A Blooming Hill Vineyard

Oh boy! Jim is famous! There’s a wonderful radio program out here with a feature called The Grape Adventurer and we are featured today! Here’s the link

http://www.1190kex.com/pages/grape_adventurer.html?feed=127048&article=6869697

Autographs cheerfully provided ….

We spent last weekend in Chicago celebrating the 100th birthday of Jim’s Aunt Isabelle! We could hardly keep up with her. No kidding. The Big Party was on Saturday at Chestnut Square, where Isabelle lives, but the real festivities began the Monday before. Isabelle told us that at Mass that evening, the entire congregation sang Happy Birthday to her – something she had never heard in Church before! Then on Wednesday, the actual birthday day, the real fuss began with breakfast delivered to her room, fussing over her all day and a champagne toast in the evening. She told us they made her sit down – like a queen – and everyone came to her. By the time we arrived on Friday, Isabelle was showing off her stack of Birthday Cards and gleefully repeating the events of the week to date.

Isabelle’s birthday brought together 72 family members and friends for the party. Kids from the fourth generation below her were there. It was exactly what you might expect with wonderful old family pictures, recitations of memories and family stories. Nephews and nieces arranged, hosted, performed and literally rolled out a red carpet. We shipped plenty of wine ahead (45 bottles) and it thrilled us, at the end, when people were “officially” thanked to hear an actual roar of applause for the wine!

A major highlight of the evening was a video recorded in Arizona of Isabelle’s 102 year-old boyfriend, Ray. She says he was “getting a little too close” 80 years ago, one New Year’s Eve…. On the video, he talked about that New Year’s and the old days, told her he knew they wouldn’t see each other again but that she is in his arms and heart. Most of us were weeping our hearts out. At the end of this sweet piece, Isabelle got herself up, grabbed the microphone from her nephew Bob’s hands and said, in no uncertain terms, “I never married him because I didn’t want to be a farmer’s wife!” No regrets about that or about anything else. She’s remarkable.

If I had to pick a highlight of the weekend itself, this would be it: Jim and I had brunch with Isabelle on Sunday, after church. We don’t see her often enough and were touched that she wanted to have us spend the time with her. Brunch is no small affair at Chestnut Square, consisting of everything from omelets to roast beef to bagels and lox, baked fish, lasagne, lots of salads and about 12 different dessert cakes and pies plus cookies and rugelah. Isabelle mentioned during the meal, which took quite a long time to consume, that a rule had been established about people taking food away from the brunch because too much was disappearing to residents’ apartments. Now it’s eat it or leave it.

As we were leaving, Jim helped Isabelle by carrying her coat and scarf (you don’t offer your arm to her because, usually, she is ten paces ahead of you wherever you go….). He was about to pick up the bulletin from the church but she stopped him fast and told him she needed that to hide the cookies she was stealing from brunch! Sure enough, she had the cookies concealed inside her palm and the bulletin deftly folded between her fingers so she could make a clean getaway.

Now I have hope for the future – a boyfriend and stolen cookies – should I need either commodity. Life is good.

How much fun is it to have Valentine’s Weekend as a long weekend! We are filling it up with three wonderful days of wines and chocolate. Friday, come see us at the fabulous Jenkins Estate Chocolate Fantasy in Beaverton – just Google it and you’ll find the way. There will be massive amounts of chocolates but wines from only two wineries and WE ARE ONE OF THEM! Yay!

Saturday and Sunday, February 13 and 14, we will be pouring right here at the Winery – 5195 SW Hergert Road, Cornelius – from noon to 5 PM each day. Click on directions to get here. We’ll have wines and chocolate hearts.

If you can’t get here – click on the Northwest Wines To You link and send yourself a Valentine’s present.

It’s also my sister’s birthday – best Valentine present I ever got!

Come see us!

Mmmmm mmmmm good. Jim’s white wines from the 2009 harvest are fabulous and the Riesling, in particular, is something very special. What a life I’ve fallen into — my handsome husband bringing me canary diamond colored wiines to sip at every stage of their artful evolution. In the beginning they taste and feel like nectar. Now, only a scant month or two later, they are wine and I am amazed each time at the lovely changes taking place.

