Moving Along

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As members of what amounts essentially to a farmer’s electric company cooperative, Wasco Electric, we receive their monthly publication, Ruralite, a magazine that covers life and individuals out in the agricultural reaches and towns they service. I enjoy reading it because it’s “real,” not air-brushed imagery or loaded with Madison Ave adverts, its glamour is in its simplicity. Anyway, after dinner I was thumbing through and came across an ad in Marketplace, that began, “Plant Grapes, Make Wine.” It went on to tell about the acreage and location of “prime, undeveloped land, water rights, blah blah blah” from a notable Washington State AVA. Didn’t I have a chuckle. How easy. Plant grapes, make wine. Just like that, people. And we wonder why the market is as the market is. Holy crap.

Chatting with Scott, he told me about a phone conversation he had with a wine broker? wine something or other, who said to him how she often checks the Oregon Liquor Control Commission website, and sees, as Scott relayed, “All the wineries springing up.” That’s right. springing up. And indeed they are. And we wonder why the market is as the market is. Yes, I’m saying it again.

For better or worse, we took a true path. Our endeavor was not one that sprung up. It’s been decades in the making, years of searching, and of waiting. We planted a vineyard on land that met our requirements, and we waited, to make wine based on Scott’s palate, one that he developed in France with one of its top wine merchants. Yeah!

And then there are ads like this, thank goodness, to leave us smiling even more, where someone 64 years young wants to meet “sexy looker that can treat me right and cook well.”  Ha! Good looking and a good cook! At least he didn’t ask for some sexy looker he can plant grapes and make wine with who’s also a good cook and on top of it all treats him right. I’d end our subscription.

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So, not having a tasting room, and Memorial Day weekend supposedly being one of the busiest for wine tasters out and about, and knowing our vineyard was TOO far off the beaten trail (not crazy far, but not on a prescribed “wine route,” so to speak), we were driving down a road in Hood River a couple of months ago, on the way to where we have our wine made, and I saw a very cool abandoned garage with great parking out front, conveniently located right off the highway on a great bluff overlooking the Columbia River Gorge, and fully on a “wine trail.” We found out who owned it, he laughingly agreed to let us use the spot–at no charge–we got all required permits with city of Hood River, and Oregon’s governing alcohol commission, and voila, a farm-stand was in motion. So we schlepped our stuff each day 70 minutes down the most scenic highway, to Hood River, and set up our blue canopy wine farm stand, at the Old Garage.

We had a ton of fun, and I believe, met some of the most adventurous of the wine adventurers that weekend. Making one’s mind up to pull off the well-traveled highway and discover what’s under that blue canopy is not for the faint-hearted, but it IS for the curious and courageous, and we are thankful for everyone who had it in them to dodge the potholes and come on in. And they really liked the wine. So one of my theories of our wine being really for the most adventurous was proven that day.

There was also a great showing of our Portland friends, as well as one of our The Dalles buddy’s, and my old boss from ages ago who now lives in “The Hood,” whose support of our endeavor really made us feel all warm in that chilly wind;  Scott was referred to as “the kid” setting up; some guy pulled in and asked if what we were doing was legal and then just left without tasting a thing; the scotch broom smelled divine(!); and an eagle soared out in front. It was truly a grand weekend.

“Will we do it again?” That is the question. People did stop, and we did sell wine, but was it enough to sustain the idea? Will we need to keep going back to keep the momentum going? Or was this weekend it? We’re still working it through. But we do know that from this we have happily run across another “farm stand” opportunity with a restaurant in Mosier, a neighboring town, as well as a very interested and supportive local journalist, and maybe a couple more ops with some of the area’s mover and shakers that can help get our wine out and about even more.

The big thing for us is that we need to get people to our hill; we’re not happy separating the land from our wine, we want people to experience the whole kit and kaboodle, and we know visitors will just be blown away by our site, they will.  So we hope to soon begin hosting “camper” tastings since now we’ve disinfected it from all the mice who conveniently took it over instead of going south to Phoenix for the winter…stay tuned! And if you’re interested in being one of the first “Camper tasters,” please do let us know!

