A Blooming Hill Vineyard

After a morning of a few more exploding irrigation pipes and a quick trip to Hillsboro Pipe Supply to get the couplers and blue glue, planting could begin in earnest …. and here is Jim putting in the first plant in the first row of 68 … or, maybe, 69 rows of varying lengths, he’s not really sure …  .

For the past few weeks, jim has been putting in a new Pinot Noir block.  This is hugely work intensive.  Actually, it started a year ago when the 20 year old Kotata Blackberry vines that grew in the designated area were removed to make way for the grapes.  I’m not sure Jim would have expanded if the blackberry market hadn’t dropped so radically.  Used to be you could get a nice price for the berries; but, manufacturers here now buy offshore and it was costing us more to grow them than we could get to sell them.  As delicious as they were, It was an easy equation to make the switch.  I’ll miss the pint or so I could eat on the way down to the mailbox in season but we did save enough to turn into a few pies, now residing in the freezer, and for about 10 gallons of Jim’s exceptionally delicious Blackberry Port.

Following the removal of the old vines – a nasty, prickly job that also involved rolling up miles and miles of wire which might have a future life – the soil had to be conditioned for the new crop.  That was accomplished by putting in wheat, something new for Jim to fret over.  It all managed to come up and look exactly like wheat and was ultimately harvested into a giant combine, but not before saving 50 lbs. from which I mill flour (using my new Kitchen Aid attachment) to make bread.  This is not cost-effective as the attachment cost $99 and it is a slow process to grind the two cups of wheat into 3 cups of flour.  Nevertheless, the bread tastes great and, at this pace, I’ll be making well into my 70s or even 80s.

Our Wheat ... Also looking a little like funny, little aliens who might have appeared in Star Trek

With the wheat harvested, the field got disked and thrown up and tossed around and irrigation was placed (this is a very long and ongoing saga that may have no end given that the pipes randomly start spurting every time the water is turned on), plastic laid out, posts put in, tubing stretched across the field.  It’s beautifully ordered, which took days and days of laying it out, crossing it out, laying it out again on graph paper.  Everything about the grapes is hand done and hard thought out!

So, with a lot of the daily tasks left out, that brings us to today and the arrival of the 3000 plants.  They were so CUTE on the truck, all stacked and with their tender vines sticking out at odd angles.  Here’s a picture of Jim unloading the first flat.  The crew who work for Jim really teased him about being a proud papa and telling him he should really hand out cigars.

The Proud Papa

One of the things I truly love about the Northwest is how everybody is so willing to help everybody else.  When I first moved out here, my friends in New York were aghast.  My best friend asked me what I was doing moving to a place where they served lox in its natural state.  Soon they wanted to know what it was really like out here (i.e., was there indoor plumbing yet….).  I told them there were two major differences:  the first, when it gets to be above 50 degrees out here, people put on their shorts; and, if you have a good idea out here people will say “Oh, that’s a good idea.  How can I help you?”  Whereas, in New York, people will say “Oh, that’s a good idea.  It’ll never happen; you’ll never do that.”

That has held up time after time and as recently as this morning when I talked to Rick at Oregon Barrel Works who is making four new barrels for us out of Oregon oak.  They will be Burgundy shape, of course, and medium toast.  As we got to the end of the conversation, he wanted to know when we thought harvest might be and when i told him Jim is thinking right after Oct. 15th, Rick said that was what everybody was saying.  It was good to get that confirmed and I said how much I appreciated the informal network of information.

Just last week someone stopped by to get some of our bedding straw (for horses, not grapes!) and it turned out he was part of the Chehalem Mountains AVA so Jim offered him a taste of the Pinot Noir in the barrel.  Jim mentioned that it was light in color and Todd said everybody’s seemed to be this year.  Not only did that relieve some of Jim’s (misplaced) anxiety about his wine, it made us feel part of the larger whole of wine producers. It’s that collegiality that makes this a wonderful place to live, to grow and to protect the land by using its potential to sustain us.

Here’s a picture of the lovely Chardonnay grapes.  Oh, and of one of my pumpkins happily growing in the vegetable garden.  I’ve got about a dozen, all grown from seeds from my last year’s jack-o-lantern!  And that pumpkin came from one of our new neighbors down the road who gave it and a couple of others to us in exchange for a Christmas tree, which we also grow!

Lovely Chardonnay Grapes. Tasting this Chardonnay Jim makes takes me in my mind to a fresh, glassy waterfall in an elegant woods filled with sun dappled spaces.

