Joe the Winemaker – The Official Blog of Oregon Winemaker Joe Dobbes

“The LIVE certification is centered around three core principals — asking whether practices are good for the environment, good for business and good for the community. If a winery can’t meet or exceed these goals, they won’t be certified.” – Statesman Journal

Hello Everyone,

My name is Tom Dodson and I’m Joe’s Production Manger. I just wanted to bring everyone up to date on what’s keeping us busy other than making great wines for our customers. We’re going GREEN! Our facility has just been certified LIVE (Low Input Viticulture and Enology). This is certification that proves that our practices in the field and in the wine-making process are in line with sustainability efforts.

Over the last year the team and I have been preparing our facility for a LIVE certification audit. This refers to the practice of limiting the amount of raw materials (inputs such as pesticides, fertilizer, water, chemicals, fuel, etc.) used in vineyard and winery production. It starts with preparation and then an inspection. If all the standards are met you become certified by LIVE. Sounds easy right; not so fast, LIVE will continue to work with and drive wineries and vineyards to continually reduce the impact our industry has on the environment. Reduction, reduction, reduction. A noble prize: superior wines produced in a sustainable continuously improving industry.

What does this mean to you the consumer? This will ensure you that the wines purchased from Joe are produced using a world class winemaking process (yes, Joe’s Midas touch) but also in a certified facility that is focusing on waste reduction, environmental safety and energy conservation. In addition, let’s not forget that Joe’s facility is also a custom winemaking site. If your fruit source or vineyards are LIVE certified having your wines made here will meet the OWB criteria.

We are ecstatic to be participating in such a forward thinking program. I will be updating everyone on our progress. Please feel free to write me with questions or comment: tom@winebyjoe.com

Thanks and talk to you soon,

Tom

BEFORE

So, picture this: You’re driving down 99W and you’re looking for tasting rooms. You see a couple blue signs that read, “Wine By Joe” and “Dobbes Family Estate Winery”. And you think, “Wine By Joe, that’s pretty catchy,” and “Dobbes Family Estate, I’ll bet they have some great Pinots.” You decide to stop. Once you figure out where the tasting rooms are located. You look right, see an elementary school and assume, much to many of the teaching staffs’ dismay, that there is not wine being served there. Look left and see two very large metal production buildings and wonder what kind of canned goods are produced inside. So, you keep driving and wonder where in the world you can taste those wines, but don’t know at that point, you’ve already passed your opportunity because you missed the turn a mile ago. And that canned good production facility was really a wine production facility with a great little tasting room tucked behind it.

Well, I am happy to report that passing the Wine By Joe and Dobbes Family Estate tasting room will soon be ancient history and here’s why- reclaimed wood. Yes, that’s right, the outside of our not-so-pretty metal building is getting covered in barn wood from a local barn as well as the flooring from an old tobacco plant in Kentucky.  Check out the progress so far.

AFTER

Just want to remind everyone who hasn’t made plans for Valentine’s Day yet to stop by the Dobbes tasting room for aphrodisiac and wine pairing. We’re holding the event both Saturday, February 13th and Sunday, February 14th. You can expect delicious gourmet goodies like espresso brownies, baklava and lemon squares with a  raspberry drizzle to be paired with our sumptuous wines.  All of the desserts contain several aphrodisiac ingredients so you’ll be sure to leave with a smile on your face!  The event will be held during normal business hours- 11 am to 6 pm. RSVP with Charles: charles@winebyjoe.com or call 503-538-1141.

We continue to prune all day, and have finished more than sixty percent since the start of the year. Pruning is a dialogue with both the past and the future. By cutting away and reforming each vine, we’re working with those who did the work before. By thinking of the work to be done in the future, we’re making decisions to facilitatethe work of growing future vintage’s wines.

Ours is a vineyard not grafted to American rootstalks, which makes for both challenges and opportunities. One of the most amazing things about working with ungrafted grapevines is the ability to propagate a new vine by “layering” a new vine in. That is, we select and grow a long cane during the previous year, and once pruned, we bury it in a way that it’s still connected to the mother vine and growing towards and up into a new vine position. The cane will begin to self-root in a matter of days. Within a year, we’ll have established the production of two vines where once we had just one. In another year, we’ll cut the new vine away from the mother vine, thus making two distinct vines.

February 14 isn’t just St. Valentine’s day, but is also another wine Saint’s day, that of St. Trifon the Pruner, patron saint of wine growers. Celebrated mostly in Bulgaria, at the end of the day the women join the men who’ve been pruning all day to feast and dance. So next Sunday, there are two saints who would very much like you to drink some pinot and celebrate wine and love.

Look who is featured on the “Powered By Orange” website this month! We are so proud of our new mama and amazing VP Gretchen Boock.

