I’ve been  a pig at the trough lately.  Well, maybe just figuratively speaking.  Doug and I have been racking and blending the 2008 wines — we will these bottle tomorrow.  This is a photo of the lees coming out of the barrel into a collection trough after the barrel has been racked, or emptied, of clean wine.  This time of year combined with this process of racking, collecting lees, cleaning barrels, and blending wine is a physically demanding time and also makes me kind of philosophical and, I guess, a little sentimental.  I can’t believe I said that, because I am generally not sentimental — I don’t fondly remember past events, or wistfully remember days gone by — I’m usually firmly rooted in the present or looking forward to the future.  My family is sometimes frustrated with me over this because I don’t remember birthdays (not even my own) or anniversaries unless they are written in stone in my calendar, nor do I generally care about their perceived importance.  Cold but true, and it is something I’m working to change.  Even so, wine has a way of dislodging this part of my character, and I don’t mean this happens when I drink it.  Do you know that our noses are immensely more sensitive to aromas than our tongues are to flavors?  In everyday life for me aromas are vastly important, so this time of year is a heady, sensory experience that seems to have the power to unravel me a little.  Smelling wine in the barrel — sumptuous, myriad aromas of young wine in a new oak barrel, blending it in a tank, wafting through the cellar with the steam from washing a barrel — all of these things make me remember what the wine and all of us have been through in the past year.  It is the last opportunity for me to take my impression of this vintage before it gets sealed into bottles, and then it is a time to anticipate yet another harvest.  Forget January 1st; Labor Day is usually when I sing Auld Lang Syne in my own private way with a mix of melancholy and forthright commitment.

So, with that, I’m starting up my blog with renewed focus this year.  It looks like harvest will start a little earlier than usual, and we may bring in our first load of Chardonnay as early as the beginning of next week.   Stay tuned, piggies!