Ok…. So my wishful thinking about no wind didn’t help much.  Today is blustery and blisteringly dry.  There is almost no humidity and the winds are gusting big time, and the past few days have been exactly the same.   We have Riedel glasses blowing over and shattering on the patio, cardboard boxes flying out of the recycling bin and there are no insects and few birds in the sky!   The night time temperatures were very cold, the skies are clear and the winds are searing.   The winds were definitely bringing cold air until yesterday and now the air feels warmer but the winds are gradually dying down.  Everyone’s lips are cracking.  Good thing the vintage is making everyone salivate…. There is balance after all.

Two days ago we harvested Bergstrom Vineyard blocks 1 and 2 which are planted to a mix of Dijon-clone Pinot Noirs and block 3C which is our very first harvest of our newly grafted Chardonnay.  This was especially exciting as we have been waiting for this day for a few years and it is tasting great!  The fruit looks very promising and we incorporated more whole clusters than normal into our Bergstrom Vineyard tanks.

Yesterday we brought in half of the Croft Vineyard and all of Anderson Family Vineyard Chardonnay which put us at just over 12% harvested for the year.  We have a long way to go but I just walked through Shea Vineyard and Le Pre du Col and de Lancellotti, amongst others, and they are holding up very well and  the fruit flavors are just now getting out of the strawberry and red raspberry and entering the dark raspberry and bright blackberry flavor spectrum which bodes well for a little more hang time, but not much before we begin to bring these sites in.

Yesterday we also had the staff of Veritable Quandary Restaurant in Portland come out and visit us as they are big supporters of our wines (they poured our Rose by the glass all summer and are now pouring our Old Stones Pinot Noir 2011 by the glass as well as supporting Sigrid Chardonnay and de Lancellotti Vineyard Pinot Noir.)  We showed them around the vineyards and they joined us for a pizza luncheon as our old friend Kris Utz from Renaissance Catering brought the mobile pizza oven up to the winery for our first Pizza Day of the harvest!  Good times, especially when you top them with our homegrown (Biodynamic) Jalapeno and Serrano peppers which are perfectly ripe and wickedly hot!

Today we harvested the Winery Block Chardonnay and Pinot Noir and these look incredible!  I am very happy with how this vineyard is maturing and beginning to produce stand-alone wines of great depth and intensity and sense of place.  I think that the 2012’s from this terroir will be very special.

For now the sun is setting and the crew is diligently sorting through the small concentrated clusters of fruit as they pass from the picking bins over the sorting table and drop gently into the fermentation tanks.  Vintage Pink Floyd floats out from the Hi-Fi and all seems good….. but the dry winds are beginning to shrivel fruit and turn happy vine canopies yellow and brown and the fruit will begin to come in at a furious pace beginning on Monday.

Now off to clean the winery up for two nights of food and drink with 200 of our wine club members.  The Annual Harvest Dinner Series and the release of “Homage” Pinot Noir is eminent.   Then the flood gates burst and  we will truly be burning the midnight oil.  The picking calendar is stacked for the next 7 days…. The rest of Bergstrom, de Lancellotti, Le Pre du Col, the Beginning of Shea and the start of Gregory Ranch.