We returned from New York City to beautiful blue skies in Oregon’s Willamette Valley. The colors in the trees and vines is simply amazing right now. The air is crisp and the mornings are frosty. The pumpkins we carved for halloween are looking a little scarrier now due to the wide array of molds growing on them. I can’t believe it’s November and we still have fruit hanging.
Bergstrom Wines brought in the last of our Pinot Noir on Tuesday October 29th! Old vine Pommard and Wadenswil from Hyland Vineyard. This vineyard has always benefited from hanging longer than others and I wasn’t quite sure when the rains began if we would ever even harvest this fruit this year. It came in looking a little ragged around the edges and we had to sort out a fair amount of clusters for botrytis but the sound fruit was amazingly sweet and ripe. I couldn’t believe the lab report; Brix of 24.5, PH of 3.35…perfect! no, Astonishing!! After more than a month of rain ( over 7 inches total) and cool weather, this fruit had improved dramatically and might even shine as one of the better wines of the vintage if all goes well in the fermentation.
Riesling begaon to come in soon after that and looked good. There was, of course, much botrytis to sort through but a little of the noble rot can benefit high-acid Rieslings. The Dr. Bergstrom Riesling program looks very promising this year. In fact, as I mentioned earlier, we are expecting our last fruit of the year tomorrow morning: old vine Riesling from Chehalem Mountain Vineyard. Very exciting. Probably the latest we have ever harvested fruit here at Bergstrom.
There are still 16 fermentations going on in the winery (and two cold soaks) as I write this. We have filled over 400 barrels of Pinot Noir so far and have more than 85 Chardonnay barrels peacefully bubbling away/ We are far from being close to packing up and saying goodbye for the winter. In-fact Im betting on pressing out our last tank just prior to the Thanksgiving open house weekend if all goes as expected. And I haven’t even touched on the 400 tons of compost that we need to build before it starts snowing!
I’m off to Florida on Monday for a sales trip. Maybe the sunshine and ocean breezes will help me decide where in the world I’m going to put all of that cow manure.