Here’s a link to some photos I posted on Face Book (click on the underlined link, Mom).

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Memorial Day Weekend Wine TastingAlmost. Tomorrow. Hood River. Pouring Wine. At the Old Garage. AND I’M SO EXCITED! I don’t know why, maybe it’s just this coming together of family, a sort of rally to get our wine out in public more– whether or not this weekend’s wine travelers will be our public has yet to be seen; who will dare to venture off the road (or at least turn their heads since we are on a well-known wine road) and pull into a place unmarked from any Memorial Day Weekend Wine Tasting map they may have, a locale to happen upon, and discover us there, a blond-haired little boy almost three out running about, Scott hunkered down because it’s supposed to be chilly, red-white-and-blue banners a-flappin in the stiff breeze we’re expecting, me making sure all the particulars of  our little “farm-stand” are ready for the throngs of adventurers…who will it be? We’ll find out! And THAT’s very exciting!

Here are the particulars —

We will be at the Old Garage, 135 Country Club Road, Hood River, 97031, Sat – Mon, 12-5.

Woohoooo!

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WARNING: This post is waaaay more heady than a meadowlark warbling (my last post).

Was at the best lunchtime presentation about the power of story last week, where the presenter, the creative mastermind behind the Portland Timbers advertising, Jelly Helm, a former Executive Creative Director at Wieden and Kennedy, shared some of his expertise. Even now it’s all still swirling in my head: the idea of story deficit in our culture (what we do have is way too shallow), about how the stories we’ve all depended upon as a society have been challenged and are in many cases no longer valid, the hero story — lots of heady stuff that I just LOVE, having a brand storyteller/writer background.

As I sat there and listened, I started thinking about the wine industry, the industry I now write for, and work in, and The Grande Dalles, and Scott and myself. And Steve Heimoff. What stories are now being told in the wine world, what stories aren’t, and at this junction the industry finds itself at, because it’s clear the wine world is going through something, what  scenarios will characterize the wine world and its stories moving forward?

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With some days now between our return from the Empire State (my home state) and our James Beard Foundation “Columbia Valley Terroir” event, we’ve had a chance to actually think about how good it all was — the weather — not too cold, not too warm; our hotel, the Affinia Shelburne in Murray Hill fresh and comfortable; the Flower District and our hunt for table decorations a good jaunt and fun peek into the day-to-day of that busy city; Sarge’s Deli on 3rd Ave now Scott’s #2 for best sandwich ever (the first is a sandwich shop in Brooklyn, near Flatbush Ave, I believe) ; fresh bagels with whitefish spread for breakfast; an outing to Central Park and to the American Museum of Natural History to see the dinosaur bones recently discovered by Sam in a Curious George book; but most importantly, our James Beard Event. Up until we showed up that evening, we wondered, “How would people like our wines and their food pairings?” We found out: They LOVED them!
The two things that we heard the most, specifically about our wines were:

1.  “I never liked Riesling until now.”
We’ve heard this many times before. Seems like people we’ve run into have an aversion to the sweet sweet, because with no residual sugar, Leroy’s Finest is far from it. Still fruity, but bone dry.

2. “We can’t believe wine like this is already coming from a young vineyard.”
People were amazed at the how such interesting/complex wines (THEIR words) could come from a first harvest/vintage. Most memorable was when Scott spoke to one avid drinker/collector of First/Premier Growth Bordeaux/Burgundy at length, and after dinner he came up to us, looked Scott in the eye, and with some astonishment told him he couldn’t believe this wine was just our first vintage, adding that our future potential was tremendous. He said it two or three times.

All in all, a great evening, a refreshing weekend, even if it was mostly business.

I posted some pictures on facebook (don’t need to be member for this link) on The Grande Dalles page (need to be member for this link), if you’re interested –I didn’t get too many, since Scott and I were “working the room.”

Thank you everyone who attended — it was a great evening. We love New York!

