Published December 11, 2025
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The Season of Quiet Winemaking
If you visit a winery during harvest time, it’s easy to see, hear, and smell the winemaking activity taking place:
- purple stained winemakers in rubber boots moving quickly from task to task
- forklifts and pumps moving grapes and juice
- the lovely aroma of fermenting wine
This time of year, the winemaking happening at Winter’s Hill is much more quiet, but still very important to the wine you enjoy.
Guiding the Natural Process
Currently, in our barrels and tanks, billions of Oenococcus oeni bacteria are transforming Malic acid into Lactic acid. This natural process helps us achieve just the right balance of acidity: not too tart, but not too soft.
Maintaining the optimum temperature is the easiest way to keep the bacteria healthy and happy, but with dozens of barrels and tanks, each at a different phase of the process, it isn’t so easy after all. This time of year, we play holiday music, but I’m not sure it’s helping. Like other aspects of winemaking, we can steer the process, but we don’t have total control.
For you, the wine drinker, the important part is that we guide the process here at the winery, so it doesn’t happen later on in the bottle. Funky aromas and cloudy or spritzy wines are some of the things we worry about, so you don’t need to!
P.S. Have you seen the recent issue of Oregon Wine Press? We made the cover (!). Take a look as we celebrate five Oregon wine regions which are “Finally Legal” – including the Dundee Hills.
