpose. But when I took some classes some in viticulture everything changed, everything had to be re-calibrated, and I've gotten after it with a similar enthusiasm as when I set out to study wine back so long ago. I source fruit from what I would call micro-leases, where I am present from pruning to harvest and manage each block in accordance to the rhythm of the season and how I feel the best way to express the vintage through the medium of wine. At this moment in my evolution I don’t own any land or machines, but I offer time and ideas. 

While I govern myself with the feeling that wine's most poignant expression is as a narrative that should recall a place and time through one's effort, I would also be a fool to abandon the notion that wine is something to enjoy once in a moment and leave behind forever. It's just wine. In fact, all of the wines from the vineyard will be made for the simple pleasure to drink them and nothing else. Whether or not you derive the sense of place and time from a glass I can't control that nor does that really matter, but all I can do is make the wine through this lens . . . of one who values the simplicity of nature and yet the often confounding and beautiful way that that happens. There will be some experiments along the way. It could be an epic failure but it will be true and if it all lines up ok, it'll with any luck make you feel something. 

I am an aggregate of all my crushing errors, ennui, small victories, narrow misses and am the metamorphism of said forces. A wine can in its way be this way too if not fussed around with too much or put on an altar. I want it to be fun to drink the wines. I want them to be alive. From my perspective, nothing else really matters, but they aren't mine anymore once they're in your hands.

MG

https://www.cutterwine.com