Ben writes…

Dear Family, Friends and Followers,

Given our recent schedule, it seemed fitting to combine weeks five and six into one update. Prior to these last two weeks, we were patiently waiting for fruit to be picked and transported from the Chehalem estate vineyards to the winery. A window of fantastic weather gave a last push of ripening potential to the fruit and we were able to pick almost all, equaling close to 300 tons of fruit. Only Riesling remains on the vine with a very small block of Pinot waiting at the top of the Corral Creek vineyard.

All that fruit coming in right away means that we have wearily weighed every bin, sorted every cluster, pressed load after load & filled every tank. Now that we are two weeks into the constant arrival of fruit, our bodies ache, sleep seems but a dream, and all of us should have purchased stock in Advil before this began. Harvest is a funny experience. One experiences extremely long hours (a 14 hour day is not uncommon) yet our spirits remain high knowing that we are taking part in something bigger than our tiny tired selves. Alchemy is seemingly in action as grapes ferment into wine. What is initially a sticky mess requiring an exhaustingly cleaning process is transformed into one of the most sought after art forms on Earth. Work one week of real harvest and you may never question the price or value of a bottle of wine again.

On a related side note: Friday of week six was the end of an exhausting stretch of long days processing many tons of fruit. On this particular mid-day, I was operating the forklift, tipping bins of Pinot Noir into the hopper on the sorting table when Romaine approached me and said that a man and a woman were in the tasting room asking for me. As I had done nothing to draw the attention of the local police and I pay my taxes long before they are due, I didn’t think I had anything to worry about and I was busy so I ignored it. Our winemaker was near me and I told him about the two in the tasting room so he said that he would go check it out. Mike (the winemaker) returned and asked me to move something with the forklift which was located on the crush-pad behind me. As I was backing the forklift away from the red wine fermentation building, past some small tanks, towards the end of ramp, an incredible surprise was waiting: All three members of Hipster Enology.

Ben and Renee flew up from Los Angeles and Jesse flew in from Indiana. Apparently they had coordinated this surprise with Mike who was very kind in allowing this to all take place during one of the busiest days of the year at Chehalem. It is difficult to communicate how elated I was to see these familiar faces. Given my exhausted state and how weak and dirty my body felt, seeing these three was truly an emotional moment for me. My initial reaction was one of utter shock quickly followed by tearing up and hugging the heck out of my friends. The rest of the weekend seemed a fantasy as the four of us explored Oregon wine country together and went to a wicked halloween party. Ben, Jesse and Renee all had costumes planned for the party so I had to whip something together pretty quickly. The result: wet weather gear I wear every day at work and a stocking cap made me a fisherman.

After brunching on Sunday, the four of us had time for a few wine tastings before Ben and Renee had to fly back to Los Angeles. The last winery we visited, Bella Vida, is perched on a steep hill surrounded by their vineyards overlooking the Willamette Valley. Raptors were riding thermals overhead as the Sun broke through the clouds clearing an incredible view of the valley. While sipping on the wines of Bella Vida Winery, I couldn’t help but think, “This is a good life.”

As I am still in harvest mode, perhaps one of the other Hipsters will review the wineries we visited that weekend. For a more detailed, eloquent and current account of the harvest happenings, check out Harry’s 2011 Harvest Report at the Chehalem website.

Cheers,

Luke Mathews

Dear Family, Friends and Followers,

This is an update for week four, which almost mirrored week three, as we continued waiting for grapes to come in. Our team is looking forward to the long hours and hard work that harvest brings mostly so we can start to work off some of the padding starting to show around our work-shy midsections. Every bin of fruit that is received at a winery needs to be weighed for auditing purposes later. To do this, many wineries have a pallet-sized scale that is sensitive enough to weigh anything from a ton to a couple of pounds. The weight we are putting on during our wait falls somewhere between those two values.

For now, going out into the vineyards to gather random sample bunches for lab analysis is our best hope for some exercise. The winemakers will choose different divisions known as blocks within the vineyards to be analyzed for Brix, pH and TA. Brix represents the amount of sugar in the juice, while pH & total acidity show the acidity of the wine. Forgive me for not giving a detailed explanation behind the chemistry of the inverse relationship between Brix, pH and TA. When all three are at optimum levels, the grapes can be picked and that is what we are waiting on.

One fascinating aspect of collecting samples from vineyards is observing the genetic mutations that occur in Pinot vines. Pinot Noir, Pinot Gris and Pinot Blanc all share the same DNA and are genetically unstable plants. Genetic mutations will show in the form of random clusters of Pinot Noir showing up on a Pinot Blanc vine or Pinot Gris popping up in a Pinot Noir block, etc.. The most fascinating of theses genetic anomalies is called a Chimera. On a Chimera cluster, one will find two or perhaps all three of the Pinot grapes nestled together. This is bizarre, beautiful and mentally captivating to see. I happen to have two pictures of two different bunches. The first photo is of Pinot Blanc and Pinot Gris grapes clustered together, while the second is a very rare shot of all three Pinot grapes on one cluster!

