Moving to Minnesota... the Street, Silly, Not the State

Finally, finally moving the Tasting Lounge to 126 NW Minnesota Ave between Wall and Bond, Downtown Bend, right next to Clutch, across from Toomies. Very exciting, we are psyched. But, the next few weeks we will be in a state of flux, with weird hours, two locations, and Scott and I schlepping lots of things across Downtown.

So, I am formally asking for everyone to be patient with us during this time. We are just two people and are trying to get this move done as seamlessly as possible. We have to move all the stuff, plus our OLCC licenses need to be switched and we are getting everything squared away with the Department of Agriculture so we can have a small menu of food (and it will be simple, French bistro deliciousness, and we will always strive to have a few vegetarian items available). Tentative open hours are as follows:

Sundays, Mondays and Tuesday will be ‘by appointment only’ until our “Grand Opening.”

Saturday, September 19: noon to close at the Brooks Street space. This day is my and Scott’s 10th wedding anniversary, so if it is slow, we reserve the right to close up early, although not before 6 or so. I think we’ve earned it, right?

Wednesday and Thursday, September 23 and 24: 2 to 8 at the Brooks Street spaceFriday and Saturday, September 25 and 26: in the new Minnesota Ave space. It is Oktoberfest, so stop by and check the new place out. We will most likely NOT have food yet, except our beloved oyster crackers. Yummy!

Wednesday and Thursday, September 30 and October 1: 2 to 8 at the Brooks Street space

Friday and Saturday, October 2 and 3: in the Minnesota Ave space. Oct 2 is Art Hop – we are hoping to have music, but our two go-to music artists are out of town that weekend – if you know anyone interested in playing, let us know. October 3 is the first day of Fall Fest Downtown – pop on by and check us out – again, probably no hot food yet.

We should be in the Minnesota space from this point on, although we will be closed the weekend (from Thursday on) of October 15. The next week, we’ll do our official opening so stay tuned for more info on that.

Thanks to you all for your interest and support!

Faith, Hope & Charity Vineyard to host FAN event this month

I know, I know! I haven't posted anything in months - I gotta tell you, this summer thing with no school has been quite an adjustment. Woohoo for this Tuesday!!!

We'll be announding the location of our move very soon - stay tuned.. In the meantime, here's a press release from the folks at Faith Hope & Charity Vineyard in Terrbonne - should be a great event, and if you haven't been up to their location, it is worth the trip.

Sunday, October 4th at 3:00 pm
Faith, Hope, and Charity Vineyard
70455 NW Lower Bridge Way
Terrebonne, Oregon

Redmond, OR - September - Every day in Deschutes county, over 650 children are homeless, 1 in 7 go to bed hungry, and more than 6500 children don’t have access to adequate healthcare. Too many parents are faced with deciding: Heat? Or eat?

To help ensure all children in Deschutes County have access to basic-need services, the Heat? Or Eat? Benefit will be held on Sunday, October 4th at 3:00 pm at the Faith, Hope, and Charity Vineyard in Terrebonne.

This fun, family event will feature several booths highlighting Terrebonne’s growing Agritourism industry. Educational displays will showcase the Crescent Moon Alpaca Ranch with alpacas to pet and learn about, Deep Canyon Preserve with information on Pheasant and Chucker hunts, Rainshadow Organics vegetable farm, Maragas Winery and local vineyards.

There will also be a silent auction, horse-drawn wagon rides, wine tasting, art, and music provided by Erin Cole Baker and Casey Elliott. Beverages & hors d'oeuvres will be provided. Entry to the event is $10 and children under 12 are free.

All of the funds raised from this benefit will be used to support Family Access Network. FAN is a local non-profit organization that is committed to building a healthy community by alleviating the suffering of children in need. Through FAN advocates in each public school, children and families are connected to essential services including food, shelter, healthcare, clothing, job opportunities, child support, and more

Old White Guys

After millions of years waiting on tables I slowly weaned myself from restaurants by teaching hotel/restaurant management at a little college in San Francisco, and supplemented that meager income working in the teeniest wine shop on the planet. It was, literally, under the stairs at the St. Francis Hotel. We specialized in older vintage Napa and Sonoma wines. The majority of the reds were 1985 and 1986 Cabernet Sauvignons for under $20 a bottle – and this was in the early to mid 1990s. I kid you not. The whites, unfortunately, were mostly from 1985 and 1986 as well.

