PAETRA Willamette Valley MONDAY (Bottling day) ROLL ON!

I want to sincerely thank all of you for your support! This has been an amazing day and everyone who has ordered has absolutely and drastically helped Paetra for our coming year. Berserker Day has really become our black Sunday! It’s such an amazing outlet for us to operate on the scale that we do. I thank you, my family thanks you! Thank you Todd for all of his work in putting this together.

I hope that you all visit anytime you’re here! Hit me up! Please reach out with any questions. I’m always available!

I’ll keep the offers open until tomorrow night as I need to get home to sleep for an early bottling.

Thanks again!
Bill

Hi All,

I’m excited once again to be a part of this day! I can’t stress enough how BD has become a very important part of our year and I want to thank everyone for their support throughout the last few years. For a small winery without a proper tasting room and 90% distribution, this is a huge deal for us. Thank you, Thank you! I hope you like the offers!

BD#1 and BD#2 are limited and I’ll need to monitor and pull if inventory runs out. #3 is a PRESELL in that the wines will be bottled literally tomorrow Jan 28th(!) and I have pretty good supply on them. I’ve posted info on our history, farming and production methods below but please don’t hesitate to reach out with questions either through the site, email, or by phone. I’ll be available all day. Thanks again!

BD OFFER #1: 2014 Paetra Riesling Eola-Amity Hills Off-Dry (Feinherb) $39 6pk ($6.66 /btl)

Here’s the screaminest deal of this offer. I’m too far forward on current vintages to make it a distribution wine so here we go!

This was one of the wines from my first vintage in Oregon. It’s a bit of a departure from the style that I’ve gravitated towards, but it’s a delicious wine in it’s own right. The idea behind this was to make a pre-WWII German style Riesling. This wine was harvested over three passes starting on Sept 15th and ending on November 1st 2014. The passes were fermented separately, mostly in neutral oak and then blended shortly before bottling. The different harvests showed a drastically different fruit profile starting with bright apricot with strong floral aromas. The second pass showed a lot of the mirabelle plum and peach that is most typical of the N90 clone from which it comes, and the third was a totally crazy fresh fig and spice bomb that definitely shows in the finished wine. I oxidized the must at the press-pan for all three passes and they were fermented using native yeast and zero additives until some SO2 at bottling. I racked the wine several times throughout the elevage to increase the savor and vinousity of the wine. It’s a single vineyard wine, but the three passes provided a more complete picture of the vintage instead of just a snapshot as a single pass might. It has loads of fruit and a Christmas spice character that I love. It’s off-dry at 19g/L RS which throws it in the Halbtrocken/Feinherb range. It’s green-tinged in color and because of the pre-press must oxidation is pretty bullet-proof for aging. I think it’s a great representation of the historic style and I tried very hard to honor that. After extensively studying the production methods of that time period, I think its pretty close. Beyond all of that, it’s delicious.

I would like to keep some for the library but have about 60 cases I’d like to sell. If we blast through that, I’ll peel off a few more. There is no hurry to drink this this and I’d love for you all to follow the development of it over the next 8-10 years.

90 Pts. David Schildknecht to boot!

12% Alc. 19g/L RS

BD Offer #2: 2017 Paetra Riesling 6-pk $110 (REG $160) 31% off

I am so proud of the 2017 vintage. It’s my best yet. Stylistically, I think these will give Germany and Austria a run for the money.

2017 Paetra Riesling Elwetritsche Reserve Eola-Amity Hills Dry (2 Bottles)

The name Elwetritsche comes from the mythical beasts that are said to inhabit the Haardt Mountains around the city of Neustadt an der Weinstraße where we used to live and I went to school. This dry Riesling is an homage to the German Pfalz and the style of wine that has become the standard bearer for the region. It was hand-harvested, given 24 hours pre-press skin maceration and fermented without commercial yeast or chemical additions. It is a powerful, yet elegant style of riesling and it’s our best wine to date. It is very dry, but with juicy white peach, grapefruit, spice, white tea, mirabelle plum and beautiful floral aromas. I’m down to our last dozen cases of it and am proud to get it in front of you. You could say GG in style and I’d happily throw it into a blind tasting that included some of the best from Germany.