On Friday of week four, we finished early and headed to Portland where Harry (Chehalem’s owner) took everyone bowling. I now know that he is not only a skilled winemaker, extremely knowledgeable about the Willamette Valley and wine in general, but a bowling shark. I am on the opposite end of bowling talent and bowled poorly, frequently getting asked by teammates if I would like to have the kiddie bumpers raised during my frames. Most importantly, it was great to go out on the town as a whole team and enjoy the company of our harvest family. This truly is a good life.

Cheers,
Luke

Dear Family, Friends and Followers,

There are many aspects of wine that require patience. As consumers, we wait for vintages to be released, or for our bottles to age appropriately before we open them. Wine producers wait for the grapes to begin or finish fermenting, then wait patiently as wine ages in barrels and tanks. Viticulturists and winery crews alike wait for the fruit to ripen. Lots of waiting. This year, the Willamette Valley has had a particularly rough waiting period for grapes to ripen due to lots of rain and cloud cover. This email is being written in the third week of harvest and we are still waiting for grapes with some a fairly long way off from being ready.

This year will be a unique vintage in the Willamette as the valley has not received an ideal amount of sunshine to ripen grapes. Sunshine is required for the grape vine plant’s process of photosynthesis to produce sucrose, the first step in the development of a series of sugar molecules. The sugars make the grapes sweeter. The density of that sugar in a grape is described in levels of Brix – which are currently below optimum levels. Depending on the grape Chehalem is looking to pick, the ideal level is between 22 and 25 Brix. Pinot Noir, for example, has an ideal brix window of 23-25. Mike, our winemaker, says that most people will be happy if not lucky to get pinot at 22-22.5 Brix and some will get fruit below that.

Worry not, though! Between these days of rain, the sun breaks through the clouds and continues to ripen the fruit. And, as long as the temperature remains above 50 degrees, respiration still occurs within grapes, mellowing and refining the acids of the fruit. After all, the wines of the Willamette Valley and specifically Chehalem are known for lower alcohols and balanced acid levels. Those two qualities usually make food friendly, delicate wines that tend to age well. To be fair, this is generally true for cool climate wine regions and is arguably why these wines are so sought after.

So one might wonder what we have been doing while waiting for fruit. The cooking of harvest meals is finished, as is the bottling of the last vintage. Our work days now have a leisurely pace getting the winery cleaned in anticipation of fruit arriving. There is always lots of cleaning to do but as Felix, my German roommate, says, “Winemaking is 49% cleaning dirty stuff, 49% moving heavy stuff and 2% drinking beer.” In New Zealand we had adopted a different set of statistics: Winemaking was 98% cleaning and 2% making wine. I quite like this updated formula mostly because it acknowledges the importance of beer. Yes, life is good.

Cheers,

Luke

As Luke emailed on October 6th, 2011:

Dear Family, Friends and Followers,

Last week was an important milestone in the harvest preparation at Chehalem Wines. For five days the winery staff, vineyard crew and harvest interns gathered around and within a mobile bottling truck to bottle 2010 Pinots and Chardonnays. Bottling is another aspect of winemaking that should make any romantic think twice before jumping into this career. Simply, it is tedium defined. For those that have never seen a bottling truck, it looks just like any other semi-truck trailer from the exterior but contains seemingly space-age technology inside. A droning hum comes from the whirling bits of stainless steel, hydraulics rhythmically moving up then down and all of it moving in a synchronized pattern, often behind what look like hermetically sealed glass panels. This pricey mobile assembly line is solely designed to bottle wine in a sterile and efficient environment.

The steps for bottling are as such: Finished wine is pumped from tanks to the truck where it will be automatically dispensed into bottles. One might imagine that bottling is a seamless and even joyous chain of bottle after bottle and case after case exiting the truck. But there is a human element to every other step in the bottling process which is repetitive proof of the love the goes into making every bottle of wine. Before dispensing the wine, the bottles have to be taken out of cardboard boxes and loaded onto a conveyor belt by a team member. Empty glass travels along the belt into a giant wheel where they will be filled with inert nitrogen gas to prevent oxidation of the wine. Immediately after sparging with nitrogen, the bottles are filled with wine and continue to move with the preset speed of the conveyor. Two women place Stelvin closures onto each of the roughly 90,000 bottles we filled last week which are then mechanically sealed. Once each vessel has a screwcap, it continues along the belt to an automatic labeler that (in theory) will wrap the label, level and plumb, around thousands of bottles in a row. After pirouetting through the labeler freshly adorned, each formerly naked bottle continues on the conveyor belt to the back of the truck to be boxed up. At least one harvest intern leans close to the passing bottles to make sure that each label is level and properly applied, removing those needing to be relabeled. Bottles that pass the test make their way to the back of the truck where two men fill empty wine cases and set them onto yet another conveyor belt which carries them through a taping robot (that’s what I like to call it) which seals the tops of the boxes. Sealed cases are zipped out the back of the truck down a wheeled ramp to be stamped with the bottling date and a matching label of the contents within. Next, a member of the Chehalem Winery team picks up each case and stacks it with its brethren onto pallets a la Tetris.