Have you ever had a (domestic) chardonnay older than, say, five years or so? They turn an amazing, glowing shade of rich gold and lose their fruit to become… undrinkable, in my opinion. My boss used to sniff at me and say that appreciating these older chards was an “acquired taste.” Methinks he just wanted to unload this old stuff on some poor suckers from out of town. Frankly I hope I never do acquire a taste for that stuff since it tasted like aspirin.

This was back in the when California chardonnays were expected to be buttery malo-lactic fermentation oak bombs. These days the pendulum has swung away from that (and thank goodness – YUCK!) to a cleaner, crisper style (neutral oak or stainless steel) that can handle more bottle time – and allow us to taste the fruit. You’ve heard me lecture on oak before – if you can taste the oak, you can’t taste the fruit, and that means there won’t be much left once the wine matures.

Oak is one of the many factors that influence the ability for a wine to age well, along with acid, alcohol level, tannins (present in reds as a result of fermentation contact with skins and stems) and the presence of residual sugar, to name but a few. Fundamentally, the wine has to be balanced and well structured in order to flourish with bottle aging. Much of this depends on the natural characteristics of the grape varietal.

Viognier, for example, is a robust white wine grape with a natural acidity and full, complex fruit flavors that make it a good candidate for aging. For the southern Oregon and northern California viogniers I have tried, vintages 2005 and 2006 are getting to their peak just now. We planted Viognier at Crater View Ranch Vineyard in Jacksonville in 2006 and brought in our first harvest this past fall 2008. After fermentation, we put it in neutral oak barrels where they now wait. We will bottle, most likely, at the end of summer and then… wait some more. Wait for the blow-you-away fruit to mellow, for the flavors to integrate. Patience is required. But even then, I am only talkin’ 4-5 years, not 10 or 20. I have yet to find a US white that can survive that long.

Does that mean the 2008 Pinot Gris showing up in the stores are inferior? Of course not – many white varietals peak in their youth, thanks to being naturally fruit forward. Sitting on a deck overlooking the ocean, do I care that my sauvignon blanc with the hint of residual sugar will be over the hill next winter? Uh, no, I don’t.

Compared to red wines, some of which hit their peak 20 plus years after harvest, it seems as though quibbling over a year or two with whites is absurd (and frankly, quibbling over something like wine is indeed silly). But given the shorter life span of whites, that year can make a big difference.

Originally published at: http://bendnights.com/blog/old-white-guys/

Another View from Brooks Street, Part 2

Wow. Had I known that people actually read this blog I would have been a little bit more careful about what I wrote!

Seriously, I guess I do need to clarify a thing or two about our tasting room. Yes, we are closing the Brooks Street tasting room space, but it will be open until someone else takes over that space. Also, once it is closed, and before we get the winery open, we will do stuff on the lawn of Balay on the weekends and on Farmers’ Market Wednesdays. Balay is just across Brooks Street from us, they have a great backyard that overlooks the river.

And once the winery space is open, we are planning on doing tastings out of there, and hopefully we can get a place with the proper zoning for us to do special events on site as well. We would have done this whether the economy was great or in the tank.

Thanks for all the encouragement and support!

Another View From Brooks Street

Three years ago, Scott and I opened the tasting room for our winery, Volcano Vineyards, on Brooks Street in Downtown Bend. Since that time we’ve done what we could to improve and increase awareness of that still-secret little back alley. And to this day, we still get the brow crinkle, even from longtime Bend residents. “Brooks Street? Where is that??” Shortly after we opened, we became active in the Downtown Bend Business Association: Scott is now on the Board and is chair of the beautification committee, which brought the planters and flower baskets to Brooks Street, and I have done work on the marketing committee and assisted the DBBA staff with some municipal issues. We worked on the Brooks Street coalition to get the seasonal banners, and are working with the city and delivery companies to help renew the ‘pedestrian walkway’ feel Brooks Street was originally intended to have, rather than the back alley for Wall Street it has become. But last week we added another little feature that has become all too common to Brooks Street lately: the “For Lease” sign.

Yes, that sounds very dramatic, but for us, it will be a good thing.

