Lawrence Buhler: What I think Peller really show us well in it’s vineyards and our wine making is our Sur Lie Chardonnay. So it’s our top end chardonnay, it’s hand pick, whole cluster pressed, only the free run juice is on the barrels. It’s barrel fermented, barrel aged and spends about a year on its least. Stirred every couple of weeks to get that really nice richness and body, and we only use the best French barrels, it’s like the baby.
Ange Aiello: Yeah, it’s a great chardonnay
Lawrence Buhler: Yeah it’s probably one of my favorite wines to make. Year after year, again being a cool climate it changes, but it always is a unique and a really top quality wine from our winery.
Ange Aiello: And I mean, it runs about $30.00 a bottle, it’s not anything that’s too expecting, it mean and it’s a fantastic.
Lawrence Buhler: Yeah I think it’s a great value wine, a great food wine. We have 2004 and 2006 out, so different vintages and they are a lot of fun to taste the differences between them if you have a chance to. You can try yeah.
Ange Aiello: What time in your wine making like in all the years you have been wine making, what has been your absolute favorite memory, something you remember more than anything else.
Lawrence Buhler: I think it was my first year down at university and I carry that in my wine making, because I definitely made wine in university, so I carried that within my years of my memories spending the time going out and picking my very first ice wine harvest and I was blown away. I grew up in Ottawa and I thought I was used to the cold, but coming down at 2 o’clock in the morning, the moon is lit, clear sky, so cold, so cold.
Ange Aiello: And you’re hand picking the grapes?
Lawrence Buhler: Hand picking the grapes, you know you’ve got the motor running behind you, you know the big lights in you, you could see them if you drive around during ice wine harvest. You drive the country roads here and you see everybody else picking. It’s probably one of my fondest memories. It’s that very first night I am going out and really experiencing what a Niagara is like.
Ange Aiello: That’s a classic Canadian memory.
Lawrence Buhler: It is. Cold too.
Ange Aiello: But what are you doing now in the wine making? What are you doing right now? Is there a bottling stuff right now? Yeah?
Lawrence Buhler: We’re talking about bottling olive or aromatic lights, so we have sauvignon blanc, pinot noir, we have a new 00:02:19, a mascot and we also have a brand new Rose that’s coming out, so that’s pretty exciting, a Bordeaux style Rose. So yeah, it’s an exciting time we’re you know lot’s of wine that’s going to bottle and then we’re working on our chardonnays and some of our Bordeaux reds as we rack them barrel to barrel, so exiting times.
Ange Aiello: A lot of work behind the scenes.
Lawrence Buhler: Yes, a little bit looks tough drinking wine.
Ange Aiello: People think you just work during harvest season, but that’s not true. You work all year round.
Lawrence Buhler: It’s all year round.
Ange Aiello: You got to drink wine to work too. You got to taste you’re wine all year round to know what to improve on for next year, what you want to change, and that’s a good question too. I mean, did you ever tried your wines that you make, that have been bottled and picked, and harvested and that you’ve even mixed and then come back around and go “oh I don’t like this anymore”, have you ever had one of those that you’d want to change something in it.
Lawrence Buhler: Yeah, I believe you’re always 100% happy with the wines that you put to bottle, but if you can’t learn anything from the ones that you made before, then I think you get to hit that level where it’s not so much fun anymore.
Angie Aiello: Not challenging anymore.
Lawrence Buhler: Exactly, so I think it’s important to always think back to take the step forward and say, “how can I improve every year on the wines whether it’s fit to culture, and you know the harvest to barrel type the you use or the fermentation style that you use in fermenting in any of the great varieties. And learning from what you have done last year and what you want to improve I think is the most important thing.
Ange Aiello: So what’s the goal for 08?
Lawrance Buhler: 08?
Ange Aiello: Put you on the spot here.
Lawrence Buhler: Goals for 08 is to—I mean if we have a fabulous something like we did in 2007 I think everybody will be happy.
Ange Aiello: Last years a pretty perfect year.
Lawrence Buhler: It was, it was beautiful, beautiful year. I think, again making steps forward in the vineyard, you know, I think if you start with really great fruit quality it always translates into great wine.
Ange Aiello: Into the glass.
Lawrence Buhler: Exactly, so I think another year of focus on the vineyards and learning more about them, and bring them into the winery and you can apply those with the other grapes.
Ange Aiello: Well that’s fantastic. Thanks for the behind the scenes action with Lawrence Buhler here at Pellers States Winery. If you have a chance this summer, come down and have a tour, and join the tour out of the vineyard and they go down in the barrel cellar and have lunch. They have a fantastic Four Diamond restaurant with Jason Parson, so check it out it’s definitely a valuable memory that you will never forget. Cheers Lawrence.
Lawrence Buhler: Cheers.
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