After the whirlwind of the Tour & Taste weekend, followed by our Labor Day party for the community association, I jumped on a plane – actually, four planes – for a quick trip to LA and then Coloma.  In each place Jim’s wines got a little showcase (by me) and were delightfully received.  One esteemed wine drinker called the Chardonnay a little like Vigionier (something I thought, too) only better!

We enjoyed the next two bottles – PN and the Chard – after a thrilling day river rafting on the America River lower South Fork.  You need to know that I never even got into a sleeping bag until I was well into my 40s and that was on a ferry trip up the Inside Passage in Alaska.  And, at that, we slept in sleeping bags on deck chairs on the open Solarium deck so it wasn’t like squirriling on the ground with creepy things.  And I haven’t been in a sleeping bag since.  Thank you, Lord.  So, for me to go rafting is a BIG DEAL.  Oh, did I mention i also get seasick??  Nevertheless, I wanted to do this and believed everyone when they told me I wouldn’t have any problems on the river.  It was enormously fun and quite a bit scary, too.

Are They Kidding .... I Need A Glass Of Wine

That’s me on the left in the dark shirt (I am either smiling or grimacing), Jim on the right in a dark shirt and his brother Jerry and nephew Tommy about to disappear into the rapids in the front!

By the time we got home, the grapes had begun turning their beautiful deep purples and golden greens.  The weather is now perfect for their ripening – lovely, hot days and cool nights.  I tasted some of the Pinot Noir grapes in the little vineyard Jim planted first to test trellis designs and they are sweet.  He worries about every grape, which means his masterly touch is evident in the finished product.  He’s talking through the harvest and crush since this is the first harvest from which we will keep all the grapes.  Also waiting for us at home was our Winery License so we’re good to go.

That fabulous Chardonnay Jim makes will be the first wine we can sell along around next January!

This first event, part of the Chehalem Mountains AVA Tour & Taste, was so much fun for us.  One of the things I totally love about Jim is his pride of place.  Before the weekend, we talked about the interior clean up of the winery – you know, wipe off the tile surface on the sink, get the workers’ coffee pot out of there – so I was so surprised when I walked out of there and saw that Jim already had everything swept off, wiped down, washed and sparkly and all the doors graciously wide open.  It was so nice.

We didn’t really expect many people to show up because we are pretty far off the beaten path of most of the Chehalem Mountain AVA wineries … but we did have some guests and it was thrilling and exciting.  So this is a little thank you to all of you who made the trip.  We loved meeting you.  We loved talking to you so much that I can see we’ll want to invite you back to dinner so we can spend a lot more time with you.  And they’ll have to add hours in the day if I’m going to have time to get to know everybody who ultimately visits us at the winery!

The wine seems to have gotten high marks from everyone who tasted it!  I did finally have to take Jim by the shoulders and make him stop coming up with reasons why people were “probably just saying that” and tell to him to just, even for 5 seconds, enjoy the fact that he makes good wine!  What a worry wart.  The chardonnay, which is different than what most people are used to, really hit a good note and will actually be the first wine we can sell in about 6 – 8 months.  Not surprisingly to me, we did give a few people a taste of the glorious Blackberry Port Jim makes and they loved it.  One man handed his wife the car keys and said “Pick me up on Monday!”  We loved that.  Of course, Jim makes the port just for us so it won’t be for sale, even though I’ve tried to persuade him that it will fill a very nice little niche….I’ll keep working on him.

There was an added thrill this weekend.  A few months ago, through a story in the AARP magazine about people who work after “retirement”, I reconnected with friends from the early days of my last marriage in the 1970s.  In fact, these people were neighbors of my late husband and, I found out on Sunday night, actually sold him the land to build his house.  They still live in Connecticut and were out here visiting their Portland son and family and came for dinner on Sunday.  Really, I cried.  John, as luck would have it, used to be a wine importer.  To say he is straightforward with his opinion would be a huge understatement so we were nervous about what he might say of the wine.  So you can imagine my delight when he started figuring out how much we would earn from a very nice wholesale price-point he chose!  More than that, though, it was the perfect end to the perfect weekend event for us – warm people, warm reunions, new friends and the sense that everybody wants this to be a success.  Jim’s dream of being a good steward to the earth and its servant in producing its bounty is that much closer to reality!

Somehow, I missed getting a shot of our friends John and Nanette.  I’ll get one from them and attach it later.  In the meantime, here are Jim and Gemini pretty much wiped out after two busy days!