We are working on opening a winery facility here in Bend for the production of our Magmita Sangria and our second label, Magna Wines. Because of permitting and licensing issues, we can’t have the tasting room open – the OLCC allows three locations under our winery license: we have our main winery facility in southern Oregon as one, our house is another (from where we ship) and the third is now the tasting room, but that will be transferred to the new winery space. And even securing that has taken longer than we thought it would – we are regulated from the feds down to the city. The hoops are many.

So we, too, are altering our business, not giving up.It is a good time for us to close our storefront retail outlet. Our overall sales are up this year, thanks to our expansion to new markets. Scott and I are the business – and now is the time for us to focus on growing. The kicker for us is that our best customers walk into the tasting room with their Google maps and still say “Wow, you are really hard to find” – it makes more sense to be hard to find in a larger production space than being hard to find paying downtown rent. Closing date? Not sure yet – it will depend on getting a new tenant in the space. I feel totally overwhelmed with work right now, so I hope that happens soon.

Stay tuned. The process of opening the winery will be long but we’ll try to make it as exciting as possible!

originally published at: http://bendnights.com/blog/category/from-the-vine/

Festival Festivities

Many many many years ago I went to a fundraiser for the Arthritis Foundation in San Francisco. There were 60-something Napa and Sonoma wineries in attendance plus a killer silent auction – a dream afternoon, right? The food options, however, were limited – lots of fruit (and yuck-o, fruit with wine? no thanks) and stinky cheese. There is only so much stinky cheese you can consume at one time, so I admit I probably did not have enough food in my system when I hit the wine gauntlet. Was I tasting and spitting? Oh no, drinking it all down, baby! At one point I jumped behind a table to give a bathroom break to a small winery owner whose chardonnay I loved – no malolactic fermentation, not over oaked – it was yummy. So he offered me a free bottle if I would cover his table for him and like any good drunk girl, I sold the heck out of his wine. I started chatting up this cute guy, Lance, and found out very quickly that he had gone to high school with my new boyfriend, Scott (and funnily enough the conversation ended pretty quickly after that bit of information was disclosed… I wonder why?). Shortly thereafter my buds Bradly and Jim decided I had had enough and they led me to Jim’s car, smartly putting me in the front seat, as halfway to my apartment, in the middle of the Castro, Jim had to pull over so I could yack. Really lovely. I was in my late 20s, throwing up in the daylight on 17th Street from drinking too much. Bradly and Jim dumped me off at my apartment and I called Scott and made him come over to take care of me (no, not that way, I mean in the holding my head over the toilet way – ah, new love!). I was hung over for a week. And that, my friends, is how NOT to enjoy a wine tasting event.


The Newport Seafood & Wine Festival was two weekends ago and it has a somewhat deserved reputation for being a crazy booze fest. And on that Saturday it was true: folks in costumes dry humping, cougars asking for Volcano tattoos on their chests, one woman slung back a taste of our wine like a shot of whiskey – it was a spectacle indeed. But Sunday and Friday, the folks more concerned with actually tasting the wine were in attendance and many of them had specific tactics for getting the most out of this great collection of wineries.


1. Eat something before and during the event. Take it from me, this is VERY IMPORTANT.

2. Spit out the tastes. (Yeah, right) No, seriously, it is very difficult to keep track of how much you have consumed when you are having a little taste here and a little taste there. Those little tastes add up very quickly.

3. Take the time to do a little research before the event: Find out what wineries will be in attendance and select 5 or so as your priority. Don’t just visit places you are familiar with. This is a perfect chance to try something new.

4. Start by tasting whites first, then go around and try the reds.

5. If there is a competition associated with the festival, focus on the gold and silver medal winning wines. While it may not be a big time, world renown competition, it will pre-screen the

6. Take notes! Even if it is something as simple as “Wow, that Vineyard Manager from Quail Run is cute!” You’ll be trying lots of wine and meeting many people whilst consuming alcohol – if you want to remember any of it, write it down – or better yet, use that camera on your cell phone to take photos of the bottles you particularly enjoyed.

7. If the festival doesn’t have a Wine Will Call, complain to the organizers. We wineries have been chirping at some of these event folks for years to provide this – it allows you, the customer, to buy your wine at a booth, then pick all the wines your buy throughout the day up at one spot close to the exit. You don’t have to lug around bottles of wine. Basic customer service, wouldn’t you say?

