Beth gave me a hard time for featuring only the chardonnay in yesterday’s post, so here is an equally tasteful cheesecake photo of our 115, which Tony tells us is bound for the winery tomorrow.
This cluster is pretty typical this year; you can see that it got cool and wet right around the time that the fruit was setting, so we’ve got lots of size variation. Their flavor is super and you can see that the plant is undergoing senescence, so everything indicates another tasty vintage. Oh, and the long-term weather reports are getting better!
Our fingers are crossed for a Tuesday start - flavors are developing and the weather is cooperating. The fruit is also particularly beautiful on the vine this year; we will hope that this is also true in the bottle.
The weather this fall has been quite cool already, although the days have been sunny and beautiful. Long term forecasts make it look as though periodic weather systems may make harvest decisions challenging for Willamette Valley winemakers this year, but you never know until it is over. This is when we are glad to leave picking decisions to others!
The harvest is upon us, and while it is too soon to say what the wine will be like, the fruit itself this year is picture perfect. The weather has conspired to bring all of our fruit to ripeness at nearly the same instant, and there is very little damage from pests like birds, yellowjackets, fungus, elk, space visitors, cougar, or any of the other normal suspects. Picking begins tomorrow!
In honor of the beautiful fruit of the 2006 vintage, here’s a game to play: Name the Clone. Can you match the photo to the clone? Mouse over the photo to see the name of the clone, and click on it if you care to make a more detailed examination.
Beth, with her wine and her cheese. Mmmm.
Here is a detailed arial map of our current grape plantings, including clone and rootstock. (more…)
Before there was a house, before there was a stable, before there was a tractor shed, there were two cow barns. The cows are gone, but the barns remain! (more…)
Our aquisition for 2005 was a mighty Italian crusher destemmer, which not only did its job quickly, but also provided high entertainment value when it fired the stems out of its rotating drum at high speed. (more…)
We planted some old pastureland that is too steep to hold its soil and that should never have been cleared in the first place. (more…)
