newly pruned vines

The goats were let out of their paddock and came to join us;  the geese waddled up to check out the activity;  dogs trotted up and down the rows undoubtedly hoping to find something dead to roll in and, finally, the sheriff (Guido the cat) arrived and sauntered down a row to give his approval of the whole affair.  At first pruning seems like a pretty radical undertaking:  virtually all of the previous year’s growth is severed and removed from the vine and trellis;  the only thing that remains is the main trunk and one or two canes jutting from the head of the vine.  But how one chooses the proper canes  is not always obvious and will set the tone for each vine’s contribution to the quality of next year’s wine.  For example the canes should ideally come off of opposite sides of the vine so that the vascular system is balanced when it comes to supplying nutrients to the emerging buds.  Internodes (the distance between buds) on each cane need to be the proper distance so that the new shoots are neither too cramped nor too far apart.  And the decision on what constitutes the perfect cane needs to be arrived at after only a brief moment of conjecture.  There are approximately 1500 vines per acre and 6 acres of vines at Clos Electrique.  That’s 9000 vines that have to be properly groomed by the end of February at which point each cane gets carefully wrapped and tied to the fruiting wire of the trellis.  In the course of pruning, one enters a personal space of introspection and when it tacks toward seeking the truth, well, one has arrived at the Zen of pruning.

Honk if you love Cameron!

The chickens in the 3 mobile coops are on sabbatical from their egg laying duties. However, they continue to move up and down the vineyard rows spreading nitrogenous joy while they search for young greens and grubs. Meanwhile, sheriff Guido the cat protects the vines from voles and gophers. His is the work that never ends, much to Guido’s personal pleasure. We sadly report the loss of Guido’s long time feline partner in crime, Fiona (1998-2011). Finally, let us not forget the comedy team, Fois and Gras. Honk if you love Cameron!

Bill Wayne of Abbey Ridge delivering Pinot bianco

Due to continuing fermentations in the cellar for the next several weeks, carbon dioxide levels in the winery are dangerously high. Therefore
WE WILL NOT BE OPEN TO THE PUBLIC ON THANKSGIVING WEEKEND.

Our wines will be available for tasting Thanksgiving weekend at the Ponzi Wine Bar in Dundee.

Filling a fermenter with Clos Electrique

And now as we hit the end of the month we are seeing gorgeous Pinot noir filling our fermenters, Pinot noir with firm acidity and moderate sugars (hooray for 12.5% alcohols) and, wonder of wonders, ripe full flavors. Meanwhile the white grapes continue to sit in the vineyards slowly losing acid and gaining flavors (the working descriptor here is slowly!). But still the long-term forecasts are holding in there and our first picking of Clos Electrique Blanc yielded pommace from the press that smelled of cloves, a very good sign!!

Nanogoat enjoying Pinot noir

Goats and grapes are normally not considered compatible organisms since the former loves to dine on the latter.  In fact, in my experience goats prefer grape leaves to almost any other foliar experience.  So when Teri decided to introduce goats to the Cameron mileu I was somewhat skeptical.  And it was not until one of the goats, Vanna White, became pregnant that I began to see the positive possibilities of having goats at the vineyard.  You see once a goat gives birth, as befits its mammalian lineage, it starts to produce milk.  From the milk we derive cheese and in the course of producing curds from whence the cheese is made, a large quantity of whey results.  Whey is a nutrient-rich liquid considered to be of only nominal value, but when diluted to approximately 10% with water it becomes a potent mildew-cide.  During the past summer when conditions were extremely beneficial if you were a mildew spore,  Teri would milk Vanna White, separate the curds from the whey and give me the whey for my mildew-cide experiment.  I sprayed the whey solution on the young grape clusters shortly after bloom, leaving a couple of rows untreated as my “controls”.  At this point in the growing season, the results are unmistakable:  the goats are saving my ass from the ravages of mildew.  A few leaves for the goats, their whey sprayed on the grape clusters and a happy union is formed.

