Vintage 2009 - Looking good (so far)

The vines are looking great. We had a solid fruit set and we're back to what looks like a more normal target date for harvest - early October. We set a personal record last year when we didn't even begin picking grapes until October 22. We had never picked any other vintage after October 18.

So here are a couple of pictures. The second shows some rows and you can see how we manage the vineyard. We till every other row and leave a cover crop in the rest. This is one method to manage vigor in the vines - you want your vines to focus on ripening fruit, not growing long shoots.

We do a lot of work on the canopy. We position the shoots vertically in the trellis trying to eliminate overlapping leaves. We want a very thin canopy with the max sun per leaf we can get. We pull leaves on one side of the canopy to let more air circulate around the clusters. This is targeted at reducing the possibility of powdery mildew. And finally we hedge the tops of the shoots - again to slow shoot growth and improve fruit ripening.

The first picture shows some clusters. Since the set was good, we actually have to go through and do a 'green harvest'. The plants in a typical year will set more fruit than our target yield. In Oregon, most premium Pinots are harvested at yields around 2 tons per acre. It's all about ripening and developing flavors. Too high of a yield runs the risk of not ripening enough at harvest. So we're in the process right now of cutting off clusters to get to our 2 tons per acre.

So far so good, but Oregon harvests always come down to the weather in the last week of September and the month of October.

Tons of Great Food

Had a week of vacation and spent it enjoying lots of good food near home.

We had a wonderful meal at a brand new restaurant in McMinnville - Thistle. I think we were there on their third night. The owners are Emily and Eric, who also happen to be the only employees. Food was really impressive - I had the beet salad and flatiron steak. There's four or five appetizers and main courses plus a couple of desserts. The menu choices change every day.

We did a whole day in Portland during vacation. We had lunch at my favorite lunch place in Portland - Wildwood - a super consistent, high quality eatery with a great bar area and great lunch menu. Didn't even drink any wine, I went for an updated version of something my late father-in-law introduced me to about 27 years ago - the rye (usually Seagrams) and ginger ale. They made a version with raw ginger that was really refreshing.

Then we wandered around the Mississippi Street fair for a couple of hours (first time and would definitely go again), crossed back over the river to see the movie Away We Go and would up having dinner at one of my favorite dinner restaurants in Portland - the Veritable Quandry. They cooked some Alaskan wild salmon to perfection, but I was blown away by the handmade truffle that we had for dessert. It was simply unbelievable. It clearly highlighted the difference between something fresh and something you get out of box that was filled months ago. Just decadent with a stunning creamy texture.

We closed our vacation week with a experience that I would hesitate to make public if anyone was actually reading this blog. Nick's Italian Cafe in McMinnville - an institution in Wine Country - has started a family dinner on Sunday. It's one seating served family style. You can even bring your own wine. I won't even put the price in this blog - lets just say if it was twice as much no one at my dinner would even have blinked. There was wood-fired flat bread pizza with porcini mushrooms as one of the appetizers, and then huge plates of fettucine with mushrooms and peppers, followed by salad, then a sublime lamb stew, and finally Fred Flinstone sized piles of ribs. Ridiculously awesome, insane price and there was dessert too.