No truer words

Below is a poem that was referenced at Vince's funeral by his brother. I found it very touching and also very personal, as one of the reasons I decided to take a risk and follow my dreams is because I didn't want to regret not doing it. I wanted my dash to be more fufilling.....
For your reading pleasure...

The Dash

I read of a man who stood to speak at the funeral of a friend. He referred to the dates on her tombstone from the beginning...to the end. He noted that first came the date of her birth and spoke of the following date with tears, but he said what mattered most of all was the dash between those years. For that dash represents all the time that she spent alive on earth...and now only those who loved her know what that little line is worth. For it matters not, how much we own; the cars....the house...the cash. What matters is how we live and love and how we spend our dash. So think about this long and hard...are there things you'd like to change? For you never know how much time is left that can still be rearranged. If we could just slow down enough to consider what's true and real, and always try to understand the way other people feel. And be less quick to anger, and show appreciation more and love the people in our lives like we've never loved before. If we treat each other with respect, and more often wear a smile...remembering that this special dash might only last a little while. So, when your eulogy is being read with your life's actions to rehash...would you be proud of the things they say about how you spend your dash?

Sad news

So it's been a pretty sad week. On wednesday, my cousin Tara's husband Vince passed away unexpectedly. He was the same age as me. I've posted a picture of me and Vince dancing at Silk City this past winter. We had a great time that night, and not that long ago were joking about it over facebook.

I also posted a picture of tara and vince at the Nationals game. In May, tara and vince took me and bryan to the game...she got free tickets through her company and we enjoyed every minute of it!

The viewing is sunday and the funeral monday. I'm heading to baltimore tommorrow and won't be back in oregon til tuesday. One of vince's co-workers gave me a free flight using her frequent flier miles. It is really amazing how generous people are.

Vince was a fun loving guy, who loved my cousin and never minded any of our shenanigans, in fact he usually joined in. I just had a flashback of one of the first times I met vince and we were driving to a bar (we had been drinking beer beforehand) and how he had to stop for all the girls to take a bathroom break and didn't mind at all, even though the stop was in a not so perfect location. We'll all miss him and our crazy fun times together.

Please keep tara and the rest of the family in your prayers.

Sorry!

I just wanted to give a shout out to all my fans and say that I am sorry for not writing soon. Being busy is no excuse, I know :)
Well, lots has been going on at the winery, although I have mostly been doing the same types of testing. Lots of grapes coming in and lots of ferments going on.
If you would like more detailed harvest info you can check out the domaine serene blog. The interns, winemaker, and other staff have been posting detailed info. But don't forget about my site and leaving me exciting comments!!!
http://domainesereneharvest.blogspot.com
It's been a world wind of a time since I last wrote. I had the great pleasure to go back to philly for 24 hours last saturday for our good friends Micah and Stacie's wedding. Congrats guys!!!! We had a fabulous time at the wedding. It was at their house in the front yard. They live in a log cabin with a creek running next to the house and the property is surrounded by trees. It was a beautiful setting in fall. I'll post a couple of photos when I get some from Randy, the photographer!

A fun weekend at work and my future plans....

Well, the weekend is over but I wouldn't know because I spent all of it at work. We are still hard at work getting all the fruit in by next weekend. Over the past two weeks I've worked 134 hours! Now I know what it feels like to be bryan and can appreciate his schedule more, although I don't know why anyone would want to work these hours all the time. Rest is needed at some point :) Not much going on otherwise, as we are all too exhausted when we come home to do anything. Yesterday I got to do my first punchdown to the fermenting grapes, as I was adding nutrients to feed the yeast. It might sound silly, but just seeing the grapes in the fermentors, smelling them, tasting the juice, is exciting.

As for how long I will be in Oregon, our harvest party isn't until November 23rd, and the weekend following thanksgiving is a big weekend out here. All the wineries that don't have tasting rooms are open. So, the plan is now to stay through the beginning of December and then head down to California with my Aussie roommate. We thought it would be fitting to check out the wineries in Napa and Santa Barbara. Then it is off to meet Bryan in Vegas baby!

