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MIKE JANUIK
Dreyfus, Ashby & Co. Main Office 630 3rd Ave Adminstration 50 Avon Meadow Lane |
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Visit www.noveltyhillwines.com for the complete history of Novelty Hill
PLANTING A VINEYARD AND BRINGING IT TO MATURITY TAKES TIME AND
PATIENCE. By the time we completed planting the first phase of
our own vineyard in 2000, we realized we had the patience to wait for
the grapes but not the wine so under the leadership of our winemaker,
Mike Januik, we began working with a small group of conscientious growers
dedicated to low yields and concentrated, complex flavor. Much of Mike's
time during the growing season is spent in the vineyards with the growers
discussing canopy development, crop thinning and irrigation management.
Stillwater Creek is Novelty Hill's prized vineyard. It is located on the Royal Slope of the Frenchman Hills and was formed by the Missoula Floods. This beautiful property that sits on a steep, south-facing
slope more than two decades ago for its excellent growing potential, then
collected years of historical site data to ascertain weather patterns
before we began planting in 2000. Few other vineyards in Washington can
boast the wide array of clones from not only Washington but also California
we've carefully selected with each specific vineyard block in mind. We
think clonal selection is the next great frontier in Washington winemaking,
and we hope to be a leader in this arena and share our learning with other
Columbia Valley grape growers. The vineyard's first harvest in the fall of 2002 produced
impressive results. Mindful of the vines youth, we cropped to keep yields
low about one ton per acre. Careful vineyard management combined with
an outstanding growing season produced deeply colored, concentrated wines
with rich flavor. The Floods That Carved the West From Smithsonian Magazine, Vol 26 number 1 In a great geological catastrophe, a giant lake exploded through an Ice Age dam, and its waters swept across the Pacific Northwest; awesome signs of its passage are still visible to this day Fifteen thousand years ago, during the last Ice Age, a glacial dam collapsed in what is now northern Idaho, releasing the waters of a giant inland sea known as Lake Missoula. Five hundred cubic miles of water rampaged westward at 60 miles an hour in a torrent flowing with ten times the volume of all the rivers on earth. The flood carved canyons, gouged out enormous plunge pools, made rivers like the Snake and the Willamette run backward and scoured the earth of eastern Washington right down to bare basalt rock. The flood may have happened not just once, but many times, as the glacier periodically crept forward again to recreate the lake. Today the landscape of the Pacific Northwest still bears the signs of these cataclysms: the flood-scoured scablands of eastern Washington, giant rocks near Portland transported all the way from Idaho by the flood, potholes and plunge pools dug by waterfalls that would have dwarfed Niagara many times over.
A Virtual Tour - www.glaciallakemissoula.org The impact from Glacial Lake Missoula and the Missoula floods can be seen in parts of Montana, Idaho, Washington, and Oregon. Testifying to the cataclysm are the ancient shorelines, ripple marks, scoured lakes, dry channels, falls, and flood debris that are still visible after nearly 12,000 years. Without seeing this evidence it is hard to imagine the enormity of the geologic event
1. Glacial Lake Missoula The horizontal lines etched into the hillside are evidence that a prehistoric lake once filled the valley. The parallel lines represent the ancient shorelines of Glacial Lake Missoula. The highest known shorelines are found at an elevation of 4,200 feet. If the lake existed at this level today, the top of Mt. Jumbo would be an island and the city of Missoula would sit beneath 950 feet of water. 2. Clark Fork River Valley When it burst through the ice dam and exploded downstream, the waters of Glacial Lake Missoula ran at a rate of 10 times the combined flow of all of the current rivers in the world! The fast draining waters left many features similar to features seen along creeks and rivers today, but on an exagerated scale. In the center of this photo is a sand and gravel bar such as you might see at the junction of a creek and river today... but this one is several hundred feet wide, and high above the valley floor. 3. Camas Prarie In 1942, Geologist Joseph T. Pardee identified these unique parallel ridges found in the Camas Prairie as "giant" ripple marks. With an average height between 13-30 feet these ripple marks would dwarf any ordinary ripple mark you might find on a beach or in a river today. The Camas Prairie ripple marks were formed as the deep and swift flowing water from Glacial Lake Missoula raced through the failed ice dam at speeds up to 50 miles per hour. 4. Channeled Scablands The floodwaters from Glacial Lake Missoula moved through eastern Washington forever changing the landscape by stripping away topsoil, picking apart the bedrock, and carving an immense channel system into the land. This area, known as the Channeled Scablands, provided geologists with the first clues of the catostrophic nature of the Ice Age Floods. 5. Dry Falls During the Ice Age floods, water over 300 feet deep poured over the 350-foot cliffs of Dry Falls . At three miles wide, Dry Falls is five times the width of Niagara Falls . Today, we can only imagine the torrent of water that moved through this area. 6. Flood Debris After stripping away 200 feet of topsoil, the flood ripped away huge boulders from the underlying lava rock. These boulders were picked up and carried in the floods only to be stranded in fields and prairies when the floodwaters subsided. Some boulders, called glacial erratics, were rafted on icebergs and transported great distances from their source by the floods of Glacial Lake Missoula. 7. Erratics As glaciers scour the landscape, they pick up massive boulders and move them far from their point of origin. When the glacier that formed Glacial Lake Missoula's dam burst, uncountable boulders embedded in its ice were carried along with the floodwaters. As these ice blocks melted, the boulders dropped out of the flow. Today, boulders with origins in the mountains of Montana and British Columbia can be found along the flood paths as far away as Oregon 's Willamette Valley . 8. Temporary Lakes By looking at flood sediments from Glacial Lake Missoula, geologists try to calculate the number floods and subsequent fillings of the glacial lake. Many layers of glacial lake sediments are found situated on top of one another; each layer represents a separate filling of the lake. The exact number of floods that occurred is still unknown, but evidence shows that it happened on possibly 40 different occasions. 9. Columbia River Gorge The Ice Age Floods associated with Glacial Lake Missoula are significant
in the world's geology history. Similar ice age floods occurred elsewhere
in the world, but few were as big and as repetitive. 10. On to the Pacific After racing through the Columbia River Gorge and backwashing into Oregon 's Willamette Valley , the floodwaters ended its journey at the Pacific Ocean near Astoria , Oregon . New studies are revealing what became of the floods sediments as the waters mixed with the Ocean.
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