Inspiration?

I've been waiting for inspiration to strike so I really have something to talk about.  To encourage that process I've been out taking pictures.  I still don't have anything I want to write about but I do have some great pictures so enjoy the show.

There have been several great walks in the vineyard.  I love watching all the new growth right now.  The young vines are starting to look like real plants and buds are popping out every where and getting ready to burst into bloom, well ahead of last year.  Let's hope we keep on this trend.

I caught three hatchings of garden spiders.  This one I actually had my camera near by to snap a few pictures.  The weather cooled off right after they hatched and it took about three days for them to all move off the loveseat.  Can you believe how many there are!? (Click on the picture for a larger image.)

It appears all of our grafts are taking.  I haven't found any with no growth.  I caught this one the other day, it's just over the moon, there are even two future pinot blanc clusters at the top of the shoot.  And in the right hand picture you can see the Marechal Foch trying to put out it's own leaves.  Those were promptly removed after snapping this picture.

Sebastian has been out spraying and mowing the vineyard while Rosario and Guadalupe have been suckering the vines, see below, and are about to start cleaning the heads.  You can also see some of the lingering frost damage where a second or third bud has not pushed out yet in the fourth picture.

We had our Memorial Weekend Celebration and released four new wines all sporting the new label design and two with wax dipped tops! I got to spend the day with the printers watching our new labels being run.  I love seeing a project come together as well as watch someone very good at his job turn out a beautiful product.

On the wine making side I attended a conference on pinot gris and have several new ideas floating around in my head for next year.  I also have been tasting through the barrels every two weeks and am happy with what I have, this picture was taken one of the times I took the wines home.  The wines smell different and my focus differs depending on where I am tasting.  I don't know yet if we will make a reserve wine this year but that's due to quantity not quality.  We only have 23 barrels of pinot noir and I think we will need that for the Willamette Valley Pinot noir but we shall see as the wine progresses.

On the home front I finished a stitching project that I plan to give to a friend after it comes back from the framers and my cats tried to build either a fort or a bunk bed I could quite decide but either way they were quite comfortable.  And while Ferb is pretending to look squished he sat there for a quite a while longer after I took the picture.  I think he was enjoying the warmth personally.

Twas the week before Christmas . . .

. . . and all through the winery not a creature was stirring because we all went out to lunch.  I have a new recommendation for those of you who live in the area.  They have been open for a while and while I had enjoyed the fruits of their labor, delicious, I hadn't made it up there personally until last month.  And then we went again yesterday!  Some how The Bread Board in Falls City is very inviting on a winter day.  The cheerful paint; red floors with periwinkle, green and mustard yellow walls, not as garish as it sounds trust me, the huge brick oven and of course the ever charming Travis all combine to make it the place to visit and the excellent food make it the place to come back to.  They have built a beautiful brick oven and bake breads, scones, biscotti, pizza and more.  We all trooped up there yesterday to deliver some empty barrels, we being Sebastian, Barry, Mary and myself and had a wonderful lunch.  There was even some sunshine coming in.  What more can you ask for during winter in Oregon.  We had salads and grilled panini sandwiches finished off with a variety of biscotti, all of them were excellent.  I have heard stories about their sticky buns but have yet to have one myself, apparently one bun can feed three and I've also heard rumors that they go fast so you might want to call ahead and reserve one.  So if you are looking for a little place to check out some afternoon that's cozy and inviting or a new place to go for wood fired pizza I highly recommend The Bread Board.  I'm including their website here if you would like more information.

Back in the winery I am working on the next set of bentonite trials.  I was able to bracket the pass/fail point on the two wines last week so this week I am fine tuning that point by rerunning the test and dosing the wine in smaller increments.  Hopefully I can nail it with this test otherwise I'll have to do it one more time. Imagine putting my water bath in there!  I think it would boil away in just a few minutes.  Now pizzas on the other hand . . .

Wishing you all a wonderful holiday season and a Happy New Year!  

And may you enjoy your drink as much as Phineas!

Steamed Milk, good to the last drop!

Are you suffering from WIBS?

pic courtesy of Van Duzer Winery

Chances are you aren't unless you are a winemaker on the west coast this fall and more specifically one in the Willamette Valley at which point I am almost 100% sure you are among the suffering.  I myself was an unknowing sufferer of the disease until I was recently diagnosed by my good friend and fellow winemaker Jerry Murray at Van Duzer Winery, about 45 minutes north of here.  Jerry says that Weather Induced Bi-polar Syndrome (WIBS) can be aggravated by repeated checking of the weather forecast and then looking at fruit in the vineyard.  The symptoms are feelings of elation when the sun is out and the thermometer reads 80 followed by extreme lows and the conviction that no grapes will be harvested this year when the clouds roll in, rain threatens and the temperature isn't above 62.  The fact that these highs and lows can occur on the same day only increases the severity of the swing as well as raise stress levels and here at Airlie has caused Mary to run to the coast and go crabbing.  I am very appreciative that Jerry formally diagnosed the disease and gave it a name.  I am hoping that he is working on a drug to alleviate the condition as I type.  I was thinking something alcoholic (smile . . . feel high) but then remembered that none of us have any fruit to be making alcohol (sigh . . . another low).  If you are interested in reading more about Jerry and his philosophies click here, you'll be taken to Jerry's latest comments on the vintage, beautifully expressed I think. 

As far as what else I have been up to, last week we bottled the 2009 Willamette Valley pinot noir, it went very well, and the little bit of 2008 Dunn Forest Pinot noir that had an extra year in barrel.  We were scheduled to bottle the infamous port on Saturday but the bottler was giving us problems so that didn't get bottled till Monday of this week.  Mary had some friends in town who took on fixing the problem piece on the bottler.  Thank you Orv and Alan it worked great on Monday.  I must admit that I feel at loose ends with almost no wine to look after and that I'm not scrambling to get get ready for fruit to be picked.  Just the 7 barrels of 09 pinot I held over for another year of aging in barrel.  They look so lonely.

Muller Thurgau,      Pinot noir,      Marechal Foch

Yesterday Sebastian pulled our first samples of grapes for me to test.  And apparently my blogging brain was turned off because I didn't take any pictures.  I still had the juice sitting on the counter this morning so you can see the three grapes we sampled and the color difference though amongst the three.  The Muller and Pinot noir have oxidized in the jar over night so aren't as green or pink, respectively, as they were yesterday.  Isn't the colour on the Foch amazing!  I'll explain the process next week when we sample again but suffice to say the grapes are not ripe.  The Marechal Foch has at least 10-14 days and that will be the first fruit to come in.  I went looking at past numbers to see if I could give you and me both an estimate for how far behind we are and it turns out I have never sampled the Foch at as low a number as it is right now.  The closest year was 2007 and the fruit then was a degree of brix higher, about a weeks worth of ripening, on September 13th, versus October 6th.  And we didn't pick for another 19 days.  Deep Sigh!  I never should have gone and looked.  I should add checking past vintage numbers to the list of don'ts while suffering from WIBS.  I think I'll go join Phineas on the couch and hide my head under the blanket.  Let me know if the sun comes out.