Let me wax ecstatic about that Riesling because it is already sweet, creamy and transportative. Right now I am looking out of my office window onto a landscape of lingering snow being washed away by a cold, winter rain. Mist hangs at the bottom of the new Pinot block we call Arlington. It is beautiful and mystical in its own right having received the surprise of a snowstorm two days ago. One sip of that Riesling and I still see the storied Northwest winter but feel the promise of summer and those sultry breezes that drift down our valley.

It is New Year’s Eve and a time of looking forward for us. Tonight Jim will sing Happy Birthday to all of the horses – they all turn one year older on New Year’s, just like the Queen of England celebrates her birthday on a designated day that is not the actual date of her birth – and we will marvel at all we have and all we have ahead of us. By now, we can be reasonably sure about the quality of the wines and look forward to offering more of Jim’s magical way of coaxing these aromas and flavors out of the earth. We can also look forward to the surprises each year brings. Better not to speculate. Who knows what will happen. About the only thing I do know is that the things I can’t know are the ones that will be of the most significance.

Tonight, we’ll toast the ends, the beginnings and the surprises.

We have plenty of thanks to give – love, health, the earth we live on. And, to think, the earth, with loving encouragement from Jim produces such incredible bounty. We’re talking about the grapes and wine, of course. Truly, we have to sell some of this wine … but also truly, there is tremendous pleasure in serving it to people. This is the weekend we do that at our vineyard and winery. We serve delectable little chocolate cakes that draw out the flavor of the Pinot Noir; and, this year, we’ve added lemon cake to complement the white wine. There is a small tasting fee of $5, which we will happily deduct from a bottle of purchased wine. You can also buy your Christmas Tree right her – you choose it and cut it or we’ll help you cut it. What could be fresher than that! Make it a festive weekend with us. Here are the details:

A BLOOMING HILL VINEYARD
5195 SW HERGERT ROAD, CORNELIUS
FRIDAY, SATURDAY, SUNDAY (NOV. 26-28)
NOON TO 5 PM
DRIVING DIRECTIONS ARE ON THE BAR TO THE LEFT ALONG WITH A LINK TO BUYING OUR WINES FOR OUR FRIENDS OUT OF OREGON…

Well, we’re almost through the harvest and crush and Jim is still smiling and happy.  The harvest is, for us, huge – way bigger than last year and the grapes are beautiful.  Most mornings, in the early days of deciding whether the grapes were ready, Jim brought me little jars of pressed juice to sample.  I honestly thought we should be in the juice business as well as the wine business.  I think I really understood nectar as something lucious and sensual.  

And to think it continues to transform into wine and all the delights that brings…

There was a bit of a mad scramble while Jim rounded up the additional barrels we need this year but we’ve made it.  All that’s left to harvest is the Riesling…Jim is planning on a sweet, dessert Riesling, which is just fine with me!

Our real activity this year will be to market the wines.  What a concept, we need to try to sell them!  We’re just about to sign on with a wine shipper because I can’t tear my hair out any longer over filing for permits in all the states where it is possible to ship.  Soon – very soon – we’ll be able to ship to many states, including ones where we have good friends and family!  As soon as I have the complete list of states, I’ll put it up and with the link to how to buy.

With a little luck, some of you might be able to enjoy our Pinot Noir for Thanksgiving … it’s official release date.

So much for my plan to write weekly on this Wine Blog.  So sorry but a million life events knocked the virtual pen right out of my hand.  I’m happy to tell you that our lovely summer white wine is doing quite nicely and I’m happily selling it at the Forest Grove Farmer’s Market every Wednesday for the next several weeks.

And now we’ve added the first bottling of the estate Pinot Noir.  This is an especially wonderful wine: beautiful color, very smooth and full to the taste, floral aroma, long finish to it.  Tastes are fruity and chocolaty – sweet and sensual. This is the ageless wine you can drink right now.  It is young but most people taste it and can see that it is going to develop into something quite spectacular.

Jim is even willing to say that, yes, he has made some very good wines!

We’ll also be at Forest Grove Uncorked this weekend, August 15th.  I love that kind of selling because I get to talk to interesting and charming people who seem pleased to taste the wine and talk about it – and life in general!

Let me tell you about the Wine Angel…I had to go to Singapore in July for my job, which didn’t allow for too much sightseeing – probably a good thing since it is VERY HOT in Singapore and you can’t stay outside too long.  One jaunt took us to a fabulous Art Deco- style building with a several story high bar that is the lobby.  The bar, called Divine, features a five or so story wine storage case that soars over the bar.  Bottles of wine are retrieved by a fetching Wine Angel wearing a silver, scanty angel costume and wings.  She flies up to the retrieve the bottles in an art deco basket on pulleys.  I wish I could show you a picture but none are allowed inside.  Instead, here’s a shot or three of the building itself.

