Curious George

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All Pumped Up

July 2, 2011 in Farming, The Nuts and Bolts of It | No comments

Water has returned to the hill. Sam and I went and picked up old pump out in the green and firework stands of Vancouver, WA where we thought we might buy our new one, and then travelled southward down I-5 with all those tractor trailers to pick up new, smaller pump we ended up purchasing. Didn’t I feel like quite the farm wife that day, talking the ag-pump talk, driving the dusty pickup with my co-worker Sam, and Curious George, of course.

Old Pump, New Pump

And best news, the pump works! Yes, yes, a new pump ought to work, so why this excitement? The last pump was nightmarish. It caused so much headache and heartache because we could not depend on it. You should know, when you’re working on an endeavor like this and have bootstrapped the adventure yourself, along with a very kind bank (always grateful, Brad!), and don’t live out there to get right on it, everything that doesn’t go right is magnified because of the time and energy and moolah to fix it. So off Scott goes, he with his full time other job that pays the bills, because we’ve learned our lesson when counting on others. That’s why I’m so pumped up. THE PUMP WORKS! Scott’s only hesitantly pumped up. But not me! WOOHOOOOO!

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James Beard Event, What a Feeling

March 10, 2011 in Moving Along, Our Wine, Wine Marketing | No comments

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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Curious George, Single Vineyard Wine, and the Brothers

March 10, 2010 in And Then Some, Farm:Wine Connection, Farming | 7 comments

Was reading a Curious George story from the late 1950s to our young son the other day. In one of the scenes is an image of a reporter carrying one of those old-time cameras, the boxy ones with the big flash on top, looked like she was looking down on it to take the picture instead of holding it to her eye. You know what I’m talking about? Anyway, I soon put our little guy to napping and came downstairs thinking of that camera, about how in many of my favorite children’s books I share with Sam there are a good many dated items like the telephone in the big green room, or this box camera, or horse-drawn wagons, etc; in essence, objects from the past that my son might never come to know because they are no longer relevant to our cultural landscape.

Alone with my cup of coffee, Scott across the table finishing up Hugh Johnson, A Life Uncorked (look for a book report soon – I’ll try to get Scott to expand on his thoughts for this one), I began to think about something I had read recently in the March WS, about an idea from the past that I wonder if more and more people might never come to know, or even worse, to dismiss: the farm-to-wine connection.

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