“When you think about Gretchen Boock’s background, it’s unsurprising she chose a career in the wine industry. She grew up in Mt. Angel, Oregon, a beautiful, hilly town known for its proximity to some of the most fertile agricultural lands in the state. She spent her summers helping her family tend to their strawberry and broccoli fields, and spent the rest of her free time outside.”   Read More…

We held our first Vino & Vinyasa event on January 16th and are so excited about how well it went. Everyone had such a great experience that we are still getting positive feedback on it and have decided that it will now become a regular event here at the winery! Blogger Renae Walter posted a great write-up on the event, portland-and-one-of-the-best-winery-experiences-ever-thank-you-dobbes-winery. Check it out and then email: nicci@winebyjoe.com to reserve your spot at the next one on February 27th!

We picked the last of the grapes at the end of October, and since then, the vineyard has been resting. In dormancy, the vines have lost all their leaves and are waiting for the Spring to grow again. In the meantime, we are hard at work in the wind and the rain, pruning away last year’s growth and shaping the vines.

Pruning is the singlemost important task of the vineyard year, setting the stage for the following year’s work. A good pruning job will produce a balanced crop to ripeness, it will make all the viticultural work like leaf removal easier, and it will decrease the disease pressure. A bad pruning job at its best can ruin the next year’s crop, and at its worst it can kill a grapevine.

Pruning is essentially surgery, and by cutting into the wood, we are exposing the grapevine to possible infection, most notably from Eutypa lata. In order to prevent infection, we’re coating every pruning wound with an organic paste that relies on elemental Boron to prevent fungal contamination.

This Saturday marks the Saint’s Day celebration of St. Urban of Langres, the Catholic patron saint of vineyard workers. Fleeing from his persecutors in 390, he was concealed for a while by men pruning grapevines in the rain. There are several old German sayings that claim that if there’s sunshine on St. Urban’s Day, there will be either big harvests of delicious wines. While he lived, he was the deacon of Dijon, where many of our Pinot Noir clones come from. Adopted as the patron Saint of the winemakers in Burgundy, it’s a good excuse to drink just a little bit more Pinot this weekend and hope for the sun.

Hey everyone! Just a quick introduction, I’m Mary Bellando and I’m the Northwest Sales Manager for Dobbes Family Estate and Wine By Joe. I asked to be a guest blogger to let you all know about this amazing vintner dinner we are putting together with this tiny little restaurant called Ruth’s Chris Steak House, maybe you’ve heard of it? I went to Ruth’s Chris restaurant in Portland a couple weeks ago to put together the menu with the food and wine pairing for the Dobbes Family Estate wine dinner on Jan. 13th . It was awesome! I was with two of my sales reps from Young’s Columbia. We tasted each course they (Ruth’s Chris) want to serve at the dinner.

We started with an appetizer of BBQ shrimp in a zesty creamy BBQ sauce served with their yummy garlic bread. We chose the 2007 Dobbes Family Estate Pinot Gris to pair with that dish. Next was a fabulous harvest salad with mixed greens, dried cherries, toasted pecans and a little goat cheese, we decided on the 2008 Dobbes Viognier for that dish.

The entrée was their signature filet toped with a crab cake and drizzled with a béarnaise! We couldn’t decide on which red we wanted to use for that course because the Pinot Noir and Syrah were both excellent with the dish, so we decided to use both! That filet course will be served with Dobbes 2005 Cuvee Pinot Noir and the 2005 Grand Assemblage Syrah. We thought it would be a good food and wine pairing education to taste two different varietals with the same dish. The last course was Ruth’s Chris famous Crème Brule we of course paired that dish with the Dobbes 2007 Late Harvest Viognier.

I am really looking forward to this dinner on January 13 at Ruth’s Chris. There are only 30 seats available it should sell out quickly!

Mary

While the harvest all around Oregon is winding down, the grapes on our estate vineyard continue to develop. Located in the cooler climate of the Van Duzer corridor, our grapes are ripening more slowly than others and the cool nights and warm afternoons have meant that a natural, bright acidity is maintained while the complex flavors of Pinot Noir slowly develop. I’ve spent a lot of time during the last few months visiting vineyards with Joe, and I’m pretty sure our grapes are going to be some of the tastiest in Oregon.

One of the things that Joe has noticed is that the grapes in our vineyard seem to have the thickest skins of any other vineyard we’ve visited this year. This is a good thing, not just because you can make fun of them and they won’t mind, but also because by the time this update has been published, the rain will have begun to fall. Were our grapes not in as good of condition, much of which is attributable to the thicker skins, we’d have been forced to pick earlier than we’d have liked, worried that the rain might bring Botrytis, a fungal disease of the vine associated with wet weather.

