Ripeness racing along...boy are we going to be busy

We brought in our first 1.5 tons today from Carlton Hill Vineyard. Great flavors, and nice, ripe fruit. If it's any indication of things to come, this is going to be one kick ass vintage.

This hot spell is really pushing the ripeness quickly. While we currently have a total of 1.5 tons in the winery today, we'll have 11-12 tons by Friday and 20 tons by Monday night. For those who want to help sort fruit as it arrives, now's the time!!

More pictures coming tomorrow...along with more fruit on Thursday and Friday

We'll get the pix from today online tomorrow night sometime....The winery looks empty now. Soon it'll be crammed full as all the wineries rush to get fruit in before it turns too raisiny.

Here's a preview of coming attractions at Boedecker Cellars (all still tentative beyond Thurs):

Thursday: 7-8 tons from Cherry Grove Vineyard
Friday (?): 2.5 tons from Shea Vineyard
Monday: 4 tons from Anderson Family Vineyard
4 tons from Momtazi Vineyard
Tuesday: 6 more tons from Cherry Grove Vynd

Weather Looking Good:

• Sunshine is in the forecast until around Oct 7th! This is absolutely perfect for this year. All the fruit in our vineyards is creeping along toward ripeness, and if the temperature and sunshine hold, we should have everything into the winery by ~ Oct 3-5.
• All this heat will absolutely push ripeness along. Two days ago, I wasn't thinking we were going to pick anything ahead of next weekend. Now I'm sure that we'll have somewhere between 6-10 tons of fruit in the winery by next Sunday. Which leads me to....

First fruit in the winery on Tuesday this week!!!

• We are expecting to have our first 1.5 tons into the winery on Tuesday
• The fruit comes from Carlton Hill, which is a new site to us this year. The fruit will be a mix of Dijon 115 and 777 clone, and should be dark, flavorful, and in good shape. David Polite (owner and vineyard dude extrordinaire) should be on hand, hopefully.
• If anyone's interested in sorting fruit, we're planning on hitting the winery with fruit around 11 am, which means we'll be on the sorting line sometime between 11 am and 1 pm. Please just drop me an e-mail (stewart@boedeckercellars.com) or a call (503.866.6699) if you'd like us to wait to start sorting before you arrive.

Harvest notes on boedeckercellars.com: Please give us feedback regarding my new public bloggish thing (http://www.boedeckercellars.com/Boedecker%20Cellars%20Harvest%20Updates.htm). I'll tweak as I go, but I'd be curious what you, your friends, and/or your mothers all think and what folks would rather see.

Talk to you soon - sb

Waiting for the rain to stop....

What do you do when it keeps raining?

Well....first of all, you try to remember that you live in Oregon and that this is normal. Then you fight the "AAAHHH, is it ever going to stop?" panic. When you've finally calmed down, you start working on cool, useful things. Athena and our friend Anna spent the day building cool new Tyvek lids for our 1.5 ton fermenters. They did an AWESOME job of getting about a dozen of them cut and sewn...You might ask, "Why are tyvek lids so cool?" Well, they breath (no codensate falling back into the wine), they're easy to clean, and they help us maintain better temperature control of the ferments...basically, it's a winemaker geek thing.

Other Happenings

Otherwise, we're probably over-prepared for fruit now. All the barrels are in the racks, everything's clean and ready to go...and we might actually get the morning off on Saturday.

I'll be in touch with everyone regarding picking dates, and I'll try to get some more interesting info up on the web soon. In a more abbreviated version, I'm also launching a "Harvest Notes" section on our web site - check it out and let me know what you think.

Think sunny thoughts...