NORTHWEST NOTES
- Moffett family name is a common one in the Nez Perce tribe, including the recent tribal president and the treasurer.
- in history surrounding the 1877 war I found that in that era there was at least one intermarriage that could account for it- of Chief Red Heart, a ‘treaty Indian’, with one Ruth Moffett.
- Our place is located near Wawawai on the Snake River. The name is said to have meant it was a Nez Perce council ground - or it could mean 'place where there are mosquitoes' - which is ironical since I spend the last decade of my research career on an aspect of mosquito physiology.
- we are interlopers on sacred ground.
- I suspect that the Nez Perce spent most of their time near the riverbanks, though, for we have found but two pieces of worked stone in a quarter century.
- The original Wawawai was a little town. There was a ferry across the Snake there and many of the settlers that came here took the Washington branch of the Oregon Trail, crossed the river on the ferry, and ascended out of the canyon to take up land on the prairies. All of that area was inundated by the Lower Granite Dam in the early ‘70s.
- In another irony, there has been a campaign for years to breech the lower Snake River dams to restore salmon runs to a level consistent with the treaty with the Nez Perce that guaranteed their traditional hunting and fishing rights. Our neighbor told us that salmon once spawned in our little creek. When the county paved the road, it set the culvert openings so high up that a salmon would need to be a flying fish to get into our creek to spawn.
- Our winery tasting room is in Uniontown WA. The area thereabouts was settled by German Catholics who built a charming baroque church that is the oldest sanctified church in Washington. Sometimes the local chorale performs there.
- Presently we are in the midst of the wine grape harvest - a little less than half done. It will be an interesting vintage because of the high heat and drought conditions this year, but the syrah that just went to barrel is going to be exceptional.
- We have cabernets franc and sauvignon, and smaller blocks of malbec, petit verdot, carmenere, syrah and sauvignon blanc.
- We like to blend our reds, but also do make pure cab varietals.
- The S. blanc is usually dry but in a few high-sugar years we have finished it off-dry, which made it very appealing to women - those off-dry vintages always sold out.
- Ben, younger son graduated from the wine program at Walla Walla CC and is a very talented and creative winemaker.
- block of cabernet sauvignon
- drink in the aromas of the fermenting grapes
- Wawawai canyon
- 2018 Merlot - reserve wine in that we didn’t bottle all of it at its first maturity, so what you are getting has gotten some additional good years of barrel aging.
- Our vines weren’t in full production at the time we made it, so we were getting grapes from a number of Columbia Valley vineyards. I think this merlot was from Rosebud Ranches near Mattawa WA
- training vines, mowing, spraying (organic or minimal impact fungicide), etc, and trying to fend off deer,
- Nimiipuu in the reservation around Lapwai. One of S's former students is a nurse and she and her husband, who is a forester, are pillars of the tribe. The Nimiipuu are a relatively well organized tribe and now manage the steelhead fishery on the Clearwater and their reservation forests.
- One of the books we read last winter sitting around the Russian stove was The Dying Grass by William Vollman. It is a novelistic account of the 1877 war. It was intensively researched and footnoted and I believe it is quite accurate. It greatly diminishes the importance of Chief Joseph compared with what you learn about him in popular histories. One thing that struck us was the
- immensity of the geography over which the Nimiipuu held sway. It reached from the Wallowas in eastern Oregon almost to the Canadian border.
- It is a beautiful area with every kind of landscape - deep canyons, forested mountains that are high enough to have a subalpine zone, shortgrass prairies, the Snake River and its many tributaries.
- Like all humans, the indigenous peoples of this area exploited environmental resources - but their populations were so small and their technology so appropriate that they were in balance with their environments for thousands of years.
- There were those days when spawned-out salmon littered the banks of the Columbia and Snake, delivering nutrients from the Pacific Ocean to the Bitterroots. Now the nutrients flow in the opposite direction, in the form of sewage, fertilizer run-off and logging waste.
- 2018 Merlot is one of our older reds, although we like to sometimes blend different vintages together to get the complexity of the older wine combined with the fresh fruit aromas.
- 100+ acres of land, and the need to pay taxes on said land. That proved to be labor-intensive and attracted gophers, but a neighbor pointed out that a Frenchman had visited and announced his judgment that classic wine grapes should be grown on the canyon slopes. The perfect high desert climate, with hot days and chilly nights to ripen while retaining the acidity that is so important for longevity.
- spacing, fencing, irrigation, trellising. Grapes are admirable plants, however, and they want to live, no matter what.
- Ben has feeling for the grapes and fermentation process that is uncanny.
- I found that in that era there was at least one intermarriage that could account for it- of Chief Red Heart, a ‘treaty Indian’, with one Ruth Moffett.\
- Our place is located near Wawawai on the Snake River. The name is said to have meant it was a Nez Perce council ground - or it could mean 'place where there are mosquitoes' - which is ironical since I spend the last decade of my research career on an aspect of mosquito physiology.
- I suspect that the Nez Perce spent most of their time near the riverbanks, though, for we have found but two pieces of worked stone in a quarter century.
- The original Wawawai was a little town. There was a ferry across the Snake there and many of the settlers that came here took the Washington branch of the Oregon Trail, crossed the river on the ferry, and ascended out of the canyon to take up land on the prairies. All of that area was inundated by the Lower Granite Dam in the early ‘70s. I
- there has been a campaign for years to breech the lower Snake River dams to restore salmon runs to a level consistent with the treaty with the Nez Perce that guaranteed their traditional hunting and fishing rights. Our neighbor told us that salmon once spawned in our little creek. When the county paved the road, it set the culvert openings so high up that a salmon would need to be a flying fish to get into our creek to spawn. Our winery tasting room is in Uniontown WA. The area thereabouts was settled by German Catholics who built a charming baroque church that is the oldest sanctified church in Washington. Sometimes the local chorale performs there.
- the syrah that just went to barrel is going to be exceptional. I hope we can share some of this with you, as well as our other creations. It would be fun to hear how your interest in wine developed. We have
- cabernets franc and sauvignon, and smaller blocks of malbec, petit verdot, carmenere, syrah and sauvignon blanc.
- We like to blend our reds, but also do make pure cab varietals. The S. blanc is usually dry but in a few high-sugar years we have finished it off-dry, which made it very appealing to women - those off-dry vintages always sold out.
- Ben graduated from the wine program at Walla Walla CC and is a very talented and creative winemaker.