I am excited to announce that my lovely and talented wife Martha will officially be joining the Scott Paul team in March 2007. Martha has been a huge part of and major contributor to our success and growth from day one, and I am thrilled that she will now be on board in a more defined and official capacity. Martha will be in charge of PR for the winery and Burgundy portfolio, and will serve as our Brand Ambassador, and I literally can’t wait until she starts.

A New Orleans native, she’s been a dynamic PR & marketing executive throughout her career (not to mention an amazing wife & mother!), whether she was managing Food Network celebrity chefs or spearheading the Portland & Lousiana Children’s Museums. She’ll be a perfect complement to Kelly & Kelley, though whether she’ll be able to get along with her boss remains to be seen…!

The inaugural “La Paulée de Carlton” Grand Tasting & Dinner has come to pass – and what a celebration it was! Huge thanks to everyone that came out to participate and celebrate with us. We are blessed to have so many wonderful people joining in and sharing in the festivities. Martha and I are honored to be a part of it. Kelley and the crew had the winery hospital clean and ready for the revelry, and we were proud to kick off what we hope will become a long-standing tradition in the Oregon wine universe. Mark your calendar now for next year – Saturday November 3rd (we’ll always do it the 1st Saturday in November…)

I’m getting ready to take off for France and their version of La Paulée next week – I’ll report in from the wifi cafe in Beaune with the updates on all the action. As for our Paulée dinner here in Carlton, here’s what I can decipher from my scribbled set of notes on the wines that passed my way that evening (I’m sure I missed a dozen or two along the way…):

’93 Beaune Clos des Mouches – Drouhin

’99 Beaune Clos des Mouches Blanc – Drouhin

’03 Chambolle-Musigny – Mugnier

’03 Chambolle-Musigny les Fuées – Mugnier

’96 Meursault Genevrières – Grivault

’96 Hospices de Beaune Volnay Santenots

’00 Louise Domaine Drouhin Oregon

’96 Beaux Frères

’98 Laurène (mag) Domaine Drouhin Oregon

’03 Nuits-St. George Clos des Forets – l’Arlot

’03 Pommard Vaumuriens – Coche-Dury

’95 Griotte-Chambertin – Drouhin

’03 Charmes-Chambertin Perrot-Minot

’53 Pommard Rugiens – Verdereau

’99 Beaune Clos des Mouches – Drouhin

’02 Riesling Vendange Tardive – Belle Pente

The ’53 Pommard was a gift from Thiébault Huber for my birthday last summer – it was made by his grandfather a year before I was born. (He apologized for having no ’54s in his cellar!) The wine had an amazing nose of flowers and truffles and mushrooms and leather that got more intense the longer the bottle was open, and the fruit flavors were still readily apparent and quite lovely. Truly a lovely, complex, amazing wine. Encore merci Thiébault!

We also opened up a complete vertical of every Scott Paul wine ever produced – the 1999s were especially nice, and I was blown away to see how well our first wines were doing at maturity – and amazed at how lucky we were with that first vintage. Which reminds to publicly thank my friend and mentor Greg LaFollette, who helped us start this journey years ago…

It all seems like a blur now, but vintage 2006 is officially over and all put to bed here at Scott Paul. Wow! What an amazing, wild ride it’s been. Huge kudos to our contractor Marty Knopf, who pulled off the impossible and managed to get our new facilities in amazing shape just in the nick of time. He is one in a million, and none of this would have been possible without him…

I am so excited to welcome everyone into our new home and celebrate the harvest at our upcoming “La Paulée de Carlton” event on December 4th – please plan to join us. As of this moment there are still a couple of seats available for the dinner – and of course everyone is welcome to join us for the open house from 11-4 that day. Please prepare to learn a traditional Burgundian drinking song or two…

My schedule is just about complete for my annual fall trip to Burgundy next month for the Hospices de Beaune auction, La Paulée, and all the festivities. I’ll also be tasting the 2005s from all of our Burgundy producers, as well as the new 2006s just in barrel, and I hope to put together agreements to add at least two more exciting producers to our Scott Paul Selections portfolio for next year. The 2005 wines appear to be outstanding – I’ll be trying to secure as large an allocation as I can for you, as well as attempting to keep the prices in line. Many producers will hike their prices significantly in a highly-regarded vintage likle ’05 – but I have reason to believe that our guys will be reasonable for the most part…

There is light at the end of the tunnel! Thanks to Kelley, Jeremy & Marietta’s hard work, focus, and dedication, we can now see our way clear to an end being somewhere in sight in the not too distant future. We are draining and pressing and going to barrel daily, as the well-behaved ferments finish up. We should have vintage 2006 put to bed in another 10 days or so, giving us just enough time to catch our breath before “La Paulée”…

If you’re on our mailing list you should have by now received your invitation to our first annual harvest celebration bacchanalia – “La Paulée de Carlton”, set for November 4th. We’ll have an open house all day in the tasting room, and the dinner and wine-sharing extravaganza that night is by reservation only – don’t forget to call or email Kelly Karr to book your seats (503 319 5827 or kellykarr@scottpal.com…)

Well, let’s see. We’ve had all of our fruit in the winery since Monday night. Now we only have 48 different fermentations to monitor, baby, finesse, and keep on track. Of course I promptly got kicked in the head with the flu on Tuesday – once the adrenaline of crush wore off, I literally collapsed into a heap and fell into a feverish 14 hour sleep. I didn’t know it was possible to ache in some of the places I’m feeling it. Crush is probably like giving birth – it happens far enough apart from the last time that one conveniently forgets the intensity and the pain… Kelley and crew are totally on top of everything, and it is really a wonderful feeling to be fully in our new facilities. The wines are all behaving nicely, and we’ll probably be pressing off our first lots – the Shea 777 & 828 – either tomorrow or Friday…

Oh. My. God! You know, it looked reasonable on paper, when we laid out the picking schedule for these past four days. The reality of dealing with it all when the fruit arrived at the winery is another matter entirely. First of all, my hat’s off to my amazing team – Kelley & Jeremy & Marietta have worked like crazed-yet-talented bulldogs throughout crush, and they are seemingly no worse for the wear, relatively speaking.