13% alc, 4 g/l RS, 7,5 g/l TA (94 case production)

2017 Paetra Riesling Yamhill-Carlton Dry (2 Bottles)

This is the first offer of the 2017 Yamhill-Carlton Riesling which was just bottled. I only made 72 cases of it and it’s the best vintage yet of this wine. Those of you who have bought this wine in the past will notice how mush more crystaline it is in '17. It retains the extract and fresh profile of the past vintages but is significantly drier. It tastes remarkably like Austrian Riesling Federspiel and I’m extremely confident that it would show well in the company of those wines. This was the last pick of 2017 (a coolish vintage for sure) and even at completely dry registers at just above 11% Alc. It was picked the day before Halloween, hand harvested to remove all but the driest botrytis, gently pressed and fermented in neutral oak where it was left Sur-Lie for almost a year before bottling. This vineyard is north-facing in a forest clearing and hence a very cool site. I’ve been working hard to revive it by bringing in lots of biodiversity and trying to revitalize the Willakenzie soil. It was made without commercial yeast, acid, sugar, or chemical adds.

11% alc, <1g/l rs (72 case production)

2017 Paetra Riesling Willamette Valley ‘K’ (Kabinett) (2 Bottles)

Like the Elwetritsche, I am very nearly sold out of this wine but have a few cases on hand until the 2018 is bottled. This is the first couple of harvest passes from our Yamhill-Carlton and Eola-Amity Hills sites co-fermented in stainless-steel. The soils are calcium-rich seabed and wind-blown loess on a sandy clay and from two different riesling clones (N90 and a Geisenheim clone). It was fermented spontaneously and left sur-lie for 6 monthes before bottling. The 2017 vintage is drier than the previous vintage and more mineral. Apple and pear fruit, wild flower and chamomile aromas with a salty sea-spray minerality as always and pronounced acidity. Perfect for a dry kabinett for me. This is our flagship riesling and the last chance to fill out your vertical of BD Paetra Riesling K.

11.5% Alc, 5g/L rs

BD#3 2018 Spring Release PRESELL 6pk $100 (REG $150) 33% off

2018 Paetra Pinot Noir Rose Eola-Amity Hills (2 bottles)

This is a wine that I (stupidly!) don’t get the chance to offer directly to consumers as it immediately sells out to distributors. I treat this as an equal to all of our wines and don’t cut corners just because it’s Rose. It has no saigne juice in it as we do a separate pass in our Pinot Noir Block (clones 777, Wädenswil, 828) to keep the acid lively, the fruit vibrant and the alcohol low. It is fermented spontaneously in neutral oak after 4 hours pre-press skin maceration with native yeast long and cool. It’s the first to be picked and the last to finish. Sur-lie without racking until bottling. Strawberry and raspberry fruit and highly aromatic with great texture and acidity.

12% Alc. (175 cases produced)

2018 Paetra Riesling ORANGE Eola-Amity Hills (2 bottles)

This limited release Riesling has become one of our most sought-after wines and like the Pinot Noir Rose, is one I rarely get a chance to sell DTC as It’s snapped up by distributors very quickly. I first made Orange wine as Silvaner in Amphora in Germany and wanted to continue the style when we moved to Oregon and in 2014 I was the first producer in the western hemisphere to make Orange Riesling. In this case, it’s fermented in variable capacity stainless-steel from the latest harvest pass of our Eola-Amity Hills site. This begins it’s life in a carbonic-state, is native-yeast fermented on the skins until completely dry (one month this year) and pressed-off immediately after primary. It retains a lot of freshness without oxidation because of the tank and doesn’t show the brown, caramel tones of many skin-contact and orange wines. It’s all orange-zest and savory herbs and has a pretty cool and unique balance of riesling acidity and tannin. Have some fun with pairing this wine with food that would typically shy away from Riesling.