Regardless of where you are on the bottling line, it is repetitive and tiring. Often there is so much of the same movement that your eyes seem to twitch for a while after leaving the truck. It is not uncommon to dream at night about bottles moving briskly by. Remember in the movie, “Groundhog Day,” how Bill Murray’s character wakes up every morning to his alarm clock playing Sonny and Cher’s, “I’ve Got You Babe,” only to find that February 2nd is happening all over again? Last week was very much like that for everyone at the Chehalem Winery. Please don’t interpret this account of bottling as an entirely dismal time. Whilst bottling there were many shenanigans, much laughter and our team really gelled. When breaking for lunch, we were fed well and at day’s end we would gather around a table to drink beer, talk about wine, our surroundings and our team once again reminding me of what seems to be the theme of this harvest: life is good.

Cheers,
Luke Mathews

As sent via email on September 27th, 2011 by Luke:

Dear Family, Friends and Followers:

One week ago, I arrived at the Chehalem Winery property set in the hills of the Chehalem Mountains AVA just North of Newburg, Oregon. Cautiously I drove my 30 ft. and 30 year old Burning Man RV onto the gravel parking lot and driveway of the winery, where I was immediately greeted by Holden, the bloodhound/great dane mix joyously protecting the site. Right behind him were Wynne, Chehalem’s assistant winemaker, and Felix, a fellow harvest intern from Germany. The three pointed to a good place to park my roving behemoth, HaRVy Dent. After climbing out, I knew that the end of this cross-country journey signaled the beginning of a new one: the 2011 Northern Hemisphere Harvest in the Willamette Valley of Oregon.

We walked up the gravel driveway lined with Italian Plum and Rainier Cherry trees towards the house revealing itself in the golden light of a late summer evening. I was elated to find that the house was an original Craftsman home set within Chehalem’s Corral Creek Vineyard. Immediately inside, Stickley furniture and original Craftsman woodwork fill the living areas. Bookshelves filled with many eras’ novels and books on every imaginable aspect of wine line some walls while others contain wide windows looking out into the vineyard. There is a kitchen prepared for any level of chef and is clearly used by all frequently. Adjacent to the kitchen is a large dining room outfitted with a bar including just about any libation imaginable and enough glassware to support a fairly large party. Wynne showed me the upstairs bedroom that would be mine along with all of the other necessities I might need: laundry, entertainment, etc. My mind was a blur; taking in such generous accommodations and already imagining what would inevitably be many incredible times spent in this house.

That first evening we went to a co-worker’s house, ate pizzas, drank beer, chatted and drank some incredible wines. With an NFL game buzzing in the background, we chatted on full stomachs. My previous thoughts about good times ahead refocused away from the house, to the people I was with. I knew then that this would be a wonderful harvest. That night I fell asleep with my bedroom window open, listening to frogs and bugs singing night songs in the surrounding fruit trees, looking forward to the next few months.

To be fair, the first week was hardly a harvest week, making the transition much easier to handle. Monday was spent at the tasting room just two miles away preparing 450 boxes for an impending wine club shipment. Tuesday, another intern, Cheney, and I moved pallets of wine to a warehouse. Wednesday was spent cooking large pots of Thai red curry, Irish beef stew, pomodoro sauce made with heirloom tomatoes & basil grown on the property, and baked beans for meals during the harvest. Thursday, we hand bottled and corked magnums of Riesling, Pinot Blanc and Pinot Gris. Finally, to wrap up the week, Andy, a fellow intern, and I spent the first half of Friday cooking pulled pork, coleslaw and Carolina BBQ sauce for 25 people in anticipation of a party the winery was throwing at our house that night.

At 2:30PM on the Friday afternoon, all of us were finished with work for the day so we walked up to the house and began drinking beers on the front porch. Romain, yet another intern, and I found a Bocce set and played a game between rows of Pinot Noir while sipping on a 1999 Chehalem Reserve Riesling. The whole time I was throwing the bocce towards the pallino and laughing with Romain, I repeatedly thought one thing: Life is good.

Cheers,
Luke Mathews