A Blooming Hill Vineyard

We are getting ready to bottle – always an adventure, believe me!  This year, we thought we should investigate screw caps vs. corks so, at the annual wine seminar in Oregon, I went to the session on Closures. 

It turned out to be fascinating.  I heard about a lot of things I would never have thought of in a million years – things like water-based colmated corks, polyvinyl chlorides and torque meters.   I listened to discussions of the sensory experience of popping a cork and I heard about the differences in grades of cork.

I had no idea that cork comes from the Oak Tree – Quercus Suber, actually known as the Cork Oak – and that most cork comes from Portugal.  There are issues of sustainability about which to be concerned, none of which I had thought about too much – except that we have been throwing our corks into the compost bin. 

For me, it was a pretty easy decision to go with cork, and with a particular company called ACI.  This is not a commercial for them – we’re paying for our corks! – but we so prefer to do business with people we like and the people at ACI are just terrific. Even if they weren’t, we’d be using cork.  Screw caps can’t be recycled here because there are no facilities in the USA that can process them.  And even if they could, the plastic liner in the cap makes them non-degradable.  It also turns out that corks take so long to break down into compost that it isn’t the best way to handle them.  There are ways to recycle cork and Oregon is a leader in this effort: www.CorkReHarvest.org.   

Jim produces a perfectly natural wine with no chemicals.  He babies his grapes and watches over his wine throughout the entire process.   Jim loves the land – and it seems to love him right back!  I can see his awe at what the land produces from the simple pea vine to the complex grape varietals.  We try to do as much as we can to protect the planet.  Using corks from a company that cares about the environment is important to us so we were delighted to find out a little about ACI.  Here’s what they have to say about sustainability:

 ”Of all of the closures in the fine wine business, only cork is a totally natural and sustainably raised product.  It is harvested from trees that are at least twenty-nine years old and then harvested at a minimum of every nine years thereafter.  The harvesting of the cork bark does not hurt the oak tree.  The tree lives for 150 to 200 years.  The harvest in Portugal is so important that the government requires farmers to replant all oak trees that are cut or die of sickness.  This sustainability has the benefit of increasing the forest (Montado) in the Iberian Peninsula and therefore providing vital habitat for the last of the great cats of the Western European Continent (the Iberian lynx) as well as endangered birds (the Iberian Imperial eagle and the black stork).  It is one of the last truly Mediterranean eco-systems that are preserved in near its original state.” www.acicorkusa.com

I really like that part about the lynx, eagle and – especially – the black stork!

Our corks are imprinted and even the ink they use is an organic based product, a derivative of soy ink. (Actual soy ink comes off – it’s the same as is used on newspapers and you know they don’t pass the white glove test.)

Small Winery Bottling Line!

So, look forward to our 2009 wines, enjoy our 2008s and know that we are doing what we can to preserve our planet.

We have the best dogs – everybody said so this weekend!  Really, the focus of the weekend extravaganza here in our corner of wine paradise was for people to be able to visit the wineries in North Willamette Valley that are closer to Portland and Beaverton and not (yet) as well visited as those in wine country. 

I can tell you that it worked!  We probably have the tiniest tasting room in the county, if not the state; so small that more than 5 people and it is crowded.  We had about 150 people visit over the two days and, laws of gathering what they are, people usually came in clusters so there was always someone here and, often, it was at least five people at the same time, if not more!

Luckily, the weather was good so people could wander around on the patio and, since Jim was doing wine-making demonstrations in the winery itself, groups tended to self distribute.  We LOVED meeting everyone and we loved watching our two dogs take charge.  Gemini and Trouble don’t actually bark, which is a good thing.  (Well, they do bark but only when they go out at night before retiring and do what Jim calls a “bark-around” warning less welcome critters to stay away for the night.) 

Trouble, however, can look a little intimidating with his gigantic Pit Bull head at the end of his lanky, Boxer body.  I’ve had delivery people call me from their trucks to ask if the dog standing at their door is friendly.  He is and his wagging rear gives that away.  He doesn’t wag his tail so much as he wags the entire back half of his body.  To be sure people felt secure, Jim had the idea to put a bandana around the dogs’ necks.  Trouble got hot pink and Gemini got pale pink.  Trouble took one look at Gemini’s accessory and removed it; but, not out of mischief we think, but because he wanted to be the sartorial star.  And he was.  They both were busy all day long meeting cars, escorting groups up and down from the winery to the tasting room, obligingly doing all their tricks.  They looked, for all the world, as if they were making suggestions … “You should really try that Pinot. We love it….”

I hope it was the wine that curried favor all weekend and allowed us to sell what we did but, in truth, I think the dogs helped!  They definitely slept well each night – see photo above! 

Thank you to everyone who visited.  We’re so glad you got to meet us, the dogs and that we had a chance to serve you our wines!

What to do about Wilbur.  This is on my mind every time I lift my head from my computer and look out of the window into Wilbur’s aviary and beyond.  The dilemma is that Wilbur can fly perfectly, now, and we feel like we should let him go.  He sits on the little perch Jim built for him and surveys the bit of world he sees, which is pretty big, probably, from a pigeon’s perspective.  Sometimes he sleeps, all puffed up.  Sometimes his sits on the branch perch across the corner of the aviary.  This actually thrilled me when he started to do it because I knew it meant he had his balance back.  It was a couple of months before he ventured up there. 

He definitely knows his name and, gradually, has decided to stay closer to me when I feed him every morning,  He used to sit at one end and wait for me to put the seed on his ledge, back off and call his name.  Then he would fly over.  Now he flies over immediately and stands there while I pile in the sunflower seeds, his favorite.  We tried grapes when Jim was dropping fruit last year but he didn’t seem all that interested.  Hmmmm.  A teetotaler pigeon?

I worry that he’s lonely although he does have visitors  during the day – some good, some bad.  The good ones are the little sparrows and small robins that fly into the aviary to nibble the seeds he leaves behind then fly out until the next meal.  He seems to really like the beautiful blue jays that land in the Magnolia Tree and then come over to eat spilled seed on the deck floor just outside of his aviary.  He looks at them, cocks his head, seems almost ready to coo at them.

Hawks are a different story and there are a couple that have stalked him.  I haven’t seem them in a while so maybe it would really be safe to let him out.  Still…I don’t know.   Where will he go?  There aren’t any other pigeons around here so we’ve talked about taking him to the racetrack next time we go out to see the horse training there.  Many pigeons live there and I’ve seen several with red feet, the sign that they are not native to Oregon, so maybe he can make it.  But, what if he’s not accepted in the existing groups?   I’m hoping he will head back to our barn where he had taken up residence when he first flew in.  He would stroll around in the arena, in and out of the horses legs.  All was well until Trouble decided Wilbur would be a nice lunch.  Has Trouble learned that Wilbur is not a meal?  Trouble did learn that the cats just don’t want anything to do with him and he leaves them alone.  Not sure how the barn kitties, White Paws and Tiger Paws would treat him, though.   

The possible solution Jim thinks will work is to cut open a little flap near the top of the aviary and build another perch up there so Wilbur can fly in and out as he pleases.  Jim says he will do this but I notice he’s in no hurry either. 

It’s hard to see our little chicks leave the nest.  Maybe tomorrow.  Maybe not.  Not today.