It has taken a couple of days, but I am now sufficiently recovered from the IPNC bacchanalia to post coherently!As always, this year’s event was a full-on festival of hedonism. Hey, somebody’s got to do it, right?

I was honored to be chosen as the moderator of the tri-continent winemakers panel, which was held at my old stomping grounds at Domaine Drouhin. We had really good, illustrative examples of the differences between Burgundy , New Zealand , and Oregon Pinots – and the discussions were both interesting and informative. Thanks to Blair & Nigel of Felton Road , Pierre from Domaine Cornu, Hugues from Domaine Pavelot, and DDO’s Allen & Arron for the great wines and enthusiastic participation…

I also had the good fortune of dining a couple of times over the course of events with Allen Meadows of Burghound.com – for whom I have the utmost respect. Allen is always a pleasure to be around, and his depth of knowledge of Burgundy is truly unparalleled. Of course some amazing wines made it across my lips over the weekend – at IPNC you can’t help stumbling across astounding wines at every turn. Highlights for me this year were bottles of the 1949 Camille Giroud Musigny, a 1929 Boyer Charmes-Chambertin, a ’53 Corton-Grancy from Jadot, 1950 and 1959 Y’Quem (ok, not Burgundy, I know, I know…) a ’62 Giroud Clos Vougeot, an ’85 Groffier Amoureuses, and of course the magnum of ’88 Jayer Cros Parantoux.

As for the current release wines at the grand tastings, I was particularly impressed with the pure, elegant wines of Domaine Cornu (from the largely unknown appellation of Ladoix – really gorgeous wines), and the beautifully balanced assortment of Savigny-les Beaunes from Domaine Pavelot – especially a couple of vintages of the 1er Cru La Dominode…

Tomorrow is my birthday – 51 – I believe there may be some Krug in my future, as well as a bottle or two of something emanating from the village of Chambolle-Musigny – I’ll report back in the aftermath!

Big thanks to Wine Enthusiast’s Paul Gregutt – who just laid a big fat “91″ score on the 2003 La Paulée – “Older vines from the Shea and Stoller vineyards anchor this goreous wine. A beautiful, bright cherry-red color, it is packed with sweet cherry fruit, cherry candy and spice. Hints of mint and citrus peel provide extra interest, and despite the ripe vintage it retains a sense of elegant proportion.” I couldn’t have said it better myself!

Well, it’s just been insanely busy since my last entry. Visitors from out of town in our guest house, a great winemaker dinner at Paley’s in Portland, a lot of time in the vineyards, a zillion tours and tastings at the winery, and preparations for Oregon Pinot Camp and the International Pinot Noir Celebration – other than that not much going on… Oh, and we’re sold out of the 2003 Cuvée Martha Pirrie, with just a tiny bit of the La Paulée and Three Barrels remaining. You’ll hear no complaints from me – there are worse problems to have, for sure…

As for the most important part, the vineyards – it looks like we have managed to dodge the bullet. All of our blocks are in full flower as I write, and the few showers we’ve had over the last week do not seem to have dislodged the delicate flowers – with a little luck over the coming days we may well set a “normal” crop this year. That would be nice for a change!

Pinot Camp starts this Saturday night, and we’re looking forward to hosting 250 of America ’s top retailers and restaurateurs for three days of seminars, tastings, and great meals. I need to make a note to myself to pull some treasures from the cellar for our dinner Saturday night… More soon, after I emerge from the other side of Pinot Camp…

Big thanks to Wine Enthusiast’s Paul Gregutt – who just laid a big fat “91” score on the 2003 La Paulée – “Older vines from the Shea and Stoller vineyards anchor this goreous wine. A beautiful, bright cherry-red color, it is packed with sweet cherry fruit, cherry candy and spice. Hints of mint and citrus peel provide extra interest, and despite the ripe vintage it retains a sense of elegant proportion.” I couldn’t have said it better myself!

Just back from a quick visit to L.A. for the Vintage Hollywood event – which was very nice, and I’m glad I was there. If you’re in the SoCal area, I would recommend you look into going to next year’s event. It raises a lot of money for pediatric AIDS, and a bunch of excellent winemakers and LA’s finest restaurants provide superb food and drink. This year’s event was held at former mayor Dick Riordan’s stunning Brentwood estate, with a VIP & sponsor dinner the previous evening at the Riordan’s equally stunning beach estate in Malibu …

It’s still cool and damp here in the vineyards – not what we want for the crucial flowering period, which theoretically should be happening right now. I’ll be checking all of our blocks tomorrow, and will update you all here on these pages shortly…

I start again by apologizing for the length between posts. I truly intended for this to be a much more frequent thing. I pledge to do better starting now!