Dave drops crop

Last year (2010) nature combined with global climate change and brought us the latest vintage ever recorded in Oregon. The saving grace of the vintage in some respects was that the weather also sullied the flowering in the spring so that there wasn’t much to try and ripen. This year nature has again combined with global climate change and the predicted vintage will be even later than last year. But this time there is also a bountiful crop hanging out there. Since the ultimate object of this enterprise is to properly ripen the fruit before picking it, dropping many of those beautiful grape clusters on the ground now is necessary in order to have a chance at ripening what is left. After spending the winter pruning the vines, the spring coaxing the young vines along thinning shoots, suckering and spraying to prevent mildew, the summer pulling leaves, hedging, weed-eating underneath the vines and spraying to prevent mildew, it is a bit disheartening to be faced with dropping on the ground the fruit of our labor. But there it is.

One must keep one’s eye on the prize: massive profits and winter homes in the Caribbean… whoops, that must have been pasted in here from my Wall Street rant. One must keep one’s eyes on the prize: aromas of  dark bing cherries merging into cloves and cardamon with a silky texture flowing across the tongue. Honestly that’s what this is about: if it’s not in the fruit to begin with, it can’t be created in the cellar no matter how much is invested in expensive new barrels and fancy technology (see the Wall Street quote above!). If you look closely on the vineyard floor, you will notice a Trail of Tears closely following Clusters’ Last Stand.

What you will NOT get on this web site is an ability to purchase wines directly from the winery because we are intent on devoting our time and talents to growing grapes and making wine and leaving the selling part to far more able people in the world of retail. Therefore, you will quickly note that when you click on buying wine, you will be connected to a list of links for retail outlets that carry our wine. If you are a retail outlet in an out-of-state market that carries our wine and you do not find a link to you on this web site, please alert us to that fact and we will put you on!

The new Web site is primarily intended to be informational (and entertaining…in fact sometimes more entertaining than actually informational!). You will note that we are maintaining vineyard and cellar photo galleries and blogs regarding everything that goes on at Cameron Winery (this will include reports on the goats, chickens, geese…Fois and Gras, our honey bees, Guido…the winery policeman, and the human component, as well as the more mundane aspects of growing grapes and making and aging pinot noir, chardonnay, and more!).

There might be occasional videos along with the changing photo gallery and I guarantee that there will be new things to learn whenever you check on this site. Your comments are always welcome, even if they are not appreciated!

I therefore greet with considerable dismay the continuing cutbacks in a “meat axe” fashion that the so-called pro-business party has levied against the federal government. Prior to their most recent attacks on the government, it would take approximately 2 weeks to get a label approved via the on-line process that has been developed and occasionally it might take only a week. With reduced staff, it now takes at least 6-8 weeks to receive an approval. This is a huge imposition for a small business with product which needs to be sold in order to meet payroll and other concerns.

For a small winery such as Cameron, decisions regarding possible blends are often made at the last minute since individual barrels often age quite differently. For example, in the course of recent blending for our 2009 single-vineyard Pinot noirs (Arley’s Leap, Abbey Ridge and Clos Electrique) we found that the best wine from each of these groups came from only a portion of the barrels. So we decided to blend the remaining wine into a super-blend of Dundee Hills which we will call “Reserve” since it was aged for nearly 2 years. At the point of deciding on this blend for a new wine, we immediately created a new label and submitted it for approval.

And now we wait….and wait …..and wait while the Republican Party slashes funding and threatens to shut down the Federal Government as if this is just some big game. And I’m sure that for the politicians in Washington and the multi-national corporations who own them, this is a big game. But for small businesses such as ours this is a very serious game with dire consequences affecting our ability to survive and employ people.

The next time that you cavalierly declare that “government is the enemy” and must be eliminated perhaps you can try putting that weighty mass between your ears to work and perhaps consider all of the things that “government” does for you. You might consider just for starters the roads that you drive on, the airports that you fly in and out of, the weather service that gives you forecasts, the National Institutes of Health that funds medical research, the National Forest Service that maintains our forests for commerce and recreation, and the Treasury Department that tries to make sense of wine labels so that you, the consumer, can actually receive trustworthy and useful information on the bottles of wine that you purchase.