A Theology of Wine

. . . and No Stewardship Campaign

2011-11-20T14:18:00.001-08:00

Instead of helping with a stewardship campaign today I got to go on a special wine tour with some wonderful friends. Doug and Linda Cruikshank had bid on this special tour at some charity event. They could take four friends, so we got to tag along with Bill and Jane Moore. The winery was Trisaetum (rhymes with I ATE 'em). Our tour was lead by Andrea Fry who with her husband, James owns this beautiful estate. Actually they own two estates. The winery building is located just outside of Newburg, and the other estate is just outside of McMinnville.
They are still processing fruit. Andrea explained that they were going to let the Riesling hang even a bit longer, but when James went out to check on the fruit and grabbed one of the clusters all of the grapes fell off. James appeared at one point in the tour looking a bit haggard. Turns out he hasn't have a day off in 42 days. (They are hoping to have Thanksgiving Day off!) James has some almost finished Sauvignon Blanc that we get to taste (poured from a beaker which I just think is so cool.) I am impressed with the production facility. It is exactly what you would do if you had the resources to make it happen. They have a number of large wood fermenters which are located up on a ledge so that they do not need to be pumped out, but can be fed by gravity instead. I'm thinking that's pretty cool when Andrea shows us the secret tube that goes through the wall and down the floor into the barrel cave! So, when they are putting the wine into the barrels, they just feed the hose downstairs and let it flow into the barrels. Once a year they do a club member's dinner in the cave. It is a very cool space. Andrea does a wonderful job of talking us through the production while at the same time moving us through their selection of wines. Three of the wines are from their Artists series. It turns out they have an artist on sight who makes a custom painting for each of the releases. And it's handy that he also happens to be the winemaker and owner. Really, that is just too much talent to be located all in one person. He can also figure out computer programs which just doesn't seem fair. There is a gallery of Jame's work just off of the regular tasting room. Many of the pieces of art include debris from the vineyard. Some have vines incorporated into them while others have grape seeds and some of the dirt from the vineyard. There is just something so right about art combined with wine. The fact that the same artist at Trisaetum makes both is even more fun. That and the barrel cave gives this winery a very unique and beautiful aesthetic.

After our tasting we decide to stop for lunch at Farm to Fork in Dundee. It was wonderful. And the conversation was wonderful. And the wine was wonderful. And the fact that a very successful stewardship campaign took place this morning at McMinnville Cooperative Ministries without me? Priceless!

Weekend of Wine and Women

2011-11-19T22:19:00.001-08:00

I was able to get back up to Coeur de Terre Winery today, and this time I wasn't working, I was enjoying the beautiful wines. For the last two weekends the winery has been doing a special vertical tasting of their estate Pinot Noir. It is so interesting to me to see how much of a difference you can taste in the wines from year to year. The basic backbone of the place is present in each, but they are also quite different. And they are holding up beautifully. Scott and Lisa only stated making an estate blend in 2005. Up until that point all of the wine came from
one block. '05 was wonderful and is ready to drink right now. The '06 tastes to me like it will continue to get better and better. '07 is so different--so full of an earthy, musky type of aroma and I love it.

We had the pleasure of sitting and talking with Lisa Neal who with her husband, Scott, owns Coeur de Terre. We get her talking about the very beginning of the winery. "We had to go slowly because we didn't have much money, and I think that was really good" she said. That time allowed them to explore their property, find out where the cold spots were, where the soil drained well, and where it didn't, and just gave them a better feel of where vines would thrive. Figuring out the soil took some detective work. There are several different soil types in their small estate. Just Abby's Block alone has four or five different types of soil all by itself.
They also couldn't afford to purchase grape vines that were already grafted, so they decided to do the work themselves. It cost them $1 per plant to do it themselves, and it cost $3.50 per plant to get them already grafted. Scott signed up for an internet class on grafting and proceeded to purchase every book he could find on the subject. They also found some budding vineyard owners and sought out their help. It was funny because Karlene (Jeff's mother) was asking me on the way up how wine makers learn their craft. I shared with her that some go to school, and then work in a winery. Others hang out with other winemakers and watch what they do (kind of like I did this year.) Quite a few start making wine in their basement and decide to make the leap to larger production.

Some experienced vineyard owners told Lisa and Scott not to do their own grafting--that it would never work. This acted as a catalysis for Scott and made him determined to do it himself.

I look out into the production side of the winery and it is jam-packed with barrels. I'm not sure how many more they could get in there. They are still out in the warm side of the production facility because they are finishing up their ML fermentation. I also get a chance to walk around the vineyard a bit. There are so many birds, more than when the fruit was still on the vines. It is so nice to sit and listen to them--without having a propane cannon go off next to your head. Lisa says that at some point she'd like to try and do some self-rooted plants in the vineyard. She explains that the grafted vines will only live for about 35-40 years. Self rooted vines will produce fruit for over a hundred years--IF they don't get infected with the phylloxera root louse. It is interesting to me that I may live to see many vineyards of Oregon replanted eventually.

Friday night at Wednesday Wines we had a little retirement party for my walking partner, Irma Karns (she's retiring from her insurance job, not from being my walking partner.) It was a wonderful way to celebrate a life of service and integrity. We're also going to a special wine tasting and luncheon tomorrow with some good friends. I love to enjoy beautiful wines with people that I love. Sharing a glass of wine can add so much to an already wonderful celebration. We'll be celebrating a great deal this next year. I celebrate that I'm going to be able to see my worshiping community again next week. Then my son's wedding takes place in January, and my daughter's in August. That's a lot to celebrate. And so is a day spent with friends enjoying half a decade of estate wines. On the way out to the car Judy shares that this is one of her favorite wineries, both the wines and the place. I couldn't agree more.

ML Inoculation at Coeur de Terre

2011-11-14T14:33:00.000-08:00

Yes, it's true, we've given our little baby Pinot Noir barrels their inoculation. Malolactic fermentation is used to help convert some of the more tart tasting malaic acid into a smoother, rounder lactic acid. This is accomplished by adding a bacteria culture. It's kind of strange that

we've done everything heavenly possible to prevent bacteria from getting into the wine. We carefully cleaned everything that would touch the juice (several times.) We put a blanket of Co2 on the top of the cold soaking grapes to keep bacteria out. We cleaned and steamed each barrel. And, now, after fermentation is complete, we're adding a bacteria into the wine.

I think the exact bacteria is Oenococcus oeni. Scott showed me the container, and I looked it up on line, and I think this is the one. One way to have the wine go through this process would be to just bring it up to a temperature of 70 degrees or so and let it go. The bacteria are probably present in the wine already, but Scott doesn't like to leave things to chance, so, we inoculate.

In the photo to the left, Ryan is stirring the wine in the barrel with one hand, while pouring in the solution with the other. Scott has combined some water and food with the brown powder and shown us the amount to go in each barrel. Ryan and I get into a groove where he pours the solution into the barrel, and I clean up, and put a chalk check mark on each barrel to show that it is complete. Every once in a while we stop and smell the wine in the barrels. It is so beautiful now. Especially the estate wines in the new oak barrels present themselves well.

After we are finished with the inoculation I decide to take a walk around the property. It is interesting that the leaves are falling off the vines from the bottom of the hill up to the top of the hill.

The grapes at the bottom of the hill mature earlier, and you can kind of see the progress in the photo to the left. No leaves at the lower section of the hill, and still some bright colored leaves at the top. Part of the reason that the leaves still have color at the top of the vineyard is that they were not as affected by the cold weather that we had a couple of weeks ago. The cooler air flowed down towards the valley floor and left warmer air up above.

Scott is getting ready to attend a conference for his other work, so I'm kind of wrapping things up. I hope to be around for the harvest of the Riesling vines from Highland Vineyards, but I maybe back in the pulpit by then. I head back in less than two weeks now, so it's going to be close. I never would have predicted that when I was planning out my sabbatical in June. This is by far the latest harvest they have ever had in the Willamette Valley. On Saturday I get to go back up to Coeur de Terre to taste some wine for a change. That's still my favorite part of the wine making process--consumption. I'm glad there are others who enjoy making it for us. I'll appreciate what they do a lot more now. One very strange aspect of this experience is the overwhelming sense that I know less now than when I started. The first step in learning anything is to go from unconscious incompetence to conscious incompetence. And I guess that's where I am. I now know how much I don't know about wine. And that just makes me want to learn more. And, the best way to do that it to do research. So wine tasting here we come!

This One Goes on Eleven

2011-11-11T17:57:00.000-08:00

I had an almost surreal feeling today at Coeur de Terre. Maybe it's the numerology of the day (11-11-11), or maybe it's the sudden change in weather with a pretty steady stream of rain on the horizon. Suddenly I am pretty much done with my internship in the vineyard and it just feels so strange. I've kind of centered my life on the place for the past two to three weeks, and now it's pretty much over, and somehow I just didn't see it coming.

I went up today to prepare lunch for the crew. It was a joyous occasion with most of the regular work crew, a couple of other guys who are working on the house and all of the Neal clan. Lisa asks me if that's OK. I tell her that I have portion control issues, and that I could probably feed twice that many people, and that turns out to be about the case.

Ryan uncharacteristically decides to crack open an '05 Estate Pinot Noir for lunch. It is bright and beautiful, and is showing beautifully what good wine will do in the bottle. The flavors are getting more and more complex. But, I believe, it's not even close to being as good as it will get. Scott chooses to make wines that taste good right away, but will age wonderfully, and this '05 is

a great example. Scott decides we should taste the '06, '07, and '08 as well. Oh my. Each vintage has a common aroma and flavor component, but they are so different from one another. Kind of like children. By the way, Coeur de Terre is pouring a special vertical tasting the next two Saturdays for club members. I would suggest you go up and join one of the clubs and have a taste.

After lunch Scott, Abby, Talulah and I grab a basketball and shoot some hoops. Lisa comes down to join us. She shoots two or three shots with her right hand and then just switches up and goes with the left without skipping a beat.

Berto is cleaning out the last of the barrels. There is a special sprinkler that gets hooked up to the steam cleaner and left to run inside the barrel for ten minutes or so. It's the last step in cleaning the barrels before the wine will be added to them.

I glance into the winery. It is so full of barrels. That's a lot of wine we're making. There is a dense blanket of warm, yeasty, moist air that enfolds you as you enter the room. My camera lens fogs up right away, but the light effect with the windows is really cool, so I keep the shot.

I also went for a walk around the vineyard after lunch. The leaves are mostly gone and the vines stand as lonely sentinels on the hilly slopes. A few strangling grapes are still in place but mostly it is empty and quiet. There are no more beautiful clouds and sunny skies. It is, and will continue to be, overcast. The photos I find now are more still life, and less scenic. The vineyard is telling me that the season for grapes is over. The harvest is in, and it's time to move on.

I'll be going back up to the vineyard next week just to check in, and I've told Ryan that I'll run the cash register Friday and Saturday of Thanksgiving weekend. I haven't gotten a chance to experience the retail side of the winery, and, heck, I might as well just jump in right on some of the busiest days of the year.

I know I've said it before, but I just can't believe how blessed I am to have gotten this experience. I'm so thankful to Scott and Lisa Neal the owners of Coeur de Terre for allowing me to get my feet wet making wine (quite literally on many days.) I'm thankful to Ryan for answering a myriad of questions about the industry and about hospitality. I'm thankful to the crew of workers at Coeur de Terre and their patience with me and my inability to do many of the tasks that they seem to do so easily.

At the end of the day my good friend, Jeff Peterson, comes up. He has a great discussion with Scott and Lisa while I loose a game of horse to Abby (but I beat her at around the world.) Then Jeff and I go up to taste some wines. Ryan makes the mistake of saying he thinks it would be great to have an intern at the winery. Jeff is not the guy you want to say that to, if you don't want to have a detailed discussion about it for half an hour or so.

Jeff enjoys some of the corn bread I made for lunch, we enjoy some wonderful wines, and then it's time to head home. I'm ready, I miss my community at McMinnville Cooperative Ministries. I've missed the wonderful people like Jeff and Courtney. But I'm so glad I got a chance to do this. Truly, this experience goes to eleven.

The Fibonacci Winery Building

2011-11-09T13:07:00.000-08:00

As I'm wrapping up my internship at Coeur de Terre it occurs to me that I've never talked to Scott about the design of the winery building itself. I love the building, and have very much enjoyed visiting, and sipping wine in the tasting room upstairs. Now, however, I realize how well laid out the working sections of the building are, and especially how smoothly the works flows. So I ask Scott about it. "Well, of course I based it all on the Fibonacci sequence." And once again, I'm starring at Scott like a cow starring at a new gate. You could say that Scott is a numbers guy.
It turns out I do know the principle. I know it from photography. For example that little guy to the right is sitting in the right hand side of the rectangle that is left over when you form a box of the other part of the frame. In other words, photos don't look good when the subject is dead center. The fact that the bird is looking towards the largest part of the frame is even better. At some level I just know this, my mind kind of sub consciously senses it when I'm framing a photo. It helps though, to think about it consciously from time to time. And Scott does. The tasting room is like that photo. If you look at the building layout, it is the smaller section of a large triangle that is left over from the square of the wine making area.

I ask Scott if he based his winery on another that he'd seen. I also want to know how he figured out all of the mechanical systems, and the flow of the work area. It's just not something that you think a lot about when you are enjoying a glass of wine, but when you're in the winery, moving barrels and trying to access hot water to warm up some juice you do think about it. Scott said that he didn't really base his building on any others. "It had to be utilitarian, because we just didn't have very much money when we started." He said. He also shared how pretty much every major piece of machinery was purchased used. All of the large stainless steel fermenting tanks, the destemmer, and the press were all used when Scott got them.

He also said that he learned a lot about what he didn't want by studying other facilities and seeing where they didn't work well. "I wanted two entry points to every room, and I wanted a barrel room that would stay cool naturally."

This may seem like a small detail, but it is not. The barrel room here sits underneath the tasting room, and has concrete walls all around it that are insulated by earthen berms. No cooling required which adds up to major savings on electricity.

Another question I have is how did Scott learn to make wine? I ask him if he did something like I'm doing, just pitching in and helping someone to make wine. He did, but didn't have the abundance of time that I've been afforded. He worked with Scott Shull of Raptor Ridge Winery for a few years, helping him with crush and learning the trade. However, there was a steep learning curve when he started making his own wine. Some of the techniques that he had learned, that worked well in another location did not work at Coeur de Terre. Scott ended up never bottling his first vintage. The fruit at Coeur de Terre specifically, and the McMinnville AVA in general, is more expressive and has more tannins than in some other areas, and it's easy to over extract it. That's what happened to Scott's first harvest. The wine was too tannic which can give it a bitter quality. It's still sitting in a barn somewhere. Needless to say he figured it all out very quickly, and the first vintage that he bottled in 2002 is one of my favorite vintages so far.

I came home early today. I ran out of juice, or rather my camera battery ran down. It lasts for so long that it's easy to forget you have to recharge it. My personal batteries, on the other hand, are well charged. Doing a different form of work has been so wonderful change up from my regular vocation. The whole idea of studying winemaking and applying those lessons to the church has, well, born fruit. I'm excited to share my research with the folks at my church who made it all possible, and then with other churches who may be interested in what I have learned. I have been richly blessed and I want to especially thank Pastor Courtney McHill, my Methodist colleague who's made it possible for me to step away from my pastorate for over four months without a second thought to how things are going at the church. Now, she can start planning for her sabbatical!

Highlands Vineyard Riesling

2011-11-08T17:58:00.000-08:00

If you study the photograph above you will notice that the vines in the front of the photo are still lively and green, while the Pinot Noir vines in the very back have gone dormant. These are Riesling vines at Highland Vineyard. Scott sources these 60 year old vines for his Riesling wine. And they're not done yet. The brix on the grapes is around 19. Scott said that he may be processing these grapes around Thanksgiving.

It is so strange to see green vines with almost ripe fruit on them in the middle of November. Riesling vines are hearty (they grow in some of the colder sections of Germany.) The skins are thicker and the vines can tolerate colder temperatures. I joke with Scott that if the weather would just get colder he could do an actual ice wine. He says we'd need a high of no more than 28 degrees for two days in a row, so I guess that's out.

After the tour of Highland Vineyards Scott and I have a chance to go out to lunch. I get to ask him about his other business, the one that makes all of this other stuff possible. Scott co-owns a business that does imaging and radiation treatment of prostate cancer. He told me many more details, but that's about what I understood.

Meanwhile, the guys at Coeur de Terre are still processing the Pinot Noir into barrels. I've gotten all of the wine up to temperature and we have yeast in all of the fermenters, so my duties are lightening up. Just in time I might add. I do not know how these guys do it day after day, week after week. Well, they're young, so that helps. When I started, I tried hard to convinced myself that I would stay up with them, work as hard as they did. I've given up such silly notions. I just can't keep up. I've kind of specialized in keeping track of things in the winery, and I think they are happy to have me out from under their feet.

Lawrence the welder was back today with the jig to help hold the bins onto the fork lift. I'm excited. The other holder came off on one of the loads and almost decapitated me.

This one isn't going to do that. Lawrence knows his craft. When Scott suggest that we could just use regular bolts for one piece instead of stainless steel he gets the look. Obviously this just isn't done. Scott is like a kid in a candy store. As soon as the rig is put together he wants to hop in and grab a bin to empty into the wine press to try it out. The new jig works great, and is so much easier to put in place and move around than the other one. It makes things a bit tight to maneuver under the sorting table roof, but it should work great. It's kind of amazing how much engineering went into this one jig. A good craftsman is truly a gift, and this jig is going to make work in the winery much easier (and safer) for years to come.

Later in the morning, while Scott is still in meetings for his other job, I do some things I haven't done before. I go up into the empty tasting room, make some coffee, sit down on one of the wine colored, overstuffed leather chairs and relax. Nice. Then I go for a walk around the vineyard.

Down by the pond I see a whole family of ducks. They manage to stay almost directly opposite of me in the pond, like the southern end of my north compass point. Then as I turn the corner a blue heron lights in front of me (much more quickly than I can get my camera in place.) Then a hawk cries out from the top of one of the old, battered oak trees. And once again the clouds above the winery are glorious. I'm sure this will all end soon, that the overcast grey skies will return for months on end. This time of working in a vineyard is going to end soon as well. My colleagues have have been sending me various communications to remind me that I have to come back, have to return from the mountain top. That is the nature of all great experiences. They come to an end, and we must return to our regular life. But the time away changes us, the experiences create new places in us that we can be touched and revisited. And, I have some beautiful photographs to help me remember.

Free Run & Crush

2011-11-07T17:39:00.000-08:00

I've always wondered how wine is pressed. I knew that red wines had to stay on the skins for a week or so to pick up color and other elements, but I never knew how that was done. Now I do. Today I figured out the difference between free run and crushed wine. In my mind everything was put into a press and then before the press was turned on the juice that ran freely was the free run. It could be done that way, but usually not. The red juice is taken out of the fermenters with the same stainless steel filter I've been using to pump over and heat up the wine.
Once all of the juice has been pumped into barrels, the rest is placed into the press. In the photo to the right Berto is inside Bertha One, shoveling out what is left after the wine had been pumped out from a valve that is located at the very bottom of the fermenter. Once he has that bin full (it actually took several bins) he takes it with the forklift and dumps it into the press. I attended a barrel tasting event once where Scott had the exact same wine with one sample that was free run, and one that was from the press. The taste difference was amazing. The press wine has much more tannins for one thing. All of the wine tastes a bit bitter to me right now. The oak will help to mellow it out, as will a secondary fermentation called malolactic fermentation where the harsher malic acid is converted into a softer lactic acid. You can just heat up the wine to about 70 degrees and let nature take its course, but Scott will add another yeast culture to get the malolactic fermentation He's going to start it up right away, so the wine in barrels is going back into the wine making area and not into the barrel room.

I spent the day warming up the rest of the red juice. It comes out of that barrel room at around 50 degrees. It takes the heater about 25 minutes to warm up the fermenter bin to 70.

During a break I went outside to watch Berto fill up barrels. They are all steam cleaned before being filled. I stick my nose in one and smell it. It's so wonderful. Someone should make a men's cologne out of that smell--so earthy and sweet with a kind of leathery finish. Scott comes by and says it's the best $1,000 smell there is. (That's about what a barrel cost.) Berto is being extremely careful in filling the barrels. He's got a flashlight in his right hand and his left is holding the valve to turn off the pump when the barrel is full. It is so hard to know when it is full, because once it starts to the top, it finishes very quickly. And of course, since I'm taking photos, this one

ends up blowing up like Old Faithful.

That's another couple of bottles of wine down the gutter. It could make a grown man cry. Tomorrow Scott and I are going to try and get over to Highland Vineyards. They have some 60 year old Riesling vines on the estate. Scott purchases some of that fruit to make his Riesling which is just amazing. I don't have to be at the vineyard first thing in the morning, so I probably won't get any more sunrise shots like the one at the bottom of the page. I was driving down Muddy Valley Road and I looked up and saw that fir tree standing all by itself and reaching up into the fog. I've gotten pretty good at finding a wide spot in that narrow road and jumping out quickly to grab a shot before another car comes along. It's such a beautiful commute, but I'll be really glad when I don't have to get in a car every morning. I kind of forget how spoiled I am being able to walk to work. I've probably put more miles on my car in the last several weeks that I would in several months otherwise. But if you have to be in a car driving somewhere, really, this isn't too bad.

A Thin Place

2011-11-06T17:20:00.000-08:00

I did church this morning the way about 85% of Oregonians do. I went up to the vineyard and hung out in nature. It was quite a message I received today. Martin Luther, the founder of the church in which I serve, said that Scripture is not the only text God uses to communicate to us. God also uses nature. A few weeks back I was sitting in a church and the preacher tried to tell us that this life isn't good for much and that we should really be anticipating how great heaven will be. Such messages just don't play very well in the Willamette Valley. We know better.

I was up early this morning (thanks in part to time change Sunday.) When I looked at the weather forecast for the week I thought today might be the best day to head up and walk around Coeur de Terre in the first light of day. It was awesome. I quietly tried to sneak in the front gate around 7:30. There was a beautiful fog hanging in wisps just off the valley floor. My footfalls flushed out several coveys of quail. I didn't even know they were present in the vineyard, and here were several families scurrying away from me as I walked up the rows of fruitless vines.
Incredible beauty was everywhere I looked. But maybe that's the point, I was looking. The drive through Muddy Valley was gorgeous (that's a photo of the drive I take to Coeur de Terre at the top of the page.) Every level of the vineyard had beautiful colors and wonderful light-filled clouds. And I got to work along side winemaker Scott Neal. It's always a good day for me when I get to be around him. I save up all of my questions, and pepper him with them several at a time. He's amazingly patient in carefully answering them all.

We only had one minor emergency today, so that's pretty good. I think we only lost a couple of gallons of Pinot Gris in the process. I ask Scott about some of the techniques he is using this year, and if he can trace where he heard about a particular idea, and what each technique is suppose to accomplish. I'm surprised that someone who makes such good wine would be constantly trying out something new. Scott says that he use to do a lot more--that he's more consistent now, but that he still likes to shake things up and try something new. I ask him about leaving the stems in the press with the Pinot Gris. Turns out it was more of a space availability issue than trying to change the wine. There are a million different things you can do in the winery, and Scott knows what he's going to do pretty much as soon as he sees the fruit. It's a mystery to me.

Right before I went into the winery to start punch down I drove up to the top of the vineyard to get a look at the sky. There were some wonderful clouds up near the big oak tree. How many great views can one person take in a single sermon? God was laying it on thick, I guess. Or, maybe Coeur de Terre is one of the Celtic "thin places" where God always seems to be lurking about--in a turning leaf, in a covey of quail, in a beautiful sky and in some wonderful wines.

Bringing Wine to Life

2011-11-04T00:51:00.001-07:00

Wine is a living thing, and fermentation brings it to life. I have been amazed this week at the transformation that takes place when we bring the bins up to temperature and add yeast. The colors get much richer and the aromas are intensified. And every single batch is different--just like children. One fermenter, the one I'm calling Big Bertha, is a petulant child, in a big hurry to get going, and becoming over heated in the process. (We had to cool her down.) And, of course, I have my favorites. Bin #10 with Talulah's Run is my baby. Her fruit was amazing coming in.. She started up fermentation at a nice easy clip, and she's picked up wonderful color and body in the process. And she tastes just amazing. In one procedure I have to push my hands into the cap of the fermenting wines, and it's so warm, and so like opening up a living organism.

Abby's Block just got put to bed last night and is in a cold soak in the barrel room. I know it is time to press a few of our Pinot Noirs because I can't read my notes any more, they are too covered in juice. Scott told me that the first three fermenters will be pressed and placed in barrels tomorrow. Or, rather, since it's 1:15 in the morning, they'll be pressed today. The crew will be showing up to the vineyard in four hours or so.

If you look at the photo to the right you can see how much the color has changed in this sample. Also the specific gravity has gone down. When it gets to zero we know it's time to get the wine pressed. I spent the entire day in the cellar. I started by doing the punch downs and taking the temperature and specific gravity of each fermenter. I also got to bring one of the batches to life today. I brought it out of the barrel room, got it up to temperature, and then got to add the yeast. The yeast is placed in little pockets in the cap and allowed to work for a bit before it is incorporated into the whole batch.
I ended up taking kind of a long lunch today. Lisa and I just got into an awesome conversation, and I just didn't realize how much time had gone by. When I finally arrive back down in the winery Scott tells me he's going to dock my pay. "On second thought, I'll double it" he tells me. Zero is such a fun number. In truth I would have paid him to do all of this. It's kind of like a wine making boot camp. It's fun because I'm starting to get confidence in the process and what needs to be done. Now Scott can just kind of give me the shorthand and I know what to do.

There is a wonderful system for joining together different pipes and plumbing in the winery. Every fixture has a flange on it that is one of two sizes. An "O" ring nestles inside that flange. The hose ends have a similar flange. You join them together with a clamp that kind of looks half of a set of hand cuffs. Scott tells me the system is fool proof. But I am gifted when it come to leaky plumbing. I've never put a set of waste pipes together and not had them leak. I turn on the water and wait for that horrible sound of a leak. Similarly in the winery when you hear water flowing it can be unnerving. The most paranoid I get is when I am getting a sample out of the valve at the bottom of Big Bertha. I have nightmares where I open the wrong valve and hundreds of gallons of wine flow onto the floor and down the drain. I can't believe how many different ways there are for a person to

create catastrophe in a winery. What if one of the instruments I use broke and a glass shard fell into the wine? What if I break one of the fermenters when I'm moving it? What if I mess up a connections when I'm pumping the wine and it spills onto the floor? I guess the fact that I realize how you can mess up is a sign that I'm learning more about the process. I still have Scott come out and look at my set ups before I run wine through them. I'm still just a bit paranoid, I guess.

I had a break around 4:30 today, and when I walked outside there was a half moon shining brightly in the sky. I wanted to see if I could get a photo of it with the big oak tree at the top of the property, so I climbed up quickly before the light faded completely. When I got up there I happened to look back towards the winery. That's the photo at the top of the page. You can see the lights of the crush pad lit up where the crew is sorting fruit. I ended up taking a couple of hour break for dinner, so that I could sit down with that woman who lives in my house--I think her name is Robin. She says she's a vineyard widow. But it won't last much longer. All of the fruit is harvested and in the winery. And they are beautiful, well above average children.

