Okay, so life on the range wasn't the lifestyle I thought it would be. Sea Biscuit and I have parted ways. A true cowboy is nothing without his faithfull mount and my dream of taming the great west has come to an end. Turns out that there's a reason John Wayne wasn't a winemaker. It's difficult to crush Pinot Noir, Lemberger and Gewurztraminer when you're out branding calfs. I never actually branded a calf but I did crush the last of our 2007 harvest.
Sea Biscuit should be glad he wasn't around when I was crushing Gewurztraminer. Right when I destemmed the last cluster of the year and began cleaning the crusher/destemmer, (Large piece of equipment used for crushing and destemming grape clusters) the
!@#$#% thing broke! The good news is that I was able to process all of the fruit and I have about 10 months to fix it. The bad news is that I'm the kind of person who will wait 10 months to fix it.
I'm thrilled to have everything in and I'm not bummed about a single variety. I'm also thrilled that the annual Wind River Cellars library tasting is only a couple of weeks away. We will be opening every bottle of every wine we've ever produced! It will be like traveling back to 1995. The average gallon of gas in the U.S. was $1.09, a stamp was $.32, and Braveheart, Apollo 13, and Ace Ventura were tops at the box office. If you didn't like that year you can skip forward to other vintages.
The weather here has been amazing. It almost reminds me of the days when Sea Biscuit and I rode the open plains with reckless abandon. To Hell with Sea Biscuit! He won't get to be around for the Wind River Cellars Thanksgiving Open House. This year we're hosting it on Thanksgiving weekend, that way it will be easy to remember. I encourage you to come out for a visit. I promise a great time.
Visitors of the week included the couple from Wisconsin, the mother/daughter from Puyallup, the anniversary celebrating couple from Portland who were staying at Bonneville Hot Springs Resort and Lap Dance Jon who was climbing Mt. Adams for no good reason but to see if he could get cell phone service. (He did)
Holidays are coming folks. Call me to schedule a group barrel tasting and I'll tell you stories of life as a cowboy.
Happy trails, Husum.
Joel