Our new winery is working like a charm. Most importantly, the quality of the incoming fruit has been excellent – the Ribbon Ridge and Momtazi are standouts so far – and my very early prediction is that the 2006 wines will be on the rich and voluptuous side. The quick rush-up in sugar levels over the last week pushed ripeness quickly, but our picking decisions have been fortunate in that the fruit is arriving at the winery with nice acids and decent pH levels to accompany the sugars. The early fermentations are going well, and after the rest of our fruit comes in today (we decided to Pick Shea 21 today), we’ll settle in to the tasks of finessing the ferments and begin the the long voyage of shepherding this gorgeous fruit into the bottle. Every year I am always struck by the sheer natural genius and beauty of the fermentations – it is truly nature at work in one of its most poetic expressions…

Harvest continues, with 2 of our 5 blocks of Momtazi vineyard coming in yesterday. The quality, flavors, and balance of the fruit has been just superb. We’ve decided to pick Stoller on Friday, Ribon Ridge on Saturday, Zena Heights and the rest of Momtazi on Sunday, and Belle Provenance on Monday. Still need to decide when to pick Shea 21 and Maresh – I’m off to sample now for an update on those sites. This will be a hugely busy next 5-6 days, but it feels awfully good knowing the quality is really there. It also feels awfully good that our new winery is up and running, and everything is working as designed! More soon…

How fitting, that on the first day of fall, the equinox, we brought in the first grapes to our new winery and began vintage 2006! It is an overwhelmingly wonderful feeling – 2 of our acres of Shea vineyard – Block 19 – were ripe and ready this morning, and they arrived at the crush pad about 9am. All of our new equipment miraculously performed as designed, and we are officially under way in our own new winery. Huge thanks to and a major aknowledgement of the labor and skills of our contractor Marty Knopf, who continues to pull off the impossible on a daily basis – and who had the winery ready for us on time (as for on-budget, that’s another matter!)

The new forecast has us looking at a string of 10 or more days of bright sunshine and 75-80 degree days, cool 40-45 degree nights – an ideal scenario for long, flavor-building ripening of our fruit. It feels like the universe is smiling upon us indeed…

One of the world’s most gifted winemakers, Burgundy’s legendary Henri Jayer, passed away on Wednesday night at the age of 84. His wines and work and wisdom have been a huge influence on me over the years. I was somehow called to the bookshelf in my living room Wednesday night to grab a wonderful 1988 book about him, and began to re-read and underline certain key passages that I intended to read to my crew this morning as we began crush. I walked into the winery with the book under my arm yesterday morning, only to turn on the computer and learn that Henri had passed during the night. It took my breath away, to say the least. I have decided to dedicate our 2006 harvest to the spirit of Henri, and indeed did christen our first crush this morning with a Champagne toast and a reading of the words of Monsieur Jayer. Henri, may you rest in peace, and have an endless supply of your ’78 Richebourg to savor…

Only a few showers have materialized over the past few days, and all continues to look good on the vineyard front. As of now the plan is to start our 2006 harvest with a couple of blocks of Shea vineyard on Friday the 22nd. Interestingly enough, last year we started on the 23rd…

We had all of the team together Saturday night at Park Kitchen in Portland for a little pre-harvest feast. The food was divine, and a bottle of one of Jacky Truchot’s last wines – an ’03 Morey-St. Denis 1er Cru – was absolutely gorgeous. He truly was a genius in finding the elegance and finesse from his vineyards. It is sad that with his retirement, there is one less producer of his caliber in the world…

Back to the matters at hand – it will be very interesting to work with a few new sites this year for the first time. Our biodynamic blocks at Momtazi should be ready on the earlier side – perhaps in 7 days or so? Also our new blocks at Zena Heights down in the Eola Hills are developing nicely – we should be a week-10 days away from picking those as well…

Well, the cool weather and the drizzle that was forecast has indeed arrived. As much as we needed it, I can’t help getting that feeling in the pit of my stomach that says “what if it never stops raining?!!” In actuality it looks like it’s just going to be a few brief scattered showers here and there, so all’s good. This will surely stop the sugars from rushing up any further (most of our blocks are currently in the 20-22 Brix range), and give everything some hangtime for flavor development.

Kelley, Jeremy & Marietta (whom we now refer to as “Jerietta” ) are working like dogs getting all the new equipment set up and dialed in at the new winery, getting barrels prepped, and praying for a little more rain/time…

Just got word that our next container from Burgundy is being loaded on Monday – we should have the new shipment in at the end of October. Very exciting stuff on board, including our first shipment of the killer Meursaults from Domaine Buisson-Charles…