Harvest journal: a cool October

Harvest started two weeks later than our average, and ended two days before the first real rain of the season — which, in the Willamette Valley, is the difference between a good vintage and a great one.

We picked block by block at dawn, starting October 1 with the early-ripening Gris on the valley floor and finishing with the old Chardonnay block on the hilltop. The frost scare came on the 9th: 34°F at 4 a.m., which is the kind of number that keeps a winemaker awake even when the frost fans are humming.

The Pinot arrived small-berried and deeply coloured, with acids that the lab called "generous." Our cellar crew crushed by hand in open-top fermenters, punched down twice a day, and slept like the dead between shifts.

What it tastes like yet, nobody knows — that's the rule. But the signs are good: the fermentations are slow, the colour is deep, and the barrels that have been filled so far are the quietest, happiest barrels we've heard in years.

The 2026 vintage will be released in late 2027. Allocation members hear about it first.