12% alc. 0 g/L rs. (90 cases produced)

2018 Paetra Gewürztraminer Van Duzer Corridor (2 bottles)

I’m super happy to offer our inaugural vintage of Gewürztraminer! This is the first one I’ve made since my time in Germany and I think it’s a great addition to our line-up. You will be the first to try it! Picked at perfect ripeness from a very cool site in the newly anointed Van Duzer Corridor AVA, I boot-stomped out 1/3rd of the grapes for some maceration time before pressing, but left the rest to press-off whole-cluster to retain some cut and elegance without giving up the beautiful aromas in this amazing grape. It fermented spontaneously in Stainless-Steel without any additions other than SO2. Dry and precise, It finished with less than a gram of sugar and because of the high elevation of the vineyard, it has great acid balance which is normally harder to achieve with Gewürz. it’s all spice and herbs under the juicy peachiness without being overpoweringly heady. It’s a drinker!

13.5% alc. (75 cases produced)

Shipping is a straight $30 per 6pk, $50 per 12pk and the wines will ship as soon as weather permits (Usually March). Please keep in mind that the delivery lines need to go through freezing temps on the way to your state. I try to monitor as best that I can. Thanks for your patience!

Here is a brief rundown of my background and farming/cellar practices to help explain the style and goals of my winemaking.

I’ve been working in the wine industry since 1998, first in retail and wine distribution/importing in Minneapolis where I grew up. In 2010, after studying German for several years, we sold everything we couldn’t carry on our backs and I moved with my wife and at the time two small children (2 and 4yrs old) to the Pfalz region of Germany to complete a classic European wine apprenticeship. This included working for three different wineries while studying viticulture, viniculture and enology at the agricultural research school in Neustadt an der Weinstraße.

In Europe there is no distinction between vineyard and cellar work in we were required to learn and practice both –a different model than what is common in the US where these jobs are generally separate. It was a wonderful and challenging few years. We immersed ourselves in German culture and I somehow supported my family on my apprentice wages. I was fortunate to spend part of that time at Weingut Odinstal, which has emerged as one of the top Biodynamic producers in Germany, albeit on quite a small scale. We farmed and produced wine from ~ 6ha of vineyards which really allowed us to be uncompromising in our work. It was my time here that solidified my farming and winemaking philosophies under the tutelage of Andreas Schumann, who himself apprenticed under the famous Hans-Günter Schwarz of Müller-Catoir (who was also a great source of knowledge for myself). In 2013 I became the second American to graduate from Neustadt in its 116 year history and the only one working in the US wine industry. An interesting side note is that the research institute was formed in response to the phylloxera outbreak, so indirectly I was able to benefit from a school that was founded because of a pest brought from America!

Towards the end of my schooling I started researching wine-growing regions in the US that might be similar to the Pfalz regarding climate, soil, and suitability to the grape varieties that I had worked with in Germany (Riesling, but also Pinot Noir, Blanc and Gris, Silvaner and Gewürztraminer among others). The Willamette Valley of Oregon was the only region that checked all of my boxes, meaning it had adequate rainfall to employ dry-farming; a cool but not often destructively cold climate (as in NY); and one that had a myriad of different soil types to play with –especially volcanic.

So we sold everything again and moved to Oregon just before harvest 2013. I worked for Brooks winery over the harvest that year and then started on with a vineyard management company while I found vineyards to produce my own wines.

In 2014, I contracted a couple of Riesling vineyards to take over the farming and make wines. That year I produced 400 cases of 3 different Rieslings. In 2015 I added another two vineyards including some Pinot Blanc (which is another variety I love) and made about 1000cs. In 2016 I’ve quit my day-job to focus on my own business. Since then I have added Pinot Noir, Pinot Gris and Gewürztraminer.

Much different from most start-ups, I spend roughly 90% of my time farming my vineyards and tending my vines and 10% making wine and selling it. Because of this, I want the techniques that I employ in the vineyard to show the greatest impact on the style of the wines. My approach is simple in that I try to be as thoughtful and innovative in the vineyard as possible and to be very minimalistic in the cellar. I’ve learned that if we can understand the vine’s natural tendencies and allow them to pursue these with the goal of producing ripe, healthy fruit, then we don’t have to correct or manipulate the wines in the cellar.