Crushed

2011-11-02T06:59:00.000-07:00

Just when I think there can't be any new beautiful views of the vineyard, another one pops up in front of me. The photo above was taken this morning. The vines are all empty of fruit now and will go into dormancy soon. The same goes for me.

The last two days have been long. The eminent arrival of rain complicated the scenario somewhat. Scott decided he didn't want to leave Abby's Block on the vine any longer. However, you have to give the contractor three days notice if you want to have a crew provided. So, Scott sent out his regular crew to do harvest. He paid them what he would have paid the contractor, or $1.65 per bucket. I was not one of the crew out harvesting. I was in the nice warm, dry cellar working with the developing wines.

One of our primary jobs right now is getting the fermentation process going on all of the wines. I discussed punch downs yesterday. There are two different types. When the juice is in the cold soak stage (that is before Scott has warmed them up and added yeast to begin fermentation) all you have to do is gently push down the cap into the liquid. The grapes at the surface tend to dry out, and all this process is does is keep them hydrated. The other kind of punch down is being demonstrated by Scott on one of the large feremters. That handle he's holding on to is over four feet long.

While the guys were out harvesting I was pumping wine around. First we had two more fermenters that had to be brought up to temperature. Then Scott wanted several of the bins to be pumped over. In this process you suck juice off the bottom of the fermenter and have it flow back over the top. This adds oxygen to the wine. I have totally lost track of what we have done to which container, and we have twice this many sitting back in the barrel room. Luckily everything is written down. I find myself going back to the papers over and over, making absolutely sure I'm doing what Scott wants me to do.

After lunch today, it was time for more crush. We sort and de-stem Abby's Block first. Then we move on to the Syrah (which the crew also harvested), and then we take care of some Pinot Noir that came from another vineyard. After the sorting table the grape clusters go down the shoot that you can see in the photo to the right. The auger sends them along into the de-stemming device. One guy stands on a ladder all day and picks up leaves and stems that make it through both the sorting and de-stemming. I just can't imagine doing that. And remember, these guys are doing this work after they have done another job. It's really two days work all in one.

In the photo to the left you can see the two rollers that only allow the grapes to fall through. The device that does the de-stemming is a rod with finger like protrusions which are in a kind of spiral staircase configuration. They guide the grapes through a round tube that has square holes in it, which are about the same size as the grapes. When all of the grapes have been processed and put away the clean up begins. I've found it's best to just get out of the way and let the crew work. The primary tool for cleaning is the Lamba steam cleaner. I don't know how you'd run a winery without such a machine. It is powerful. Unlike your home pressure washers, it runs on 220 power. And that's just for the water pressure. The water is also heated by a diesel powered burner. I was using it the other day to clean off the top of the wine press, and when I pulled the trigger it almost blew me off the ladder.

In the photo to the right, Berto is standing on top of the destemmer pulling it apart so that it can be cleaned. Everything is steam cleaned. The inside parts, the outside surfaces, and the concrete floor under the equipment.

Well, it's late and I'm starting to fade. Scott showed me a schedule tonight, and it turns out we may actually finish this work in the not too distant future. I'm glad now that I got my sabbatical extended to Thanksgiving weekend. Who knew we would have just barely finished up crush by then?

Punch Down at CdT

2011-11-01T21:57:00.000-07:00

I was up at the crack of dawn this morning. When the sun started to stream into the valley I was already up at Couer de Terre watching the last of the fog roll away.

I have a new ritual when I arrive at the winery. It's called punch down. To do a punch down you grab one of the plunger looking devices that is attached to a four foot long handle. Once the yeast has been added to the grapes and fermentation is going a crust starts to form on the top of the bin. You have to take the plunger and push it through the crust and down to the bottom of the bin. Sounds easy, doesn't it? The cake-like crust can be almost a foot thick and practically impossible to push down. And remember, this is where winemakers die. The juice is giving off CO2 as it ferments, and if you inhale enough of that you go face first into the bin. Scott has now reminded me several times to be careful, especially when we have dozens of fermenters all going at the same time.

Next up is taking the juice's temperature. Mostly Scott tells me we're looking to see if the fermentation takes off out of control, and a very high temperature would be an indication of that. Once the yeast are introduced the mix gets hot. You can feel the heat when you stand next to the bins in the morning. You can also smell them. It's starting to smell like wine, with that beautiful, yeasty, musty aroma that I love. You take the temperature of the juice with a three foot long metal thermometer. The juice that the thermometer is in in the photo to the right has not started fermenting yet. It's been in a cold soak for about three days. Today we brought it up to temperature, and then added the yeast. Tomorrow the temperature will be up in the 80's.

The next step in punch down is to check the specific gravity. I asked Scott what this is. The hydrometer is calibrated to read zero in water. Anything with more sugar that water will give you a more buoyant reading. The wine will

actually have a negative specific gravity once it has produced alcohol. To get the juice sample you take a strainer and push it down into the crust until it begins to fill with juice. Then you dip a cup into the strainer to grab some of the juice. The liquid is poured into a tall tube and the hydrometer is placed into the liquid and swirled.
Before fermentation has begun the numbers are larger. In the photo below you can see that the specific gravity is reading 22. As fermentation gets going that number will be cut in half in as little as 24 hours. It's amazing how quickly fermentation takes off, and how dramatically the juice changes taste, smell and texture and color as the process goes forward.

The final step is punch down is, of course, cleaning up. You grab a rag, spray some alcohol on it and clean the inside of the bin. Once that's all done, and the data for each bin has been recorded, you cover up the bin again. Punch down has to be done every eight hours. Scott's doing it late tonight, I'll be there to do it first thing tomorrow morning.

We are headed for some long days. We have two vineyards sending us fruit tomorrow, and Scott is going to have his own crew harvest the last of the estate Pinot Noir. We also have to get three more fermenters up to temperature and add yeast to them. I got the the winery a little after 7:00 this morning and left around 9:00. Tomorrow should be later.

A wine guy stopped in today to talk. He wanted to know if I was the winemaker. Good lord. I couldn't look more like a custodian if I went to the theater and had them costume me. I'm wearing my construction orange rubber overalls with work boots, and a tattered, old, stained grey tee shirt. I'm also knee deep in dirty hoses that I'm steam cleaning. Really? Is this what a winemaker would look like? And then it occurs to me. Yes, this is what winemakers do most of the time. The idea of making wine is so romantic. The reality of making wine is constantly cleaning and just a whole lot of very hard work. This experience is going to make me much more thankful for the wine that I drink, for the hands that have planted the vines, for the hands that have pruned the vines and trained them up the trellises. I'll be thankful for the hard working people who harvested the grapes, and those that did the crush. I'll be thankful for those who did the punch downs and actually made the wine.

I did sneak outside around 5:00 tonight, and the sun was starting to set and the moon was rising. Just another beautiful moment in the Couer de Terre Vineyard. It was nice to see the sun!

Four Blocks Down . . .

2011-10-31T16:50:00.000-07:00

Wine areas in the United States are broken down into AVA's, which is short for American Viticulture Areas. We live in the Willamette Valley AVA. These areas are sometimes broken down into sub-appellations or areas. Coeur de Terre, where I am doing my internship, is located in the McMinnville AVA which is the smallest sub-appellation of the Willamette Valley. Coeur de Terre Vineyard is then broken down into blocks. These are parts of the vineyard which may have been planted at different times, and probably represent a different aspect of that particular place. Generally speaking, the smaller the area, the more your wine is going to cost. An American red wine will cost less than one from the Willamette Valley. Scott Neal's own Willamette Valley Pinot Noir costs less than his Estate Pinot Noir. Then he has his Renelle's Block Pinot Noir which is even more.

Renelle's Block, Sara Jane's Block, Tallulah's Run, and the Winery Block (all planted in Pinot Noir) have all been harvested. The only Pinot that has not been picked yet is Abby's Block. Scott decided to throw the dice and see if it would gain a bit more sugar in the first days of November. Also not yet harvested is the Syrah and Viognier. I was walking through Sarah Jane's block today and wanted to get over to the Syrah section, but I didn't want to walk all the way down the row to the road and then climb back up again. So I started looking for a path, and low and behold, there is one. That's a photo of the path looking down on the Syrah vines in the photo at the top of the page. I'm kind of amazed that with all of my walking around this vineyard there are still new paths and sections that I have not yet seen.

I wanted to compare grape varieties a bit today. As you can probably guess, there just wasn't a lot to do at the winery today. There was the morning punch down of the fermentation tanks, but that only took about half an hour. Then Scott had me clean out the crush machine. It is a huge cylinder laid down on it's side. There is a door in the stainless steel structure that opens so that grapes can be placed inside. Scott arranged the door so that it sat at the very bottom and then instructed me to climb in and scrub away. Let me just say I am not a fan of small enclosed spaces. Heck, I lifted my whole house up off the ground so that I wouldn't have to duck all the time when I was under the house working on it. But I did it. I got in there and I scrubbed, and then I steam cleaned. But I still had some free time, so I walked around.

The differences between grape clusters are so amazing to me. Look at the Pinot Cluster above, and the Syrah cluster to the right. See how long the Syrah cluster is and how widely spaced the grapes are from one another? Now look up at the Pinot Noir above. See how tightly bound up they are together? That's one of the reasons Pinot is so difficult to grow. No air can get around those grapes to help dry them off, so they are susceptible to mildew and mold. Pinot is also very thin skinned, so the grapes can dry out easily and they can also get sunburned. The Syrah won't quite get ripe in this cool weather, so Scott is going to make a rose out of it. A Rose wine doesn't need as much sugar as a red wine, so it will work wonderfully for that. Coeur de Terre has only been able to produce an estate Syrah once in the last three years, and it is wonderful, so if you want some, get it right away.

Coeur de Terre also has a small amount of Viognier planted just next to the Syrah. These two grapes go together. A small amount of the white Viognier is added to the Syrah wine, and, contrary to everything that you would assume, it makes the Syrah darker and richer. That's a Viognier cluster to the left. They can be almost twice as large as a Pinot cluster. I think they catch the light in a beautiful way.

Tomorrow afternoon we will be getting more fruit from another vineyard that will also go into Scott's Willamette Valley Pinot Noir. Wednesday they are scheduled to harvest Abby's Block and also get more fruit from another vineyard, so that is going to be a very long day.

I'm loving the work of being in a vineyard, and helping to make wine. I don't want to do it for the rest of my life. The work is way too difficult and it requires way too much faith.

I took a wine appreciation class at the Chemeketa Viticulture Center a while back. Someone asked the professor, Bob Sogge, about how wine was made, and he said, "I'm not a wine producer, I specialize in wine consumption." I'm with him! But it is awesome to know more about how wine is made, and to be a part of helping to create it. And not just any wine, but Pinot Noir. And not just any Pinot Noir, but Willamette Valley Pinot Noir. And not just Willamette Valley Pinot Noir, but Coeur de Terre Estate Pinot Noir. And not just Coeur de Terre Estate Pinot Noir, but Abby's Block Pinot Noir. I'll tell you, it doesn't get a whole lot better than that. That's Abby's block catching some late morning sun in the photo below.

New Tasting Room at Maysara is Open

2011-10-30T10:03:00.000-07:00

Driving home Robin and I decided to stop at Maysara which is located just a bit up the road from Coeur de Terre where I am doing my internship. I love the Momtazi family. Moe, the patriarch of the family, has created an amazing new edifice on their estate. The scale of the building is hard to imagine, but I think it would be safe to say it's the only winery in the state with abundant indoor parking for the tasting room.
The new building is up the hill from their older one. As you enter the estate you drive past their irrigation pond, and see a building straight ahead of you. Veer to the left, go around that building and follow the signs up to the new one. I predicted that the ambiance and cave-like feel of the new tasting room would be popular, and it is. The tasting room counter is glorious, I think. The first time I saw it, it was covered up for construction. This time it was covered with people. All of the wood in this project and most of the other materials we harvested from the estate. That's Naseem trying to keep track of everyone's tasting, working behind the counter in the photo above. The scale of everything in the building is huge. The tasting room counter seems to go on forever.

I asked Flora, the matriarch of the Momtazi family, if they had hired some artist to do the doors and tasting room counter. "No, our workers did all of it" she proudly proclaimed. And rightfully so. They have concentrated on finishing the multi-story section of the building which is to the right hand side as you drive up the hill. The tasting room is at the bottom with an outdoor entrance. Above is an office, a small gathering space and an industrial kitchen.

I predict that this new building is going to build a lot of interest for Maysara. It just seems so brilliant to me to use the employees who work at your truss factory to build a beautiful building in a down economy. As things pick up Maysara is beautifully positioned to attract new visitors, and to bring back some folks who haven't been there for a while.

Oh, and the wines are great. The three daughters have their own label now called 3 Degrees. They make an all estate, Demeter Certified, Bio Dynamic, Pinot Noir for $20. That's just ridiculous. We sell a lot of it at Wednesday Wines. So, head up to Maysara for a tasting soon. You won't even have to get out of your car. Then while you're there swing on up to Coeur de Terre and say hi. They are two of my favorite wine destinations.

Harvest 2

2011-10-29T17:50:00.000-07:00

Last night I fell asleep with my fingers on the keyboard of my laptop. I figure that 's a sign to go to bed. This morning Robin and I made a quick trip out to the winery. Scott wanted to start the fermentation on the three bins that were picked last Wednesday. I thought it would be a simple process of throwing in some yeast. Nothing is simple in a winery. First we have to heat the grapes up to around 70 degrees. They are still at a chilly 50 degrees when I arrive. Also, when you use any piece of equipment, any hose, any stainless steel that is going to come in contact with grapes, it must be cleaned. Some are simply steam cleaned, but the pump and the hoses takes a more involved process. First you make a garbage can size container with a product that is similar to Oxy Clean. This must be continuously run through the pump and hoses for 20 minutes. Then you flush everything out with water, then you do a citric acid run, then flush out with water again. You do this before you use them, and you do it again when you are done using them.
Last night as the grapes came out of the destemmer most of them were moved into the barrel room, where it's around 50 degrees all the time. One particularly exciting transfer was a huge stainless steel fermenter which as it was lifted actually caused the back of the forklift to come off the ground. Scott quickly grabbed a hand jack and helped to lift the load while several of the guys hopped onto the back of the forklift. At one point Scott and I are moving one of the plastic fermenters into the barrel room. Scott has neglected to give me the stupid end of the job, so I have the handle of the jack. When we have the extremely heavy bin in place I pull the handle all the way instead of easing it down slowly. I know I've made a mistake before Scott even says anything. And it strikes me, I could have cracked that fermenter, releasing over a ton of estate fruit onto the winery floor and down the drain. It still makes me shiver a little bit to think of it.

Several of the bins were emptied into one of the huge wooden fermenters that I was cleaning earlier this week. In the photo above you can see Umberto emptying one of the bins into one of the larger fermenters. That board you see is the one we stand on when we punch down the grapes once fermentation starts up. People die doing this. When you crack the cap CO2 is released, and if you inhale too much you go head first into the mix and don't come out alive (but what a way to go!) Scott warned me about this and told me to be careful, because . . . well . . . it would ruin the wine!

To get the grapes to come up to temperature Scott has two instruments that transfer heat through the mix of grapes in the fermenter. One is a stainless steel hose that has another hose inside of the first. Water is circulated down the hose through the inside hose and back through the outside. The other instrument is a huge steel tank. The wine is run through some pipes inside the tank, and hot water is added to the tank. The system works really well and we go from 50 to 68 in about 30 minutes.

Then Scott adds the yeast. Well, first he adds some food for the yeast to make sure that they stay healthy. It's kind of like yeast multi-vitamins. Then he gently pushes his hand down and makes three little nests. This is where the yeast is actually placed. He will let it sit there for about 24 hours just to makes sure that the colony is well established. If you are a baker, it is something like proofing your yeast for bread dough. At one point Robin was up in the tasting room hanging out and some folks came in to taste wine. She asked Scott what she should do. He said he'd be right up. Robin said, "I have my pouring licence, would you like me to get them started?" Scott says that would be great. Soon there are several people at the windows looking down at what we are doing. I feel a bit like the monkey at Alf's. But I remember the curiosity. I so desperately wanted to learn how all of this is done, and wanted to be down there in the cellar asking questions about what was going on. It's why this experience has been so amazing.

Another reason is the food. We eat very well during crush. Last night Budd White make some amazing BBQ'd pork ribs for us. There was about 5 pounds of ribs per person! Lisa had made a beautiful, hearty soup earlier in the day for lunch with homemade tortillas on the side. I was so hungry both times. At dinner Lisa tells Scott to bring up something special to go along with the meal. He heads down into the library and comes back with a 2005 Renelles Block Pinot Noir. It could be my favorite wine that I have tasted at the winery. And it tastes as though it is still a baby--like it will continue to mature and develop for another decade in the bottle. Could it be possible that I'm helping to make something that amazing? Scott said that 2005 was another cool vintage. I hope and pray that it will be. And I also hope and pray that I don't do anything stupid and mess it up.

Robin grabbed the camera and took some shots of the vineyard while I was working. The one below could be my favorite shot of Coeur de Terre so far.

Harvest 1

2011-10-28T22:59:00.001-07:00

From the sounds of it not many of us on the Coeur de Terre team got much sleep last night. I was pretty wide awake at 4:00 a.m.. Lisa Neal, the co-owner of Coeur de Terre said that she didn't sleep at all. I was just so excited to see harvest happen first hand. I'm now home early, well earlier that I thought I might. I was in the vineyard at 7:30 AM, and got home around 10:30 PM. That's a very long day of physical labor. But what I did was nothing compared to the hard work of the people actually harvesting of the grapes. I went down to get a few photos, and I just couldn't believe how fast they were picking.
There are sixteen pickers and they each have two five gallon plastic buckets. They throw one of them up the row a ways, and then start picking with the second. The bucket is held under the clusters of grapes which are cut to fall into it. I've talked to a number of people who have done this work and they all say about the same thing. The first time the tried it they about cut their fingers off. While the speed of harvest is impressive, the next step is unbelievable. When the two buckets are full they grab them and run up the hill. That's right, they run. When they get to the end of the row, the buckets are emptied into one of the bins, and the crew chief checks them off on their picking card.

Ryan and I decide to head up to the wine cellar at about the same time, so we walk up Sara Jane's Block together. I am winded by the time we're half way up the hill, and I'm not carrying anything. I don't know how those folks do it.

The permanent crew at the vineyard don't do the picking. A special crew is contracted to do that. The pickers are paid by the bucket, and the contractor is paid by the ton of fruit picked. The guys who are full time are doing logistics. Martin is on a tractor ferrying bins up and down the vineyard. Roberto is operating the forklift full time. The rest of us are on sorting detail. The bins arrive at the upper level of the winery. They are taken under an awning where a special attachment on a fork lift twists them in the air to dump them onto the sorting table. The table doesn't have a conveyor belt (for which I am very glad). Instead it vibrates which gently sends the fruit down the table to be sorted. We are looking for leaves, under ripe fruit, or fruit that just doesn't look good. Anything that's rejected is tossed into the center of the table where it

ends up in buckets that eventually have to be emptied.

We started up the sorting table once a few of the bins have arrived. It's about 8:30 or so when we begin, and we won't stop (except to eat until 9 at night.) I end up with a pretty simple job, but my back is already starting to tighten up on me. When the bins are picked up by the forklift they have to be secured in place. There is a big, heavy metal bar that is inserted into a track over the top of the bin. Then it has to be strapped in place. It gets difficult about the 300th time you do it because you're lifting something leaning over the side of the bin.

Once the bin is emptied, it has to be hosed out, and the the next one is put in place. A variety of people swing through and help out during the day. Lisa Neal and Ryan are working with Mauricio and Lisa's friend, Trisha, in the photo to the right. When I wasn't helping to strap in the bins, it was my job to get under the table and grab the buckets and empty them. I was also in charge of keeping the driveway free of grapes. In between I would step up to the table and help sort. Part of the reason for all of that cleaning is to keep the fruit flies at bay. Fortunately (well at least in this regard) this harvest is so late the most of the fruit flies have been killed by cooler weather. At noon I was thinking how great it was that we escaped the forecasted rain. After lunch the skies open up. Now I have another job. I have to make sure the the bins are always covered in plastic. Scott doesn't want to have water getting in and diluting the wine he is making. OK, I'm beat. Off to bed. It was a very long and a very satisfying day. I'll write more tomorrow.

Seven Hours and Back to the Vineyard

2011-10-27T20:50:00.000-07:00

About seven hours from now I'll be headed back to Coeur de Terre. Tomorrow is the day that we will be harvesting most of their estate fruit. Today was all about getting ready for tomorrow. It started with a chemistry lesson. I feel a bit like a trained monkey doing the chemistry of wine making. Scott is very good about explaining what he wants done, and I can do it, but I have no idea what I am doing.

We start in the barrel room where the three fermenters that we filled with de-stemmed Pinot Noir are resting. Scott does not want them to start the fermentation process yet. The cold soaking allows more of the color and flavors to be transferred to the juice, than going right into fermentation. He is keeping that process at bay in several ways. First of all he is keeping the bins cool. Also, he has not yet added any yeast to get the process started. He also keeps a level of Co2 on the top of the bins. That is a lump of dry ice sitting on top of one of the bins in the photo on the left. The mist that flows from the ice reminds me of the fog that is settled onto the valley floor as I head to the vineyard each morning. Today is kind of a low pressure training for what we will be doing tomorrow. Scott wants the specific gravity of each bin checked. You do this by placing a hydrometer (a glass tube with a bulb on the bottom) into a solution of the juice from the bin. You record the number that is level with the top of the liquid and this is your specific gravity. Don't ask me what a specific gravity is, I don't know. We also measure the temperature. Before any of this is done we punch down the materials in the bid, pushing the grapes that have accumulated at the top down into the other liquid. Then we take a rag spritzed with alcohol and clean off the inside of the bin. After all of that is done you grab a few chunks of dry ice and throw them on top, then cover the bin and move on. Today there are three bins in the barrel room. Tomorrow there will be dozens.

At lunch I go down to one of my favorite parts of the vineyard. It is a picnic table that sits right next to the irrigation pond. The colors are beautiful today. I've learned that there is a slight click right before the propane cannons go off. If you listen carefully you can cover your ears right before they go off. I've thought that this would be a great place to bring Robin and some friends for a picnic. We'll wait until after harvest is complete, because those cannons are loud.

After lunch I head back to the cellar to clean another of the huge wooden fermenters. First I scrub it down with a base solution, then rinse it with warm water, treat it with an acidic solution and rinse it again with warm water. It takes about three hours to finish. The pump is giving me problems, so after I am done I take apart the plug and discover one the of the wires has come undone. While I'm at it I fix another problem with the control wiring. I'm honing my mechanical skills doing this gig.
Late in the day Martin is out in the vineyard setting up the bins in which the picked fruit will be collected tomorrow. The harvesting crew arrives around six AM. We will start processing the fruit around 8:30. We will finish up sometime Saturday morning. Scott is going to let the upper part of the vineyard stay on the vine a bit longer. He had to schedule the harvest crew three days ago. I'm excited to see how everything works. It's going to be a very, very long day. I doubt I'll get a chance to write anything tomorrow. I want to get out to the vineyard early so I can get some images of the grapes being harvested.

I'm the last one out of the cellar again tonight. As I leave I strike up a conversation with the welder that Scott has hired to fix some machinery. We chew the fat for a while and then, suddenly I am very cold. It's amazing how quickly these vineyard hillsides loose heat when the sun goes down. That is part of what makes this such a perfect place to grow Pinot Noir. As I go down the hill Scott is out with Jack, the vineyard dog, shutting down the propane cannons. It's suddenly quiet and peaceful. I leave with a certain amount of sadness, but with a lot of excitement about tomorrow's harvest.

For Karlene

2011-10-26T17:04:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was the anniversary of the death of the man who was the husband of someone I care for a great deal, and the Dad of one of my best friends. In Karlene's honor today I went up to Coeur de Terre and puttered. There's really no other name for it. I just went up and did some small tasks, along with a couple of projects that I simply really like to do. But first I almost killed myself (now that would have been quite a tribute!)

I wasn't even doing anything dangerous. That is unless you take into consideration the quality of the ladders supplied to the help at CdT. I'm not saying Scott is cheap, well, yes, actually, I guess I am (I'm just hoping he'll read this and be coerced into buying a new one). The step ladder we use in the cellar is a P.O.S. aluminum that barely holds the guys who weight in at a little over a hundred pounds. For me who weighs in at just over 200, it's a scary activity. I was changing light bulbs. There were quite a few out in the cellar room, so I got to work. The ones on the wall are easy, so I did those first. Then I had to tackle the ceiling bulb that was out. They've been having some issues with the lighting circuit, so I wasn't sure if it was the bulb or the circuit. I took the protective metal cage off of the glass jar which screws into the fixture. Then, as I was unscrewing the jar I noticed that it was completely full of water, and yes, the circuit was on at the time and the ladder is made of aluminum.

After puttering a bit more, I went out to see
what Roberto was up to. He was moving the barrels outside. I'm fascinated with how the whole organizational structure of a cellar works. Scott had me move all of the barrels out of the barrel room, and I wondered if they'd just stay in the big room. No, they go outside. We just had to get them out of the barrel room so we had room for the new fermenters. Roberto had asked me earlier what Scott wanted done with the barrels. Luckily I knew. Now how do you communicate? Luckily the little I know of Spanish includes beer, so I pointed at the one with exes on them and said "Dos Equis" and pointed outside on the other side of the drive, and then at the "no-equis"

and pointed to the pad outside the cellar. Scott had gone through the barrels earlier and ex'd out the ones that he no longer wanted. Usually they were over four years old. I still can't believe that you have to pay $1,200 or so for a barrel and then only use it for three to four years.

After that wineries will usually sell them for around $50 a piece. That's quite a depreciation of an asset. These barrels are all made of French White Oak. The trees from which they are harvested are often over one hundred years old. The wood is gorgeous, and has almost vertical grain. The inside of the wood is toasted a bit. After they have been used the inside is also red from the wine. In places the wood has been eaten away. If you smell vanilla in a wine, that's the oak. Likewise if you smell smoke, that could be the toast of the barrel. Scott likes his barrels with a medium long toast.

After I'm done puttering, I decided to walk around the vineyard. The light has gone from direct sun to overcast, so I decide to try and find the perfect cluster of Pinot Noir. It's not easy. For some reason there are wires everywhere. You'd have thought that Scott and Lisa would have been more considerate of future photographers when they planted their vineyard!

I now have so many pictures of grape clusters, and there is always something that isn't quite right. Today I was laying down in one of the rows, trying to get the light just right behind the grape cluster when one of the guys on the crew ran up with a shotgun. I wondered if he was going to finish me off.