So, I will be back in the real world of working in January. If anyone knows of any recruiters in philly let me know. I am hoping to get a job using my MBA (wine related would be the best of course but not alot of options) and work in the city (I've kind of gotten used to being able to walk to work). I actuallly saw a cool wine marketing research job at E.J. Gallo in Harrisburg, but that would be a 2 hour commute. Anyway, anything to start off with will be good as I know the economy is in the dumper.

Sensory analysis

So one day this past week....life is a blur now, can't even remember what day it is, but maybe this was tuesday....our winemaker brought in someone to teach a course on sensory analysis. I've never had a course quite like this. We smelled and tasted various levels of alcohol, tannin, citric and other acids, sulfur, sugar...and caffeine and alum to mimic the effects of a bitter and astrigent substance on the tongue. In addition, the coolest thing in my opinion that we did was we got to smell through wine faults.....oxidation, ethyl acetate, VA, Acetaldehyde, Polymercapton, Di-methyl, Brettanomyces, TCA (what they call "corked"), and phenolics. I definately need some more practice on the id, but it was a good start!

Got out at a reasonable time and was able to head up to portland to hang out with tommy. I knew the weekend was a no go, so was happy to have one last night to hang out.
We went to Alexis', a greek restaurant. It was so yummy, but I must admit that I found some of the above faults in the greek wine we had......
Went for some cocktails at the saucebox and then had to go home to sleep to prepare for another long day at work.....

Finally a visitor :)

So yes, i am backtracking but I couldn't not post about my friend Tommy's visit. Tommy is the only one who has actually made it out here to visit and I very much appreciated seeing someone from home. He came down Saturday and our first stop was my winery. I gave him the personal tour, along with a taste of some of our wines. Since there are so many great wineries in the area I decided to take Tommy to some wineries I had yet to explore. We went to Adelsheim, Penner Ash, Willakenzie, and tried but was too late to make it into Elk Cove. All were good, but particularly liked Adelsheim and the architecture of Penner Ash, not to mention a few of their Pinots!

After tasting we took Tommy into McMinnville for my second dinner at La Rambla. We ended up the night at our favorite local dive bar Kin's where we had loads of fun singing karaokee. I stunned them with Elvira, the locals were even dancing :) Tommy has a good pic, I'll try to get it and post it.

Sunday I had to work, tommy slept off his jet lag and for dinner we went back to McMinnville (not many places to go around here....) and tried the Japanese restaurant. It was awesome! Afterwards we treated ourselves to ice cream...luckily noone was in the shop, so we got to taste test most of the flavors!

15 1/2 hours.....

Well, I have been putting in 12ish hour days since last week, but today we got our first large arrival of fruit. Since they are predicting rain in about a week or so, we need to bring in all our fruit in the next week, which means we'll be bringing in 70 plus tons a day. In the past the max they have done is 50 tons, so this could get interesting....

I'm still testing the vineyard grape samples to see if they are ready to be picked, but basically the schedule is set.

Since our Syrah is done cold soaking we have begun innoculations with different strains of yeast. So, now I also get to test for the levels of primary Amino Nitrogen and Ammonia so that the winemaker can determine the nutrition and how to proceed with the yeast innoculations.

I've never worked this long of hours before, but was still able to have a smile on my face most of the day. Although at the end of the night I was getting pretty tired and so ready to be done scrubbing the tartrates off the chute....but I did have a lot of fun with the power hose and now my sneakers are soaked and drying over our heating vents.

Since I didn't write about last weekend, and my friend Tommy's visit....I am going to backtrack with the next posts....it's 12:30 am and need to be in at 7am, but who needs sleep???

Harvest is here!

Harvest is here. Finally!!! Worked my first long day....11 hours.

I was so excited when I saw the grapes! As you can see from the photo I got to work the sorting line. Had to look for anything green...like leaves, raisins, bird damaged fruit, and insects! Our first batch of syrah was minimal, so once the pinot comes in they will hire temps to do the sorting. It was fun though to have an opportunity to be on the sorting line. The rest of the day I performed alot of testing for our other fruit that hasn't come in yet, as well as the syrah after it was in the fermentor tanks. As for the fruit we brought in, it will now be cold soaking in the fermentor tanks for the next week!