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

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

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

Happy Thanksgiving!! We had a really nice pre-Thanksgiving weekend up on the hill and we're looking forward to seeing many more friends noon to 5 pm Friday through Sunday this coming weekend. We made a few changes in the tasting room to accommodate more people and reorganized our crush pad to provide a place for musicians to play to more guests. Wine tasting this weekend will include our Oregon Wine Press ‘Cellar Select’ 2014 Zenith Vineyard Pinot Noir and 2015 Chardonnay.