Bluebird Hill Cellars

In our last blog, back in September, we talked about getting ready for harvest. The beautiful summer weather continued into mid-September, and then Mother Nature threw us a pretty nasty, big-breaking curveball. Mostly in the second half of the month, we received over five inches of rain compared to the typical, monthly average of 1.3 inches for the month of September in the southern half of the Willamette Valley. What this meant to grape growers and winemakers, was all of

It’s been said that you cannot cut wood effectively if all you do is cut wood, there needs to be some time sitting back and sharpening your saw. This came to mind a few weeks ago, as we began to get ready for the ‘Super Bowl’ of winemaking, the harvest of our crop and the primary fermentations that will begin the production of our 2019 wines. In its simplest form, it’s Neil joking with our Bluebird Hill Cellars' assistants, Clay Williams and Alexis Doyle, that the cleaning

Certainly not the yuletide holiday season, but the winery season in the Willamette Valley unofficially kicks off for the summer over the Memorial Day Weekend. Sometimes we get in such a frenzy to get ready for our own opening, we need to keep a special remembrance for what Memorial Day is about – the honoring of our veterans who served our country. We remember especially, Neil’s dad Frank, who served in WWII on the USN Yorktown (CV10) and Sue’s dad Bill, who served in the i

Vineyard Update: We skipped our April blog, and it’s apparently clear if you look at the picture posted with our March blog post versus now: there’s a dramatic transition from the snowy vineyard picture from the beginning of March to where we are today in the vineyard, with shoots of 6” (or more) in both the North and South blocks. Break was a bit uneven, but we’re calling bud break April 21, about the same as it was last year. This led to a late September harvest, you m

Well.... not exactly ‘frightful’, as the song goes, but after getting home a week ago yesterday from the Newport Seafood and Wine Festival, we woke up the next morning to 9-10 inches of snow at our place, simply beautiful, although the roads in Monroe were treacherous until afternoon! We have had some big snows before, but not for a few years, so it has been something a little out of the ordinary for us here. It was enough snow that the vehicles outside were cleaned with a

With the official start of winter at hand, we’re realizing that it’s been too long since we posted about the goings on here at Bluebird Hill, so here we are, reporting in... Fermentation: As we mentioned in the harvest update, we processed 15 tons of fruit this fall – almost exactly half from our vineyard, and half from our various vineyard partners, Zenith, Walnut Ridge, Sunrise, and Aurora. Give or take a little bit here and there, from the 2018 harvest, we have 18 barrel

After months and months of waiting, the harvest exploded into action at Bluebird Hill on September 22 as a crew of eager pickers set out in the cool of the early morning and picked more than a ton of Pinot noir from the North Block for our 2018 BBHC Rosé. We picked some of each of our five different Pinot noir clones: Pommard, Wädenswil, 777, 667, and 115. (For those of you interested to learn more about clones, here is perhaps a good start from Dr. Rusty Gaffney, at his ‘P

We feel like we say this with nearly every blog post, but just cannot believe it is already two months since our last post. We are on track for that late September harvest that flowering predicted, as we mentioned at the end of June... Vineyard Report: We are just about 100% past veraison now, the changing of those small and hard green berries into purple berries that begin to accumulate their sugar and wonderful flavors, while reducing their acidity. We track the sugar co

Vineyard: After bud break seven weeks ago, we’ve had a pretty moderate season thus far, not too hot and not too cold! Granted, all of July and August are still to come, so we may wind up with a killer hot summer, but not as of yet... Almost all of the vines are up to the top wire already, and topping or hedging is looking imminent. We are caught up on our spray program, mostly organic sulfur thus far, to prevent against powdery mildew on the leaves and stems, but now we

Saturday, April 21 appeared to be our official bud break day at Bluebird Hill Vineyard. After weeks of variable weather: cool/warm/cool/warm/cool/cool, etc., buds all around the vineyard opened up to show the first evidence of 2018 foliage. At this point now (early May), we are just about through shoot thinning in the vineyard, the process of ensuring a reasonable array of nice, straight vertical shoots, upon which this year’s fruit will be set and mature. In the past few

