People! Enough of the emails. I'm sorry that I haven't had time to document my last several days with this silly blog that Tonya, our website designer, talked me into.
Lets start with last Saturday. At 10:00 a.m. I was just sitting down, thinking I had some time before somebody showed up to taste. At 10:01 I was in the tasting room pouring. (I didn't leave the tasting room until 6:30 p.m.) A very tall Texan and his lovely wife were in town from Houston and needed some Tempranillo. Tex, the next time the two of you are in town lets do dinner.
Later in the day we had a great rafting group for lunch. A dozen or so beautiful women, mostly from Seattle were out for a girl's getaway. Yes, I felt threatened. All I could think of was wishing I had some mace, just in case. Luckily, they all enjoyed themselves enough to respect me as a humble small business owner and not some beefcake play toy.
Towards the end of the day I had three very nice couples, also from Seattle. One of the couples had a cute little girl who our pet pig, Mini, still asks about. (Pigs don't really talk much. They mostly grunt. But if they could talk, Mini would certainly love to have this little girl feed her more treats.)
Sunday I pressed Merlot. So far, it might be the best merlot we've ever crushed.
This morning I headed up to Celilo Vineyard to check numbers. "Checking numbers" is a winemaker's way of going for a beautiful walk. In this case it's the most beautiful. At one point, I looked out at the amazing view and pinched myself. The pinch brought back memories of the women's rafting group and I felt another need to join a support group.
Tempranillo came in today and I'm very excited about it. I figure we have about two more years before every winery in Washington begins planting this gorgeous grape variety.
Chardonnay tomorrow.
I'll make you wine, Husum.
Joel
