A Dream’s End

April 26, 2011 in Farming | 1 comment

Got some very sobering news the other day. The farmer who sold us our land, the coot I’ve referred to as “Old Wise All” in my earlier posts, the guy who at one point years ago we would’ve said is getting what he deserves, might be losing it all. His house and property up for auction on the courthouse steps. I can’t imagine. For all our headache and heartache, this guy also enabled our own dream when he sold us land. He, too, took steps to change his own life, bust out of the status-quo and do something different. It appears this might be the end for him. We hope he may have something else lined up, but when all your land and family home is getting auctioned off, it doesn’t appear so.*

I’ve got to write a book. The ups and downs, our own and all the others we’ve run into during this endeavor, have been tremendous. The emotion I feel today thinking about this overwhelms me. I feel hollow, with tears as I write. What is happening to this man could happen to anyone who steps out and tries to do something different. It could happen to us. How in the hell do I know this is all worth it?

*Follow up to the Public Foreclosure Notice: The auction on the courthouse steps never did take place.

Why We Make Wine

April 19, 2011 in Farming, Starting the vineyard, The Straight Dirt, Our Story | No comments

Why We Make Wine

 

It’s a story that has been 20+ years in the making, maybe even longer. I mean, after all, Scott is the son of farmer of a farmer, and now here he is, a farmer himself, with a son.

If you’re interested in the whole story, it’s right here.

 

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Diary of A…Second Installment: Welcome to Farming

April 15, 2011 in Uncategorized | No comments

It’s up, on TheDailyMeal. Timely, relevant, from our life to yours. Welcome to farming.

Diary of a Start-Up Vineyard and Winemaker

April 4, 2011 in Life of a Start-Up, Our Wine, The Nuts and Bolts of It, Wine Marketing | No comments

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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Watching Sap

April 3, 2011 in A Sense of Place, Farming the Vineyard, On the Land | No comments

Bud Break, 2010

That’s what we’re waiting for these days out in the vineyard, for the days to warm and the sap to rise, to see what we’ve got to work with this year. Here’s why: right around Thanksgiving last year, a major freeze rolled through the Columbia Valley and our vineyard on Rock Flour Hill. We were spared the below zero F temperatures vineyards in WA and to the east of us received–the lowest our gauges recorded was 5 degrees F. So far we’ve seen no wood damage that we’ve heard might be the case in WA. But Scott says there’s no guarantee of bud damage, we just have to wait and see for the days to warm up and the sap to start making its rounds, out to the buds and leaves that unfurl from them. We had a similar wait-and-see  episode the first year we planted, a deep freeze came in instead of the anticipated first frost at the end of October. Our vines were young, tender, barely hardened off in defense of winter cold, and we were told the vineyard was dead. It wasn’t. But it was a frightening thought, and many months of fret ensued.

On the other side of the country, in upstate New York, my father is also closely watching sap, as he waits for buds to come out, but on sugar maple trees. For him, this signals the end of collecting sap for his maple syrup production–he told me that once the trees bud, the sap becomes soured, and no good. He’s a very small producer of syrup, maybe only a handful of gallons — when it takes 40 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of syrup, and it’s just him doing the work, who can blame him?  When I was young he’d tap the centuries’ old maples out in the front yard of his similar-aged home (used to be an Inn). I think now he uses the younger stands of maple up on the hill where he has his sheep. He still does it the old fashioned way, outside over wood-burning fires, imparting a lovely smokiness to the syrup. He better save me some!

Funny how we’re both in our own sap-watching stories. I guess that’s just what some farmers do: we watch sap.

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Mind the Gap

March 31, 2011 in And Then Some, Moving Along, Wine Culture | No comments

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?

Read the rest of this entry »

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Hello, Spring

March 21, 2011 in A Sense of Place, On the Land, The Meadowlark | No comments

If you’ve been reading along, you’ll know there’s nothing better for me than hearing the Western Meadowlark’s song punctuate the still out on our hill. Happy Spring to all of you.

 

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Slainte, Ireland

March 17, 2011 in The Straight Dirt, Our Story | No comments

“There’s no better time than a dark, blustery Irish winter to dream the dream of sunshine, grapes and wine.”

That was my opening line in our letter – or something like it – way back in 2005 when we were living in Ireland, courting our not-yet-on-board cowboy vineyard manager who we had met some weeks earlier while we were honeymooning in Roseburg, Oregon. How? What? Ireland? Yup, Ireland. The land where this whole wine adventure really took off.

Scott’s work brought us there for a 2-year assignment — mine was shortened because I had to prepare the cat for travel to a rabies’ free land. So in Ireland we were, and it was then when the wine dream that had been growing in Scott for decades really bit him in the behind. Alone on those winter nights, between late night pub phone calls (I got some pretty funny ones), he began to read the books I had given him over the years, and he was hooked. It also helped that we had just gotten back together only weeks before he was to depart for Eire, and that I agreed to join  him on his assignment — the tipping point was being reached, no turning back — we were committing to each other, see how that goes?

Scott Reading About Limestone, Prompting Our Honeymoon in Roseburg

So, it’s to Ireland I raise my glass today, not necessarily in celebration of that guy who supposedly set all those heathens straight, but to that little green penny of a country, that colorful, cheerful, rural land, the location that so inspired Scott’s dream, or at least reminded him that Irish winters are ridiculously grey and wet.

Besides the steer and sheep and the occasional pheasant, my favorite backyard Ireland view.

Slainte, Ireland!

 

 

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For Doing Things Differently, We’re the Wine of the Week

March 14, 2011 in The Word Spreads, Wine Culture | No comments

The Grande Dalles made Bottle Notes’ Wine of the Week (see below), the news hitting the internet while we were in transit to New York and our James Beard event. So it’s been almost 2 weeks ago, but I’ve only just now had the chance to pop it in The Uncultivated Life.

While being chosen from all the wines I’m sure they receive was indeed quite an honor, even more so was what was written about us, like:

–Referring to The Grande Dalles as “That winemaker who goes the extra mile to defy convention and produce wines that are different from everything else in the immediate surroundings.”

–“For doing things just a little bit differently, The Grande Dalles is our Wine of the Week.”

“The Grande Dalles is…a contrarian in the massive Columbia Valley, producing unique, small-batch wines…”

“…Use The Grande Dalles as inspiration to seek out other wines that diverge from the regional norm.”

YEAH!

Thank you, THANK YOU Bottle Notes — for recognizing our wine and the spot-on words about our endeavor.

 

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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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