 

 

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That’s what the local print shop guy, Dave, asked me, when I went in to drop off our James Beard Foundation event brochlets (not really a brochure, not really a pamphlet) we’re hauling with for our Thursday James Beard Foundation “Columbia Terroir” event with local chefs Aaron Solley and Suzanne Bozarth from the James John Cafe. I had to think. How was it? “Busy,” was all I could come up with. Here’s what I had been doing:

1. tweaking links and whatnot to connect our website to new e-comm site, hosted by Nexternal. all the nitty gritty. thank goodness for the Nexternal support. my gal Shauna is a dream. and thank goodness i love learning another language. it’s fun, but not when there’s a little 2.5 year-old tugging at you, or sitting on your lap with “wandering, happy keyboard fingers,” if you know what i mean.

2. tweaking design and layout of Columbia Valley Terroir brochure that I essentially wrote and designed. not being trained as a designer doesn’t help me catch the tiny things that are noticeable when printed (margins and stuff), thank goodness i have the software to fix it. but, oh, my shoulders from hunching over my laptop! but the big one was the cover image — we finally settled on something very pretty. you want a sneak peek, you say? well, ok – here you are:

This is the view from our vineyard, with a little photoshopy-shop going on for the grainy texture.

3. saving hummingbirds. ok, not saving them, but making sure my friend’s frozen feeder got replaced with non-frozen syrup, so her little hummers could eat while she was away.

4. getting fitted for an outfit my crazily talented designer friend Yvonne is making for me, specifically for the James Beard event. she and i had a project together some years ago that didn’t take off, and I asked her if she would be interested in starting it again by getting her designs in front of a NY crowd. not that i’m a runway model, and not that squeezing between tables at the snug James Beard foundation constitutes a runway, and not that, oh — well, anyway — there’s been some back and forth and i can’t wait to wear it.

5. going to our POD storage unit  we rented to declutter our little farm house with when trying to sell it (that’s been way over a year now) that we have not yet moved to our new house (a good 1/2 year already), to dig through and find an outfit just in case #4 (see above) fell through. i found some, but they don’t fit anymore. note to self: do something about that mama belly. enough is enough. it’s time.

6. prayed that #4 didn’t fall through since i didn’t have Plan B to fall back on (see #5 above), and had very little time, money or energy to go find an outfit, because clogs and jeans and wool sweaters, my standard portland togs, wouldn’t fare well at an NYC evening event in the West Village.

7. being a solo mama — scott was away on saturday, a drive to seattle to meet with a Masters of Wine residing there– and wasn’t I on pins and needles about THAT. would he like our wine? he LOVED our wine! and then scott was off again on Sunday to the farm, to meet up with a friendly farmer who has an absolute PERFECT smile (you do, Dave!), who was going to do some work for us. it gets too hard to coordinate farming with weather and scott’s full-time work — thankfully Dave has time and is willing to help. so while i’ve got all that going on in the back of my head, sam and i were out at the park, going to Yvonne’s fitting, helping hummingbirds, and taking a nap. ahh.

8. the standard laundry work. does it ever end?

yes, it was a busy weekend and somehow, very invigorating.

How was yours?

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Went to a James John Cafe fundraiser dinner last week for our upcoming joint The Grande Dalles – James John Cafe James Beard Foundation dinner, and weren’t we overwhelmed by the outpouring of support — not just for James John, but from the people I spoke to attending the event, their enthusiasm and well wishes for ALL of us just about brought tears to my eyes. Ever since we planted the vineyard, the reception we’ve received has been chilly, putting it nicely: felt like the local wine community was rolling their eyes at us newcomers who had our own ideas about how to do things; the local farming community was not happy to have a vineyard in their midst; even felt like many in our family couldn’t grasp the enormity of our undertaking; and we couldn’t find a soul interested in investing a plug nickel — well, OK, except one, and that didn’t pan out. Bottom line,  it felt like the only people intent on, or, should I say, who cared about our success was us, and wasn’t it the loneliest feeling in the world, especially out on that hilltop. Until that evening at the James John. And wasn’t it refreshing.