I also use what I believe to be the most complex cover-crop program in the western hemisphere, planting some 30 different plants: legumes (for natural nitrogen fixation), flowers and herbs (to bring in pollinators, beneficial predator insects, and to increase biodiversity) and other plant species to compete for water and mineral resources to keep the berries small and loose, to provide soil structure at varying depths and to help force the vine roots deeper in search of nutrients. I brew actively-aerated compost teas to bring in an enormous diversity of micro-organisms which help the vines take up nutrients and to provide healthy soil-life. I don’t spray herbicides because of the damage they do to the microflora and fauna and mycorrhiza that I’m trying to cultivate, instead relying on hand-hoeing, tilling, and mowing under the vines to aerate the soil. I’ve built in-row insect houses to provide habitat for earwigs and wasps which can help to eradicate vine-pest such as aphids and mites without using insecticides.

Harvesting is done in selective passes (up to 6 times per vineyard) and by hand (my children, now 10 and 12 carried some 30,000 lbs. of grapes this year) to ensure that only the optimal bunches are picked for each style of wine.

In the cellar I use varying pre-press skin-maceration times depending on the wine and variety, I let all of the wines ferment spontaneously without chemicals, acid, or sugar adds. For some wines I use stainless-steel to preserve freshness and detail and for other wines I prefer neutral-barrel fermentations because I like the acoustic complexity it brings. The wines are left on the gross lees until filtration and bottling when I do a light Sulphur-add. My goal is to produce complex, long-lived wines in a traditional German style, but on American soil.

I insist on farming and making the wines myself because I think it gives me more control over the eventual style and because I can make better, more informed decisions about how to marry both aspects. I get to write the screenplay, produce and direct the whole program and hopefully that ends with a more authentic wine that speaks to the work that my family and I put in. This is very much a family business in that my wife and children help in the vineyard and my wife designs the labels. I hope that our hard work shows.

Thank you!
Bill Hooper
Weinbau Paetra

PAETRAPIC.jpg

So looking forward to ordering tomorrow … need to restock!

One question - are the prices on the individual wines for 2 bottles or a minimum order of 2?

Thanks!

I DESTROY Paetra Rieslings - been trying to save two bottles (fortunately he puts great info on the back label so I know which are more age-able) but it’s tough to do so. Amazing juice…can’t imagine what the Gewurz is like.

Bill.

Which one of the above was the Riesling K from last years Berserkerday?

Hey Bill, If I order something (tomorrow), can I request that shipping be delayed to early May? Thanks, -Jim

Hi Siun,

Thank you! I saw that the wording and pricing was confusing, so I changed it. #1 is a 12pk, #2 and #3 are 6pks (2 bottles of three different wines).

Cheers,
Bill

Yessir! Just send me a separate email and I’ll pull your order aside. A lot of people do this.

Thanks,
Bill

Hi Dan,

Last year was the 2016 K, and this is the new 2017 (2 bottles are included in BD#2).

I don’t have enough 2017 left for a stand-alone offer like I did last year, so this will be it until the '18 is bottled in April.

Thanks!
Bill

Thank you Todd!

Going in for #2.

My 6 pack disappeared quickly last year. Can you add these wines to CellarTracker/ Thanks.

Thank you Dan. I think you’ll like them!

Looking forward to this!! talk to you tomorrow Bill :slight_smile:

Thanks Mike! I’ll wear my SBFD shirt for good luck!

In for offers #2 and #3. Thanks.

Bill, can I pick up instead of ship? Don’t see that option when checking out, but will be down in the WV twice in next two months. Thx!

I had just drunk my last 2014 a few weeks ago and it was so superb … being able to restock (at this insanely low price too) was wonderful!

In for offers 2 and 3. I’m still debating about offer 1, because I love to track the evolution of Riesling over time.

Bill, I was just charged $80 shipping for my case. Will you be adjusting that? Thanks.

Order in (2 & 3). Looking forward to trying the wines.

Awesome!! Thanks Bill