Several people have asked me what I think of this vintage. The smart answer is we'll have to wait and see, the proof is in the glass. But I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's going to be awesome (with a caveat of course.) It's going to be a great year to purchase wine from more expensive vineyards with experienced winemakers who really know what they are doing. This fruit has had forever to

hang on the vine, and I think that's going to give it amazing flavors.

It also has a high acid content, and winemakers will have to know what to do with that to temper it and make it work. Maybe I just love it already because I've put so much of myself into it. I admit my objectivity may already be skewed. Look at the grapes in the photo above. Don't you think they'll make an awesome wine? In the hands of Scott Neal, I feel confident that they will.

80% Custodial Work

2011-10-25T20:05:00.000-07:00

I'm down in the barrel room this morning. Scott has lined out a pretty simple job for me. Take the hand truck and move all of the empty barrels out to the large room, and move the full wine barrels down the the other end of the barrel room. And I can do it. I manage to move all of the empty barrels without a mishap. Roberto catches me making some mistakes and shows me the right way to lay them out. I'm fine until I start thinking. "I'm moving a lot of money." Each barrel when new costs somewhere around $1,200. They each hold about 60 gallons of wine, or enough to make 25 cases. The last two barrels I move are the Founder's Club Pinot Noir. I know that these cost $50 a bottle, so counting the barrels, I'm moving over $32,000! I start to get paranoid about dumping the whole thing over.

After (successfully) moving the barrels I get to clean out a six foot tall by six foot in diameter wood barrel fermenter. Scott has given me instructions on how to clean it. There are two solutions to use with hot water rinses after each one. The only thing he hasn't told me is how to get in. I want to drop down from the top. But you actually go in through the "man door". I'm wondering if my bulk will fit. But Scott assures me I will. Id, but just barely. I also get to try out my new waterproof overalls. They work great.

Lisa comes downstairs and finds me sweeping out the cellar room where I have just taken out all of the barrels. She tells me a story of a well knows person who was in the wine trade and then decided he wanted to make his own wine. After a few years he called it quits. He just didn't realize the making wine is 80% custodial work. You clean the cellar, you clean the equipment, you clean it again. You clean your barrels, you clean your fermenters, you clean the bins to hold the grapes, you clean the crush pad, you clean . . . well you get the idea. And then when you're done inside you go out and clean up the vineyard. I'm getting closer to being a winemaker because I have the custodian thing down.

In the afternoon we get to do our first crush. Crush is kind of a misnomer, especially with red grapes. We will not be crushing any grapes today. They are de-stemmed and left to soak in a fermenting tub. Our grapes arrived from another local vineyard from which Scott has purchased grapes to make his Willamette Valley Pinot Noir. As the bins arrive Scott looks them over, grabs a few and pops them in his mouth. Roberto is the fork lift master of the operation. He pick up the bin with a special attachment that allows him to tilt the it to one side so the grapes can flow out. I have two jobs. One is the set a bar over the bin so that lid doesn't slide off when it's tipped, and the other is . . . clean the bin out with water after it is emptied.

In the photo to the right you can see Roberto (in Red) using a tool to move the grape clusters around on the sorting table. Mauricio (on the left) and Martin (on the right) are sorting the grapes. They are removing any non grape materials like leaves, and also looking for any botrytis clusters. Botrytis is a mold that desiccates the grapes. The table that they are standing next to vibrates, and is slopped slightly away from Roberto. At the other end is a shoot where the grape clusters fall into the destemmer. This amazing machine gently removes the stems from the grapes. The grapes continue down into the the fermenting tub and the stems all come out of the side of the machine.

The grapes are partially juiced when the come out of the destemmer. Scott applies a small amount of sulphur to keep down bacteria, and a bit of dry ice to create a blanket of CO2 over the top. He doesn't want the juice to start fermenting yet. He'll add yeast later to get the process going. Some winemakers don't add yeast at all. They just let nature take it's course. I think Scott likes to have a little more control over the process than that. Scott and Roberto are consolidating two of the fermenting bins in the photo to the left. The bins are then placed in the barrel room where they will be kept at a constant temperature.

At the end of the day I'm cleaning up around the large barrel fermenters where I'd been working earlier. As I'm putting away the hoses I see something move. It's our friend. We heard him croaking when we were bottling, but we could never find him. I open the large door next to the fermenter and let him out. Roberto is transferring some wine from a large stainless steel

container into some carboys, so I go into the winery, grab a glass, go out and stick it under the stream, and . . . instant glass of wine. I take it upstairs to the deck just off of the tasting room, sit in one of the Coeur de Terre Adirondack chairs, and watch the sun go down. What a great blessing it is to have time to sit and enjoy and glass of wine and just look over the vineyard as the light starts to fade. When I'm done I pack up my things, get in the car and head down the drive to the front gate. For the first time since I've been working here I'm the last one to leave. Luckily the closed gate wasn't too difficult to figure out. On the other hand being trapped in a vineyard doesn't sound too bad at all.

The Calm Before the Storm

2011-10-24T19:04:00.000-07:00

It was a slow day of cleaning at the vineyard today. It is so thrilling to be in a vineyard just as the first light is starting to peak over the rolling foothills that surround the valley. The colors are

so dramatic. The best lighting in a vineyard is in the early morning and later in the day toward sunset. One of the great joys of intentionally spending so much time in one vineyard is the joy of seeing it glow in all kinds of different light. The clouds pop up suddenly and just glow in the blue sky. The grape clusters grab the horizontal rays and seem to be illuminated from the inside. The photo above was taken first thing this morning the heart shaped rock that gives Coeur de Terre it's name. To the right is a beautiful Viognier cluster in the beautiful morning lighting with the eastern light flooding the vineyard that sits just beneath the rock that gives Coeur de Terre it's name.

When I wasn't out taking photos in the morning and evening I was in the cellar cleaning up. I have a strange tick about work areas. I like them to be clean. It's the one place where I like things to be organized and in their place. So, I took apart the tool boxes and cleaned them up. I helped to organize the back of the barrel room and got all of the remaining wine and materials up and on shelves. Then I took apart the junk closet!

Since there's not much to learn about wine in cleaning, (although you do a lot of cleaning to make wine) I thought I'd talk about the commute to Coeur de Terre from McMinnville. It is one of my favorite drives through back country farmsteads with perennially green fields and half dome oak trees.

Above is a picture of the misty Muddy Valley taken on my drive this morning. As you leave McMinnville on highway 18 you are in the midst of the spacious Willamette Valley. As you continue to the coast, however, you get closer and closer to the coast range foothills. In my case I leave highway 18 fairly quickly and weave my way out Masonville Road (just follow the blue signs to Coeur de Terre.) After about a mile of driving you are actually encountering the foothills of the Coast Range. At about McCabe Chapel the road curves around a big curve and suddenly you are in a much more narrow valley with foothills on both sides. This is the Muddy Valley. As the road begins to hug the western edge of valley floor it takes another dramatic turn to the right. You want to follow this road straight instead of turning with the pavement to the left. It brings you through another tight set of hills which are very close together and then quickly open to yet another valley. This is the valley in which Coeur de Terre is located.

A one mile drive down this gravel road will deliver you to your destination. The iron gate at the foot of the estate welcomes you. The small house at to the right is the "temporary" housing for the owners of the vineyard. Abby's Block will follow you on the left hand side as you climb the hill. There is an old, metal out building on the right followed by the estate's root vines (they graft all of their own vines at Coeur de Terre including growing their own root stock)

As you climb the steep drive that heart shaped rock will be on your left followed by the irrigation pond. Just another small climb and you are at their beautiful arts and craft inspired tasting room. I'll be down in the cellar cleaning up no doubt

The photo above was taken in the evening. Every lighting today seemed to be more dramatic than the last. It was a good day for photography. As I'm getting ready to leave for the day Lisa drives up and asks me if I'd like to take home the wine that was left over from the tastings this weekend. It is such a silly question. I'm drinking an '09 Abby's Block Pinot Noir right now and it is luscious. The fruit is a bit darker than the rest of the estate with just a bit more mineral and spice notes. This wine is going to age like gangbusters.

As I'm preparing to leave Scott drives by on the ATV with Talula (she has a blocked named after

her too, I just didn't get to taste the wine from it tonight.) I get the feeling that this young woman is beginning her training to be the future vineyard manager of Coeur de Terre. Consider this her early training in vineyard management. She's off to see how the grapes are coming along, to scare up a few birds and just generally enjoy the vineyard. There are so many beautiful sights to take it. I wonder if you become accustomed to them over time and kind of take them for granted. I just can't imagine.

Way, Way Too Much Chemistry

2011-10-23T21:53:00.000-07:00

I love to be in a vineyard, but I had no idea there would be so much chemistry involved in wine making. I'm a bit nervous about going back out and starting crush at Coeur de Terre. Scott Neal, the Co-owner and winemaker at CdT is a natural science geek. He loves to get into his laboratory and get out test tubes and beakers and perform archaic tests. Me, not so much. I practically flunked chemistry in high school. Part of that was due to the fact that I was a terrible student, but a big part was the periodic table. I have a good friend who thinks it is a work of art and admires how everything fits together. To me it remains a big mystery.
I was in the lab with Scott the other day and he was showing me how to figure out the total acidity of some grapes that we had selected from different vineyards. Did you know that total acidity and PH are two different things? Come on. Doesn't a PH reading tell you the level of acidity in something? No, it turns out, it does not. So we start by making a base solution, then we add 100 ml of some of the smashed up juice from the grapes. This is my first grape crush! The fact that we did it in a one gallon zip lock bag kind of took some of the romance out of it. After Scott added the juice he measures how much base solution it takes to bring the total back up to the level that we started out with. Then Scott looks at his magic book and it shows him what the total acidity is. The levels are high (or at least they were last week, it might be a bit better now.)

The tool I think is cool is the spectrometer. Here's how it works. Grab a grape, lift the little plastic lid at the end of the device, smash the grape on the glass surface, close the plastic lid, hold the eye piece up to your eye, and look towards a light. A blue bubble appears and shows you the brix level of the grapes. Brix is the level of sugars in the grapes. Last week the level was still a bit low, but any sunshine helps bring the level up. When we get to the lab Scott also does a quick test of the brix so he gets a larger picture of how they are doing in the vineyard as a whole.

We will be starting crush this week. I think Scott has scheduled the picking crew to come in on Wednesday. What will we do in the mean time? In a word, clean. Everything is cleaned. The bins that the grapes will be gathered in when they are picked are cleaned. The sorting table that they will be emptied onto will be cleaned. The de-stemming machine will be cleaned. The wine press will be cleaned. The containers that the crushed wine will go into will be cleaned. The bins that the de-stemmed red grapes will rest in for a week will be cleaned. The large stainless steel tanks will be cleaned. The hoses that we use to transfer the wine from one place to another are cleaned when we are done using them, and again when we haul them out to use again. You do not want the wrong bacteria to grow in the fermenting wine. It does bad things to the taste and aroma, so we clean, and then we clean some more.

I may or may not be able to write much later in the week. I'm assuming we'll be working quite late once crush starts, but I don't know anything for sure.

Oh, and there is another thing the crew can do when they have a spare moment. The can grab a shotgun and shoot it towards the birds. Scott considered netting his whole vineyard as the owner of the vineyard to the left has done. But he thought that the extensive losses they had last year were not going to happen again this year. Last year the birds arrived at a slightly different time, and the food they needed was in short supply and they stripped the vineyards of tons of fruit a day. This year has not been quite as bad. Sitting out in the valley it sounds like a war zone with propane cannons and real shotguns going off on a regular basis. Have you ever thought it would be fun to live next to a vineyard? Not so much during the harvest. Everywhere we traveled we could hear the explosions.

Well, I'm looking forward to crush, but not so much the chemistry.

Good Beyond Your Doing

2011-10-21T20:04:00.000-07:00

Maybe my morning devotion just primed me for it, but this was one of the best days of my life. I got to work a bit up at Coeur de Terre, and the go around and tour other vineyards with Scott Neal. I'd been saving up about a weeks worth of questions, So I let them all fly at the same time. Scott was very patient about answering them all. I have found him to be the original multi-tasking, technology geek. He must have five or six different gadgets powered up on the dashboard of his car. I don't even know what they all do, but he seems to use two or three of them simultaneously. We drive by a number of vineyards that I didn't even know existed. Scott tells me that they are owned by some professionals, who do it on the side. He calls them petting vineyards. I almost we my pants I laugh so hard. Scott is out checking on some of the other fruit that his is purchasing to make Pinot Gris, and to add to his Willamette Valley Pinot Noir. The fruit is looking good. Despite some very badly timed rain the grapes are in good shape and ripening nicely.

After the tour we head back to the winery. They guys have made great progress on bottling the wine. There are seventeen pallets all finished and ready to go by the time the truck arrives to

take them away to the wine storage warehouse. (Most wineries do not have enough room to store their wine, so they pay to have it stored, and then have it delivered as they need it.) You can see a lot of our work in the photo to the left. There are 17 pallets with 56 cases of wine on each one for a total of 952 with 12 bottles in each one for a total of 11,424 bottles! And we broke a total of four of those bottles (and only one was full of wine.) It's really a wonderful sense of accomplishment to know that I've handled just about every one of those bottles. In the photo to the left, Maurico is stacking up the just glued up boxes to receive the newly labeled bottles. In this week of bottling and labeling we have emptied two huge stainless steel containers that were full of wine. It just feels good.

When the truck arrives there is frantic activity to get all of the pallets wrapped and ready for transport. Then, suddenly, the cellar is empty. Just a few scattered boxes here and there and the two wooden fermenters. It is such a stark contrast to just a few minutes earlier. Lisa Neal has promised us a luncheon today. I'm looking forward to it. What could be better than a luncheon at a vineyard? Time in a vineyard is always relative, and lunch is no different. We were scheduled to eat at 12:00, then 1:00, and because of the truck arrival, we sit down somewhere south of 2:00. But man, oh man is it worth the wait.

Lisa has laid out a beautiful spread of food. There is incredibly moist and delicious BBQ'd chicken, a gourmet mac and cheese, rustic bread, a mixed green salad with still warm brownies for dessert. But that's not all. We also get to pop open one of the bottles we've been bottling. Then Ryan brings over one of their estate Pinots from 2007 and its spectacular. Then a bottle of their estate Syrah arrives. O MY GOD!

And the conversations are lively and extremely entertaining. We talk about the demented cat who is attacking Jack the vineyard dog. We move on to Ryan's wonderful and strange relationship with Roberto. Scott finally shows up and we're off to Los Vegas talking about the inability of white people to dance. It was so, so, so good. These guys that I've worked so hard with this week, finally have time to sit down and talk and have fun. After everyone else leaves our wonderful hostess, Lisa finally sits down to eat. I stay behind while everyone else heads back to work and we talk some more. We talk about our parents and the world in which they struggled to make a better life for their children. Then we move to our own children and our hopes and dreams for them. Scott and Lisa talk just a bit about their lost house and how tender that spot remains for them. And then I get to go home and see my granddaughter and have dinner with Paul and Ashley and her parents. It's just too much goodness packed into one day.

The title of this blog comes from Acts 14. Here is the whole quote taken from the Message version of the Bible: "God didn't leave them without a clue, for he made creation, poured down rain and gave bumper crops. When your bellies were full and your hearts happy, there was evidence of God beyond your doing.

I have so much, I am so blessed and it is way, way beyond my doing.

Stop, Look and Enjoy the Beauty

2011-10-20T20:29:00.000-07:00

I'm trying to consciously pay attention to my surroundings. When you are walking around a beautiful vineyard like Coeur de Terre noticing beauty is easy--it's everywhere. At lunch today I hiked up the hill to the top of the vineyard and I noticed this old, gnarled oak tree. Something about it was compelling, like I'd seen it before. I couldn't really place where until I went back down to the cellar to start up bottling again and then it hit me. This is almost exactly the same picture that is on the '10 Willamette Valley Pinot Noir label. I've seen it several thousands times in the last few days!

The vineyard is always beautiful, but it is especially so right now. The colors in the nearby hillside are starting to turn, and the grapes are lush and low hanging. The lighting is saturated, causing the colors to glow even more.
The little guy swimming in the pond in the picture to the right makes me think that the bird

cannons may not be doing their job. There is one located about 20 feet from where he is swimming and he flinches a lot less than I do when it goes off.
After lunch Scott says he's going to walk around the vineyard and check sugar levels. You do this with a nifty tool called a spectrometer. You grab a grape and squeeze it and set it on a glass tab. Then you look through the lens of the device and it shows you the sugar levels (read in brix.) I ask Scott what level he needs for harvest. He says ideally he'd like to get to 23 or so. Some of grapes in the upper vineyard are reading 18 and 19

brix. Just a bit further down the hill they are reading 21 and 22 brix. Scott and Lisa do a quick

consultation. It looks like we'll start picking next Wednesday. Some of the upper vines may not be harvested until November. Scott shows me how to tell if the grapes are ready for harvest. I'm surprised to learn that you want the grapes to be just a bit soft. I would have thought you would want them to be firm like a table grape. He also shows me how you can see the inside of the grape sticking to the seeds more in riper fruit. I'm excited because tomorrow we're going to go out and look at some of the other vineyards from which Scott is purchasing fruit this year. And, the weather looks as though it just might cooperate with partly sunny weather through next week.

There's a new guy on the team today (I'm not the rookie anymore, yea!) So, I managed to get into the bottle filling

station. During a break in the action I filled up the cork reservoir and then took over controls. My goal was to fill and cork a thousands bottles of wine. I would know it was a thousand when the cork hopper was empty. It takes a long time, and just as I was getting there, Scott walked by and noticed that we needed more corks. So he filled the hopper again. By the time I was done the hopper was half way down again, so I estimate I did something like 1,500. I have experienced all of the different jobs now. Today I topped them off by putting together boxes with a hot glue gun. (That's the much less than tidy box building station to the left.) I'm glad we'll be done with this phase tomorrow. At one point when I was filling up bottles Lisa came through, pointed out one that wasn't quite right and then, said, go ahead and take one of these home when they're messed up. The problem is that never happens. I mean, we do mess them up, but there always seems to be a way to fix just about anything. If the level is too low, pull the cork, add some more wine and re-cork it. If it's too high, pop it open and pour a little bit out. If the labels aren't right, soak the bottle in warm water and scrape it off and re-label it. But today we found a problem that couldn't be fixed. Someone dropped a bottle on top of another one and broke the glass. I was going to throw it away, but Ryan said it would perfectly safe to drink. And since he's an officially trained

wine sommelier and everything, and since he agrees to take the first drink, I decide to believe him (plus, I really want to taste this wine.) And it is amazing. I just plain love it. The aroma is so rich with ripe fruit, spice and leathery notes. I've tasted wines that cost twice as much that have less complexity of taste. That you can purchase this Pinot Noir for $20 is incredible. So we end our work day by toasting all of the hard work that went into growing the grapes that made this wine. We toast the hard work of turning those grapes into wine. And, finally, we toast all the hard work of getting it into bottles and off to the store. I now know something about that last one.

4,200 Bottles of Wine

2011-10-19T18:21:00.000-07:00

Not too surprisingly today we bottled at Coeur de Terre. We'll be bottling again tomorrow. We'll probably be bottling the day after that as well. When I go to bed at night I see bottles flowing past me in a never ending river. Today we were able to fill, cork and label seven pallets of wine. There are 14 cases on each level of the pallet (with 12 bottles in each case.) The boxes sit four high on each pallet, so that's 56 cases per pallet and a grand total of 4,284 bottles for the day. I am tired. That's our ocean of boxes in the photo to the left. It's quite a feeling of accomplishment to look at all of those boxes and know that you've helped get all that work done.

I know I need to adjust my schedule for when crush starts so I'm up early this morning (like 4:00 AM early.) When I arrive at 6:45 the rest of the crew has been working for over an hour. The master of the cellar is Roberto (in the photo to the right.) He says what we are to do, he decides when we break for lunch, and if something isn't working, he will fix it. Early in the morning he is called away, so I jump in to work at the labeling machine. (How hard can it be?) I am able to do it, but it's slow going. The labels don't always start in the same place, so I have to stop each time and adjust the roll so it's right. Then the labels don't always stick completely, so I have a rag that I wipe them down with the get them firmly in place. If you look closely in that photo you can see that Roberto is doing all of those things at once. His left hand is gently helping the pick up roll along keeping the alignment just right. His right hand is holding a roller to secure the label as it turns. He's able to send the labeled bottle on its way and pick up a new one all at the same time. He does this without missing a beat . . . all day long.

And Ryan shows up for work today! (He's been threatening to show up all week.) Ryan runs the tasting room upstairs, and is trying to gets some hands on experience in the rest of the work of the vineyard. He is sitting on the table in the photo to the right. In the front of that picture to the is the cork hopper containing over$700 worth of corks.

After lunch Ryan wants to run the corking machine so he jumps in, and it's "cork-a-geddon" right away. One of the jobs you have to do is make sure each bottle is filled to just the right level. The first dozen or so that Ryan turns out are off in one way or another. So, we pop out the corks (at 75 cents a piece) adjust the level of the wine and cork the bottles again. Ryan asks if we couldn't just pour the little extra wine into a glass someplace and drink it later, but apparently that's not allowed so it goes down the drain.

Lisa Neal (one of the owners of Coeur de Terry) told me yesterday that one of my jobs for harvest is to pray for sunshine. I'm on sabbatical, but I'm giving it my best shot anyway. The weather forecasts in the newspaper have not been encouraging. But today we lucked out. The grapes don't need full, direct sun to get ripe, they just need UV rays. Today we had them. In the afternoon the sun broke through the clouds and lit up the vineyard for a spectacular view. I hope we have more days like this one (weather wise, not bottling all day long wise.) Scott and Lisa have a great crew of very hard workers. I'm having a hard time staying up with them, but I want them to know that I'm willing to do the work that they do. In truth, doing this kind of work makes me very happy that I have a graduate degree. It is hard on the body, my arms are aching, my back is sore and my feet are swollen. That really doesn't sound like a recipe for happiness, but it is. There is something deeply satisfying about hard work well done.

Bottling at Coeur de Terre Day 2

2011-10-18T18:01:00.000-07:00

It's day two of bottling. All I can say is I am going to appreciate every bottle of wine a lot more from now on. Scott Neil (the co-owner of Coeur de Terre) once told me that every vine on their estate is touched by human hands 12-13 times every year. Wine making is a "hands on" business. Likewise, I calculate that each bottle is handled six or seven times. One guy takes the full case and turns it up side down onto the feed table. The next guy shoots nitrogen into the bottle. Then it's placed on the carousel where it is filled. Someone then places it in the corking machine and then another person (like me) cleans it with a towel. Next it is placed in the labeling machine, then someone places a capsule over the cork and yet another person places it in the "capsule roll" which gently firms the metal cap into place. The last person in line places the bottles in boxes, glues them shut and stacks them on the pallet. That's a lot of hands.

I'm back on bottle cleaning duty. I've watched the other guys do it. They place the bottle on the table and rub up and down . I don't do it that way. I grab the bottle and place it against my chest and rub it (which created the groovy pattern above). Today I wonder why I'm doing that. I try the other way. In about five minutes my back is killing me. The height of the table is perfect if you are about five foot seven. If you're six one you are leaning over the whole time.

During a lull in the action when the labeling machine is jammed up I try the capsule roll. It is much harder than it looks. You have to push it into the center of the machine at just the right speed. "That was too slow" Scott says as he fights with the labeling machine. On my second try I hear, "That was too fast." And sure enough both capsules are wrinkled and marred. As production starts back up I'm mysteriously back on bottle cleaning detail. As I'm wiping about the six thousandth bottle I think, "This is so easy a three year old could do it." And just on cue Tallulah comes running into the cellar. She watches Martin for about 3 seconds and then grabs a bottle and places it on the nitrogen injector,

then hands it off with a huge smile. I haven't been around three year olds for a while. They move fast! Tallulah is at the bottling station one second, helping to clean the bottles in the next,

and then handing bottles to Roberto at the labeling machine. The guys on the crew are clearly at ease with little girls. They count in Spanish with her. I clock out at 11, Tallulah is going strong at 14. She beams up at her Dad and says, "look, I'm working!" Scott asks if she wants to go and work on her ballet, and she's out of the cellar in a flash.

Scott has borrowed a new labeling machine for the day. The retail price tag of $4995.00 is still on it. The Capsule Roll machine likewise has a tag of $1295.00. The price of the bottling machine was a factor of ten times that. Why would anyone purchase all of that equipment? I'm at a loss until I have a conversation with Lisa Neal (the other co-owner of Coeur de Terre). She tells me that last year the vineyard turned it's first profit. Eleven years in business and finally they made more than they put in. But they didn't keep it long. Scott and Lisa decided to give their employees health care. "It just seemed like the right thing to do" Lisa said. I'm impressed. We haven't even been able to do that at our church employees yet.

At the end of the day we are running out of capsules. It's a constant nightmare because one thing is always running in short supply which brings everything to a standstill. Scott is sure he ordered 20,000 of the little suckers, so we search everywhere for them. He finally calls the company in California. Turns out they weren't delivered yet. In fact they haven't arrived in the U.S. yet. They are on a boat from France and will arrive in November sometime. So, Scott decided to box up the rest of the wine with labels, but to not glue the boxes shut. He tells me to place a sign on the pallet with the words "in bond." I ask what that means. Scott explains that they are going to pay taxes on that wine yet. Technically if he didn't pay his tax bill the government could come after the wine in bond and sell it to pay the taxes. Scott tells me that this will work out because he can have the crew finish off the bottles when it's slow at the vineyard. And it strikes me. One of the reasons Scott has decided to bottle his own wine is because it keeps his crew working. Bottling is something you can do at anytime, and doing it yourself during the slow times keeps the crew employed year round.

I'm a tired puppy by the end of the day, but I take some time to walk out into the vineyard and just sit. It is so beautiful. The sun may not last much longer, so I try to soak it in and enjoy it. I taste some grapes. They are coming along. We may be a week or so from harvest.

The wine storage company showed up today around 2:00. We loaded four full pallets of Willamette Valley Pinot Noir onto the truck. That's almost 2,700 bottles, and I've touched every single one of them. That's a feeling of accomplishment. I'd feel a whole lot better if we were somewhere near half way done.

The Bottling Line on a Beautiful Day

2011-10-17T19:45:00.000-07:00

I got to do my first winery work today. We are in

the midst of bottling the 2010 Willamette Valley

Pinot Noir at Coeur de Terre Vineyard. Bottling is a great deal of hard, repetitive work. Many wineries hire out the process. Scott Neal, the owner of Coeur de Terre, does not. He has a large investment in some highly temperamental Italian bottling machinery, so we do it ourselves. And there is a heck of a llot of wine to bottle this week. This extremely well priced Pinot has consistently sold out, so this year Scott has made more of it. In a long day of work we were able to bottle two pallets of wine. One pallet has 54 cases. We have a total of eight pallets to finish this week.There are five guys working with me. They are a regular part of Couer de Terre's staff. Usually most of them work out in the vineyard, but today they are in the winery helping with this process.