SEE OUR PRODUCTS PAGE – CLICK ON PRODUCTS IN THE NAVIGATION BAR AT THE LEFT! NOW YOU CAN BUY OUR WINE ON LINE AND USE PAYPAL.

More exciting than I can tell you….the white wine is bottled and we actually sold our first bottles! We bottled 149 cases the weekend of my birthday and set up a little winery setting at the Forest Grove Farmer’s Market on Wednesday, May 27th!

It was sociologically interesting to me to be there …. people make eye contact but don’t come over unless they are invited so I said “Would you like to taste some of our wine?” about a thousand times and was amazed that I felt sincere about it each time! Not everyone wanted to do it but everyone was gracious. The first bottle sold quickly…a man came up, tasted, asked the price, said “I’ll buy that…” and I said “What? Say that again? Did you say you wanted to buy a bottle???” I can’t imagine what he thought but he laughed and seemed pleased when I told him he was our very first customer! Jim and I drank a toast to him at dinner late that night!

The job of being married to a winemaker…really, how nice is this?  Here I am sitting at my computer doing actual work and Jim shows up with a glass of newly filtered Pinot Gris for me to taste.  Luckily, it’s the end of the work day for me so I can do this and not render myself incapable of a reasonable decision in my job, should one be required!

The wine is lovely.  It is the color of a canary diamond.  I want to wear it as perfume because it has a lovely, light floral scent.  A thousand years ago I used to wear Diorissimo…mostly because a man I was dating brought me back a bottle from a trip to Paris and I immediately told him it was what I wore most often.  He said “Either this is an amazing selection on my part; or, you are a very clever girl…”  I never did quite answer.

But, I digress.  The wine is delightful.  It is still early in the maturing cycle and you can taste that it will add roundness as time goes on.  Still, the essence of a lovely wine is right there.   Yesterday we tasted and Jim tested four of the barrels of Pinot Noir.  Every one of them had exceptional wine in it. Barrel Number 3  (we informally named them for the 12 Apostles so this would be James, amazingly enough)  is especially good!  I know I resisted the idea of writing about the tastes we detect in our wine but, really, it’s the way to let people know what to expect.  I wonder what you will make of the fact that I taste graham crackers at the finish of Barrel #3, James….

So the news here is good … we really like the way the wines are developing; all growing things are breaking free of their winter-wear and have put plump buds all over themselves, like trying out a new mascara that adds volume; the tomato seeds are starting to sprout in the greenhouse; we’ve still got stores in the pantry to hold us over until the garden performs its annual Major Symphony; and a horse is about to foal – probably this week.

See why I love this job??

So I’m sitting here playing paper dolls with our labels as we work through the federal government’s process of label approval. We’ve been turned down once because some of our letters weren’t 2mm higher than other letters. How tall is a mm anyway? I’m not really grousing, however, as -– knock on wood –- getting our approvals and licenses, server’s permit, and whatever else we’ve needed has been relatively uneventful. And we’ll get through this next step, too, because we are very smart people and have cleverly engaged a label company that also helps through this process. Isn’t it interesting how entire industries grow up around consumable products?

Anyway, we need a couple of labels for bottles we are donating to two auctions coming up: one helps the Oregon restaurant industry advocate for good business practices; the other, Salud!, the Oregon Pinot Noir auction that raises money for healthcare for Oregon’s seasonal workers – a very good thing.

And there is news on the actual winemaking front: we have a new white called Mingle. It is a divinely bright tasting blend of the three grapes Jim grows: Riesling, Pinot Gris and Chardonnay. We’ll debut it this spring and we are confidently hopeful that it will be a hit and a signature wine, along with the Pinot Noir.

Jim is now through the winter pruning. We thought, just in time for spring! But we were surprised with an overnight snowfall last night that left 3 inches. It’s warmed up enough to have melted by now; although, I can still see some on the nearby slopes of neighbors’ fields. What a time of year; the buds on the Magnolia tree are about as fat as they can get without actually popping open and there are daffodil, crocci and even parsley leaves braving the still-chilly air. They all look like little space beings trying to absorb and understand these strange surroundings. Hope they know they will be very welcome!