A Blooming Hill Vineyard

Yow, there’s a lot to do.  We’re doing our first official event as A Blooming Hill Vineyard this weekend and you’d think the Queen was coming to dinner … or, at least, we were having another wedding in the Teahouse.  Actually, we’re also hosting the community Labor Day gathering on Monday so we would have done some clean-up anyway.   I’m making a little flyer for people, making my famous chocolate cake in mini-cupcake versions to go with tastes of the Pinot, weeding the heck out of the area in the back of the house, preparing for a visit from the officer at the Oregon Liquor License Commission who comes on Wednesday morning to approve us….

Jim is up and at ‘em from early morning on.  He does end his day between 5:30 and 6 PM but he has been up since the AM version of that hour and he’s non-stop.  In fact, I feel guilty if I stop to sit down and do nothing for a few minutes.  Right now he and his crew are working on the irrigation for the new Pinot block, fixing the gutters on the barn and the winery, dragging the gravel over the new catch basin and culvert and taking care of all the other, usual stuff like the horses and the garden.  Clearly, we are not trying to get to a place in our life together where IT will be finished and we can sit back and enjoy it.  The enjoyment appears to be in the activity of IT.

But there is a reward every day … just as we say in our story for the wine label … and that is to enjoy the gift of being able to take care of this bit of the planet and allow it to produce the abundance we are blessed with every day!  And we get to drink the wine….

Last summer, Jim’s friend and plumber in California came to visit with his wine and son.  Friends from Jim’s former life always make me a little tender until I have a chance to let them get to know me and see Jim’s new life. You know, the first wife/second wife syndrome.  It doesn’t matter that both Jim and I lived through the death of our spouses, there’s always some sort of comparison factor.  So It turned out to be great to have them here last summer and they were generous enough to offer to come back and help Jim put in the irrigation for the new Pinot block when he was ready.

Half thinking that was a great offer but it wouldn’t work out, imagine the delight when Andy called a couple of months ago and said, “Okay, we’re ready.  When do you want us out here?”  So they spent the last five days digging ditches, buying stuff and installing what looks like an early robot or, possibly, an art installation on the other side of the Rhodies and at the head of the new Pinot block.  Back hoes, ditch witches and a lot of other exotic devices I never heard of back in Brooklyn were involved.  Gemini spent all of his time out of doors supervising the activity.

The photo below of Andy and Gayle is at Mt. St. Helen’s, not our vineyard, but they look the same.  Well, a little cleaner!  Joe, their son, looks EXACTLY like Elvis Presley and is interested in things beyond his 25 years – like the Dodgers (way back to their Brooklyn roots), Art Deco, Swing Dancing, beautiful cabinetry and oil painting.  All the age appropriate interests seem to be there, too, and he’s sweet and great to have around.

Here’s Joe:  Now I’ve got to stop because I haven’t mastered the placement of photos and text yet!

I’m getting into this wine blog idea … My long, complicated, colorful and interesting dreams were interrupted last night because I kept thinking about things to talk about on this blog.  I thought about the kinds of stock Jim selected – Pommard, Wedensville, 777, Chardonnay Dijon clone, Pinot Gris 152, White Riesling 12 all on 101-14; and, why he decided to grow on a Henry Trellis in order to develop a good upper and lower canopy; but, then I got to thinking about my first trip out here to visit him…

It was early in the 2000s.  I was living in Seattle and Jim had moved to Cornelius from LA.  Our history goes way back to New York in the late 60s, early 70s when he was running TeleTape, a major television production company and I was a lowly secretary.  In fact, I was his lowly secretary.  In double fact, his late wife hired me.  The company was a wonderful place to work and our circle of friends is still intact.  In triple fact, the man I married – and the father of my child – also worked for Jim at TeleTape.  After he died, in 1980, I sort of skimmed the surface of life in a rather haphazard way and, although I had a fruitful career in raising money for important social issues, I did not remarry.  How I even got to the Pacific Northwest is another mystery I don’t quite understand myself….

But, here we both were.  Jim and I had kept in touch, minorly, and we had seen each other a couple of times on my business trips to LA.  A good friend of ours, who stayed in pretty close touch with both of us, urged us to get together once Jim moved up here.  That was strange because Larry was from Seattle and knew it was a trek, to say the least, from there to Cornelius.  Nonetheless, I drove down one lovely Saturday with a plum torte as dessert for a promised lunch.  Jim was in his test vineyard when I drove up, the one where he experimented with trellis systems and grapevine stock.  It’s only a few rows.  I’m sure what he told me that day was certainly interesting but I doubt I retained much.  We did have a delightful picnic down near the pond.  Jim, a great cook, demonstrated his expertise with that meal.

Here is how he looks, so you can see why I was attracted! Yes, he’s still a Laker fan.

Oh, the beautiful dog is Gemini (he came later, after we were married)…

The story unfolds in rather charming if separated by time chunks from there and has some interesting pathways that included my telling Jim he was GU (geographically undesirable), and his not infrequent phone calls asking for help in choosing kitchen counters and stove tops.  Finally, in 2005 a little voice urged me to pay attention to this friendship in a different way.   We were married less than a year later.  By this time, there was a full size vineyard, not the manageable baby one I saw in the early days and we served Jim’s Pinor Noir at our wedding!

The wine in the silver cup is Jim’s wine… it must have been really good because some cousins took a case back to the hotel where lots of family and friends were staying and had a party we heard was great!  Also, I found out a few months later, my sister and brother-in-law took a case back to New York.

We did have another wedding…but that’s another story!

A scant three years ago, I would have been a candidate for being knocked over by the proverbial feather if you had said I would a) know anything about wine; b) be involved in a vineyard; c) be MARRIED; d) be married to a vintner; and, e) spend part of this day pulling leaves in the vineyard with my husband.  But, strange as it is, all of the above are true …

This vineyard, A Blooming Hill Vineyard, is my husband’s dream.

Jim makes terrific wines:  Pinot Noir, Pinot Gris, Chardonnay and Riesling.  Jim started planting the vineyard 2000, added to it in 2002 and 2004 and we are about to add another Pinot Noir block this fall.  We  have just become a bonded vineyard and winery.  The grapes growing, pictured below, will be the first we can make available for sale to the public.  In these blogs, I’ll introduce you to Jim, his wines, our household of six exceedingly charming cats, one (brilliant) dog, 14 horses and our poetic life together.  Stay tuned; every day is an adventure…

Holly