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

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

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

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,

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

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.

The summer has wound down, all of our 2016 wines have been put to bed for their winter slumber and we are now looking forward to two great weekends of wine tasting at the winery! Since opening over the Memorial Day Weekend in May, we’ve had the pleasure of hosting an incredible group of visitors, traveling from both nearby and distant locales to meet us and taste our wines. We’re extremely grateful for the turnout at the winery during our tasting room hours this summer. It

I’m sitting here with a wonderful glass of Rosé in the late afternoon of what has been a spectacular weather day. When people talk about Indian summer, this is it: temps in the high 70s, full sun, beautiful blue sky, and just a little bit of a soft breeze now and then. A great time to collect our thoughts on the 2016 harvest; we’ve processed almost six tons of fruit so far (Pinot noir and Pinot gris), and are expecting to bring in another three to four tons of white wine gr

W e’re in the midst of the most exciting, most frantic time of the year, we are at HARVEST!! The Bluebird Hill Estate fruit is in, we picked our first Pinot gris grapes ever early last week, and a half-ton of Pinot noir at the end of last week. Fruit has been looking really good, with no evidence of any fungal pressure and thankfully, no visits from flocks of birds or other fruit stealers!! Fruit is coming in this week and next from our vineyard partners and everyone is re

I’m not sure if the grapes hanging on the vine call this the ‘dog days of summer’, because I can almost hear some of those clusters talking to me, saying ‘Mmmm Mmmm Good’ in response to this stretch of sunny, warm weather we are in the middle of! We’ve had a whole string of days with high temperatures in the mid-90s, and nice cooling overnight, we typically wind up with early morning temperatures in the high 50’s, so the grapes are nice and cool every morning in anticipation

Sunday July 10: I’m sitting here in the wine tasting room contemplating rare summer weather: rain and clouds! More typical of March than July, we had a weather front travel through overnight and perhaps we had the good part of an inch of rain. Maybe good for the grapevines, but we’ll have to keep an eye out for mildew-related problems that can be associated with wet weather. So far, everything looks great out in the vineyard, and hard to believe how great our young vines

We’re gearing up for the sunny summer weather and have two events we want you to consider yourself invited to! Sunday June 26th will be a special after-hours event to mingle with friends of the winery and our winemaker, Bobby Moy. The event will be held from 5:00 – 8:00 pm and will feature a catered hors d’oeuvres buffet and six pours of your choice of Bluebird Hill Cellars wine to pair with the food. Menu details can be found here. Talk wine with Bobby, Sue, and Neil and

With a sigh of relief and a feeling of gratitude, we can sit back, breathe deep and relax for a moment to reflect on our opening, held Memorial Day Weekend, May 27-30. Each day, we welcomed a lot of great people, some old friends and some new friends as well. We’re grateful for our sister wineries in Monroe, Sweet Earth and Tebri Vineyards, for suggesting to some of their guests to take the drive up into Alpine to come visit us. Bluebird Hill, Sweet Earth, Tebri, and Broad