Festival season is underway, Sip in McMinnville is this weekend, and we, Volcano Vineyards, are one of only five Oregon wineries invited to pour at Pebble Beach Food & Wine the weekend of April 16. The next weekend is the Astoria fest. Here in Bend we have the Promenade du Vin/Wine by the River event every fall. The mountains are bringing themselves to you, Mohammed. Take advantage!

Syrah: Sexy and Seductive? Or Sybil?

Last year I had a self proclaimed wine snob in our Volcano Vineyards Tasting Lounge who snorted when I told him our 2004 Syrah was a “cool climate” Syrah. He dismissed me as “spinning” the marketing on our wine. He was obviously an idiot, as that wine won a double gold medal at the Wine Press Northwest Platinum Judging. His idea of Syrah was the big, fat, flabby high alcohol fruit-bomb wine typically coming out of Walla Walla, parts of California and Australia (where they call is Shiraz – yes, same grape). So, not only was he a blow-hard who really wasn’t quite the wine connoisseur he fancied himself to be, but his palate has yet to evolve enough to appreciate elegant, refined Syrahs.

Settle down, I am only kidding - he is perfectly fine preferring one style of Syrah over another, but I do wish he would realize that it is a stylistic preference (and often dictated by climate – I don’t think we could ever do a high-alcohol Syrah from Lakeside Vineyard – it just doesn’t get that hot there).

I realize that it is very hip these days to be in love with syrah from Walla Walla. Especially here in Bend, it seems to have a cult-like following. And with good reason. I have complete admiration for the Walla Walla wineries, in fact, I am downright jealous of what they have been able to do over the last ten years: a cohesive, united marketing effort coupled with self policing has elevated the region to world class status. Mark Retz from Zerba Cellars will tell you that they absolutely have a marketplace advantage with Walla Walla on their label.

Scott made our Volcano Vineyards 2006 Fortmiller Syrah in a “Walla Walla” style – very fruity, higher alcohol than we usually have, longer aging in oak. That is what people expect when they order a Walla Walla syrah: a big, bold, fruity explosion of luscious, almost inky wine. It’s a style that has its place: for example, when you are sitting in front of the fire having wine for dinner. If you are planning, however, to have wine WITH dinner, a more subtle syrah – and yes, it is sometimes referred to as a “cool-climate” Syrah - would probably be your best choice.

I hereby confess to being uncool. I prefer my Syrahs refined, elegant, well balanced and generally lower in alcohol. A personal choice, a matter of taste, a stylistic preference.

The big, bold, high alcohol wines are perfect to have on their own since once you’ve tasted them, it is difficult to taste anything else – your palate is blown. When in a restaurant, I find that if I am spending more than $10 on food, I would really like to be able to taste what I am eating.

So the big bold fruit bomb wines knock your socks off on first sip, then… kablam! Your mouth goes nearly numb. And these fruit bombs can be any varietal from any region – it is a winemaker choice to let the fruit hang until the sugars (which convert to alcohol during fermentation) hit high numbers. From a business perspective, it makes perfect sense. After all, the fruit bombs are the big sellers these days, the consumers seem to prefer them. The glossy wine mags, despite their editorial musings on the flaws of high alcohol wines, consistently award them scores in the 90s.

There are higher alcohol wines out there that retain some acidity and have decent structure – and keeping that acidic backbone is the key. I recently had a Pinot Noir with a 16% alcohol – very unusual for a Pinot Noir - and it was lovely, a perfect complement to duck. But frankly, if I am going to polish off a bottle of wine, I’d rather not be hung over the next day. (And no, for anyone getting his judgmental hackles in a twist, I do not consume a bottle of wine a night on a regular basis. By myself, that is. Scott and I do usually split a bottle a night, but after all, we are professionals. Sheesh.)

For me, wine is food, and its purpose is to be part of a memorable meal. When made in a well-balanced, well-structured style, Syrah is one of the most food friendly of the red wines, paring with the traditional “red” foods, like steak, mushrooms and game, but it also perfectly complements salty and bitter foods, such as olive tapenade, roasted vegetables, and lighter fare accented with lemons or capers. It is a great option for vegetarian fare.

So save that big crazy fruit bomb wine for an afternoon when you aren’t going anywhere and aren’t having dinner for a few hours. You’ll find it pairs perfectly with mid afternoons and soul searching conversations.

Originally published on: http://bendnights.com/blog/category/from-the-vine/