Harvest has begun and fruit is arriving at the winery. Pinot Noir from the Rogue Valley was first and now we’re receiving fruit from the upper Willamette Valley and the Dundee Hills. As fall began, temperatures cooled down and that’s a good thing: The fruit will continue to ripen slowly, developing strong flavors while maintaining a tight acidity.

It’s cooler in our own vineyard in the Van Duzer Corridor. There’s an opening in the coastal mountain range that the cool ocean breezes flow through and thick fog has been rolling in and out in the mornings that burns off by 9:00 in the morning to reveal clear blue skies. The geese have begun to arrive from their winter sojourn in the North, and the flocks of grape-devouring starlings have only recently noticed our bumper crop. We’ve been busy getting our bird protection up and running, placing noise cannons and speakers that play loops of birds crying out distress calls around the vineyard that we have to move on a daily basis.

Because last year there was so little fruit, because the weather during the flowering and fruit set was so perfect this year, and because rain fell at just the right times during the growing season, there’s a lot of fruit this year. In fact, the vines would more than anything like to grow too much fruit, and all over Oregon it’s taken a lot of work to balance the crop load by thinning the number of bunches. For those farmers who didn’t thin their crop, the birds will be arriving too late to do the work they ought to have done. It’s now that vine is producing the complex flavors and aromas that flavor and perfume your wine. With too much fruit on the vine, the resulting wine will be less delicious than what we’re going to produce.

Rain is in the forecast for this coming Tuesday or Wednesday, but there’s only a chance of showers. A few showers aren’t much to worry about, but we’re still a long few weeks away from finishing harvest. We’ve had a near perfect growing season in 2009, and I’m pretty confident that 2009 will go down in the history books as a vintage year in Oregon: a year of abundance and quality.

Our sorting line got a little action yesterday with the arrival of our first delivery of fruit from the Willamette Valley. We received several bins of Pinot Noir from Meyer Vineyard which is located right here in Dundee. It’s official: Harvest 2009 has begun!

Matt’s dumping the fruit into the hopper. 

Gustavo thinks he’s Vanna White here.

More Pinot Noir.

 First sorting table.

 Punching down stems to make more room in the bin.

 Anna, Sarah and James doing the final sort to catch any remaining stems, leaves, green grapes, etc.

 Stacks of bins.

Beautiful Oregon Pinot Noir.