P I C N I C

For my wine this year I got grapes through John Grochau, who makes his wine in the NW Industrial district. He was receiving Pinot Noir for about a week during this very late harvest. The Anderson Family Vineyard was the last to come in, on the 22nd. John shares his winery with Boedecker, and the crusher-destemmer was tied up, so the grapes sat overnight in a refrigerated semi trailer. On the 23rd I drove over and picked up 4 bins of the Anderson Family Wadenswill clone. This came in at 1300 pounds.

The winery was bustling and it was really exciting watching the work being done. Here John is pressing down the cap on some Pinot that had been fermenting for about a week. These plastic bins are used for all the fermentations, and they allow for keeping all the myriad types of grapes in separate batches. Each bin contains perhaps a different clone or location from any of 10 or 12 vineyards.

These are the Boedecker people. The perforated stainless tube is a filter for the must pumpovers. Their fermentations are all wild and they are probably trying to introduce as much oxygen as possible to jumpstart the yeast. The pumpover also accomplishes the work of the punchdown.

I didn’t help out with the work at the winery, as I had to get back and tend to my own. The 1300 pounds of grapes fit in my 4×8 trailer perfectly. I didn’t take any photos of me and Ben working in my backyard, as our hands were so sticky. In the shed are the 3 fermenters filled with crushed and destemmed grapes. Ben samples some must in an oversized mug.

I bottled some Muscat from last year.

The grapes came from Elle’s father. He has 6 or 7 old vines about 200 feet from the Willamette river.

I dropped off a case of Muscat and Pinot Noir on Saturday. The yearly family renunion was in full swing. Here they are doing some skeet shooting in the cow pasture.

Also, the counter was glued in on Friday.

Elle and I are planning to make some beer, perhaps this coming weekend. I thought I’d smoke some barley with madrone, to see how that works. I’d like to try making some whiskey, so this is the first step towards that. Next I’d like to malt some barley, then use the smoke to dry it. Perhaps I could use Joels coffee roaster, if he’d let me? Actually, I think the fire pit would work better. I was trying to look into whether there are any peet bogs in existence in the northwest. It seems likely. I think hardwoods and fruitwoods could suffice though.

I helped out John Grochau bottle some Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Noir today at his winery in the NW industrial area. He had rented an on site bottling line. This was a trailer about 20 feet long with the most amazing stainless steel and teflon machinery. It’s speed was limited only by the human inputs and outputs, but we got it going at about 1 bottle per second! We bottled in 4.5 hours perhaps 6000 bottles. Unfortunately I don’t have a more dramatic photo. When we were bottling there was no time for photos.