New to me Grenache — Orr Wines

My 2021 Grenache is for sale! This vintage is different from years past because it’s a blend of two sustainably farmed Royal Slope grenache vineyards.

I’ve been working with the grenache vines at Stillwater creek vineyard since 2016. Thanks to your support, my wines have been selling out quickly. I wanted to increase production in 2021 but the fruit at Stillwater is so allocated I can’t get any more than two tons from this site. So I was on the hunt for another grenache vineyard.

Thankfully the Lawrence family had grenache available to sell to me from their ranch called Corfu Crossing. It’s sustainably farmed and within the Royal Slope American Viticultural Area. And the wines coming from that block are delicious!

The vineyard manager for Lawrence Vineyards is an interesting guy named Matias Kusulas. He was a lieutenant in the Chilean Navy before he went to study agricultural engineering at the University of Chile. He went on to post-graduate work in viticulture and enology in France at the Universities of Bordeaux and Montpellier and he worked at wineries and vineyards in Chile, New Zealand and the northern Rhone before coming to Washington state. He’s both a viticulturalist and winemaker. A very knowledgeable dude who I am hoping to learn a lot from going forward.

The Royal Slope is a relatively young farming area and was only named as an AVA in 2020. Before that we called the winegrapes from that region Columbia Valley. Royal City is the closest town - midway between Seattle and Spokane, just northeast of the Wahluke Slope AVA and southeast of the Ancient Lakes of Washington AVA. Driving around Royal City, you see a lot of signs for Lawrence orchards. In addition to wine grapes, the Lawrence farm produces apples, cherries, hay, wheat, dried beans and other crops. I rarely have a chance to hang out in Royal City because I’m usually in a big hurry to either haul west back to the lab or to drive south to check out Yakima Valley chenin blanc vineyards. The Lawrence family recently opened a pub I’d love to try.

The climate is a semi-arid desert with only 6-8 inches of precipitation annually. Royal City was founded after irrigation water became available from the Grand Coulee Dam by way of the Columbia Basin Irrigation Project in the late 1950s. But before then, way back in the early 1900s, there was a train station and small community there called Corfu.

Corfu Crossing vineyard is named for this old ghost town near Royal City. I drive by this creepy old cemetery on my way to the grenache block. Ghost towns of Washington