A friend of ours in NY, Dave S., reminded us when we were lamenting some “influentials” who declined our invite to our wine opening some weeks ago, that we ought to focus on those who would attend instead. Bullseye. I got it. Quit griping and embrace the people who DO care. I don’t know how that will change the tone of my blog, I know I have been at many times a big old whiney arse, and I at times cannot help myself when I point out the hilarity that abounds. But with these community blessings out there — one couple even told us they would open a bottle of our wine the time of the NYC event, and think of us, and send good thoughts in real time — it really lifts the heart and soul.

Soon we’re off to NYC, with the blessings of many in the St. Johns Community. And THAT’s a great feeling. Thank you.

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At least that’s what we’d like to think it was, The Grande Dalles’ Inaugural Release Party at the James John Cafe. People came, people stayed, no-one tasted our wines and then nervously hustled out, and no-one was spitting, except Scott, who had been “tasting” all afternoon/eve.

First on our tasting list was Leroy’s Finest, our riesling; which many people first declined, imagining it to be sweet, until we told them it was bone-dry. And weren’t they pleasantly surprised by it! Many imagined how Leroy’s Finest would do with oysters and seafood (excellent, of course -just ask David Rosengarten!). Moving along to our reds, there were camps that preferred one over the other, but we expected that. Both have their own qualities and flavours, Home Place maybe more robust, Gampo not so much, but critic/journalist feedback reinforced the wines’ integrity: structured, well-made, fine wines. And with the food that evening: roasted pig and some good home fixins to go with it, everyone seemed to be rather happy.

A big THANK YOU goes out to Joe and Lana: Joe was our pourer, and Lana, his wife, got rounded up for the “Welcome” table. And of course a big THANK YOU to everyone else, for making the event a lively time, and for all the kind words and sales (!). Your support is absolutely priceless.

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Ok, granted we’re not there yet, we have yet to get on the airplane and have our Columbia Valley Terroir event, but we are officially on their March 2011 lineup, and that’s pretty darn good. How did we do it, you ask? With only our  inaugural wines, and even more so as an unknown from a state that only really touts its pinot noir? BECAUSE WE’RE ON TO SOMETHING. And the James Beard Foundation recognized that when we visited them last Spring and invited us to pour at a dinner.

So, we went out and found suitable partners who share the same ideals–it’s not about the show, but what gets shown in the wines, or in their case, the food–and will create the dishes to highlight our wines, and our wines their dishes. It was rather serendipitous, I only asking if our neighborhood’s James John Cafe rented out their space, so captivated was I by its high, tin ceilings and quirky decor, out here where we live in what feels like the outpost of St. Johns in North Portland, Oregon. But after talking to them during our wine tasting, I stepped out and asked if they might be interested in joining us at The James Beard House. And there you go. Of course their training and expertise helped with selling them in to the James Beard House, these two gems of chefs, Suzanne Bozarth and Aaron Solley; each has worked directly with James Beard Foundation Award Winning Chefs.

I know it’s a slow process, getting The Grande Dalles’ wine out and about. And its difficulty becomes compounded by all the surprising number of people who don’t value the new and different, so god bless New York. If you, dear reader, happen to know of any individuals who don’t follow the herd, send them our way, please. Or at least to The James Beard House in New York on March 3.

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How golden the sun on December’s last day,
Not rainy like last year’s —now faraway.
A brisk winter’s afternoon light fills the sky
And the colored bulbs wait for the moment when night
Descends all around us, a new year’s fresh start
As we all celebrate in the bright of this dark.

Happy New Year, One and All – Stephanie, Scott, Samuel, and Jack

*******

2010 Top Ten Highlights (in no particular order)

  1. Sold some wine!
  2. The Grande Dalles’ wine and story are getting out.
  3. David Rosengarten told us he found Leroy’s Finest the best American Riesling he’s ever tasted.
  4. Proper sleeping arrangements are now in order.
  5. Sea turtles.
  6. We got an up close look inside The Machine.
  7. Thankfully, our grapes ripened just right.
  8. Our third harvest, and Sam turned two!
  9. Samuel started asking for his own glass of wine at dinner.
  10. Little House on the Hill Project takes a shape.

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