Scott introduces me to the line. He is at the corking machine and hands it off to me. I am immediately paranoid. You grab a bottle from the turntable where it has been filled, make sure that it has just the right amount of wine, and then push it into a knob which forces the bottle up into a shoot where a cork is pushed down into it. In my mind I could just see me miss the open-

ing and have the machine crash down and crushes the bottle severing my hand in the process. And, of course, I miss on several tries. Fortunately the machine is built to correct inappropriately placed bottles. Somehow I magically get moved over to the least mechanically challenging job on the line. I grab each bottle as it comes off the corking machine and clean it with a towel for the labeling machine. This little machine is Scott's personal nightmare. It is touchy, and without the least provocation with mangle the labels and bring the entire process to a halt.

Wouldn't you think bottling wine would be simple? I mean you put some wine in a bottle and stick a cork in it, right? Not so much. It takes a lot of technology. Before the bottle is filled it is inverted and filled with nitrogen gas. The nitrogen is slightly heavier than air, so it sits in the bottom of the bottle. When the wine is added, it pushes the nitrogen up to the top of the bottle. The corking unit has a vacuum which draws out any air as the cork goes in. All of this is to make sure no air is in contact with your wine.

After the labeling machine there is another one which presses the capsule over the the top of the cork. Then the bottles are placed in a Coeur de Terre box and set on a pallet. They don't arrive

at the winery in Coeur de Terre boxes, so they have to be taken from the shipping boxes, placed on the bottling line and then put into new boxes. After five or six hours of this work I'm beat. It is glorious out so I head into to the vineyard to look around. The sun is shining, but there are no birds. That seems strange until I hear a shot gun blast. This isn't one of the propane cannons. Some of the vineyard crew are out walking around with real shotguns. I'm thinking this will make the fake blasts much more effective.

At one point during the day, Lisa Neal comes down with paychecks, handing each one to the employees and thanking them for their hard work. Martin, who is working next to me, asks if I'm a friend of Scott's. It tell him that I'm an intern trying to learn about wine making. That I have another job which is paying me while I do this work, is just too confusing to communicate.

I am blessed to be able to experience all of this, blessed to work with Scott and Lisa, blessed that people I serve were willing to give me this extended time off to study winemaking.

And there are some benefits. Right before

I leave Lisa walks up with some '10 Pinot Gris bottles that don't have any labels. They ran out of labels before they ran out of bottled wine. She gives me a few to take home. We have one with dinner and it is outstanding. Beautiful, tropical fruits with a deep minerality all beautifully balanced by a bracing acidity. Eventually I'm going to get to help make some of this beautiful wine. It will be worth doing all of this bottling just to get the chance to help make something so wonderful.

Harvest Has Started at Last (Sort of)

2011-10-13T15:33:00.001-07:00

I had some time on my hands today so I decided to stop in and see my friends at Maysara Winery. I thought that Tahmamiene would have some free time since harvest hasn't begun. But I was surprised. They have begun harvesting their Pinot Noir Rose. Tahmaniene told me that these grapes don't have to be a sweet as regular Pinot Noir, so they were able to start picking yesterday. Last year the wine sold out within a few hours of being bottled, and this year Maysara sold futures and 800 cases have been pre-sold!

You can make a Rose from red grapes. You pick them and let them sit on the skins for about 24 hours, and then crush them. They absorb just enough color to turn the wine pink, not red.

I also got a chance to meet Maysara's intern for this crush. His name is Kevin and he is the wine buyer for a restaurant in Greenville, South Carolina. That's Kevin in the picture above with the toilet plunger like apparatus. I've never seen grapes get crushed before, so this was fun. Kevin is on a cat walk about 15 feet in the air, making sure that the grapes get into the crusher. Tahmaniene is on the ground running the fork lift.

The lift is outfitted with a special attachment that grabs the box of grapes and holds it in place as it is turned up side down to pour the grapes into the press. After it is all loaded up, a set of grates is reinserted and a pillow inside is inflated to squeeze the grapes to release their juice.

I ask Tahmaniene if I can see her new egg. It's a concrete tank that she is going to ferment some of her Pinot Gris in this year. The concrete adds a minerality to the wine. The wine made in the egg with be blended with the other Pinot Gris that is fermented in stainless steel. I look forward to tasting the results.

Tahmaniene tells me I should go up and check the progress on their new events building. Moe Momtazie, the owner of Maysara (and Tahmaniene's father) has been building the events center for several years. He is using his crew from the truss company to do the construction. It is beautiful, filled with rock and natural wood taken from the vineyard. The walls are covered with wine barrel staves that have been straitened out. The new tasting room is so cool. It feels like a cave. That's it in the photo to the left. The long serving counter is all natural oak and will be stunning when it's done.

Moe has had a heck of a time getting this building approved for events which I find very strange. Robin and I toured several wineries in Southern Oregon this summer and none of them seemed to have had the difficulty that Moe did. Why is this? The facility is going to be such a blessing to this place. My own quartet is going to do a fundraiser there around Valentine's Day. The money will go to the soup kitchen and the Community Compassion Fund. The Momtazi's are so generous, and Moe has built this building instead of laying off employees in this down market for construction. Wine tasting, and especially events at vineyards are the goose that laid the golden egg for this area, and we are so uncooperative, and make it as difficult as humanly possible.

I'm glad someone is harvesting something right now. We were suppose to be headed into a week of sunshine, but we certainly didn't get it today. Here's hoping to a sunny weekend, and here's hoping that those in charge of planning wake up and smell the coffee when it comes to vineyard event centers. This kind of building is exactly what people are searching out for special occasions, and I believe the vibe of this new tasting room is going to be a huge draw for Maysara. I can hardly wait for it to open.

The Advent of Crush

2011-10-10T12:40:00.000-07:00

I will be heading back to pastoral ministry at the start of the Advent season of the church year. Advent is made up of the four Sundays which precede Christmas. It is a time of waiting. It comes in the middle of winter when days are short and nature has taken a break. We imitate nature and try to catch our breath and experience renewal.

Right now we're waiting for crush. I was headed up to Coeur de Terre this morning to help do some bottling, but Scott called to say that the glass company had sent the wrong bottles. (And this is not a few bottles, this is a couple thousand.) And so, we wait.

I'm not sure if you're better at waiting than I am. I'm getting better at it, but that is only in comparison to how I use to be. Patience and waiting are not in my gift set. I get anxious for results and want to see things happen right away. Working with nature is a good cure for that. When will the grapes get ripe this year? When they are good and ready, and not a day sooner.

I did head up to the vineyard, just to do some walking around. There is an eerie feeling to the place. Birds are everywhere. You don't so much see them flying around, as hear them gathering in the trees all around the vineyard. After seeing Hitchcock's "The Birds" as a kid, the sound of hundreds of birds roosting in trees gives me the creeps. It gives vineyard owners the blues. The birds don't seem to be eating a lot of grapes. They swoop through the vineyard and make noise, but as I walk through the rows I don't see a lot of evidence of eaten grapes.

You can see in the picture above where Pinot Noir gets it's name. Pinot means pine cone and you can see in the tightly packed where the name came from. That tight cluster is a part of what makes Pinot so hard to grow. There is no space for air to circulate around each grape, and that can give mold and mildew a place to grow. Scott and Lisa are currently planning to spray of an organic compound that will help combat those problems. The clusters all look healthy to me. Now if we could just get a couple of days of partly sunny weather.

The light and color saturation in the vineyard are spectacular in this weather. A cloudy mist drifts past the wooded hillsides on the far side of the valley. The grapes are glistening and shining. All of the leaves have been removed from both sides of the grapes and they now stand out at the bottom of each canopy. I have a feeling that crush is going to be a lot like getting a drink of water from a fire hose when it finally arrives. I'm trying to just sit back and relax while I still can, but it's hard. I'm working on just be-ing, but the society around me tells me I must be a human do-ing, constantly in motion and making strides towards something or other. Right now it's nice to be tied into the ebb and flow of nature, with some extra time to just be. It is a gift. I will try to enjoy it while I have it.

Rainy, Wet Day at Coeur de Terre

2011-10-05T16:48:00.000-07:00

In my original plans for sabbatical we were picking fruit about now . . . not so much. So my internship with Coeur de Terre has been a bit slow in getting started. This morning I arrive around 8 AM. I've never been up to the vineyard this early in the day, and a cloudy mist has enveloped the lower vines on the property. We are scheduled to filter some wine today. Actually we're not scheduled to do anything. We are going to watch a guy who specializes in filtering wine, but don't say that in front of him. I put my foot in my mouth right away by asking, "How does this filter thingy work?" Corey Morris, the owner of Willamette Cross Flow visibly tenses at the question and he retorts, "First of all this is not a thing, it's Charlene, and second, this is not a filter, it's a cross flow." OK, Now I'm lost. It turns out you can really damage a wine by filtering it by conventional methods. Flavors are lost, and the wine is bruised, or harmed in the process. In the cross flow system the wine is gently circulated through a series of thousands of spaghetti like fibers. As it circulates the smaller wine molecules are able to slip through while sediment, yeast, bacteria, and other nasty stuff are left behind.
Corey has reason to be touchy. The machines cost a lot of money, and he has two of them in use today, Charlene (in the foreground in the photo) and Betsy (in the back.) We, or rather, they, are filtering Coeur de Terre's Willamette Valley Pinot Noir. This is Scott's entry level wine which is am amazing value at $20 a bottle. At Wednesday Wines it is one of our best selling wines. Scott sold out last year, so this year he is making more. This is the wine we will be bottling next week. Scott also has an ice wine that he is having filtered. It is made from Chardonnay grapes from Highland Vineyards. It was tough duty, but we had to try some to make sure it was OK, and, although it took me several taste to know for sure, it is!

Once the filter, I mean, "cross flow" is up and working there is not much to do. This allows me to accomplish something that I've wanted to for some time now, and that is to just hang out in a vineyard. As I walk around the corner from the wine making cellar the sun pops out showing a beautiful blue sky behind all those clouds. I hike up the hill to get a different perspective of the place. BOOM! A propane cannon goes off just to my right. The first time I about come unglued, the second, a flinch a little bit, and the third time I'm accustomed to it. Turns out that birds react in just about the same way. I step in to get a close up of some wet grapes and when I step back onto the road I'm about three inches taller. This clay soil really sticks to your feet when it's wet. I realize that I'm probably going to need some different boots for harvest.

I've told Scott I want to experience as much as I possibly can about harvest, and I'm glad I got to see this process. Corey has created a neat business filling a need to help make better wines. Few wineries could afford to purchase such a machine, so this is a great service. It also allows him to participate in harvest and crush. No one wants a big filter machine sitting in their cellar when crush is going on, so he is always free during that time of year. I'm looking forward to actually making some wine, now if mother nature would just cooperate. All we need are a few weeks of partly sunny weather. Is that too much to ask?

The Great 2011 Fruit Drop

2011-09-29T12:29:00.000-07:00

Even now it kind of takes my breath away when I see it. I was walking through Coeur de Terre Vineyard and they had just dropped fruit. What does that mean? In a late fruit set year like this one at the end of the growing season the vineyard manager will go through and have the crews cut off up to half of the fruit. In some rows it looks as though there is more fruit on the ground that there is on the vine. Why would they do this? Why would you go through a vineyard and cut off perfectly healthy fruit?

There are two reasons. One is the give the remaining fruit a better chance of actually getting ripe. With a large section of the fruit gone, the vine will give more energy to the remaining fruit, giving it a better chance of getting ripe. It is going to be a very late harvest this year--around October 26th for Pinot Noir, and maybe November for Riesling. It's going to be a nail-biter at the end of October to see whether the rainy season holds off just long enough for the fruit to ripen.

At Coeur de Terre they have cut the fruit back to one cluster per shoot. Many vineyards use two clusters per shoot, and some leave two clusters on one shoot, and only one on the next. This year is the most austere I have ever seen. Can you imagine what it must feel like to nurture these plants, to care for them and prune them, to feed them and hope they grow--and then go and throw half of them on the ground? I'm not sure I could do it. You can see how beautiful some of the fruit is at the photo to the right (complete with yellow jacket!) The second reason to drop fruit is to increase the complexity and depth of the fruit.

Today I was out with Scott Neil, the owner of Coeur de Terre to look at some of the fruit he is purchasing from other vineyards in the McMinnville AVA. It turns out there are quite a few that I'd never heard of--vineyards that do not make their own wines, but sell to other wine makers. We are checking out a few sights from which Scott is sourcing some of his fruit this year. The first we visit is having some problems. Some of the vineyard was planted with self rooted vines, and they have phylloxera in the vineyard. These vines are being torn out and are being replaced. They also have a section which has a virus called leaf roll. I'd never heard of it before. It's systemic, and the vines which have it will need to be pulled out, and the land left fallow for up to five years before it can be planted again. Since it takes five years for a plant to mature enough to produce fruit, it could be up to a decade before those areas will produce fruit again. It takes a special person to own and manage a vineyard. Someone who can make very difficult decisions about how to allocate resources. I often hear people say how wonderful it would be to live on a vineyard, or to own one. I'm not so sure.

I will be starting my internship with Scott in just a few weeks (or whenever the grapes to finally get ripe.) I'm excited to get to experience crush, and see how wine is actually made. It will make me appreciate all that much more the beautiful wines we are able to enjoy here in Oregon. Wine is an amazing symbol of God's grace to humanity, of how much God loves us. That grace, however, does not come cheap. It requires an incredible amount of hard work and dedication. I think I'll have a much more concrete picture of that work about a month from now.

Pinot on Chardonnay at Witness Tree Vineyard

2011-09-16T09:27:00.000-07:00

There are several vineyards that I want to study while I'm on Sabbatical. Each has a unique quality that has caught my attention, and caused me to want to learn more about them. One of those is Witness Tree Vineyards which is just east of Amity. It was named after the huge oak tree which dominates the hillside about half way up the vineyard and is used as a surveying point. I wanted to do some preliminary research on a wine they have provocatively called "Chainsaw Red". I just love a winery that celebrates a form of cultivation on a wine label. I want to get a look at the vines that produce this wine. Specifically I want to look at the mature Chardonnay vines that were lopped off with a chainsaw so that Pinot Noir vines could be grafted onto them. There are two things about this process that fascinate me. First of all that you can do that. Just top off a mature vine and graft a different varietal onto it. And, secondly, I'm amazed at how vineyard managers make decisions like that. "OK, lets bring in the chainsaws, wipe out these vines and do something completely different." As someone who works in a church this kind of decisive leadership is impressive.

So I dropped by anonymously early on a Thursday to do some research before I bother the vineyard manager. I've already contacted Steven Westry by email, and he graciously told me to call him directly, but I want to know a bit more before I deal directly with him. I love this winery. There is something magical about the wines that come from this part of the Eola-Amity Hills AVA (American Viticulture Area). To me there is also something understated about the tasting room at Witness Tree. It's friendly and welcoming, and unlike some other wineries in the area they have some wines that are within my price point. Chainsaw Red Pinot Noir is one of those wines. So, I introduce myself to the young woman who is behind the bar, give her one of

my cards and ask a few questions. She puts up both hands and says immediately, "I'll get Steve."

Before I can object Steven Westry is standing in front of me. He's just returned from a sales trip somewhere down south and he's tired. He is also one of the most gracious and welcoming wine makers I have every met. I ask about the chainsaw vines. I had thought that they were American root stock, grafted with Chardonnay, and then re-grafted with Pinot Noir. It turns out that a lot of this vineyard was planted with self rooted vines. That is a problem. There is a little root louse called phylloxera that kills European root systems like Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. I know that another vineyard just up the hill has the problem, and, it turns out, so does Witness Tree. I can't imagine the pain of seeing large swaths of your vineyard go from green, well producing vines, to practically dead, non producing ones.

Steven takes me out and shows me one of the Chainsaw vines. You can see it in the photo above. The two shoots at the top of the vine are the new varietal which was introduced after the old was topped off. I learn some really interesting things right away. The most amazing to me is

that the Pinot Noir on Chardonnay root stocks produce larger clusters of fruit than the the ones

that are self rooted. (That's a cluster of these grapes in the photo to the right.) Chardonnay roots just send more energy, water and vitality to the grapes. That blows me away. I ask Steven why they did this. It turns out that when the original owner of the property went to get a loan to plant a vineyard (of all things) the wise bank officials insisted that they had to have "bankable" varietals on the property, if they wanted to mess around with this unproven Pinot Noir, that was fine, but half the vines had to be Chardonnay. So, as over time Pinot Noir became "THE" grape, the vineyard found itself with much more Chardonnay that they could effectively market. So, out came the chainsaws. It was a specialty company from California that did the work. Steven explained that this was a stop gap measure. It's not the best way to grow Pinot Noir, but when you pull out the old vines and plant new it takes seven years for the new vines to produce usable grapes. With this method they were producing a full crop the next year. Steven explained that these vines are at the bottom of the property in the "Missoula Floods" soils. These are not the soils that grow great wines. Those soils are up at the top of the property. I ask about those, and Steve asks if I want to go up on a tour. Oh hell yes. So we drive over to one of shop buildings, grab a "Gator" and are off.

I can't believe I'm getting to do this. Two things about these upper vines just jump out at me. First of all the clusters are much smaller. (That's one to the left.) Secondly, at just a few hundred feet of elevation gain the grapes have about half as much color as the ones down the hill. The best wines are made from these upper vines. The ones on the Chardonnay roots at the bottom of the hill in the alluvial soil make perfectly acceptable wine. But these vines that have to struggle, that will barely become ripe by winter, that have so little fruit per shoot, these will produce the complex, many layered wines that will set you back $60 and more.

Steven has been away from the vines for a bit. He is closely examining each section. They have tried various ways of dealing with the problem of original root stocks. There are several four acre sections that have been torn out for a new start. There are sections where they have planted new vines on American root stock in between the self rooted vines.

As we head up the hill I'm amazed at how different the soils are. Some are the red "Jory" type of soils. A bit higher the soil is filled with rocks and is more brownish. Each brings a different note of flavor to the wines of the estate.

I didn't get a chance to do a tasting, but I will be back. Steven is a gifted wine maker and I feel so blessed to have been able to get a tour and ask an endless series of questions. I want to come back and get a few of those upper level wines and lay them down in my cellar for a few years, then bring them up to celebrate some important event, or to give to someone I love. They will taste even better knowing the story behind them and the person who tends the vines and makes the wine.

Left Coast Cellars Revisted

2011-09-12T11:16:00.000-07:00

Time is an amazing gift. How many times have you driven by some place and said, "I should stop there." Robin and I have been feeling that way about Left Coast Cellars for quite a while. We visited there seven years ago, and the winery had just opened for business. Several times as we've driven by Robin has said, "we should stop in there." And one of the great gifts of my sabbatical leave is that now we do have the time.

There was so much we liked about the winery the first time we were there. The setting is so beautiful with the tasting room nestled into the top of the vineyard in the midst of a beautiful grove of oak trees. The landscaping is so well done and the drive up to the tasting room is sweeping and gorgeous. We love their logo and the idea of celebrating the West coast of the United States as the left coast. We loved everything, but we didn't really like the wines. Things have changed.

I especially loved their estate grown Pinot Noir called "Cali's Cuvee" which is only $24 a bottle, and I didn't taste a single wine I didn't enjoy enthusiastically. There are many there are several possibilities for the changes. Maybe it's just me--maybe my taste buds have matured and been enlightened a bit in the last seven years. Maybe I was having a bad day the first time around. Perhaps the vines are just producing better fruit now. Maybe the winemaker has figured out how to best coax a beautiful wine from the grapes in that place. There are a million different reasons, but the result is the same, this time around I loved their wines.

We were able to sit outside on the patio, and our server, Amy, graciously offered to bring us out our tastings. There is now a cafe inside the tasting room, so we ordered lunch, and it was beautiful. I had a club panini and Robin had a salad made from locally grown greens. This may become our new favorite place--just head out, sit in the beautiful tasting area, have a quick bite to eat and enjoy a beautiful wine. The tasting fee is only $5 and is waived if you purchase a bottle of wine.

There are beehives surrounding the tasting room and they sell that honey inside (you can't get much more local than that.) They have a Chardonnay that has seen a little bit of oak (for those of you who like that.) It's from the Truffle Hill section of the vineyard which is named after the experimental efforts to propagate the expensive fungus among the roots of nearby hazelnut trees.

There is a hard to describe vibe to Left Coast Cellars. Serving wonderful food in a beautiful location while trying to import some crops to along with them. They have a Pinot Noir that is in a keg which they will sell by the bottle, which you then return to have refilled! I have been looking for this for quite a while, a refillable wine bottle (I take a lot of bottles to the recycling center each month, and I'd love to be able to have one that I could just refill and use again and again. They are using magnum bottles (holds two regular bottles of wine). I wish they would just use growlers like they do at brew pubs.

The winery is also sustainable and green. They have solar panels which are supplying most of their electricity, they drive efficient vehicles and have a gravity fed natural spring irrigation pond on the property. I would recommend taking an out of town friend to Left Coast for lunch. It's exactly the kind of Oregon wine experience I love to share with people. I'm thankful for the time to be able to stop in and enjoy the beautify of the place of the wines they are producing. It was also heartening to see how much color the grapes have added in just one week of warm weather. We may see a grape harvest before Halloween after all!

Walking Tour of Sokol Blosser Vineyard

2011-09-04T08:30:00.000-07:00

I'm on an extended leave from my church job. It's called a sabbatical. While I'm away I am studying vineyards and winemakers to see what lessons we in the church might learn from these exciting and creative people. Last Saturday I went on a walking tour of Sokol Blosser winery. The winery offers the tours throughout the summer months. Several caches of wine are hidden throughout the vineyard and the group walks up and down, tasting wine and learning about viticulture and wine making.

The tour included a quick stop at Red Ridge Farms to learn how they grow olives and press them into oil. They don't quite have enough Oregon olives to meet their needs, but are getting closer every year. I am so excited to have a local olive oil. Then I can make m own pesto with all local ingredients (I substitute hazel nuts for pine nuts). I really enjoyed this tour. It was informative, good exercise and fun. Our tour host was Jeff Knapp, the Hospitality Manager at the vineyard. He is animated and refreshingly honest. His knowledge of wine was deep, and he was able to communicate his complex knowledge in a down to earth and easy to understand fashion. Jeff grew up in the mid-west and decided at some point that he wanted to live in a place where they cherished food. Portland seemed a natural choice.

The first leg of the tour is down the hill and around the Concert Block at the very bottom of the vineyard. Jeff explains to us that the soil at the bottom of the vineyard is called Woodburn. It is the beautiful, sandy loam soil that was delivered to the Willamette Valley by the Missoula floods. It is a brownish color. Jeff points out that as we climb the hill the color of the soil

will turn to the classic red of the Dundee Hills. This is Jory soil and is ideal for growing Pinot Noir. At Sokol Blosser they use the lower quality grapes at the bottom of the hill to make a Pinot Noir Rose. They make a Rose from red grapes by leaving the juice in contact with the skins for a short period of time. The color of the wine comes from being in contact with the skins of the grapes. The pulp inside the skins has no color.

As we climb we see that some of the grapes in some of the clusters are starting to turn color. This is called veraison, and this is late as anyone I have talked to has seen it take place.

As we walk up the western edge of the Concert Block we are instructed to stay close to the vines on the Sokol Blosser vineyard. Just across the way are some of the first Pinot Noir vines planted in the Willamette Valley. We are looking at the ancient vines that make up Erie Vineyards. They are self rooted and therefore vulnerable to a root louse called phylloxera. It is deadly to roots of European vines like Pinot Noir. Sokol Blosser originally planted self rooted vines and suffered an

outbreak of the disease. These ancient vines (in the photo at the left--taken with a telephoto lens) are vulnerable and we could track it over on our feet, so we stay well away. At

the top of the Concert Block Jeff has a stash of wine glasses and a bottle of their Pinot blanc.

Last summer I had the privileged of meeting Susan Sokol Blosser and listen to her talk about the very beginnings of the wine industry in the Willamette Valley. Their winery went through a difficult transition from conventional farming to an organic approach. I've always wondered how they managed to make it. In the book Sokol Blosser talks about some of the difficulties they faced with blight and fungus, how it looked like they would loose entire sections of the vineyard. It turns out that when they made the transition they tried the bio-dynamic

approach. Organic farmers are allowed to use a number of sprays to treat their plants. Now the vineyard focuses on organic, sustainable farming methods that keep streams and rivers safe for fish and wildlife.

We see several other features of Sokol Blosser's care for the environment as we tour the vineyard. They have a grey water treatment field where wash water from sinks is used to irrigate a field. The water nourishes plants on the surface and then is filtered and makes its way back down into the water table to be used again. Sokol Blosser built the first building to be used as a wine tasting facility, and the first building to be used as a wine making facility. We also get to tour their barrel aging cellar. It is a concrete barrel vault construction which is buried in the ground. The very top has three feet of earth on it with native plants and grasses growing there. The building was the first wine facility in the state to be LEED certified for energy efficiency. It is a cavernous, damp space with wine barrels stacked to the ceiling on either side of the center aisle. Jeff explains that they can draw air through ducts that are buried deep in the hillside if they need to cool the cellar in the middle of the summer. The space also has an automatic humidifier with overhead sprinklers that come on if things get too dry.

We end the tour with a luncheon spread out for us on picnic tables just outside of the tasting room. It is a beautiful spread and the group of folks in the tour enjoy various conversations. The one at the far side is around ballet and dance, and the one at our side centers around teaching. I get a chance to ask Jeff his opinion of the '07 vintage which was so criticized when it came out. "It is one of my favorite vintages" he states. "We are raising the price from $40 to $50 dollars a bottle." We get to taste the '08 and the '07 and I have to agree that the earlier vintage is beautifully complex and more lively in aroma. This vineyard tour is a lot of fun and the $40 cost includes lunch. If you have some friends in town next summer who enjoy wine and are able to hike up and down a vineyard this tour would be a great Oregon Wine experience to share wit them.

Blending Wines at Coeur de Terre Winery

2011-08-23T13:51:00.000-07:00

Scott and Lisa Neal, the owners of Coeur de Terre Winery invited Robin and I up for a special event last weekend. This event is a very fun highlight for those people who are members of their "Founder's Club". The winery has limited the membership of this club to 60 people. Every year they are invited to come up to the winery and taste the wines that are still in the barrel. They then rate the wines and help to create a blend which is then available only to the club members. Blending wine is something I've never experienced before. It is where the artistry of the winemaker comes into play, I think. There are so many variables. We are given eight wines to taste without any information about each one. We are instructed to give each wine 1-6 points in each of the following categories: Visual, Aroma, Texture, Taste, and Finish.

Scott has informed us ahead of time that there is one surprise in the group. We are rating the '09 wines. This is hard work. Robin seems to have a handle on it by the time I make my way down into the wine cellar where the tasting is taking place. Little things can make a big difference in how the wine presents itself. Scott has done a great job of setting up the tasting so that we learn as we go. Two of the wines are identical, except that one was aged in a new oak barrel, and one was aged in a one year old barrel. I rate these two wines quite differently, but Robin has them rated similarly (concrete evidence, I suppose, that she has better taste than I do!) There is another example of two wines that are the same, except that one was free run, and one was the result of the wine being pressed. The taste difference in the two is dramatic.