If you could have woken up before dawn to meet me in the vineyard for the sunrise this past week, you’d have been cold but you would have seen from atop the hill that thick fog covered everything until the sun rose. As the fog flowed down the valley and away, the bright sun of cloudless days lit up rainbows in the fog. With the sun, the rainbows, and the grapes becoming more delicious by the minute, now is a good time to be a vineyard guy.

But it’s been a lot of long days without rest to get to this point. The bird pressure is increasing, and the struggle against the flocks of starlings has begun in earnest. Until the grapes are harvested, they are our foes and as I tear after them on the ATV, I sometimes wonder if they are laughing at me as they lift into the sky and fly away.

Although we haven’t yet harvested our bumper crop, we’re already planning our strategies for future vintages. We prepared the soil for seeding our winter’s cover crop, and have engineered a special blend of grasses, grains and legumes for biomass, nutrients and plant diversity. I’ll mow and disk these crops into the soil, where they’ll compost into richer soil.

I’ve been demarcating the soils that are thinner or have higher clay content by taking advantage of the more pronounced fall colors in the canopies of stressed vines. We’ll prune the vines in those areas back a bit more this winter, and in the spring I’ll cultivate the soil. In a year, I’ll seed those areas with a cover crop, and over a course of years, the vineyard will gracefully balance itself, providing more consistent ripening.

Pinot Noir is the most genetically complex of all grapevines, and the one most likely to mutate into new forms of grape. Pinot Gris is a lighter-colored variety, and Pinot Blanc its mutant. We have a few vines of Pinot Gris that spontaneously mutated into a new form of white grape. So far, I’ve found three vines in our 200 acres. I flagged and marked them so that when they’re pruned, I’ll make sure to save their cuttings, which I’ll preserve and propagate them in the spring. Smaller in size than and differing in taste from the Pinot Blanc we have planted, it’s going to be a very interesting thing to see over the next few years how these grow and what sort of wine results. My guess is that because the change occurred in our own vineyard, it will be a vine that’s suited to the terroir of our site and perhaps bet expresses its unique nature.

That’s all for now. I’ve got starlings to go beat up. Wish me luck.

Michelle, one of our wonderful tasting room employees, chose the organization to receive funds from the Dobbes Charitable Giving Program during the winter quarter. Brain tumors have affected two of her family members which motivated her to select the National Brain Tumor Society as the beneficiary of the donation. Please take a minute and read her story below.

When I was asked to choose the charity for the next quarter I instantly knew the Oregon chapter of the National Brain Tumor Society would be my choice. This charity hits home to me personally because my aunt and cousin have both dealt with and are still dealing with brain tumors.

My aunt, Eileen Risser, was diagnosed in August 2006 with an extremely large brain tumor. The good news was that it was benign, the bad news was that even though benign, without surgery it would eventually take her life. She endured two surgeries four months apart and Gamma Knife radiosurgery three months later to remove the tumor entwined in and around her pituitary gland and carotid artery. I am very happy to report that her surgery and radiation removed the majority of the tumor and she is living an active and busy life with her husband and 21 year old son. Although the majority of the tumor is gone, her health will continue to be monitored and she will continue to go in every 12 months for an MRI to make sure the tumor remains dormant.

My cousin, Brittany Bolliger, was diagnosed with a brain tumor at the age of 6, though her doctors believe it probably was there since her birth (she was born 3 months premature, weighing 1 lb-15oz., and had many surgeries during her first three months of life spent in the hospital). When her tumor was first diagnosed, her doctors were able to implant a shunt to relieve the fluid on her brain but her tumor was determined to be inoperable. It was an extremely sad and worrisome time for our family because the initial diagnosis and prognosis was not good. However, subsequently, her doctors determined that with the shunt in place, and no further complications, she would be able to live a normal life. Since then she has had MRIs at least every 6 months to check the tumor. We had another scare recently when the tumor had grown slightly, but a subsequent MRI and the doctor’s evaluation calmed our fears. Brittany continues to do well and is now an active 10 year old.

“This year, more than 190,000 Americans will be diagnosed with a brain tumor.” The National Brain Tumor Society (NBTS) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to finding a cure and creating programs and services for those affected by brain tumors, their families and caregivers. It also provides educational programs on topics ranging from new patient orientation to the latest clinical trials. This last September 2009 marked the 4th annual NBTS Portland, Oregon 5k run/walk to help raise money for the NBTS. On September 12th more than 800 people (including my aunt’s team To More Success!) participated in this event held at Willamette Park. I encourage anyone who is interested in this annual event or would like more information to check out the NBTS website at www.braintumor.org.

I am very proud and appreciative that Dobbes Family Estate will be donating 10% of all sales from the 2007 Skipper’s Cuvée Pinot Noir from October 2009 through December 2009 to the National Brain Tumor Society.