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

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

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