One wine has a great aroma as it is poured, but then does nothing, another is tight when it is poured, but then opens up to a beautiful, complex bouquet. The biggest surprise is the last wine. It's a 2009 taken right out of the bottle. Scott explains that you can blend up to 10 percent of last year's vintage into the wine which helps to even out the vintages and keep a consistent flavor form year to year.

Scott then leads us through blending the wines. He starts with 10 percent of last year's wine and then takes suggestions. Most of us liked the Rennelle's Block, so that forms 50 per cent of the blend. We try the first blend. It is wonderful, but we can't resist tweaking it a bit, so we suggest that last year's vintage be reduced (it is so much bigger than the '09 that even at 10 percent it seems to be dominating the mix.) Scott is a total science geek and he is mixing the wines together in a set of beakers! He is taking suggestions from the whole room of 40 plus people, but is also giving us guidance, emphasizing some comments and letting others go. We taste the 2nd blend, and make a few more adjustments, and viola! The 2009 Sacre Coeur blend is ready to go, and I'm sorry, you cant' get any. (Unless you join the founder's club, of course, there are still a few spots available I hear.)

If you read this blog on a regular basis you may get quite tired of all of my references to Coeur de Terre. I am going to be experiencing harvest and crush there. Scott has tagged me as his "cellar rat" for the season--that is if there is a harvest this year. We are still a month behind a typical harvest. Scott thinks that we might be picking grapes around Halloween this year. We're hoping for a long, dry fall to help remedy our long, cold, wet spring and late summer.

Many of you may have read about Scott and Lisa's dream house. They have been living in what the euphemistically call their "love shack" since they began the vineyard in the late 90's. For the last three years they have been building their dream house up at the top of the vineyard. About two weeks ago it burned to the ground. They are devastated. I know what it is like to pour your heart and soul into a house, and I can't imagine what it would be like to have it all go up in smoke when you were so close to completing it. They are such wonderful people, and I'm so thankful for their invitation to be a part of the Founder's Day blending event, and for the opportunity to join them this year for harvest. My hopes and prayers go out to Scott and Lisa, and to all of the wine growers this year as they prepare for a challenging vintage.

King Estate--The Largest Winery in Oregon

2011-08-18T09:00:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure how they have done it, but every winery we visited in the Eugene area has a beautiful events center as a part of the estate. I know several wineries in our area have been frustrated in their attempts to build such facilities. It seems so obvious to me that these are exactly they types of spaces you want to have available to draw in visitors, and to stimulate the local economy. Apparently in the Eugene area the neighbors don't mind quite so much, and they must have an easier time of getting their facilities approved through the land use process. Why don't we have such event centers here?

The most impressive example of a wine estate that we visited was King Estate Winery. This is the largest winery in the state, and according to Tracy, our ebullient wine steward for the afternoon, they have the largest: "contiguously planted organic Pinot Gris vineyard in the US." Hard to believe that Oregon has any type of vineyard that would be larger than California, but there it is.

The estate building itself is impressive. Massive wood beams support the high roof of the main entrance as you walk through the over-sized front doors. Directly in front of you is the tasting area which is an impressive 30 foot long curved bar with a display screen in the back showing different views of the vineyard. To your left as you walk in the door is the restaurant with a beautiful outdoor dining area. The building is grand and seems to go on forever (they offer free tours on the hour). We are there to taste wine, so we head for the bar. Our server is a talkative, intense, and extremely entertaining woman. She pours us a taste, flies to the far side of the bar to get another group started, and then totally disappears for several minutes taking care of some problem behind the scenes and comes back to our next wine without missing a beat. We are treated to the entire lineup of wines, and they are great. We start with their Acrobat 2nd label wines, and the '09 Pinot Noir which goes for $20 seems a great value to me with nice fruit forward presentation and wonderful aroma. But what I really like are the NXNW brand red wines. Tracy explains that the labels are shorthand for North by Northwest. Each label has a long list of the type of grapes used, the vineyards from which they were sourced and other fun information. We both loved the '08 Syrah which sells for $30, and the '07 Cabernet which goes for $40. These are going down to our cellar to age for a decade or so. They are big, reds with a generous tannin content that should age wonderfully.

On the way out of the estate I stop to look at some grape clusters. I can't believe how small they are. This is August for goodness sake. I have heard talk in some circles that this may be a year when some vineyards simply do not harvest their fruit. Spring was so late in coming, and the summer has lacked critical heat and sunshine, and the birds are going to be back in force during the later than usual harvest, so it just might not be worth it to pick the grapes. Can you imagine that? It's hard for me to imagine just writing off a whole harvest, but some growers may be forced to do exactly that. Farming is a gamble however you look at it. Especially with vineyards, the capital investment is huge, and the manual labor required to prune and care for the plants is staggering. When you add to that harvesting each grape cluster by hand the costs are astounding to me. I've had folks ask me why Pinot Noir costs so much money. I explain it's because it cost a lot of money to grow and make, and in some ways I'm surprised that wineries can turn out a great quality example for only $20.

I'm hoping for a long, sunny fall this year. The vineyards need it, and after a late, late start of a fairly cool summer, it would be nice to have that bright orange globe in the sky for a bit before the rains came back, and I head back into work!

Leaving Eugene

2011-08-04T11:29:00.000-07:00

In my personal Bible readings this morning, I was surprised to have two of the three readings be about the blessing of vineyards. The first was from Isaiah 5:

Let me sing for my beloved my love concerning his vineyard: my beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill. He dug it and cleared it of stones, and planted it with choice vines . . .

When the Bible wants to talk about blessing, it often uses the imagery of vineyards. It's not hard to see why. They are such places of beauty, and the product they create is so wonderful.

The picture above is my son, Paul, with his daughter, Zoe, standing down by the river trail in Eugene, where we met for a picnic dinner. There are miles and miles of bike and walking trails along the river in Eugene, and stretching all the way to Springfield. What amazing planning on the part of the people of this place to keep all of that land for public enjoyment.

We've had the chance to visit a number of vineyards in the Eugene area, and they are so beautiful! A ten to twenty minute drive out of town takes you up into the hills and onto some wonderful wine estates. Enjoying that beauty is a large part of wine tasting for me. Often times before I enter to winery to taste, I will walk around the vineyard a bit and just try to take it all in, and enjoy the view.

Another wonderful part of wine tasting is to meet the creative personalities who work there. The woman pictured above was our host at Silvan Ridge Winery. Her name is Kathy, and she is amazing at handling multiple tasting groups and keeping them all organized and in line. That's not surprising when you learn that she was an award winning track coach in Eugene. You can tell from the very first glance that she is a runner. I loved her personality from the very start. "If you're grouchy, you don't get to taste the reserve tasting. I don't put up with grouchy!" She announced as we walked up to the tasting area. I ask if sarcasm is included in that, because if it is, I'll never make it through!

When Kathy learns that we own a wine shop she brings us into the back room for a barrel tasting of a single vineyard Pinot Noir that is getting close to being ready to be bottled. I'm not much good at predicting how good a wine will taste based on barrel samples, but this one seems great to me. We also get to taste the '08 Merlot, the '09 Malbec, and '06 Cabernet. We purchased two of the cabs, because I know Kathy in our shop is going to love this wine.

Silvan purchased the vineyards from Doyle Hinman who was also a teacher. He planted some of the first vines in this part of the valley, and their specialty, of all things, is a sparkling Muscat. I know a young woman in Montana who was recently engaged who I think will love this wine. We're going to bring a few bottles of this wine with us on our upcoming trip out east to help her celebrate.

That's right, I've started sabbatical, I've celebrated the birth of our first grandchild, and now our daughter, Noel, is engage to be married. It's almost too much blessing to take in at one time. Sometimes blessings just stack up all at the same time, and strangely enough it can make us nervous. I often times tell people that just because the last few things that have happened have been good does not automatically mean that the next one will be bad. Sometimes God just pours it on. And according to my readings this morning, what God expects of us when we have been showered with blessings is to be thankful. I am--thankful that our children are beginning their adult lives, thankful for new life, thankful for this blessed place where we live, and thankful for really, really good wines to enjoy.

Further South in Oregon

2011-08-01T13:33:00.000-07:00

The International Pinot Noir Celebration is going on this weekend in McMinnville. We are in Eugene, and ironically enough our granddaughter is also back in Mac. So, we decide on a road trip to southern Oregon. We have a map of the vineyards in the area, and one, called Reustle Prayer Rock Vineyard has caught our attention. In my experience there are people who make and enjoy wonderful wines, and then there are people of faith. I feel kind of alone in trying to bridge the gap between the two sometimes, so it's wonderful to see a vineyard like this openly displaying their faith, and making wonderful wines.

Getting up to the vineyard is no easy task. We are following our map, we head off road and up a steep gravel road. I'm thinking in my head, "I must be the first person to ever find this place, it's so remote." We arrive a the vineyard and I realize just how wrong I've been. The primary parking lot if full. We end up parking about 300 yards from the main building. Trying to figure out how the whole process works is a challenge. We walk into a room that is packed with people and product. We need to use the facilities, so we walk around the corner into the wine making area. There are several informational displays on yield per acre and other information. There is also a white board with one of the primary principles of the winery written out complete with a reference the book of Acts the second chapter.

We make our way back into the entry room which has thinned out considerably. It turns out that this beautiful, sunny Saturday is their wine club release date. I'm glad we hung around and figured it out, because, tasting wine at this vineyard is one of the most unique wine experiences I've ever had. You are escorted by a tour guide through the wine making area, and then back into the wine cave. The tastings are done by table and come complete with a taste of food for each wine. The costs for the four wines and four foods is $10. It's a great way to do a wine tasting. Your server is referred to as a "wine educator." The wines are wonderful. We get to taste their just released Pinot Gris which we will not be able to purchase since it is only for members. The last and heaviest wine is an '08 estate grown Syrah. It is paired with bacon wrapped around a sweet fig spread. It's an incredible combination that I will try to duplicate once I'm back home.

We wind our way back out of the vineyard, get back to the road and follow our wine map to Melrose Vineyards. Their must be a ton of weddings at this winery. They have an amazing grassy area in the back of the winery that slopes gently down to a gazebo which is framed by flowing moss drifting from the branches of well established oak trees. The tasting room is packed, so we head out to the deck which overlooks the beautiful estate and affords a wonderful view of the mountains beyond. Here you can taste three wines (you pick) for free, or pay $10, get a free wine glass, and choose up to six. We're suckers for a free wine glass to we opt for the latter. We try only two white wines, and then are able to try the entire red wine selection which included a port wine. We share our tastes, so we got to try twelve wines all together. I really like the big bodied reds they make down here. They seem so appropriate to the place. Here we especially liked the much maligned Merlot. Why do people avoid this wine? It is wonderful and rich and evokes the high rolling arid hills in which it is grown.

I've traveled through this are so many times in the past, but it was always something to get through. Southern Oregon is the part of I-5 you have to put up with to visit family in California. As you run out of Willamette Valley and head into the steep hills its as though you have gone due east instead of south. The climate and scenery remind me of parts of eastern Washington. I want to come back down here. I would love to talk to the Reustle's about their wonderful wines and their love of God. The two make so much sense to me. In the entry room at Reustle they have an article about some corks that they had printed that included a passage from Proverbs about the goodness of wine. Unfortunately it was not approved by the government. Apparently the biblical passage was considered by the powers that be to be a claim to good health and was not allowed. If you have one of the wines with these corks they are collector's items.

Next time you are traveling through southern Oregon, stop and enjoy yourself a little bit. There are some wonderful wines to be enjoyed, and there is no greater sign that God loves us and wants the best for us than good wine to drink--except for grandchildren of course, they are God's greatest gift.

Exploring the Southern Valley

2011-07-27T07:03:00.001-07:00

I am on sabbatical from my church work for the next four and a half months. It is a wonderful gift from my congregation and my United Methodist sisters and brothers in McMinnville. I'm especially thankful to my colleague, Pastor Courtney McHill, who is providing coverage from me while I am gone. To start my time away I'm spending a lot of time in Eugene, Oregon. There is a strong gravitational pull that is sending me down to Eugene on a regular basis. Anyone who has a grandchild understands this irresistible attraction. Mine is called Zoe.

On our most recent trip down south we decided to divert away from highway 99, and visit one of the wineries that we are usually in too big of a hurry to enjoy. We follow the signs to Emerson Vineyards. They have a mailing address of Monmouth, but are located quite a bit further south. As you turn off the main road you travel a beautifully rolling one lane drive which flows past a scenic pond complete with a rustic dock. The most notable feature of the landscape are the oak trees which dot the estate and surround the winery.

The tasting room is a working winery. There is nothing fancy about the converted machine shop where the wine is now made. The plane metal building even has a working overhead crane. I like that. We are greeted by the owner of the estate, Tom Johns. Tom is an Oregon boy who made a living in the pharmacological field, but now has returned to his roots to grow grapes. I really like to visit a winery where you get to talk to the owner. I love to ask how they ended up getting into the wine business. For Tom the answer is simple, it's his son, Elliot, who had a dream of being a winemaker. "His dream, my money!" Tom explains.

The winery is named after Tom's grandfather, Emerson Waldo Fisher. As we settle down to a generous selection of wines Tom gives us a non-stop narration complete with almost constant comic touches. They have a lovely '09 Willamette Valley Pinot Noir that has the earthy, smoky notes that I really love and which at $18 a bottle is a great value. But the star of the show for me is their Brother Red. Here is a red blend that expressed the slightly warmer climate of the central part of the valley. It is a big, bold, fruit-filled red blend of estate fruit that sells for only $16 a bottle. Don't be surprised if you see it featured at Wednesday Wines sometime in the not too distant future.

The winery features outdoor concerts on Friday nights on the patio outside the tasting room. It's low key, and you bring your own picnic supper, grab one of their great value wines and enjoy the scenery. It's a feature we'll have to take in on one of our many visits to Eugene.

Glorious Muddy Valley Road

2011-07-20T08:29:00.001-07:00

Tim, Sandy and John are in town. When I want to show off Oregon at it's best I head straight for Muddy Valley Road. The back roads of Oregon are so beautiful and this one is my favorite. As you head west there are fields of wheat, barley and clover on either side of the road. Eventually the road starts to curve and gain elevation--the fields give way to trees and vineyards. As we are passing one bucolic scene after another Tim exclaims, "Tell me it's not going to get better than this, I don't know if I can take it." "Brace yourself, Laddy" I tell him. Each view around each corner just seems to be better than the last. We did a quick loop past Coeur de Terre and Maysara, and then came back to visit Yamhill

Valley Vineyards. I always seem to find amazing values at YVV, but forget to stop by and look around. In addition, they have a glorious deck on the back of their tasting room. There is such a peaceful feeling being surrounded by ancient oak trees swaying in the breeze with gently sloping vines growing just beyond the trees. And of course, I'm not just going to sit and taste wine, we're going to eat some food while we're there.

I have system. I bring real china to serve the food which usually consist of toasted Red Fox Bakery Bread, some cheese from Abbie & Oliver's and roasted vegetables of some kind. We also have a caprese salad of fresh mozzarella, tomatoes, and basil with olive oil and aged balsamic.

Other people, the ones I'm not feeding, always look at me funny as I start to unload all of the food and plates. I can never figure out if they're thinking "That guy's really weird", or "Why didn't we think of that" but it's a great way to taste wines.

Linda Arnold, the Tasting Room Manager, could not have been more accommodating. There are several groups doing their tastings out on the deck. She brings us glasses and starts us off with their estate Pinot Gris. I like it, but like their Pinot Blanc even more. They are featuring a 2007 Pinot Noir bottled under the "Erratic Rock" label that they are selling for $10. That's right $10! (Go now, it won't last long.) And it's a nice little Pinot. I don't think it will age well, but at $10 I wouldn't expect it to.

Linda saves their '09 Riesling for last. It is beautiful, with just a little bit of residual sugar and a nice, mineral complexity. The vines at YVV are getting older (some are 28 years old now) and also becoming more beautiful with age. As they are getting older, they are producing more and more complex wines. By the way, Robin noticed that the longer she left the '07 in her glass the better it opened up, so when we got home we decanted it, and the tasted was even better. On the way back to the house we stopped at Farmer John's Produce and got a half a flat of blueberries and a half a flat of strawberries. They are so ripe, and sweet and beautiful. What a beautiful place we live, and what glorious time of year to explore it.

IPNC 25 Behind the Scenes with Lacey Dean

2011-07-07T08:05:00.000-07:00

Check out my other blog at:

http://ipnc25.wordpress.com/2011/07/07/behind-the-scenes-lacey-dean/

Meet this amazing young person who has been coordinating the scheduling for the INPC25 documentary. She's headed for Senegal this fall to teach. Lacey also did a research project this year for McMinnville Cooperative Ministries. She is such a talented and hard-working young person. God's speed, Lacey!

Picnic at Coeur de Terre Vineyard

2011-07-04T06:56:00.000-07:00

We had a quick visit from a precious friend yesterday. Megan Carlson was a part of our church community in Great Falls, Montana. Now she's a beautiful young woman teaching in the inner city in Arizona. She had traveled to Portland for the wedding of a friend and had time to swing by McMinnville for a visit. Noel, and her friend, Mike are also here, so we pulled out all the stops.

First I did an intro to wine class for Megan and her beau, Jason. In this class we help folks learn to identify different components of wine, and try to teach them the do's and don'ts of visiting wineries (The biggest is don't wear perfume or cologne, followed closely by no lip gloss, and no pouring your own wine.) On Saturday I check with Couer de Terre to make sure that they will be open on Sunday. I ask their tasting room manager, Ryan, if it would be OK if we brought

some food to enjoy while we did our tasting, and he said it would be fine.

This is a really fun way to do a tasting. The folks who had just finished when we arrived loved the idea and almost sat down to join us! Enjoying food with a wine tasting does several things. First, and most importantly, it slows you down. I think our tasting took over an hour from start to finish. Jason was great. He would walk out and check on our progress, and then reappear at just the right time to pour our next wine. And the setting is so glorious. The next couple to arrive get the picture and check in with Jason and head out to the Adirondack chairs to do their tasting. It was a glorious day of perfect weather for outdoor tasting.
For our picnic we are enjoying one of my favorite meals which we call quality noshing. We have some Red Fox baguettes that we have cut length wise and toasted. Then there is pita bread and humus that we purchased at the Saturday Market. I've made a chicken salad out of some of the chicken breast left over from Pizza Night. I've also made a caprese salad made up of cherry tomatoes also from the market, fresh basil and fresh mozzarella. We also have grilled zucchini and fresh vegetables with ranch dressing. I have some fresh berries at home for dessert.

We start with a beautiful Riesling with fruit sourced from the Highland Vineyard. I love this wine. The vines are four decades old and the fruit reflects that age in wonderful complexity of flavor. The aroma has the most unique quality of minerality that I describe as asphalt and I've heard described as telephone pole (I know it doesn't sound good, but it is wonderful.) I took a class on German Rieslings and this is the exact aroma component of the most expensive wines

we tasted. We move on to a Pinot Gris which was sourced at Coleman Vineyards just a little west of where we are sitting. Our third wine is a Rose` that was made with Syrah grapes gown on sight at the vineyard. Scott, the winemaker, explained that he is only going to make a Syrah in certain vintages. This year's vintage wasn't exactly what he wanted to he opted to make a Rose` instead. It is a great experiment. The wine is dry with a beautiful, spicy taste which is just right on this warm day. Scott has a Syrah which he is releasing, but it is not yet labeled. I've tasted it and it is great. I'll keep checking back to see when it is officially released. It's a wine I want to put in my cellar and bring out in a decade or so to drink. After our picnic and wine tasting we decide to walk down to the rock which gives this winery it's name. It is a huge chunk of cracked, grey stone which stands just to the side of a service road above Rennelle's block. It's a great way to end the day. As we exit the vineyard half of the entry gate is already shut and the sign on the road says closed. Is that possible? Could it be 5:00 PM already? Yes, it is. We've been at the vineyard for over two hours. It's a relaxed, and glorious way to taste beautiful wines in a fantastic location. Try it yourself, but call ahead and check with the tasting room manager to ensure that it's OK for your location. And if they say no, head out to Coeur de Terr and talk to Ryan.

The Saturday Market and After Market Celebration

2011-07-03T06:51:00.000-07:00

We got over to the McMinnville Public Market this afternoon to look around. What an active place. There was a new taco stand and all four of us had lunch for $12. The $1 tamales are an incredible value. I have a $5 burrito that is too big for me to finish, which is saying a lot. We purchase some fresh berries that are just amazing--strawberries, raspberries and boysenberries along with some of the sweetest cherry tomatoes I have ever tasted. And that's just in the afternoon. In the evening there is a whole different vibe going on. Wednesday Wines is pouring for the After Market event which starts at 6:00 and goes until 10:00. Tonight the music is being provided by Dana Libonati the vocal music jazz instructor at McMinnville High School. It's a great touch. Dana starts off on a mock 70's montage, then slides into a 60's version, when someone yells out, "how about the 50's" without missing a beat Dana starts playing a three chord progression. "Every song from the 50's fits into this progression" he states. I laugh out loud, and Dana says he wants my laugh for a ring tone.

Mike and Kathy are pouring wine and beer for us. The beer is from Heater Allen and looks great. I have a glass of Chianti which is just perfect on this beautifully warm night.

I'm just amazed at how quickly this event has come together. It seems to have flown out of Shannon Thorson's mind and into reality in one week. I just love watching Shannon work. When we are setting up the After Market celebration she is hauling out a bunch of shade umbrellas she has found somewhere in town for a ridiculously low price. She directing someone I don't know on where to drill the holes in the massive counter tops that stay on sight. Then she runs by us and notices that our signs are blowing away. "Want me to attach those to the wall?" She asks as she goes by. She is back in a flash with a screw gun and a screw. Then she's off to move the fire pit and rearrange the chairs to that they can see the stage (which she built the week before from old doors and a barn light.) She seems perfectly suited to this wonderfully assembled community.

A friend of mine was sharing a story about her husband. He was saying that they should have two farmer's markets in town with one on the weekend. (The Thursday farmer's market is right outside Wednesday Wines.) Well there is a second market. It's in the Granary District. There is wonderful pizza available, pulled pork, very good and inexpensive Mexican food, fresh fruit and vegetables and wonderful craft pieces. Swing on down next Saturday and check it out.

Pizza for 70

2011-07-02T08:00:00.001-07:00

Jeff Peterson and I are at it again. Jeff and Judy have an amazing gift of hospitality. They host a pizza night once a month and every once in a while Jeff decides that we should make our own instead of purchasing them already cooked. It sounds daunting, but we've gotten pretty good at it.

It starts with a lot of prep work. I've spent most of the afternoon getting foods ready. First I roasted some red peppers, then went on to grilled zucchini. As the afternoon progresses I see Jeff's post that the numbers are going up--from his estimate of 50 or so to 60 plus. I start to think we may need more ingredients. I add some asparagus to the list. Then I see that they have Oregon line caught salmon at the market so I get a fillet and smoke it. I have cedar planks just for this purpose. I smoke the salmon with the left over french oak barrel staves that I have from several wood working projects. It is so fun to smell the aroma of the Pinot Noir as the smoke starts to rise. I leave the fish off the heat and let the smoke slowly cook it. I also have wilted chard to add to the list, along with pepperoni, pesto chicken, fresh mozzarella and fresh basil.

I arrive a bit later than I had anticipated (it was the salmon that put me over the top, time wise.) Jeff is getting the grill ready. He's used a lot of coals, and we are going to have one heck of a hot fire. We are trying an experiment. (I know, you'd think that we'd experiment with this new idea before we have to cook for 70, but that's not how we fly.) We are going to put pizza stones on the grill. In the past we've put the crusts directly onto the grill with no stone beneath. I've brought two small plastic table to set up for our prep area. Jeff suggests that we may only need one--he obviously has no idea how much food I've brought with me. We get set up with the dough, sauce and cheese on one side, and all of the other ingredients on the other. I bring out the red sauce that is waiting on the stove, Jeff shreds some cheese, and we start rolling out the crusts. We get into an easy rhythm. And the people start to arrive. And they just keep coming.

There is a strange bell curve of feeding people.

They seem to roll in slowly for a bit and then they come in a huge wave. The pizzas are coming off the grill quickly. Then, suddenly, the pizza production catches up with the demand and there are a couple of pies ready to be consumed with no line behind them.

Fairly soon into the baking my pizza stone cracks. I've purchased a new toy that can read temperatures with remotely, so I shine it on one of the stones. It reads "High". I guess the gauge only goes up to 750 degrees or so, and we are over that. My guess is we're well over. I love the time of creativity in making the pies. We know from experience that we'd better have some basic numbers out first, so we start with pepperoni and cheese. Then we spin out some wild ones--home made pesto, fresh motz and asparagus; olive oil, smoked salmon and wilted yellow chard. Jeff has prepared three different types of dough. There is a simple mix that is mostly white flour, a more complex whole wheat and herb dough, and, my favorite, the sun dried tomato.

A funny thing has happened to pizza night over the years. The wines have gotten better and more abundant. A new couple that I haven't met before arrive saying they've just come from Wednesday Wines! When I first started going to pizza night we had about a 50-50 mix of beer to wine. Now a six pack will last several months. When I go in to grab a glass there is a wonderful assortment--an A to Z '08 Pinot Noir has arrived (thank you Jeff and Julia!), along with two of my favorite reds from the shop, Friends Red, and Apothic Red. There are beautiful Pinot Gris and other whites. I was talking to my colleague, Courtney, who moved here from Corvallis one year ago this weekend (happy one year anniversary, Court!) She shared that she has noticed how much wine is a part of the culture here. People will show up to a gathering and carefully consider which of the wines they want to try, and then they'll look at the wine glasses and find the exact one they want. We're a bit strange here in McMinnville.

At the end of the service time Jeff and I take a breather and sit down for a bit. Jeff is simultaneously drinking coffee and scotch. I suggest that he just combine the two into one drink (which he seriously considers doing!) There is still quite a bit of pizza ready, so I start to clean up. Just as I've gotten about everything put away another dozen teenagers show up. They look hungry. Jeff pops up and grabs a few of the items that I've put away in the kitchen. As I drive away he is back into production. I get a text later saying that we fed a total of 81 people and 19 pizzas. But that is before he makes two more, so I think the real total was 21. Those are both records for pizza night. What a blessed, wonderful evening out under the trees enjoying good food, good wine and beautiful friendships. I've never seen anything like it before, and it is a blast to help put one together. Thanks Jeff and Judy

Last Interview for IPNC 25

2011-06-30T15:27:00.000-07:00

This interview with Whitney Schubert, the Executive Director of the International Pinot Noir Celebration is the last one scheduled. I'll have some additional blogs about the progress of the documentary. What fun it has been to be able to hear these wonderful stories about this great event. I'm looking forward to the film!

http://ipnc25.wordpress.com/2011/06/30/a-slightly-winged-whitney/

IPNC 25 with Nick Peirano

2011-06-29T20:38:00.000-07:00

Check out my blog of this interview with the owner and founder of Nick's Italian Cafe. He was paired with Joan Drabkin who served as the first culinary coordinator of IPNC.

http://ipnc25.wordpress.com/2011/06/29/no-nonsense-nick/

IPNC 25 with Myron Redford

2011-06-28T16:51:00.000-07:00

Check out my blog on the making of the documentary of the 25th Anniversary of the International Pinot Noir Celebration.

