As the late George Harrison’s tune reminds us, “It’s allright…” Indeed! The skies have cleared and the showers have passed – though we may get another brief one in the next 24 hours. That said, we look to be in good shape to start picking this weekend – as of now we’re targeting Ribbon Ridge and maybe some Maresh fruit for Saturday & Sunday, and a little bit of a new site - Coats & Whitney vineyard up near Yamhill – maybe on Saturday. We’ll sample everything again tomorrow and see where that leads us…

In the meantime, the Cubs suck. The only solace is that so do the White Sox. I could look at it this way – now I’ll have no distractions during crush! So thanks to the Cubs for sucking so badly that I can give my undivided attention to the care and feeding of this beast called harvest…

Don’t forget we still have a few seats open for our 3rd annual La Paulée de Carlton dinner – Saturday November 1st here at the winery.  Call Kelly Karr at 503 319 5827 to book your spots…

And here’s a little reminder of what Pinot Noir is all about…

Well, the vines got more than a drink. They chugged yesterday, to the tune of about 1.6 inches of rain over the course of the day. That will certainly cause some berry swelling in the short term, but we should have enough time to recover from this and let everything dry out before there’s any action. We may have a bit more shower activity over the next couple of days, but otherwise we should be mostly sunny and dry, and it looks like we’ve got a nice window of potential picking days from the 10th-15th. If this all holds true, we will have some massively busy days, as I would guess we’ll harvest everything over the course of those 5 or 6 days. Hey, that’s why they call it crush, right?

As we get ready for our 10th harvest, all I can say I’ve really learned from the first nine is that no two are ever alike. Each one has its own unique challenges and opportunities, and our job is to ride the waves as they roll on in…

Here’s hoping the Cubbies can ride a wave of some kind of good energy in LA tonight. (Oh, I was supposed to have given up on them – sorry, I forgot.) Arsenal snatched a draw from the jaws of defeat earlier today at Sunderland – maybe that bodes well for my Cubsters? I’ll take it any way we can get it…

Here are a couple of mags of ’47 de Vogüé Musigny – just because!

The '47 Moose!

OK, OK – I know. It sucks being a Cubs fan. They were pathetic. Abysmal. Embarassing. As the Brits would say – “they’re shite!” The only saving grace is that my mother was not alive to see these last two disgraceful games. Maybe if I officially give up on them they can pull it out of the fire somehow. How could they save their two worst games of the year for the playoffs? They were simply shockingly bad…

On to happier topics. Like rain just before harvest! Which is bettere than rain during harvest, to be sure. Yesterday we had a mere 6 one-hundredths of an inch, and today looks to be about the same, and maybe a bit more tomorrow. So, the vines are going to get a nice littel drink.  After that we should dry out, with a return to sunny and cooler days in the hi 60s/low 70s. Sugars at all our vineyards are in the hi 22s right now, with very low pH and high acids, and not much flavor development yet. We’re still thinking we’ll pick most everything sometime in the 10th-15th window. Those are all favorable picking days on the biodynamic calendar, fortunately. The calendar looks ugly the 16th-22nd – so we’ll hopefulluy have it all in before then. As always, we shall see…

In the meantime, here’s a nice reminder of summer in the vineyard in Pommard…

Pommard - Summer 2008

The classic from the Clash is the inspiration for today’s post. Deciding when to pick – that’s what it’s ultimately all about. Our picking decisions will ultimately define the character and quality of the 2008 vintage for us. It’s only the single most important decison in all of winemaking, nothing too serious!

Our miracle September has continued into the start of October, but a cross-referencing of all the available forecasts leads to the conclusion that some sort of rain event is moving in over the next few days. Our ripest fruit is in the 22 Brix range and has no flavor development yet, so nothing is ready at this point. Any rain of less than a half-inch in 24 hours is not detrimental, and infact is beneficial at this point.  So, we’ll wait and see for now – it looks like a nice string of sunny and cooler days are ahead, and we could still be picking in the vicinity of October 9th or 10th. More as it happens…

In the meantime – my Cubbies are in the playoffs again, taking the best record in the NL up against the Dodgers in Game 1 this afternoon. I’ve been a life-long, long-suffering Cubs fan, and my one wish is for them to win a World Series once in my lifetime. This was also my mom’s wish – she may have been the biggest Cub fan of all – but they never made her dream come true before she passed in 2005. It’s the 100 year anniversary of the Cubs’ last championship – could this be the year? I’m pulling for ‘em with all my might, so maybe I can tell my mom one day that her Cubbies finally did it…

On the soccer front – which is the real Arsenal? The one that creamed Porto 4-0 in the Champions League yesterday, or the one that stumbled to a 2-1 loss to lowly Hull in the EPL Saturday? I prefer to think it’s the former – I guess at the end of the season in May we’ll finally have our answer…

And here’s a shot of the friendly confines of Wrigley Field – Go Cubbies!

The Friendly Confines