Weather  
Today

Another lousy day in paradise!

Upper 70s high, mid 40s low.

No rain through next Wednesday. Can you hand me that suntan lotion?

Harvest to-date:
Total: 193 tons
(83% of forecast)

Pinot noir: 123 tons
(98% of forecast)
Pinot gris: 28 tons
(58% of forecast)
Chardonnay: 40 tons
(89% of forecast)
Riesling: 2.4 tons
(35% of forecast)

Luis washing bins (2/3 of winemaking seems to be washing things!)

Struggling With Quantity

	Stoller in the Fog
	Offloading Pinot noir grapes

Long days. This is peak Harvest, bringing in Tuesday 35 tons, including the last Dijon chardonnay block from Stoller and gorgeous Ridgecrest Pinot noir from the Babies block.

We have all tanks except portable 4 ton plastics full, so we're waiting to turn tanks. The weather gives us the opportunity to not compromise by pulling tanks before full richness is achieved or holding fruit in the cold room. Instead, without danger of overripeness, we are letting key blocks hang a few days longer. For example, Ridgecrest 5 Acre block and Pinot gris will likely stay until the weekend or early next week. A luxury. Croploads are slightly higher than we expected, despite dropping lots of crop and despite them being impeccably ripe, thus making the luxury especially sweet. A quality year, a quantity year.

• During heavy harvest work it is great to welcome friends who choose to spend a week's vacation seeing what Harvest is like. It seems like masochism, but it is easy to get caught up in the adrenaline rush--even though it turns into dead-tired droop by 9PM: A perennial good friend and source of good humor and skillful sorting is John Matzinger, father of Anna Matzinger, winemaker at Archery Summit. A retired civil engineer from Bellingham, ladies always note the resemblance to Sean Connery.

• 	John Poston, finding out how it is made

  Another technical, builder sort helping out this year is a good customer of ours from Kansas City who had to find out how it is made, enjoying the romance and the hard work, John Poston. John has spent time in the NW and Oregon leading an architectural team that just completed the remodel to the U of Oregon's Autzen Stadium and has worked on other sports stadia such as Seattle Seahawks' new stadium.
• Also, continuing in the building theme, Ryan Goodwin is a 17 year-old in his senior year at OES putting in-place the building blocks for a rich life (I stretched on the "building" theme, didn't I?) by spending a week in a program called Discovery, where students experience in-depth what it's like in the workday world, hopefully in a field that permits relation to coursework and career decisions.

Everyone comments on how much washing goes on, fitting in with the general winemaking equation that to make one gallon of wine it takes 100 gallons of water (and one gallon of beer). Welcome, all. Where are you, Mark Rosenstein?

Regards,

Harry