Today's interview is with Myron Redford, the founder of Amity Vineyard and his wife and vineyard partner Vikki Wetle. This is the second time I've gotten to listen to Myron, and it never gets boring.

Check it out by following this link:

http://ipnc25.wordpress.com/

A Piece of Heaven at Sunset Ridge Vineyard

2011-06-27T07:08:00.000-07:00

We finished up our vineyard small group this Sunday with a trip to Sunset Ridge Vineyard. The beautiful setting is the home or our hosts, Doug Drawbond and Joy Means. This gets a bit complex, because the vineyard located on their property is called Sunset Ridge, and their wine label is called Anthony Dell, which as you notice is not either of their names. The label is based on their middle names. They are opening a new tasting room in McMinnville right next to Thistle Restaurant, which is right on my regular walking route. I;m quite sure that I'll become a new regular there.

I've been pouring wine all weekend. I started Saturday afternoon at a reception at Hillside Retirement Community. They are trying to find new folks to move in and are doing a reception complete with local food. I'm pretty sure we'll be moving down there at some point. It's such a lively, active place with so many folks who continue to volunteer, and remain active in the community. (You have to be 62 to move in, so it will be couple more years before they'll have me.) I'm pouring selections from our shop, Wednesday Wines. (By the way, check out the new design of our web sight. It was designed by our son and I think it looks great.)

I proceeded to the McMinnville Public Market for their new Saturday evening eventto set up to pour there. I also shared wine in communion on Sunday morning and then proceeded to the vineyard.
Doug and Joy showed us amazing hospitality. When Doug heard that I was an ordained minister he asked if I'd bless his vineyard. I've never done it before, but I think I'll be doing it again. That is the real me to the left complete with aspergillum, stole, shorts and my Wednesday Wines baseball cap! Blessing is the word of the day for me. Sunset Ridge is such a beautiful place. The view to the west seems to go on forever, and the coast range forms the top of the view as far as you can see from north to south. It is when I look at the view, and the white-columned, Spanish Colonial style house that I finally understand Anthony Dell's logo and bottle designs.

But it hasn't always been this way. Doug and Linda purchased the property when it was overgrown with blackberries and poison oak. They started in a single wide trailer. As Joy tells it, "Doug told me we'd only be living in it for three years, then we'd build a house." Nine years later she was still waiting. Doug then jokes that he finally had to build the house because his wife was going to leave him if he didn't finally keep his promise. And keep it he did.

The house is an amazing edifice located a the very top of their property with a panoramic view of the Willamette Valley and coast range beyond.

We start our experience with a walking tour of the vineyard. The sight is unique. It is not only terraced down a steep slope it also rises and to the center of each row. The rows are the length of a football field and when you are standing on one end you can not see the other side. You can tell that this vineyard is a labor of love for Doug. He can't keep his hands off the vines and as we walk down each row he is constantly touching the plants, gently placing the new shoots back inside the two metal wires so that they won't get caught by the tractor and torn off. Pretty soon the whole group is adjusting the vines as we walk. He is also gently removing the shoots from the lower parts of the plant, what he calls the suckers which would not produce fruit.

I ask Doug how he came to own a vineyard. "I was working in Salem, and I kept driving past vineyards, and I thought, I'd like to own one of those." He also attended classes on vineyard management and wine making at the Chemeketa Viticulture Center. I think we don't realize how important that center is--how blessed we are that we can train new wine makers locally and have them produce such beautiful wines.

As we sit down to enjoy a pot luck feast (no red jello with carrots here). Joy has several wines open for us to try and I select the 2007 Sunset Ridge Pinot Noir. Wow! It is incredibly good. The aroma is so complex and beautiful. It has a deep, earthy tone to it, just how I feel a Pinot should be. I've been surprised lately at this vintage. It was almost universally panned by the wine critics at the time. In a word they were wrong. Three years later these wines are fantastic. Over dinner Doug says something that I have been sensing but haven't been able to put into words. The '07 vintage has been "putting on weight" in the bottle. In deference to the critics, it did seem a bit week after bottling, but it is getting better by the day. I'm kind of thankful they were down graded because it means there are still some great ones around. At $28 this is an amazing value for a single vineyard estate wine. I would suggest buying a few of the '07's to have with dinner this weekend, and then a case of the '08 to put in your cellar to age for a few years.

In my Bible study for this tour I focused on the concept of blessing. Vineyards are often used in Bible as a symbol of God's blessing. When you are sitting on the deck of Joy and Doug's home enjoying the wine harvested below and enjoying the sweeping views of the valley it is easy to see why the Biblical prophets (including Jesus) would have chosen this symbol. As my friends Steve says, "There is something healing about being in a vineyard." Steve, like Doug lived for many years in LA. As Doug put it, "I was born in LA and it took me 28 years to get out!" But all of this blessing is given to us with a challenge to take good care of the gifts we have been given. It strikes me as we are eating that wine is always an extravagance. If you are having a bottle of wine with dinner you are blessed beyond the point of subsistence. That is another gift of wine to us. It reminds us that we are deeply blessed. And, yes, as we reflect on our beautiful trip to Sunset Ridge and the wonderful wines we have been able to enjoy, we are blessed, we are loved and cared for. I believe that the key to life is not to deny ourselves these blessings, but to have them constantly remind us that we have more than we need, and to drive us to bless those around us.

Remy, Leviticus & The OcQ CD Release Party

2011-06-20T08:35:00.000-07:00

I've crammed a lot into a day before, but not sure if I've ever done it on the scale that I did yesterday! Our vineyard tour small group Bible study went on our shortest tour to date. Really, we could have walked from Wednesday Wines to Remy Wines, but we took the bus. When I made the complicated schedule for myself I also greatly complicated the lives of my friends, Mike and Kathy Campbell. Kathy is my partner in the wine world. She can organize anything, and I deeply depend on her to bring my hair-brained ideas to detailed reality. The fact that she keeps coming through, and pulling my bacon out of the fire, just adds to the problem! I g

ot a call early Sunday morning from Remy saying that she has strep throat and can't make the tour, so we get Gretchen as our host for the afternoon. I've never been to Remy's new place before. I love it! It is a working winery, the machinery is in plain view. Gretchen, not knowing how to move the fork lift has turned it into a wine bar! We taste through a number of Remy's wines starting with her Pinot Blanc and it, like all of her wines is amazing. We carry Remy's alternate label, 3 Wives at our shop, and we sell a lot of it.

Remy began her life career at an early age. She began working in vineyards when she was 13 years old! A bit later in life she moved to Philadelphia and began work in a bakery. In the basement she made wine with "a bunch of Italian, mob-type characters" according to Gretchen. It was with these gentlemen that Remy found her focus of Italian varietals wines made with a hand's off style.

My favorite wine of the day was the '09 Sangiovese. It is sourced from the Horse Heaven Hills of Eastern Washington. I haven't tasted a wine from that region that I haven't liked, and I haven't tasted a wine of Remy's that I haven't liked as well. This one is deep and gorgeous with aroma of plums, earth and chocolate. We purchased a couple and they are going into my cellar. I thin that they will continue to age beautifully for a decade or more, but are very drinkable right this minute.

I weave a Bible study into our wine tasting. Sometimes I wonder if you should do a Bible study without a wine in your hand, but that might just be me. I select two Old Testament readings to share. One is the story from Genesis 35 where Moses finds artisans who can create the tent of the meeting. In the text it says that these artisans are filled with " divine spirit, with skill, intelligence and knowledge in every kind of craft." (Exodus 35: 31) These words describe Remy almost perfectly to me. We also read from Leviticus that wine was one of the elements required of the people when they made their offerings to God. If I've worked it out right you are suppose to bring a couple of bottles of wine to the priests when harvest comes around, and you are not to drink any yourself until you have made this gift. (I wish the members of my church would pick up on this!)

As soon as Gretchen has poured the last wine, I'm out the door and back over to the Granary District to get ready for the Occasional Quartet's CD Release Party. I'm sorry I'm talking so much about this place and the cob ove

n, and Jason, but it is such an amazing place. This party is the whole reason I got involved in the McMinnvile Public Market in the first place. Kathy Campbell has spent a couple of weeks now trying to get us organized, and it is no easy task! Right after church we started moving chairs, tables and staging materials over to the market. We impose on Jason Furch one more time to make pizzas for us, and they are beautiful works of art. I also think of Jason when I read the passage in Genesis about skilled artisans filled with divine spirit and every kind of skill. I think about that divine skill every Sunday when I lift up one of those still warm, crusty, be

autiful batard loaves from Red Fox Bakery that Jason or Laurie has made, lift it into the air and announce to the world, "This is the body of Christ." I lament the fact that our wines to not match up. I'm not so subtly prodding Remy to create a communion wine for McMinnville Cooperative Ministries. I think it would be fitting.

But back to the concert. It was an amazing time. To have so many good friends and folks from the community come out and enjoy awesome food, good wine and beer and our music was such a blessing to me. It's Father's Day, and for me I'd so much rather serve others and work than be

served and sit around. To me this was a perfect way to celebrate.

Towards the end of the concert Howie Harkema, the director of the St. Barnabas Soup Kitchen reminds me to make an announcement that there will be more concerts coming to this blessed spot. The folks raise up the biggest cheer of the night. I really believe that we are going to be able to do a series of summer concerts at the Market that will grow and become a natural extension of the cool, organic, artistic feel of the Saturday morning public market. I also point out those who have made it possible. John Mead and Carson Benner of Cellar Ridge Custom Homes who made the oven and provided all of the materials for both the oven and the shelter that protects it. Peter Kircher, owner of Golden Valley Brew Pub, who supplied the beer for the event. Of course Jason who has been making pizzas all evening, even though he has to be up at 3:00 AM tomorrow to start baking bread all over again. Kelly McDonald, who owns the property and had the vision to make it a new public square for this community. I love them all, and I'm so thankful that they have worked so hard to make this a wonderful experience for the people of this town.

The Formerly Blue Bus

2011-06-18T22:14:00.001-07:00

Tonight was my test run for being the oven master! This is the cob oven at the McMinnville Public Market that we made the roof for the other day. The occasion is a group of Linfield College students fixing up a bus and preparing to head out on the road to find other people who are doing projects to care for the environment. They are begging, borrowing or stealing everything for this project, and it's all recycled. They've even tricked out the motor to run on used cooking oil.

I arrived around noon so I discuss some of the details with Jason Furch. He and his wife, Laurie are the owners of Red Fox Bakery, and it is just amazing to watch him cook. I confess I haven't been to the Saturday Market for a a while, and it has just blossomed! I end up talking to a young man about his wooden spoons and other items. They are displayed on a large cart that on further inspection turns out to be a bicycle. It's just amazing, and he built it all himself. I finally get going to grab some equipment for the evening, and can't pass up some lemon basil plants.

When I get back, Jason has stoked the fire to the point of raging. He was frustrated because his fire gave out over lunch and it was taking forever to bake the pizzas. We will not have any such problems. We are using oak staves from wine barrels to heat the cob oven and they burn hot. I ask Jason why it's called a "cob" oven and he explains that it was built from mostly clay, straw and water and this mix is called, cob. There is also a layer of bottles built into the base to provide insulation. Jason looks as though he's ready to fall asleep on his feet. He's been up since three in the morning (that's the life of a baker.)

My friend, Mike Campbell shows up and immediately takes over the oven and cooking the pizzas. Mike's wife, Kathy, runs Wednesday Wines. It turns out Mike worked in a pizza joint in high school, and it is great not to have to make pizzas and watch the oven at the same time--especially since the pizzas are cooking in about 3 minutes.

Zach shows up. I love this kid. He's just amazingly positive and fun to work with. We start a rotation of making a crust, then assembling the ingredients on top. We decide to not specialize, but just take a crust, roll and stretch it out and then make it. Jason has given us specific instructions on how to make the crusts, and how they are to look. His are always amazingly round and consistent. As soon as he leaves they all go to hell in a hand basket. Zach's start to look like amoebas stretching out in various directions. He decides it's his trademark, so he can tell which are his. Mine are somewhat round, but nothing like Jason's, but they still taste great.

Carson Benner, is stepping in and out.

And it is just a blast. I predict this is going to become a major hang out space for the people of McMinnville. It just has such an awesome feel and atmosphere. I hope the bus project took in some good donations this evening. It will be a fun project to follow as they travel around and connect up with people.

As things start to wind down, and we have a minute to relax I start to think, "I wish I had a glass of wine." Georgine, Carson's wife, walks up at about that moment and says, "Hey, I've got some wine in the car, would you like some?" Yes, in fact I would. It's a Riesling from Biggio Hamina Cellars. And it's wonderful. Not overly sweet, with beautiful floral aroma of pears and a bit of citrus. Very refreshing after a night in front of the oven. You should go visit Todd Hamina in his new digs over by Washington Roofing and try it out. And you should come by the McMinnville Public Market tomorrow from 5-7 for the CD release party of the Occasional Quartet. Luckily Jason will be making the pizzas, and, you never know, someone just might walk up and put a glass of wine in your hand. It's that kind of place.

New Roof for the Cob Oven

2011-06-17T08:47:00.000-07:00

Wine can help build community. I'm convinced of that. Another thing that will build a community is shared hard work. Last Thursday I joined the boys from Cellar Ridge Custom Homes to put a new roof over the top of the cob oven a the McMinnville Public Market. I really believe that this oven is going to be a huge community centering magnet out on the very eastern edge of our downtown core. This oven was built by the guy who wrote the book on the subject--literally. Kiko Denzer has written a book called "How to Build Your Own Earth Oven" and he came to McMinnville to build this one.

Carson Benner and John Mead are the ones who had the vision to build it, and generously provided the funds and materials. They are on sight today to help. It takes us a long time to get started. The roofing material is, to say the least, unorthodox. It is an incredibly tough black plastic material that is covered in pin prick spikes that will hound me the rest of the day. It's not roofing material at all, but is being "re-purposed" as a roof which is very much in keeping with the ethos of Cellar Ridge. This was donated from the landfill. It is the material that they use to as a base liner.

The roof is a clam shell shaped design. John has it all laid out in his black journal with graph grid paper. The unique design combined with the beautiful blue and billowy cloud sky is giving me some great pics today. The unique design is also giving us fits. Every single piece is unique and has to be custom cut to order. John has measured them all, and put them in a numerical order which makes sense only to him!

Before we can start we have to figure out how to attach the material to the roof. John experimented with one panel before we arrived. He's secured it with sheet metal screws which come with their own rubber washers. The screws protrude well above the roof and that is going to be a problem. We decide on roofing nails, and Cellar Ridge's young assistant, Zack is dispensed to Lowe's to pick them up. I expect to see him head off in a Cellar Ridge work truck, but no, Zach hops on his trusty red bike complete with heavy duty back pack. Yes, this is a green building project!

Laurie Furch, owner of Red Fox Bakery has arrived. She is wearing a skirt, hardly the outfit for a difficult construction project. She says she'll be back in a minute, and sure enough she returns properly dressed in very short order. She grabs a hammer and heads up a ladder to the the middle work of attaching the roof.

Before we can attach the roof we have to cut out the panels--no easy job. Originally we try just using a utility knife. It works, but it is very difficult work and it is hard to keep your line on the slippery surface. Kelly McDonnald (the guy who owns all of this property) has the idea to use electronic sheet metal cutting shears. They work great! That's Kelly to the left manning the shears. We are given three measurements for each roofing section. I find a piece of old plywood holding down some plastic on a counter top and start a grid to record them all, so we can check them off as they are cut.

It is not until later that I realize that the plywood is actually Red Fox's sandwich board sign! Laurie is very forgiving about it. I feel bad, because I know how much those dang things cost.

Throughout the day, Zach is going to position himself at the top of the roof. I see him hanging at all sorts of impossible angels as the day progresses--angles that only a young man could accomplish. You can see him in the photo at the left along with the spikes that make this material so fun to work with! Once the piece is secured to the roof, we place lath over the top of each seam to make sure that it stays in place. My friend, Elwyn Behnke, shows up to take a look at the project. Elwyn is a gifted carpenter, and he can't resist the draw of a fun project, so he heads home, changes his clothes and is back and working in about ten minutes. The first few

pieces we put in place were extremely tight, which made them hard to secure to the frame. We decide to add half an inch to the width of each one and the process picks up speed. Elwyn takes over the cutting and things speed up again. You can see the numbers on the material to the right. It is important to keep them in the right order as they are transported to the roof. We decide to break for lunch. Carson suggests the Mexican food trailer right next to Golden Valley Brew Pub. We walk over and the food is wonderful. We each order a burrito and they are huge and delicious. Kelly very graciously picks up the tab.

I have to leave right after lunch to attend a taping for the International Pinot Noir Celebration documentary that we are working on to celebrate IPNC's 25th year. I'm keep a blog of that as well which you can view at ipnc25.com. Our guest thought we were coming up to his vineyard, and we expected him at the Linfield campus, so we have to reschedule. By the time I get back to the roof, things have really started to move quickly. They have found a system and are in the

grove--moving about ten times faster than when we started. I end up cutting out the last six panels and when I'm finished, I am beat. I'm just not use to hard, physical work. In no time we are finishing up. Now all we have to do is figure out the very top of the roof. John wants it to be taller that the roof below so that there will be a vent for the smoke to get out. Carson positions the scissors lift as close to the roof as he can, extends out the platform and works with Zach to build up the studs. When that is done Carson is all on his own as Zack can't get through the peak any longer to help him out. After several attempts he gets the last piece in place. It looks just like a the Chinese hat seashells I use to collect at the beach when I was a kid, and I think that's the idea. The design is meant to mimic natural forms which have aesthetic beauty and great strength.

We'll be using the oven this Sunday night from 5:00 to 7:00 for the Occasional Quartet's CD release party. Come on over and enjoy some awesome pizza created by Jason Furch, cooked in an oven donated to the community by Cellar Ridge sitting on property provided free of cost by Kelly McDonnald and enjoy some beer provided by Peter Kircher of Golden Valley Brewery. This is a very generous place, and I think that the community is going to embrace it in a powerful way. I'm so happy to see the renascence of downtown begin to spread out beyond the boarders of 3rd Street. See for yourself on Sunday--see what a beautiful place of community this is.

The Making of a Documenary

2011-06-15T14:07:00.000-07:00

I'm writing a separate blog about the making of a documentary to commemorate the 25th Anniversary of the International Pinot Noir Celebration this summer. It is a lot of fun. I'm getting a picture of a very fun celebration. So far we've talked to folks who have volunteered for over 20 years, several of the Executive Directors, the Culinary Director, and one of the founders, Susan Sokol Blosser. (That's her with Jeff Peterson in the photo to the right.) Writing the blog and learning more about the celebration has been a lot of fun. It is really interesting to learn about all of the different people who make the event possible, and the impact it has had on the Oregon wine industry.

Check out the blog at inpc25.com

I just wanted to post this for folks who might read this and might be interested in following along with the progress of the documentary.

Care for Creation in the Vineyard

2011-06-14T07:08:00.000-07:00

Yes, it's true, I get away with a lot. Right now I'm leading a small group which is looking at different themes in the Bible related to vineyards. And, since we are studying vineyards, we decided to go and meet in different vineyards. We take a bus and on the way out I introduce the vineyard to which we are heading, and then read some Bible verses. It has turned out to be one of my favorite small groups of all time!

This past week we visited one of our favorite wineries, Maysara, which is run by the Momtazi family. And what a family they are! I have grown to love them all. The patriarch is Moe who runs a tight ship and has a clear vision for his vineyard, and for the wines that will be produced there. Maysara is such a testament to his vision. As you leave Muddy Valley road and head up the steep gravel you sweep along the side of a beautiful, large pond which provides irrigation in the summer along with beautiful rainbow trout! The tasting room is the working winery. It's an industrial metal building filled to the ceiling with oak wine barrels. There are more barrels this

year than I have ever seen before. In part this is because they are making more wine. It is also because Moe's daughters have started their own enterprise called 3 Degrees. This easy to drink, entry level Pinot Noir is priced at just $20, and we sell a lot of it at our shop, Wednesday Wines.

The first degree, daughter, Tahmiene is our tour guide today. I so love this young woman. At 28 she is one of the youngest winemakers in the US. So has so much personality, and is such an

engaging story teller. Today she shares with us the story of how she came to be the winemaker at her father's vineyard. At the time she was working at a winery in New Zealand and got a call from her father asking how she liked it there. "I love it here," she answered, sensing what was coming next. "I'm thinking I might like to live here the rest of my life." I've never argued with Moe, I just don't see why anyone would. He's determined and powerful, two traits that have served him well in creating this beautiful winery. Unfortunately for him, his daughters are his match in every way! When Tahmiene finally had a

break from making wine down under she came to visit her family and came to realize that she was needed in the family business. She told her father, "OK, I'll consider it, but I need a week to think it over." After the week was up she told him she would accept his offer to be the winemaker, but that she wanted to make wines her way! Moe

responded that he needed a week to think it over! After a week he accepted her offer, but informed her that he wanted to produce bio-dynamic wines.

That would be a scary proposition for any winemaker. In fact, Tahmiene said that in her classes at the University of Oregon they had warned against trying to grow organic, or bio-dynamic crops. What is bio-dynamic? It's more of a philosophy than an agricultural science. You are allowed to spray your crops with certain chemicals on an organic vineyard. Not with a bio-dynamic one. Everything that is applied to the crops or to the soil comes from the vineyard itself, nothing is imported. Cover crops are grown to be used in composted "teas" that are applied during certain growing cycles. Some of these

cycles are "leaf" cycles, and some of "root" cycles and all are centered around the phases of the moon. It sounds a bit like new age religion to me, but there is one part of the bio-dynamic process I can not argue with. The results! They make wonderful wines.

There is no doubt that bio-dynamic vineyards are good for the environment. Even some organic solutions have to be mined from the earth. It is such a cool idea to think of the vineyard as a closed system into which nothing has to be imported. That includes the yeast for the wine. At Maysara they don't import any. The yeast that is needed to make the wine is already on the grapes when they are harvested. That requires a lot of faith, I think.

In addition to the wine we got to tour Moe's new winery building. It is huge! You can see that we

drove our church bus right inside with room to spare. (Yes, we take our church bus on wine

tours, remember, this is a Bible study!) The building has been made with many of the same principles of the winery itself. About 90 percent of the materials came from the sight from the oak trees that were harvested and milled on sight to the rocks which make up the foundation. Moe has also figured out how to straighten barrel staves and is covering the walls with them. It's going to be an impressive building.

I believe that we Christians need to confess that as a group they have not done a very good job of caring for the earth. One badly translated word in Genesis has caused a lot of this. The word is "subdue". People of faith have taken it to mean bend and break it to your will. The original intent was more of a stewardship role. The earth belongs to God, not us, a

nd we are temporary caretakers of this amazing gift. There is nowhere that I'm reminded more of that gift of creation that in a beautiful winery. I'm glad there are people brave enough to commit to ideas like bio-dynamic and organic. I don't know if I could do it, it takes too much faith!

And Beautiful Bread

2011-06-11T07:10:00.000-07:00

It is such a thrill for me to work next to an artist. Our community in McMinnville has been blessed in so many ways. I frequently point out how blessed we are to have so many people making such beautiful wines in this area. I believe wine acts as a sort of gravitational pull to other artists. This past Friday I got to work with one of them.

Jason and Laurie Furch are another tremendous blessing to this place. They run Red Fox Bakery in town. They have seriously invested

themselves in that boutique bakery. They have also invested themselves in this community. Both Jason and Laurie are graduates of the Culinary Institute of America. Those are impressive credentials. And, they create amazing, hard crust, European style of baked art. The reason I was

working with Jason was a new oven in town. It's called a cob oven and it is located at the McMinnville Public Market. The oven was created by John Mead and Carson Benner of Cellar Ridge Custom Homes. They built the oven as a demonstration project. Once it was completed, they placed it in the hands of Jason and Laurie and told them to use it for the good of the community. What a gift. I'm learning to use it

so that we can do fundraisers for various non-profit organizations that feed people, care for the environment, or seek to help those in need. Our own Occasional Quartet is going to do their CD release party there on Sunday, June 19th. The pizza will be amazing. I can say this because I won't be making it--Jason will! That's Jason in the photo above, talking to one of our cooks from the Cooperative Ministries, Efrain Arredondo.

Efrain told me that just last week he was walking through the market and was watching as bread was being baked in the cob oven, and he thought, "I'd love to be able to cook in that thing." The next day I told him we were going to meet with Jason and be trained on how to use it! Pretty exciting.

The person who made these connections for us was Elwyn Behnke. Elwyn is a member of our quartet and makes his living playing the piano. We were really struggling with where to hold our CD release party, and in a flash of insight Elwyn thought of the McMinnville Public Market. He contacted the manager of the Market, interior designer, Shannon Thorson. Shannon said that they had been looking for someone to help them coordinate the oven for community events, and would love to have us use it. When Cellar Ridge donated it to the Market, they basically said, here, we want you to use this for the public good.

What a gift, and we're just the people to make it work! Kelly McDonald who owns the properties of the Granary District where the cob oven is located has such a beautiful vision for that area, and for this oven. His investment is going to make for a beautiful entry point for the eastern edge of downtown. It is such a wonderful place to gather with folks from the community. I can just see a regular series of concerts with beautiful foods and wonderful wines being poured. You can get a foretaste of the vision next Sunday from 6-8. The gathering is free. Of course if you want to give us a donation for each piece of pizza, and every glass of wine, we won't stop you!

And you can purchase one of our CD's. It should be a great time. And if the weather is bad, Kelly

has said we can use one of the buildings on Johnson Street. But it would never rain in Oregon the third week in June, right? It really doesn't matter because it's warm by the oven anyway.

Every Sunday we serve communion at the Cooperative Ministries, and we use the beautiful, artisan bread from Red Fox. It is so good. Some mornings it is still warm in my hands as I lift it up and give thanks to God for it's goodness. That's what Jesus did, and I believe that's what we should do--find beauty in this world, bless God for it and be thankful. Sometimes I think that's 99% of what God is expecting of us. It's just a lot easier to do in some places than in others.