We’ve been trying to deliver our blog posts on a monthly basis, but things have gotten set aside over the winter and now, here in mid-March, we have SO much to relay to you all..... Catching up in roughly chronological order, the tasting room remained open through the end of December. We’re happy to relay to all our guests and customers, that we followed up a successful opening year in 2016, with a great 2017. We opened in May of 2016 with 214 cases in stock, in May of 2017

Of course, our title this month is a shameless takeoff on The Bard of Avon’s masterpiece. But, the intent is more pure – here we are, nearly to the middle of winter, and want to keep everyone up to date on what is going on. Neil always maintains that February is one of his favorite months of the year, because you notice the short days of winter giving way to the longer daytimes of spring, but even now, four weeks post winter solstice, at the end of January, we are starting

We have just experienced a rare stretch of about two weeks of great weather here at Bluebird Hill: lots of sunny days, and with that clear weather, it’s been a tad cooler than usual. With our hilltop location, we normally enjoy mostly frost-free nights during the winter, as the cool air tends to settle away from us on cool, still evenings. Despite this friendly microclimate, we’ve seen mostly frosty mornings the past two weeks. Regardless, the temps have been bearable an

Thank you, Thank you, Thank you! In the tasting room at Bluebird Hill Cellars, after the close of business on Sunday, November 26, we sat down and enjoyed a glass of wine and the barbecue we had been serving to our friends and guests during the day. It was a great feeling to look back at the two Thanksgiving weekends, pre- and post-, and reflect on the guests we hosted during what most Oregon wineries consider their busiest two weekends of the year in their tasting rooms. W

For the past two and half weeks since our last post, just eighteen days, we’ve been fermenting fruit from our own vineyard, and our vineyard partners: Zenith, Walnut Ridge, and Aurora Colony. Bluebird Hill fruit from our warm site came in first, followed by Zenith Pinot noir, Walnut Ridge Pinot gris and Pinot noir, and then Chardonnay from Aurora. Viognier is the straggler and should come in next week. As of yesterday, all of the Pinot noir has gone through the primary fer

Upcoming Events October 4th 5:30 to 7:30 pm Women & Wine Wednesday Join us for an evening of Wine, Fun & Fashion on the Hill LuLaRoe Fashion with Rosey Gording and Jewelry by Jan - Inspired by nature, Jan's designs are bold, organic and tribal, with an earthy flair. We will be serving light bites to pair with your favorite Bluebird Hill wines. Tasting fee $10 Wine for sale by the bottle & glass October 7th & 8th noon to 5 pm Wine Club Pick up Weekend Wine Club members can

Once again, we’re sitting down to catch our breaths and send out this update!! When people have asked us ‘how are you doing?’ this summer, we’re answering ‘great, but busy – just like everyone else!!’ Bluebird Hill Cellars is having a good summer of business! Our wine sales are up from last summer, which is great, considering we opened in 2017 with twice the amount of bottled wine compared to 2016. Everything is selling well, the whites, the pinots, and our dessert wines,

As I write this, it is a beautiful, sunny, pleasant day, we are now seeing many of these in a row. Sometimes, it winds up being hot near the end of the day but, at the top of the hill, we really don't see a lot of heat buildup until the middle of the afternoon. The drip system for the vines planted in the spring is doing great. All the young vines are looking wonderful and many of them tied to the trellis wires. We can now look around the entire vineyard and report that we

The last of winter and most of spring have gone by in a whirlwind. It does give us a great deal of satisfaction, however, when friends or regular visitors will stop by and say ‘Wow – I can’t believe how much has happened since last time I was here!!”. Working our way backward, this is what has been happening out in the vineyard: 1. Our new tractor and air-blast sprayer has been out and working in the vineyard. Our first few sprays have been mainly sulfur, to ensure that powd

Our vines have been sleeping during the cool and rainy winter, and the barrel room has been pretty quiet, too! But other things have been hopping, behind the scenes, to get our new releases ready for the spring and to get the vineyard ready for bud break. The weather this winter has been interesting – and a bit different! We’ve had above-average precipitation since fall of 2016, which has continued steadily throughout the winter. Over the winter, we’ve seen flooding of som