One of the things that has been occupying me greatly these last couple of months has been spending a great deal of time with my mother, who has been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. At 81, she’s lived a full and exciting life, and has an amazing spirit throughout it all. I’ve been going back and forth between tears, denial, stress, and exhaustion. At the end of the day, it’s a gift that she’s able to put her affairs in order and end her time on this earth with “no dirty dishes in the sink” as she puts it. I grew up thinking I had the greatest mother in the world, and I still do…

As for the vines – hallelujah! Flowering and set is complete in all of our blocks, and we should have more than enough fruit to drop the weaker clusters at veraison and get down to our target of 1.75-2 Tons/acre. I’m hugely excited to get to work with the fruit from the 35 year-old vines we added to our arsenal this year from the famed Maresh vineyard in the Dundee Hills.

Tonight I will start blending trials for the 2004 wines, beginning to zero in on which wines from which blocks of their respective vineyards will make up the Cuvée Martha Pirrie, La Paulée, and Audrey bottlings this year. I’m quite happy with the quality of the vintage overall, and suspect that each of the cuvées are going to be even better than the 2003s, which I absolutely love. The 2004s are inherently better balanced, and have consistently gained complexity in barrel over the last 8 months. We plan to make the assemblages in the first half of August, and will bottle everything at the end of the month.

If you’re headed to IPNC this year – I look forward to seeing you. I’ll be the moderator of a three continent winemaker’s panel – featuring Huges Pavelot and Edmond Cornu from Burgundy (Dom. Pavelot & Domaine Cornu, respectively), Blair Walter from New Zealand ( Felton Road ), and Allen Holstein & Arron Bell (from my alma mater, Domaine Drouhin Oregon .) IPNC is clearly the best wine event on the planet every year – if you haven’t been you absolutely must make plans to come… http://www.ipnc.org for more information…

A good day in the vineyards yesterday, with my oldest daughter Lindsay in tow. Every one of our blocks is looking pretty good right now, with shoot growth 12 inches or more, and what looks like a normal potential crop (2-3 viable clusters per shoot, which we will thin to 1 cluster per shoot later on…) Now if we can only get some decent weather (warm & dry) for flowering, which is maybe a week away.

The only problem spot looks like Block 32 at Stoller, where there is a lot of short-shoot/necrosis happening. It looks like many of the potential flowers are getting ready to abort, which means there could be little to no crop in this block if that does indeed happen. It’s always something, honestly! It wouldn’t be winemaking and grape growing if there weren’t always hurdles getting thrown up in front of you on a regular basis!

In the cellar yesterday, I tasted through some composite samples of each of our vineyards lots from 2004. I was really pleased overall, as these wines have continued to improve steadily as they mature in barrel. I always thought they were going to be good, but they are really exceeding my expectations. I especially like the Ribbon Ridge Vyd. stuff right now – it has that silky texture and great depth of flavor that it showed in the 2003 version, and is again a good candidate for the Audrey bottling…

Shea Block 21 is also especially nice, with good depth and complex flavors. At this point I think it will probably go into this year’s La Paulée, as will the younger vine blocks from Shea, which are showing lovely flavors and nice tannins that should give the cuvée really nice structure.

The Three Sisters and Stoller lots are all quite nice right now, but aren’t showing the complexity of some of the other stuff today. It’s really too early to tell where all of these are headed at this point. More soon – lot’s of big news to come, so watch this blog for action….

What a weekend! I’m still in recovery mode from the three-day open house at the winery for Memorial Day Weekend. It was great to see all of you who dropped by. If you’ve never been, plan to come for the next open house on Thanksgiving weekend… Thanks to everyone for the wonderful comments on the wines – it really means the world to me to hear your feedback (of course I know we only hear the good stuff. Those trashing the wines usually do so out of earshot…)

It feels great to be back home, after a lot of marketing trips around the country the past few months. I’m looking forward to Vintage Hollywood in LA on June 11 th – a great charity tasting & dinner that we’re proud to be a part of (http://www.sw14group.com/files/VH05_invite.pdf for tickets and info.)

I’ll be in the vineyards most of the rest of the week – it looks like we’re on a fairly normal schedule to this point – I would guess flowering will start June 10-15 th, which would put us on track for harvest last week of September/first week of October. I wish it was really that easy! I’m sure a dozen or more twists and turns are in our future before we start picking again this year. I’ll chronicle all of the ups and downs in these pages as we move forward…