Wonderful Weekend of Wine

2011-06-06T07:55:00.000-07:00

It was perfect weather on Sunday for our vineyard small group to head out to Coeur de Terre Vineyard to study vines and branches. We started outside with winemaker Scott Neil (that's him standing in the vineyard to the left of our group). The weather was absolutely perfect for our visit--still nicely warm, but with just enough clouds to keep it comfortable. I asked the group to look at the vineyard and tell me what they saw. We weren't able to identify all that much. There are vines, they are starting to send out green growth, and they look as though they have been grafted at their base. That's about it. Now it was Scott's turn. The first thing he sees when he looks out at this vineyard is on heck of a lot of work! "I think it's just human nature to always concentrate on the work you haven't accomplished yet." He said, "But it's amazing to me to look out and see all that we have been able to do." He then went on and shared for about 30 minutes different details that he is seeing in his vineyard. He said that with the sunshine over the weekend the vines had produced almost two inches of growth. That's amazing to me. He talked about how they will train up the new canes that are emerging from the vine, and how they will eventually top them off and thin out almost half of the fruit sets. He talked about the soil and how it is unique to their vineyard, and how many different types they have. Scott has a scientific mind that flows into every part of what he does, so I can't remember and didn't understand half of what he said. As he looked at the soil, he talked about geography and volcanic soils and sedimentary soils. Then he talked about subduction zones and inland seas. Scott had scientific names for the bud break and the newly forming grape clusters. Scott said that the vines are packed with an amazing amount of energy right now and they are just waiting for the sun. In the two days of sunny weather he said that the vines had produced over two inches of growth!

I then shared a reading from the Gospel of John the 15th chapter. It struck me for the first time as I was preparing for this class that Jesus

spoke these words to his disciples as they

were walking through a vineyard. They were walking along and Jesus stopped and pointed to a vine and he said see that? I am the vine. And see that new green growth coming off of that vine? That's you. And look at that pile of dead sticks over there getting ready to be burned? That's you if you don't produce fruit." I think one of the problems with the Bible is that we keep reading it in church buildings.

When we were done in the vineyard we got to go inside and try some of Scott's beautiful wines. Their tasting room is one of the most beautiful I've ever seen. I love all of the warm wood and the panoramic views in every direction. We tasted a Pinot Gris that was unlike any I have tasted elsewhere. It has beautiful, bright grapefruit aroma that in some ways similar to a Sauvignon Blanc. Then we got a chance to try Scott's amazing Riesling. This wine is made from 40 year old vines grown in the Highland Vineyard just over the hill from Coeur de Terre. Like the most expensive German Rieslings it has a unique aroma component of what smells to me like asphalt! Scott says this is from the terpene molecules which are unique to older Rieslings.

We were treated to three of Scott's Pinot Noirs. One is marked McMinnville AVA and costs only $20 a bottle! It is an incredible value and it is the number two selling wine in our shop at Wednesday Wines. Going up th scale in price we tried the Estate Pinot, and then the Renelle's Block. All I can say is t

hat Scott makes beautiful wines.

I'm always surprised by how honest wine makers are--even about their failures and mistakes. Scott shared the struggles they went through to start their vineyard. They invested everything they had to purchase the land and plant their first vines. Three years later they harvested their first crop and went off to make their wine. It was terrible and never made it to the bottle. Scott said that he had been studying the wine makers in Dundee and copied their techniques. The problem was that the grapes from the McMinnville AVA have a much larger tannin component. So you have to treat them differently. When you deal with these grapes you want less extraction, so you don't leave them on the skins as long, you don't punch them down as often, and you don't disturb them once they are in the barrel.

Scott shared that Pinot Noir is the most transparent of wine grapes. Good wine, according to Scott, is about time and place. Each bottle should reflect where it was grown and what the weather was like that year. The McMinnville AVA Pinot Noir's reflect where they were grown. They have a tendency to reflect dark fruit, have more tannins and have more earthy, spicy, minerality.

The wines that Scott poured for us were a great object lesson to the words of Jesus. I'm sure those of us in the class we never read John 15 the same way again. And by the way, the fruit that Jesus is looking for--it's love. And it is surely love that Scott has for his vines and for the wines they produce. That extravagant love comes through in every glass--in eachsmall sip. And, I believe, that Scott's wine also reflects God's love for us. "See how much I love you?" It says. "I've given you these beautiful grapes to make this wonderful wine. Enjoy it, celebrate the goodness of creation, and share this love with everyone you meet."

Food and Wine at Cana's Feast

2011-05-24T08:06:00.000-07:00

When the Bible wants to give us images of heaven more often than not the picture we receive is of a feast. I'm currently leading a small group which is going to be visiting five wineries in the area to learn more about wine, and specifically the uses of wine in the Bible. There are ten times more references to wine and vineyards in scripture than there are to any other plant. Wine is almost literally the liquid in which the biblical characters are swimming.

Cana's Feast (pictures to the left) is such a beautiful setting. On a sunny day sitting in the Italian style villa you could easily forget that you are still in the Willamette Valley. We had the distinct pleasure of listening to the Executive Chef from Cana's Feast, Lisa Lanxon. She is a delight! I love the way she talks about wine and food. Her attitude is do whatever you like with them. Experiment, try some combinations and see what works for you. She has several challenges working at Cana's Feast. She has only red wines with which to work, and she does her wonderful creations out of a kitchen that is probably not much larger than the one you have in your own home. As she was describing her dark caramel sauce I found my mouth starting to water, and I was suddenly hungry even though I'd felt completely full just seconds before.

Lisa became a chef when her college education

was brought to a sudden halt by her parent's decision to stop funding it. She found a job in a restaurant as a waitress and discovered that was not her calling, but in the back of the house, in the kitchen she found a fellowship and a way to create beauty that attracted her, and provided her calling in life. She came to Oregon at some point to visit, and ended up finding a new home. I asked Lisa why good food and the making of fine wines seem to go hand in hand. She said she wasn't sure. There just seems to be a symbiotic relationship. When people start making beautiful wines wonderful foods just seem to follow.

We met with Lisa in the spacious barrel room at Cana's Feast, not a regular part of a wine tasting experience there. It was fun to see where they actually make and store their wines. We were also blessed to have Jason Brumley with us. Jason is an assistant wine maker at Cana's Feast. He had just returned from Australia where he helped with the harvest there which was just recently completed (it is fall there and heading into winter.) Jason is a tall, athletic young man with a deep baritone voice. His knowledge of wine is encyclopedic. I'm always amazed at how much wine makers know about their wines, and how much I still have to learn.

At Cana's Feast they make only red wines the majority of which are big, red Italian style varietals. They source most of their grapes from the dry hills of Eastern Washington. We sampled a total of eight wines (for only $10, a great bargain I would say.) The favorite of the group was the '08 Barbera from the Columbia Valley of Washington. It is a deep, dark wonderfully smooth wine. All of the wine created at Cana's Feast is aged in oak and they only use their barrels for four years. A barrel can cost as much as $1800, yes that's right almost two thousand dollars. We did the math and that comes out to five dollars a bottle, just for the oak to store it in!

I ended up purchasing an '08 Cabernet Franc. We did not get a chance to taste it, but I love this varietal, and I think it will age well. I also purchased their '07 Nebbiolo. This is an intensely tanic wine which according to Jason should age as well as anything in their line up. I remember my wine professor saying that a Nebbiolo is purchase for special occasions several decades into the future. Maybe we'll open this one when my grand daughter, Zoe turns 21 (she won't be born until this summer!)

I'm not sure how much the owners of this winery had the Bible in mind when they named it. If you remember early on in the Gospel of John, Jesus is asked by his mother to help out a family in need. They are celebrating a wedding (in Cana) , and they are quickly running out of wine. Jesus tells his mother he can't do anything about it, and then creates about 150 gallons of good wine from regular water. There are a few things I'd like to point out about his story. First of all Jesus is a wine maker. And he makes good wine. He makes this wine for people who have already had so much to drink that they can't taste the difference. The writer of this story knows something about wine. The wine steward sounds as though he would fit in very nicely in an upscale restaurant in Portland. He doesn't just pour the new wine for the guests, but tastes it first (no doubt spitting it out so he can continue to tell what is good and what is not.) And he is correct about good wine. You do not serve good wine after your guests have already had a few. You start off with your best, because after a couple of glasses your taste buds are impaired to the point where you can't tell the difference. At a really good restaurant the wine steward might taste your second bottle of wine FOR you, as you might not be able to tell anymore if it is good or not. The Bible displays pretty sophisticated wine knowledge in this story.

If you find yourself looking for a sunny summer experience head out to Carlton and have a meal on their sunny portico with a beautiful glass of wine. And do call ahead for reservations. It's a popular spot to enjoy wonderful food, a beautiful view and delicious wines.

Dinner with Bill and Jane

2011-05-21T11:08:00.000-07:00

I'm ready for the world to end. I'm happy, satisfied, and content. We had dinner with our good friends Bill and Jane last night. Bill is a representative for a vineyard here in Oregon, so it was an opportunity to bring something special out of the wine cellar. I selected a 2004 Panther Creek Freedom Hill Vineyard Pinot Noir. Oh my goodness what a beautiful wine. And how blessed am I that I can walk over to Panther Creek Cellars anytime and taste their delectable offerings. I wasn't sure how the wine would be fairing about now. During our house raising it had to sit in a closet and the temperatures were not always ideal. I was a bit worried when I saw the color, it was a little bit on the brick-ish red side, but the aroma and taste were out of this world. It is all smoke, and earth and dark, lush herbs. It went so well with the flank steak that I had been marinating all afternoon.

It was the first chance to dine el fresco in our case out on the deck with the bbq ready for its inaugural spring start up.

I also made one of my new favorite snack foods. It could not be simpler to make. Grab a few pounds of raw almonds at Harvest Fresh Market and Deli. In a bowl combine a tablespoon of olive oil with a couple of teaspoons of sea salt and two sprigs of rosemary finely chopped. Combine with the nuts, throw them in the toaster oven and hit dark toast and that's all there is. They are hard to put down once you start eating them.

After dinner we went over to the Gallery Theater and watched "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolored Dream Coat." It is a fantastic show with an amazingly talented and energetic cast. So, if the world is going to end, that's OK. I've had a truly beautiful glass of wine, a wonderful dinner with great friends and seen very well produced local theater. And I could do it all on foot--purchase the wine, get the food, go to the theater and grab some rosemary right outside my side door. Life is good! (It would be great if it were to last just a little while longer!)

This afternoon I'm headed over to One Green Earth Nursery in Mollala. They specialize in edible landscaping which is exactly what we are trying to realize in our own yard, My idea is to have a bunch of foods growing in my front yard that people can just stop and enjoy. I've already got strawberries and blueberries in the ground. I'd like to get a few apple and kiwi fruit trees to add to the collection. This activity is tied to a quote from Martin Luther. When asked what he would do if he knew that the world was to end tomorrow he responded, "I would plant a tree." It's such a great response to those who are anxious about what tomorrow will bring. I will invest myself in a sign of hope for the future. I may not even be around to enjoy the fruits of the labor, but it is still worth the effort.

The Resurrection of Amity

2011-05-14T15:07:00.000-07:00

The Blue Goat Restaurant is a beautiful new addition to downtown Amity. We stopped in as an after thought on our way back from the beach. Actually we stopped off at our old favorite Fresh Pallet which is now called Cork. They moved across the street to a bigger building and the move was not successful from my perspective. OK, I'll admit it I'm just not a fan of country music. It was blasting out of a boom box as we walked in the door and I never got over it. I was wondering what kind of red wine would go with country music, and would it come in a glass or a Styrofoam cup? (Or not cup at all?) It makes me sad to no longer like this place, it use to be one of my favorite places to stop. After waiting for a long time to get any service the idea of heading over to Amity popped into my head. The drive from the Bellevue cut off over to Amity is beautiful! And, the Blue Goat is worth the drive.

The decor of the Blue Goat is amazing. Almost everything

looks to have been re-purposed which I really like. The chairs are all old school room chairs, either on their original legs, or custom welded to the tops of old discs from a combine. Their is one thing that was not recycled, and that is the custom counter top that wraps around from the front of the restaurant toward the gigantic wood-fired cob oven in the back. It's bird's eye maple and it is beautiful. When you run your hands over the counter you can still feel the subtle waves of the grain pattern underneath.

And the food is as good as the decor. We had three items which we split between us. You kind of have to have something straight from the over, so we ordered a mozzarella cheese pizza. It's a thin crust is spread with just the right amount of sauce, and quickly cooked in the hot oven. We added a wonderful salad which came with fresh goat cheese and roasted hazelnuts. We also shared the humus plates which comes with cooked greens including nettles which I'd never had before. We also enjoyed a glass of Remy's Red which paired up beautifully with the pizza.

I've said before that the wine industry encourages the renewal of towns in which it is found. No where is that more true that in Amity. The town is being transformed, from the new sidewalks on the eastern edge of town which nicely frame the new fire station to the new old time street lights that line the main drag. The folks at Coelho Winery have been working hard with the city of Amity to restore it's main street. They are doing great work. I have a feeling the success of the Blue Goat will fuel even more new business in town. It's a funky mix of cool restaurants, antique shops and store fronts from which it is difficult to guess their purpose. Go visit the Blue Goat right away. I'll try Corked again soon and hope that what I experienced was an anomaly. I really hope it was.

To My Methodist Brothers and Sisters

2011-05-13T11:24:00.000-07:00

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ.

You have something I covet. OK, that’s a bad beginning, but I’m a Lutheran, and we are known for being forward, earthy and abrupt. We also know for certain that we are not going on to perfection, and we’re fine with that. Anyway, you actually have two things that I covet. The first is your hand in Christian fellowship as a national mainline denomination that does not discriminate against gays and lesbians in the process of selecting pastors. I understand this may be beyond your ability to provide, and after all, why should you? Who am I to even ask you to do such a thing? I have a few reasons.

I own half of a UMC church building. My church purchased it three years ago when our two congregations got together and formed McMinnville Cooperative Ministries here in Oregon. I have a stake in what you do. And you have something I desperately want, and you no longer need, or at least can no longer use in good conscience. It’s your tag line, “Open hearts, open minds, open doors.” That is so good, and the TV spots that go with it are amazing!

But you have a problem. You are not open to gays and lesbians as ministers of the gospel. And now that the Presbyterians have come on board, you are the last of the mainline denominations to continue in this form of prejudice and discrimination.

I think you have several options here:

1. (My favorite) sell the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America your advertising campaign. We could give, say, a million dollars to UMCOR, and you could allow us to use your tag line with our church name. I covet this in a big way.

2. Un-tie the United Methodist Church. I hear from many of my Methodist colleagues in the west that it is the southern Methodist who stop you from taking this step. Just split (re-split?) down the lines of those who want to discriminate and those who do not.

3. Add some words to your tag line. Here’s what I’d suggest, “Open hearts, open minds, open doors—padlocked pulpits.” It has a ring to it, don’t you think?

I know this sounds a bit harsh, but I’m concerned. Your values, stated brilliantly in you advertising campaign, are out of synch with your actions.

We Lutherans took this step (as is our style) clearly in the middle of the pack. The Presbyterians took a bit longer, but made the decision in a very orderly and decent way. We were all preceded by the Episcopalians and the UCC churches. You just happen to be last, that’s all. It could have happened to any us. Really. And don’t fret that the US Military beat you to the punch as well. Our denomination has been in lock step with the US Army all along. That’s how radically liberal we are.

I know this won’t be easy. I have a friend who is a Lutheran Bishop in Montana, and she is in the process of consulting with 40 congregations who want to leave the ELCA because of our stance on gays and lesbians serving as ministers. We have lost revenue from congregations who are remaining in the ELCA, but want to make it known that they do not agree with this decision.

Our own joint Lutheran-Methodist congregation is going gangbusters. We have a very open welcoming statement advertising that we are explicitly open to gays, lesbians, transgendered and bisexual people. This openness has helped us to reach out to people who have been isolated from the church for many years. We celebrate our openness to these folks, except in one particular spot—the ordained Methodist Minister’s spot.

If you decide to change your policies in regards to ordained ministry that would be wonderful. I would invite you all out to wine country here in the Willamette Valley for a feast of fat things. I would throw in a beautiful “well aged wine, strained clear” but I know there is only so far you can push a Methodist--and enjoying good wine is clearly over that line.

Joy and Peace!

Mark C. Pederson, Pastor Trinity Lutheran Church of McMinnville Cooperative Ministries.

Of Space and Time

2011-05-10T18:08:00.000-07:00

Wednesday Wines is put back together. We had a hard weekend of work to get it all done, but what a difference it makes. I'm still not sure how it all worked, but we have more wine and just as much product as we did before, but the shop looks huge. Someone walking by today said that it looks as though we added another room to the shop.

It is strange how moving a few things around, and taking out a small half wall helps to open a space up and make it actually feel larger. Having the wine counter at the back of the shop really helps the flow. There are several seating areas and it's a lot clearer now what we would like you to do--come in, sit down, and have a glass of wine! The grand re-opening is this Thursday, but we're open now, so come in and have a sneak peak.

The wine rack to the right is a combination of several that were previously scattered around the store. The look so good all joined together in one place. Now they hold all of our Oregon wines. I also wanted to be able to display wines horizontally, and it took me a long time to come up with the simple rack you see here. Basically, I just took different pieces of wood and started putting them together. I'd cut one down, and set it in place, and then cut another one. I like how the lines are clean and simple and seem to flow smoothly. It can take me forever to come up with a solution such as this one, but it's really satisfying when it turns out well.

It was also fun to look back on a year's worth of sales to see which wines we have sold the most. Those are the wines that we now have featured on the cart in the front of the store. Some were obvious, like: Friends Red, Montinore Riesling and Three Degrees Pinot Noir from Maysara Winery. Some were a bit of a surprise like Remy's Red and Friends Red, and Apothic Red from California. It will be nice to have a couple of cases of these wines ready to go out the door as people need them.

That's my little cart to the left. Kathy has already done a fine job of filling it up and decorating it! I hope you'll be able to join us this weekend to celebrate the remodel of the shop. When you walk in the door, it should be pretty obvious what to do. Take a look at Abbie & Olivers as well. We forced Andrea to turn her cheese counter around, and her room now looks more spacious and welcoming. I'm really happy with how it all turned out. It is satisfying to work hard at something (especially physical labor) and to have that work make a big difference in the atmosphere of a place where you want your friends to come and sit and relax for a bit. We even have music on Thursday night, so come on down!

Hidden Inner Beauty

2011-05-08T07:46:00.000-07:00

We made significant headway at our Wednesday Wines shop yesterday. I'm going to hold off for a few days with the pictures of that project, but wanted to show the latest piece that we've built and installed. I did something different on this piece, I left the wood unfinished. Usually I love to plane down the old wood and reveal the beautiful grain beneath, but for some reason this wood wanted to be left alone. You can see how seriously tight the grain pattern is in to photo above. There are a hundred years of tree growth going across that one two by eight!

There is the finished shelf unit to the left. Kathy wanted to have that crossing pattern to hold bottles horizontally under the display shelves and of course whatever Kathy wants Kathy gets! I am NOT good at geometry, so the equilateral triangles didn't turn out quite the way I wanted them to. I tried to lay out bottles on a piece of plywood and then convert that to the project, but came up a few inches short somehow on the actual layout. So, each triangle holds five bottles of wine instead of six. (This result would not surprise my high school geometry teacher in the lease.) It works out OK, because we order a lot of wine by six bottle increments, so one display and five below works out just fine. (I can rationalize just about anything!)

This little shelf looks so simple, but there are a lot of angles involved--a lot of compound cuts that are difficult to get right--especially if you are geometrically challenged, as I seem to be.

The smaller shelves on top will fit in right behind an electrical panel that can't be covered up. On the photo below you can see how I had to join together two boards to get the right depth for

the upper, (skinnier) boards. Those longer boards had a re-sawn edge, so I applied a piece of rough board over them when I put the shelf together. Again there are clamps involved. It was kind of nice, because Friday I got these pieces ready to put together, clamped them up and then left for the fundraiser for Lutheran Community Services. Saturday morning at first light I was back in the shop putting this unit together. Once it was finished we brought it over to the shop, installed it and the bar, (uh, I mean counter) and totally re-arranged the shop. One of the most fun aspects of the job was having to go under the shop and re-route the line for the credit card machine. I got the old one in place, so I made Garry go under and place this one! You have to crawl on the dirt, under a beam that is only 14 inches off the ground. It was a very tight fit for me, and when Garry came out he expressed surprise that I'd been able to do it (he's a skinny guy.) I don't usually usually get claustrophobic, but crawling under that beam and having to expel my breath to fit under it, about did me in. For lunch we broke off work and went over to Community Plate. It was a great lunch, and the staff didn't even look at us funny when we showed up in extremely dirty clothing and generally disheveled appearance.

We got the shop pretty much put together around five and then we walked over to the Peterson's house for pizza night. A very productive and fun day. Come over to Wednesday Wines this Thursday night for our grand re-opening celebration. You can see all of the changes we've made, and I might even have the new light fixture ready and in place by then! (After all, that's what Kathy wants.)

The Beautiful, Generous Women

2011-05-07T06:19:00.001-07:00

Here's to the beautiful, generous women!
I was at the McMinnville Grand Ballroom pouring wine for the "Salsa para el bien" fundraiser last night. The event was an effort by Lutheran Community Services here in McMinnville to hire a staff person to work to help people with their struggle for legal status in this country. It was a wonderful event. And I was totally struck by the generosity of this community. If you attend a fundraiser in this area there will, no doubt, be wine served there. And that wine was, most probably, donated by some generous person in the wine industry. Last night we were blessed with wonderful wines from Lisa Neal (OK, and Scott!) from Coeur de Terre Vineyard. They shared their new Rose which is just wonderful. (We have it in the shop at Wednesday Wines by the way!) We also poured their 2006 Estate Pinot Noir and it is presenting beautifully after four years in the bottle.

We had wines from Susan Sokol Blosser, Kudos, from Northwest Wines, and a Pinot Noir and Pinot Gris from Anne Amie Vineyards. And then there was the food. Kristin from Harvest Fresh Groceries, Deli & Catering provided a sumptuous feast. It is Kristin, always Kristin who provides food for such community events. I buy almost all my groceries at Harvest Fresh. One reason is that I can walk there, but the other is that they are always giving of themselves for the good of the community. They are a gift to the city of McMinnville.

And to the left are two of my favorite, generous women. Remy of Remy Wines and Judy (who sometimes admits to knowing the guy pouring wine in the photo above.) Remy donated a case of her red blend called Three Wives. It is a wonderful medium bodied red with beautiful, spicy notes. (And, yes, we sell a lot of what we like to call the Mormon wine at Wednesday Wines--get it? Three Wives?) A lot of the details for the event were put together by Erin Stephenson who owns Third Street Flats. These are European style apartments which are located directly upstairs from Wednesday Wines.

I love these generous people. They help to make this such a wonderful place to live. They helped Lutheran Community Services raise over $11,000 last night which will help to staff this position for an entire year. If you missed this wonderful night of music, dancing food and wine you will be hearing about it for quite some time, I am sure. Support these businesses. When you visit one of their wineries on Memorial Day, say thank you. And for heavens sakes if you need groceries head to Harvest Fresh and tell Kristin she is loved and appreciated!

New Use for an Old Cart

2011-05-05T22:04:00.000-07:00

We found this classic old hand cart at Aurora Mills Architectural Salvage. If you've never been to the place you should treat yourself. They have acres of old lumber, carts, lights, windows and just about anything else you could want. If you own an old house it's a wonderful place to find those authentic odds and ends that you end up needing. We wanted this cart to hold some wine for the shop. In our remodel project we want to have our top eight wines out front on a cart, and we also wanted to be able to have several cases of those wines for people to grab and go. Kathy wanted an older cart, so I got to adapt this one to our purposes. I really like the old metal wheels and the old, rugged wood. The only place that the wood is smooth are the handles where generations of workers added the oils from their hands as they lifted and hefted whatever they were carting around.

We wanted to be able to have one of the bottles displayed at the top of the cart where folks could look at it, so I had to add a shelve. I used the same older wood that I had received from Carson at Cellar Ridge Custom Homes. I used some of the oldest, roughest pieces for this job. I also was able to use some of the old bolts that came with the wood. These two by eights were used as trusses in the old building and the bolts you see in the photo at the right are the same ones that were in the wood to begin with. I also copied the pattern of five bolts together that was used in the old building, which I think is really fun. It does mean that this cart was a bit overbuilt. Those bolts used to hold up a building. (By the way, if you have any creative uses for bolts like these I have a drawer full of them!)

I purposely didn't sand the wood very much, but left the old saw patterns. It's a rough, rustic piece, but I really like the way it turned out.

In the photo to the left, you can see the whole cart with some boxes along the bottom shelve. The boxes will be stacked two high when we have this in the shop. If you want all of the wine on the cart, the wheels actually work, so we could just run the whole thing out to your car and fill it up. Next on my project list are some shelves. I plan to use the same rough lumber and custom build them to fit the spaces we have available. I love projects like this cart where I can re use an old piece and bring new life to it. And, if there is a serious earthquake in the not too distant future, this cart would be a great place to seek shelter (and if you were stuck for an extended period of time you'd have some great wine to enjoy while you awaited rescue!)

A Time to Build Support

2011-05-04T07:00:00.000-07:00

That's some of the rough lumber that I'm using for this project. It's dimensional lumber, another way of saying that it's beefy. A two by four is measured before it is planed, so when you buy it at the lumberyard it's really only 1 1/2 inches by 3 1/2 inches. These boards are really two inches thick and still a bit rough cut. some are seven inches wide and some are nine inches. I haven't figured out exactly what the shelves are going to look like just yet, but with a little bit of good weather, I wanted to get them out from under the plastic tarp and take a look at them. In the mean time I'm doing the boring work of building supports for the wine counter.

I used the same template that I made for the counter top to build a support that wraps around the column between two windows at the shop. That's it to the left. It looks a bit like a mantel piece to me. I considered several ways to support this end of the counter, but this is the most stable. The column is old brick covered by plaster, so I didn't feel comfortable just hanging the support on the column. This system will support the counter almost all the way along its width, and since it's made with the same wood as the counter top it should look just like it fits in the space.

I was going to just use a barrel for the other end of the counter top, but it made me nervous. I've removed a few of the metal bands that help give the barrel its strength, so am not sure if over the long run it would hold all of that weight. But I still wanted to use the barrel. The question is how do you fit a

support to a barrel which is curved in two directions. One answer turns out to be 25 degrees. The first thing I did was to take a piece of scrap plywood and scribe it to the side of the barrel. This gave me the rough curve that I was looking for. As I went to cut it out I realized I had several dozen barrel staves sitting in my garage, so I took one and traced it onto a piece of two by six. Then I took those two pieces, set them against the barrel and cut a piece of wood to fit between them. It turned out the angle I needed on each side of that board was 25 degrees which I figured out by trial and error. Once I knew the right angle I was able to rip a board on both sides, and viola! I added a cross piece (which makes the support look like a cross ironically enough) so it sits against that piece that I ripped. I'll put in a couple of screws to hold it to the barrel which should give it plenty of support for our 13 foot long counter top! Of course that's all just guess work. I realize that as a woodworker you are doing a lot of engineering work as you go. I've really over designed the supports for this counter. A two by four at each end would have probably done the job. We're going to install the counter on Sunday afternoon, and then have our reopening celebration on Thursday, May 12th. Come by and have a seat--I'm fairly certain that the wine counter won't fall over on top of you!

