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This year marks our fifth year anniversary since planting the vineyard. If you have been reading our Diary of a Start-Up Winemaker series on The Daily Meal, you will have come across this — I posted one year each day last week. If you have not, it’s all right here for your reading enjoyment. Hold on, here we go.

2011 marks the fifth anniversary of our little vineyard on the frontier. It’s been five l-o-n-g years since we took the plunge and transformed a steep and distinct hillside out in the middle of wild, windy Oregon wheat country into a vineyard going on its 4th vintage, to make wine like no other from only the grapes we grow. Can that be right? We planted in 2006; at the end of our third growing year in 2008 we had our first harvest; then 2009, 2010, and holding our breath for 2011, which is our 6th growing year. Yes. This will be, if all goes well, our 4th harvest.

We thought you might enjoy a tiny peek in on those five years, for what happened along the way—to us and to our land—is as much a part of the wine as the grapes we make it from.

2006 : The Planting, and the Big Freeze

After months of preparation that began pretty much the day after we stepped off the plane in October, 2005, from Scott’s 2-year work assignment in Ireland, we planted The Grande Dalles vineyard. We had already found water and dug the well in 2005, so that was off our to-do list. But early 2006 was busy, busy, busy, as we laid out the vineyard, walking that hillside and holding up markers, person unseen because the terrain was so curved in areas.

Scott put in weather stations, a deer fence went in, we had a surveyor out to help us set rows evenly, 3-phase electricity was brought in from miles away, and Scott placed numerous orders for the supplies we would need for the vineyard, the grapes not the least of it. The bigger things we collected were drip line, wire, end posts, and center posts, and between Scott’s squabbling with our vineyard manager over inches of ground (Scott’s a farmer at heart, and does not like to waste a bit of land) we decided on the vineyard’s boundaries. In April 2006 the end posts were set, Scott holding every single one of them as they were tamped 5 feet into the earth on a terribly cold and blustery day.

If you want to get a decent first growing year, you have to plant as early as you can, and every day you lose is every day less for the plants. The big pressure for us was getting water to the top of our hill before the plants arrived. We sort-of made that deadline, and the plants arrived. But to make absolute sure water could successfully reach our hilltop again and again meant we had to stage all 17,000 starts for a week or so, securing them behind chicken wire so local deer couldn’t feast. As soon as we knew we could depend on bringing water up a good 400 feet from the well down in the valley below, we were ready to plant, and plant we did, in early June, 2006.

It was a joyous time, for the most part, as we placed all our hopes and dreams into that hillside. But Stephanie was beginning her slip away, as relationships and characters, and all the weeding we did by hand, began to take their toll. And by December, all our jubilation was soon dashed when we got the news that our vineyard was most likely dead from that unexpected freeze in October. To add to that, our then vineyard manager, our one and only with no ulterior motives who believed in us, had emergency open-heart surgery. It was around Christmas, and we thought we had lost both of them, Leroy, and the vineyard. What would 2007 hold? Read the rest of this entry »

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Our latest installment on The Daily Meal. We (mainly me, Stephanie) write a bi-monthly piece called “Diary of a Start-Up Winemaker.” What we(well, I)’ve written to date are HERE.

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We’ve only been “in business” for just under a year, and are working on finding like-minded wine adventurers who appreciate wine like ours, as well as our endeavor. It’s a crowded, crazy market these days, as you all know, but we’re slowly reaching some of you individuals who dare to step off the well-worn route, or should I say, you’re discovering us, as true adventurers are apt to do.

Carl found us through Scott’s parents, out in Missouri. He was so interested in The Grande Dalles that he purchased six bottles of our inaugural wines: two ’09 Leroy’s Finest, our bone-dry Riesling; two ’08 Gampo, our sangiovese blend; and two ’08 Home Place, our tempranillo blend, just like that. Since his order, we’ve exchanged a few chit-chat messages, so imagine our surprise, when he told us he’d be out in the Pacific Northwest (a rare visit, he said) and wanted to meet! Our first fan from afar wanting to come and learn more! We were thrilled.

So off Sam and I went — Scott had to stay in Portland, holding down his day job that keeps this dream alive — to meet Carl.

Read the rest of this entry »

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Our latest installment on The Daily Meal

Some time ago, it filtered down to us — a wisecrack at our expense, from someone who we refer to as Old Wise All — about how we did our farming in a Subaru.

Back in the day, when we were getting ourselves up and running on the farming end of it, turning bare wheat ground into vineyard, Old Wise All, an established neighboring farmer, went by the farming book when it came to vehicles out in that neck of the woods. He had a 4×4 farming truck, a “going to town” shiny truck, a “stepping out” car, and numerous other farm vehicles: a couple of tractors and trailers, and an enormous combine that he painted himself. So no wonder the snide comment, “And he’s out there farmin’ in a subaru!” Because that’s all we had. A “town and country” dusty, dirty, old Subaru that we used for everything — even farming.

See, when you have a dream and don’t have a family farm or deep pockets (or friends with deep pockets), you do what you can. So we farmed in a Subaru, among other things, to make this dream happen. And don’t we laugh about it now. READ MORE

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…And Getting Pushed Back — our latest installment on TheDailyMeal.com.

It’s about how The Grande Dalles, vowing to do things differently than the me-toos out there, is not finding it easy; very few appreciate an individual wine, we’re finding.

Here’s how it beings:

“When we began to even think about getting into the wine industry, we knew one thing: We didn’t want to be like anyone else.

What was the point, we asked ourselves? Does a painter set out to be like Chagall, or a musician like Hendricks? No! And so we set out to make a singular wine based on Scott’s vision — one that had been solidified in a pre-global palate France, and growing in him for 20-plus years. It would use grapes from the vineyard we farmed, the land painstakingly chosen for the wine we envisioned. No way were we going to emulate another country or person’s style. We only wanted to reinstate what we found sorely on the wane in the industry: Wines that dare to be different because of where and who they come from. We were going to push the envelope. Little did we know how hard the industry would push back.”

Anyhoo — the whole story is available for your enjoyment on The Daily Meal here. If you like it, please do rate it with the stars next to the column, so we can keep writing for this fine online community.

Many thanks –

stephanie

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Our first installment is up on TheDailyMeal.Com, Diary of a Start-up Winemaker. Look for our bi-monthly stories, straight out of the wilds of the wine world delivered to the safety of your home/desk/wherever, so you can live the life without the stress and dirt!

Thank you MC, and The Daily Meal!

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