It's a 14 Foot Long Wine Counter

2011-05-01T17:15:00.000-07:00

According to our OLCC licence we are not a wine bar, and if we were that would create all sorts of problems so what I'm building here is not a wine bar. The height of the counter top was determined by the barrel which will form the support on one end. The barrel is 34 inches high. With two inches of wood sitting on top that comes to 36 inches, or the exact height of a counter top. Bars are taller. A bar stool is about 34 inches tall and a counter stool is about 24. So, this really is a wine counter.
After all of the work of putting the wood together comes the fun work of sanding and staining. This is where you get to see the real character of the wood start to emerge. That's Mike Campbell above helping out with the sanding. While he was finishing off the sanding work I began work on the design for where the counter meets the wall. There is a pillar that I wanted to wrap the counter around. You don't want to have to haul a two hundred pound piece of wood back and forth from your shop to try and make it fit, so what you do is make a template. I made this one out of 3/8 inch plywood. I would have preferred 1/4 inch but didn't have any laying around. It was a good thing I used this technique. It took me three tries to get it to fit just right. You can see in the picture at right how strangely shaped it is. Once I knew that it would fit, I set in on the edge of the bar, uh, I mean, counter, traced it out and then cut it. Now I hope when we go to place the counter in the shop it will fit as well as the template did (I'll bring a rasp and a planer just in case.)

Finally, we get to stain the wood. This is where everything comes together. I'm using a medium walnut Danish oil for this project. It is what I've used for all of the other projects at the shop. I like that it seals the wood, but doesn't completely encapsulate it in plastic. The more people touch the counter, the more beautiful it will get. I will absorb oil from every person who puts their hands on it, and will get more and more beautiful as time goes by. The next job for this project is to make a couple of stands that will help to hold it up. Then a week from today we'll go over and install it. I think it is going to be a great place to gather and have a glass of wine. I can already see Kathy installed behind it sharing a story and a glass. It is fun to build something that will be used to create community, where people I don't know will come and sit and relax. Now all I have to do is build a new light fixture for over the bar (the old one is for sale!), and build some new display shelves for wine. I can do all that and hold down a full-time job. Sure I can . . .

New LIfe from Old Wood

2011-04-28T18:36:00.000-07:00

That ugly plastic-covered pile has been sitting in our driveway for about a year now. It may look like junk to most people, but it's like gold to me. Underneath is a pile of lumber that was salvaged from the Granary District building where the Saturday Market is held. One day Carson Benner called and asked if I wanted some free wood. His construction company, Cellar Ridge Custom Homes was doing the work, and these beams were replaced and couldn't be used in that space. There is no official way to recycle lumber around here. When you take it to the recycling center they send it off to be burned as a power source for a cement factory. That would have been a crime for this wood (as I hope to show.)

We are getting ready to do some remodeling at Wednesday Wines here in McMinnville. We want to create a lot more areas for folks to sit around and talk and enjoy some wine, so I have been elected to make a new tasting area. It's going to be a 13 foot long bar that will run the back of the shop. The first step was to cut the beams in two.

That's one of the beams to the right. They are fourteen feet long, and they are heavy! It was definitely a two person job. In addition we had to run them through the saw twice, so we would run them through, flip them end for end, and then run them through again. Luckily I had Mike Campbell there to help me out. There are a lot of jobs I can do myself, but this is not one of them. I love to cut old wood open. It is so rewarding. You have this old, weathered wood, and when you cut it open it reveals beautiful, new wood. It's so rewarding, especially when you consider that this lumber might have gotten burned up in an industrial incinerator.
That's Mike to the right looking at one of the beams that we cut in two. These beams are douglas fir and I would guess they are around 75 to 100 years old. They are not clear and free of knots and imperfections. That's part of what I love about them. Some of the boards even had worm holes running along the wood. I think that gives them so much personality. The next step in the project is to glue the boards together. Basically you use a liberal amount of Elmer's glue, combined with a lot of pressure to join them. There is an old carpenter's saying that you can never have enough clamps in your shop. I'll admit, I have a lot. Some I purchased, and some I got from my Dad's shop when he was done using woodworking tools. And this project took just about every clam I had available.
These are called pipe clamps and they can produce a massive amount of pressure on the joints. You know you have the right amount of glue and force when you see glue dripping out of every joint. In 24 hours the glue has set up about as hard as it ever will. If you do it right the glue joint is as strong, or stronger that the wood itself. I'm going to leave these in the clamps until this weekend (when the weather is suppose to be nice!) and then I'll pull them off, hand plane down the surfaces, sand the top and apply the stain. I'm going to try and keep posting the progress as I go. We're planning on doing the demolition at the shop on Mother's Day, (Happy Mother's Day Honey, would you hand me that hammer?) We'll be having a grand reopening celebration on May 12th and 13th.

For Michael

2011-03-28T20:33:00.000-07:00

This Lazy Susan was made for Michael. I feel amazingly blessed to live here in McMinnville and one reason is the amazing food available to us here. Michael is the front of the house manager of the Crescent Cafe. He has this amazing ability to describe food in such a way that it always sounds delicious. I've never really checked out the majority of the regular menu, because once Michael is done describing the day's specials, that is what I am going to eat. And with Danny in charge of the kitchen, the food always backs up Michael's descriptions. A while back I was making a few of these lazy susans from old wine barrels. The oak in the barrels is so beautiful. They are cut from trees that are typically over one hundred years old. Many of the oak trees were planted to make wine barrels! Wine makers can pay over $1,000 for a new barrel. They give significant flavor to the wine the first year they are used, quite a bit less the second, and after the third very little. So, wineries pretty much give them away when they are done with them. You can purchase them for around $75 or so. The only problem was that when Michael requested one of these Lazy Susans, I was out of wine barrels. I'm going to be making some new lights for the shop at Wednesday Wines, so we went out and purchased additional barrels. This one came from Amity Vineyards. The white snaking pattern in the wood is described by the way it is cut from the rough lumber, or quarter-sawn. This particular barrel top has just beautiful markings, and I knew it had to be for Michael. If you are ever in McMinnville and looking for a place to have breakfast or lunch do yourself a favor and stop into the Crescent Cafe and treat yourself the an amazing meal. Just a few warnings though. Michael runs a tight ship. If they state that they are going to stop seating people at 1:30 and you walk in at 1:35 you're not getting a seat. What a lot of folks don't realize is that some of the cook staff have been working since three in the morning, and they'll be working another couple of hours after the last patron leaves the restaurant. Also, if you like to sit and talk for long periods of time after your meal is finished this is not the place for you. Michael will indicate to you (in the nicest possible way) that it is time for you to wrap up your meal and give some other folks a chance to sit and enjoy their food. This has never happened to me, but I've heard from some of the older women that they have been asked to wrap it up (and one in particular was quite upset about it, but knowing her and her ability to talk for long periods of time I'm kind of with Michael on this one.) Michael and Danny have been an amazing blessing to this community. They both have a lot of experience in the restaurant industry, they purchase as many local products as they possibly can, and their food and service are just amazing. How we were lucky enough to have them move to McMinnville I'm not sure. They were one of the reasons a reporter for the Oregonian dubbed Third Street the "culinary miracle." It is such a blessing to be able to just walk a block from our house, sit down to one of their tables and be treated to such a wonderful feast. We are truly and wonderfully blessed.

Beautiful, Rainy Fall

2010-10-26T05:22:00.000-07:00

I both love and dread this time of year. For months I've been holding my breath waiting for something, not knowing exactly what it was. It was rain. For some reason I'm comforted by it. In a way the rain is a relief. All of those outside chores that are on my list are impossible now--the side of the house that I was going to paint, the yard work I was going to get done. It will just have to wait.

In the midst of middle age I find myself enjoying fall more and more. It is so beautiful. Rain and overcast weather creates better color saturation, so every color is deeper and more beautiful. The picture above was taken at Maysara Winery's Momtazi Vineyard. I love the way the solitary oak stands in contrast to the now distressed leaves of the grape vines. Soon the vines will give up the fight all together and let go of those leaves. The leaves will return to the earth, and give life to another season of grapes. That is the way of life. And speaking of life, happy birthday to Tahmiene Momtazi the wine maker at Maysara. The Momtazi family is so welcoming, and I has been talking to Tahmiene for quite a while before her mother told me it was her birthday. It must be hard to have this celebration always fall in the middle of a hectic harvest. Not much time to celebrate. The winery is a blur of activity. In the photo to the below, Tahmiene is filling up the barrels with newly fermented wine. I asked her what she thought of this harvest. They were fortunate to have their harvest in on Saturday before it started to rain. "This vintage is going to be more Burgundian" she told me. She explained that this meant a little less body than '08, but beautiful complexity and bouquet.

On that note, I've been pleasantly surprised by the '07's that I have in my cellar. They are opening up beautifully. Especially Tahmiene's 3 Degrees and Jamsheed Pinot Noirs, along with St Innocent's Winemaker's Cuvee. That's a limited list, but go out and give them a second taste. They are proving to be some of my favorites.

At her talk at the Linfield Library last Thursday, Susan Sokol-Blosser shared that this year is closer to what they typically experienced when they began making wines at their winery in the early 1970's. She estimated that the harvest has moved forward by almost three weeks since they began growing grapes in the Willamette Valley. She thinks that could be local evidence of global warming. Other long time farmers have shared with me that this cooler weather is typically followed up by a longer, more moderate fall season. We've had that in spades. Those sunny, upper 60's fall days are my absolute favorite. The colors begin to chance, the morning air has a crisp edge to it, and you know your time to get things done outside is coming to and end. That is the gift of fall. So, go find one of those wonderful '07's light up the fire and grab a good book to read. Rain has it's blessings.

A View of the Beach, A Glass of Wine and You

2010-09-07T23:37:00.000-07:00

Two of the biggest images of blessing for me are the Oregon Beach, and beautiful wines. This sunset was over the weekend at our favorite getaway, The Esther Lee Motel. The place is kind of old school, no frills type of Motel. That especially applies to the cottages. We love to pack a snack supper, head to the coast, turn off our cell phones, grab a book and relax. We were able to do that for a couple of nights over Labor Day Weekend. What an amazing blessing to sit, drink a glass of wine and watch the sun fall below the horizon.

I've been working with Jeff Peterson and a crew of students on the Linfield College Oregon Wine History Project. I served as a backup videographer (OK, I helped set up the camera and

watched the talented group of Linfield Students do the rest!) I never dreamed that I'd get to meet the pioneer winemakers of the Willamette Valley. What an inspiration to hear their stories of investing pursuing their passion for wine and in the process creating a billion dollar industry

here around Yamhill County. Our most recent interview was with Dick and Nancy Ponzi. They have recently celebrated their 40th year as a winery! Dick is an inventive guy who likes to work with his hands. He created a lot of their original machines from scratch.

One of the most surprising revelations to come from the interviews is that these winemakers didn't want to just make great wine. From the beginning they knew that if they could make wine, they could change the culture of the Willamette Valley for the better. Nancy, who is a chef and cookbook author, said that they knew that having good wine and vineyards could help to improve the food, the restaurants, the and the arts. I would say that they succeeded. Downtown McMinnville owes at least part of its health and vitality to the wine industry.

Just about every fundraiser I've ever been to in McMinnville serves wine, has wine donated to auction off, or takes place at a winery. I do not know why when you have vineyards you have more artists, but it certainly seems to be the case. Perhaps it's just the beauty of the vineyards themselves. They are inspirational. It could be that wine just draws people to the area who have the means to purchase art. There just seems to be a connection.

I photographed this grape cluster just outside the Ponzi tasting room. The vines are the first that they planted on their property. The base of the vines are about five inches in circumference. They are covered in moss and showing their age beautifully. These vines are self rooted, meaning that when they were planted by just placing cuttings from other vines right into the ground.

Almost all of the current plantings in the valley are grafted with American root stocks to protect against a little bug called phylloxera. I asked the Ponzi's if they were nervous about that. (Once this bug appears in the vineyard it will proceed to kill every vine.) He said they've been lucky. Because of Dick's manufacturing skills they never had to borrow equipment from other vineyards. Having a tractor move from a vineyard that is infected is one of the primary means of transport for the little bug. It is really fun to see such old vines, a sign that Oregon wines are coming of age. Estimates vary, but these wines could go on producing another 40 years into the future. Wouldn't that be fun to see?

Oregon Wine Project

2010-07-15T08:43:00.000-07:00

That's Susan Sokol Blosser the co-founder of a winery of the same name. I've had the amazing good fortune to be a part of a project to video tape the founders of the wine industry in Oregon. Jeff Peterson (also in the picture to the left) is heading up the project and hopes to have a display in place for the International Pinot Noir Celebration coming up in a few weeks on the campus of a local Baptist college (I still haven't figured that one out yet.) In addition to Sokol Blosser, we've interviewed Dick Erath, David Adelsheim and Diana Lett. If you know anything about the history of wine in the Willamette Valley that's an amazing list of people. The stories they tell of a fledgling industry just trying to find it's footing to a colossal billion dollar enterprise is compelling in the extreme (at least to me.) David Adelsheim was especially honest about his early mistakes. Early on they planted vines and then when warmer spring weather finally came didn't immediately weed around them. Another vineyard owner came by and pointed out the problem. By the time they were able to locate the plants most of them had been choked to death by the weeds. Adelsheim also shared a story of how they did some early plantings in August. Not a good idea. He ended up purchasing most of the garden hoses in Yamhill County trying to keep the plants alive.

But they got it right most of the time. Early on they realized that the hillsides in this county were ideal candidates for agricultural use. They worked with the land planning groups to get these places designated for agricultural use. Adelsheim has maps of every sight in the whole county that they thought might be good for vineyard use. My guess is that most of them now ARE vineyards! Travel over the hill from Newberg into Washington County and what you see are five acre plots with McMansions all over them. I much prefer the vineyards.

I'm working on a class for church leaders on some of the lessons I've learned by studying the early wine pioneers in this area. I asked Susan Sokol Blosser about a concept I gained from her book, At Home in the Vineyard. At some point early on she was struck by the cosmic brick and began to realize that their use of chemicals and pesticides was not healthy, nor was it sustainable. The way she explained it in the book was that they had to stop treating the vines and begin caring for the soil. They were using herbicides on the weeds around the plants and the chemicals were killing the weeds, but they were also killing the soil. When we interviewed her on Wednesday morning I asked Sokol Blosser about that concept. She replied that using chemicals and treating the plant is something like having a patient on life support. I think the idea is that the patient is fed and kept alive, but not healthy. Her revelation was to create a healthy soil and a diverse eco-system that would naturally sustain healthy vine growth. They began to make the transition to organic farm practices and were the first certified "Salmon Safe" vineyard in Oregon.

What kind of lessons can a church learn from that? In most dying churches (which is almost every mainline denominational church in Oregon) we concentrate on the people in the pews. We plan out programs to meet their needs, we visit them in their homes, we care for them when they are sick. It is easy even in a church of 100 members for the pastor to spend almost all of her or his time on those who are members. That makes sense, doesn't it? While it makes sense, I believe it is not healthy. We have to open our churches up, get people in the doors, and we won't do that by spending all of our time on those who are already there. I feel very blessed to be a part of a church that understands and lives out that concept.

I was having a conversation with some distant relatives recently and the subject of the ELCA's decision to ordain gays and lesbians came up. (The ELCA is our Lutheran national organization.) They were convinced that this decision would be the death of the church. I shared with them that we have seen significant growth because of this decision. People are seeking out the church because we welcome all people. The idea that this could ultimately be a good thing was foreign to the folks with whom I was talking. If you are so focused on only the people already in your church that is totally understandable. When several of them threaten to leave (and these departures are almost always preceded by threats of one kind or another) it's easy to think that the sky if falling. We need to look around, beyond our church people and into our greater communities.

Another lesson I've learned from studying vineyards is that pruning ensures healthy fruit. Grape vines are related to ivy, and left to their own devices they would produce nothing but vines and leaves. To get them to produce fruit you have to prune. Now, I know that WE don't do the pruning (although occasionally I'd love to have at it.) What we do is hold up our beliefs and mission and make decisions based upon those beliefs. For a church that emphasizes grace above all else this decision makes total sense to me. The pruning process is painful for the plant, and it's painful for churches. But it leads to health. When we allow a minority to hold the church ransom by their threats we do not promote growth. We remain stuck and it won't be long until we're on life support. It's exciting to meet people who have created a beautiful industry here in the Willamette Valley. When I've gotten my class organized I'll invite you all to come and sit in a vineyard, drink some wine and discuss. That is the essence of the good life to me.

A Feast of Rich Foods and Well-Aged Wines

2010-05-31T13:33:00.000-07:00

Isaiah 25 has the most amazing description of a creation that has been resorted to God's loving embrace. In this image all people are invited to a huge feast with fat things--a rich feast served with well-aged wines strained clear. We held just such a feast at Wednesday Wines last Sunday. It was beautiful. We had artisanal cheeses from Abbie & Oliver's, combined with pickled asparagus, fire roasted peppers, brie cooked in a phylo dough packed with apricot/jalapeno jelly. And that was just hors'dourves! The main course was a green salad with a strawberry vinaigrette. Then we served bbq'd zucchini, crimini mushrooms, marinated flank steak and a killer risotto featuring Shitaki mushrooms, Grana Padano cheese, fresh herbs, pine nuts and . . . well, lots of beautiful, fatty butter. Each course featured a different wine to go with it. My personal favorite of the night was the Remy's Red, a blend of big, bold, smoky tobacco flavored red wine varietals which is an amazing value at $16 a bottle (and, yes, we do carry it at the shop.) All of this was to celebrate the graduation of our intern, Kari Pierce. Kari did research on a new business venture we were considering, and then planned and executed several very successful events at the shop. It was really fun to have a three hour, sit down dinner for Kari and her family and friends. I was walking past the shop before the event began and was stunned by how beautiful the tables looked decked out with all the plates, wine glasses, silverware napkins and decorations. I think there is something very aesthetically pleasing about a table full of wine glasses. Last weekend I hosted a reception at our synod convention for the Reconciling in Christ group. This is the group that has successfully worked to allow gays and lesbians to be ordained in the ELCA. (We continue to be exactly as radically inclusive at the US military in our acceptance of gays and lesbians.) At the reception I had brought along about a hundred wine glasses and had them all laid out on a table which sat directly in front of a picture window with a view of the Columbia River and the I5 bridge. The favorite wine of that evening was another red blend made in Oregon. It's called Bricco Red Wine made by Cana's Feast. I think I've finally discovered my purpose for attending synod conventions--throwing parties for the RIC folks. I love to see people gather in a room and find a glass of wine and a conversation they can dive into. Jeff Peterson was helping me to host the event and he had some music playing in the background. After about two hours of people streaming through the room it quieted suddenly and I heard the music again. There is something very holy about gathering with people and having wonderful conversations and drinking a beautiful glass of wine. It's what I imagine heaven might be like. According to the vision of Isaiah 25 I'm not alone in that vision.

"The World Will Be Saved Through Beauty" Dostoyevski

2010-03-04T08:42:00.001-08:00

That's the Community Choir Celebration concert finale to the left. It's about 200 singers including grade school students, a combined choir of Patton and Duniway Middle Schools, The McMinnville High School Symphonic Choir, the Linfield Concert Choir, and the "Old People's Choir" from McMinnville Cooperative Ministries. (I'm in that last choir and proud to say it!)

The evening was pulled together by my wife, Robin Pederson. I'm always totally impressed with how she is able to herd two hundred people and get them to perform beyond anything they would have thought possible. We took an offering at the concert to send off to the people of Haiti (through Medical Teams International). I do a lot of singing for causes. I'm part of a men's ensemble called The Occasional Quartet, although the way we've been singing lately (three times in the past four days) I'm thinking we may need to change our name. The quartet is made up of myself, Jim Dayton, Ron Olisar,

and Elwyn Behnke. (That's us to the right, singing at the Community Choir Celebration.) We decided fairly early on that we would dedicate our performances to trying to wipe out food insecurity for the people who live around us. Jim Dayton came up with the idea after listening to a sermon by Steve Ross. Steve was sharing UMC Bishop Robert Hoshibata's vision of wiping out hunger in the Pacific Northwest. The Bishop put out a call for the people of the church to use their gifts in this wonderful cause. So we did. In the past few years we've teamed up with other musicians to raise over $10,000. If there is any hope for this world, and for this country it will come through beauty. It won't come through beating people up over life styles and theological differences. It won't come by building bigger fences at our boarders to keep us isolated and safe. It also won't come through military might, or the increasingly divisive politics of our country. It will come through beauty. I'm not sure just exactly how.

I once heard someone say that music was the international language. Wherever people live you will find music. It's something we all can appreciate and to which we can all relate. Last Tuesday's concert was a beautiful picture of that reality. The grade school kids who had only been singing together for six weeks were just as appreciated as the old people who sang. Anna Song's choir from Linfield displayed amazing mastery of classical choral technique which was also greatly appreciated. The beauty of it all is seeing all of these people from all walks of life and from every age span (from 8 to 80+) come together and make beauty. That's the way that the human race is going to be saved. By coming together and appreciating beauty.

I'm limited in my ability to express beauty. Singing is one of the primary ways I have of expressing it. But I can appreciate the beauty that others have created. I love to see how other people are expressing creativity and beauty--especially in a beautiful glass of wine. Around here they grow a lot of Pinot Noir which is also sometimes called the "poet's grape". It's among the hardest grapes to grow, but the most receptive to the efforts of the wine maker. Done well, each glass is a beautiful symphony of flavors.

One of the most inspiring movies I've seen lately is: "A Man Named Pearl". It's a documentary about a man in South Carolina who is among the first in his family to ever own their own home and land. As he is scouting out possible home sights he is told by some residents of one community that they do not want him as a neighbor because he would never keep up his yard. That's about all of the encouragement Pearl needs. He goes to the local nursery and grabs their discarded plants from a dump pile on the back of the property. He turns these rejected plants into amazing shapes of beauty and imagination. His two and a half acre park have turned into a tourist attraction. He's single handidly revitalizing the moribund town in which he lives. Pearl has no formal training, never took a class in horticulture, never took an art appreciation class, but has created one of the most beautiful gardens I've ever seen. See the movie and be inspired to find your own place of creativity, your own way to make beauty, and then open your eyes to the beauty around you. Go to an art exhibit, a show, or a concert. Support the arts. I believe with Dostoyevski that our future depends on it.

Creating Amazing Beauty

2010-02-04T13:38:00.000-08:00

Luke and Erica's new baby is due in a few

months and that means the nest needs to

be finished soon. Luke is an artist, and can

see about a thousand possible solutions for

any situation. At some point you have to

chose one of them and get going. He's been

working around his kitchen counter tops for

a good long while now. Finally about two

weeks ago we took a road trip past some of

my favorite vineyards to the thriving

metropolis of Willamina, Oregon. This town

has been hard hit by sawmill closings and

reduced logging in this economic downturn.

There is a shop downtown, right next to the public library where a young man reclaims wood from old farms and urban landscapes. He has an amazing selection of walnut, cedar, ash and Oregon white oak. First Luke had to decide what type of wood he wanted to use. Only it wasn't that simple. Luke also had some old flooring at home that his brother had reclaimed from an old house and he wanted to use that as well. So, the final product is a blend of Oregon Ash, walnut, mahogany, and some dark, exotic hardwoods.

One of the most fun parts of the job was watching Luke carefully place each board until the entire arrangement looked aesthetically pleasing. He must have rearranged them several dozens of times before he was happy with the result.

Some of the boards have insect holes in them. (There is a close up photo of some of these to the right.) To some people such imperfections would render the wood useless. To me they make the wood even more beautiful. We have 140 year old fir floors in our house and some of my favorite sections of the floor are those places where insects have made ruts and patterns in the wood. The next decision Luke had to make was how much of his counter top was going to be wood, and how much was going to be concrete. He finally settled on two pieces of wood situated on either side of the stove with concrete sections forming a u-shape butting up to each wood piece. We spent the better part of a day cutting the wood down to size and then gluing it together. Luke wanted a full two and an eighth inches of counter top, which is a lot of wood. It turns out I have a lot of clamps. (You can never have too many, but I have quite a few.) You need a lot of torque to get the wood to come together and then stay in place. Once the glue has dried, the joints are incredibly strong, and the wood around the glue will probably fail before the glued section will. The pieces turned out beautifully. Luke decided to finish the wood with oil, so we were able to get a coat on right after we sanded them down. It is so fun to add the oil to the newly sanded wood surfaces and see the texture and color jump out at you. It is also delightful to rub the oil into the wood with your hands. Very tactile. Very fun. I'll be excited to see them in place once Luke gets them installed and the new concrete in place. He's on a mission to get this project done, so I'm guessing it won't take him long. We finished the wood sections today and he was heading home to finish the forms for the concrete. I see a happy expectant mother in his future, with a finished kitchen and a fully nested household.

Rethinking Creation

2010-01-25T11:25:00.000-08:00

God's purpose statement for humanity is given to us in Genesis nine:

"You're here to bear fruit, reproduce, lavish life on the earth and live bountifully."

(from the Message)

This is in essence God's reason for creating human beings. For years I've interpreted it as having children. Some Evangelical Christians might interpret this to mean we are to convert more people to our faith and our way of life. Lately I've been struck by another possibility. We have been put here to do what God does, to create, to make beauty, to unleash creative potential and express the human condition. As I get older I'm more and more convinced that one of the most important things in life is art. My son, Paul, is studying art at the University of Oregon, and that fills me with joy. He is an amazingly creative person, and to see him find new and powerful ways to reveal that creativity is wonderful.

I met another very creative young man recently. We were at the coast for my wife's 50th birthday. One of the things Robin wanted to do that weekend was to blow a glass float. There is a little place at the very southern edge of Lincoln City called the Lincoln City Glass Center. The owner, Jennifer L. Sears has an amazing set up of furnaces where they will assist you in creating your own piece of glass. Robin and I got to work with a young man named Andrew. As we were getting to know one another Andrew asked me what I did, and I confessed to him that I was a minister. "What type?" he asked. I again had to confess that I am a Lutheran Minister. "Oh" he responded "I use to be Lutheran." He saw the light apparently. Andrew grew up in Idaho and at some point became enamored of glass blowing. I can see why. It is so amazing to watch something being created from liquid glass carefully structured as it begins to harden and take form. Andrew studied at the Pilchuck Glass School which was created by the famous glass artist, Dale Chihuly. Andrew washed dishes, cleaned bathrooms and anything else he could do to take as many classes as he possibly could. He shared that he and his friend held the record for most consecutive classes taken at the school. Andrew looks like an artist to me, with long blond dreadlocks, scruffy beard and soft, careful speech. Andrew was a very patient teacher. I was amazed at how difficult it was to do, how even the simplest instructions were difficult to follow when you are standing inches away from molten sand.

Friends David and Delia Hammond also joined us for the experience. They were working with Jennifer (pictured at right). Some of Jennifer's art is displayed across the street at their gallery. It is worth stopping in to take a look. There is something so amazing to me about such beauty that is so fragile. Glass is an amazing substance, extremely strong in some ways, so fragile and breakable in others. Sort of like human life. Each life is a miracle, a precious piece of art. So I want to offer a father's benediction to Andrew. You are doing a precious and beautiful thing. Keep on creating, it is holy work. You are a wonderful teacher, thank you for your patience and for the beautiful glass floats that now are displayed in our home.