This is the July Climate Update and Photo Journal, Vintage 2026, from Amalie Robert Estate. A FLOG Communication. Approximate reading time 0.39 ARB’s (Adult Recreational Beverages); Pictures only 0.19 ARB’s.

You’ve got Pinot Noir! There they are, bedangling themselves on the vine. They are not ready for prime time yet, but we are seeing a few blushing berries out there, affectionately known as Pinot Noir In Flagrante!

Harvest appears to be bearing down on us a bit earlier this year. We will see if we actually get to use all of the 105 days from flowering to harvest. Too early to tell. And there is mildew in the valley. Not something you wish for, like agricultural equipment failures, but you get what you get.

The good news is that we know it’s there and are taking remedial measures to remove it. And we harvest by hand, not machine. So, if a cluster eludes our pre-screening and thinning process, we can just pitch it out if it makes it to the harvest bin.


In This Communication:
The Art of the Repair
Gain of Function in the Agrarian Endeavor
Fire Watch
The Numbers
Planning a Trip to the Willamette Valley? Now is the Time
Other Resources

The Art of the Repair

July was somewhat of a blur. We did win the battle with the trellis catch wires. They are all up and clipped into place. Ernie was on it, right behind the crew with the hedger. The first hedging pass went along just fine. The machine had its hydraulic cylinders all rebuilt a couple years back, and we are proud to report no leaking hydraulic hoses. Then came the second ill-fated hedge pass. The failure this year occurred in a very unlikely spot.

It looked worse than it was, especially from inside the tractor. One entire right side of the hedger, with 4 rotating blades, disassociated itself from the upper frame. The mounting bracket was still in place on the frame, but the stud had sheared clean off. The bank of 4 rotating blades was none the wiser and kept spinning suspended in mid-air by the hydraulic hoses.

Ernie managed to shut it all down and get to the shop without any additional damage to the vines, tractor or himself. Beer thirty was about to come early this day. Upon inspection, the failed mounting bracket was easy to remove, and the owners guide (in French) actually listed the part number. Odd, that the part number was the same for both the left and right side, but so be it.

Thanks to this new fangled thing called the internet, Ernie was able to engage the agricultural supply chain on a Sunday! Websites that allow you to leave detailed parts requests are relatively new to the agrarian endeavor. Some of them actually do work and get read by humans then occasionally you will receive a reply.

Come Monday, Ernie had made the calls and sourced the part he needed. On Tuesday he discovered that while the French used the same part number for left and right, the parts themselves were indeed different. So it was a false start. There was a 3 day penalty to get the correct part, with the same French part number. No surprise they lost the world cup…

Gain of Function in the Agrarian Endeavor
The term “gain of function” has been in the news, and congressional hearings, this month. Those hearings have provided a renewed vigor in “taking the fifth”, and by that we don’t mean bourbon. But that may come, eventually.

In practical terms, what exactly does this term gain of function mean? We think it means that whatever function you begin with, you are looking to gain more of it from the research. Seems pretty straight forward.

In the COVID days, the function was identified as probable mortality. And the research was focused on increasing the gain, or probability of mortality, from the virus. This is some pretty dark research to be funding. You never see a mouse building a mouse trap…

Back in the street racing days, horsepower was the function. Adding an old school blower, turbocharger or not quite perfected nitrous oxide system would certainly result in a gain of function, until you exceeded the mechanical limits of the underlying platform. Then the engines just blow up and their internals become externals. More interesting to see after the sun sets during the evening dragstrip runs.

In the agrarian endeavor, we are looking for gain of function in the annual Yellow Jacket Harvest. While we would like to see a 50 to 75% gain of function in trapping, or otherwise eradicating them, we would settle for a 10-20% gain, or anything we could get, really.

What to do? Well, one thing we did is to start the harvest a little bit earlier this year. They weren’t quite ready, but we started about a week early anyway. We must say that the early trapping showed great success, or gain of function, as this subset of yellow jackets were unfamiliar with the traps. They were susceptible to our efforts and easily led astray.

Next is the attractant, or bait that we use. When attracting a mate, it is often pheromones that allow opposites to attract, and they are effective in the agrarian endeavor as well. Maybe not as effective as a promiscuous glance from across the wine bar and a nice pair of shoes, but they do work.

There are three types of attractants that can be used effectively. The first is fruit. This attractant is most effective during The Great Cluster Pluck while filling the harvest bins. There is a very strong appeal associated with a tote bin full of 750 pounds of freshly harvested Pinot Noir. However, if you wait to attract yellow jackets at the harvest bin, this is a systemic failure. You want them gone before the first cluster is plucked.

The next attractant to consider is protein. We have found the greatest gain of function when using salmon scraps from our local fish monger. Steelhead works just fine too, but it depends on the culinary discrimination of your target species. Either way, a yellow jacket trap full of salmon scraps hanging on a south facing, metal end post is a sure thing. When the sun warms up the salmon scraps, it sends out the signal and they come in hot!

And finally, there is the embodiment of “better living through modern chemistry”. This is the synthetic attractant developed after someone got stung just one too many times. It also most closely parallels, at least in motivation, the COVID research. What do we have that we can modify to improve the gain of function in affecting the target species?

Men and, perhaps to a greater extent, women, have been after this same type of gain of function for attracting their mates for quite some time. From new hairstyles and sunglasses to flashy clothes, fast cars and jewels, it’s all been tried. But if you haven’t seen it before, then you are susceptible to their gain of function efforts. At least you can see it coming. Is the juice worth the squeeze?

Of course, the most effective way to locate a yellow jacket nest is to set out a picnic blanket and settle in for a nice afternoon rendezvous. Just about the time you open the wine, the first scouts will have arrived. If you pack it in now, there will be short term disappointment, but no harm. If you choose to stay, there will be some unpleasantness and lasting consequences to your actions.


Fire Watch
Yes, they are out there. The French are getting their turn in the barrel. Bordeaux wines may be a little different this year. But we have our own fires raging in Eastern Oregon and Idaho. Here is what Eastern Oregon’s Air Quality looked like at the end of July.

The jet stream should keep the smoke moving east, away from the Pinot Noir, but that was not the case in 2020. Eastern Oregon fires created smoke that filled the Willamette Valley and put an end to that ill-fated vintage.

While we were warm on the West Coast with pleasant evening temperatures, the rest of the United States was experiencing something other.

The Numbers
We seem to be riding the rails to another warm Willamette Valley vintage. If August stays moderate and dry, we are still looking at a warmer than average vintage. Not that there is anything wrong with that. While we would like some rain before harvest, we are not so keen on stimulating any more mildew or, heaven forbid, botrytis.

We recorded 615 Degree Days during the month of July. The high temperature was 110.3 degrees Fahrenheit recorded on July 21st at 5:48 pm. The low temperature was 45.5 degrees recorded on July 2nd at 5:36 am. This brings the 2026 vintage to date total to 1,719 Degre Days.

We also logged 0.13 inches of rain on July 23rd, increasing the growing season total to 5.07 inches.

Planning a Trip to the Willamette Valley? Now is the Time

Planning to enjoy traveling and exploring the Willamette Valley this summer? We have prepared a handy little guide to the Willamette Valley AVA’s.

Get your FREE guide to the Willamette Valley AVA’s here!

Fully featured and loaded with information you can actually use! Which AVA is the biggest? When was the Willamette Valley AVA established? What are the soil types? Who grows what wine? Where the heck is Mount Pisgah and why should I care?

There are two primary gateways to the Willamette Valley. Most people are familiar with Portland International airport (PDX) at the top of the Willamette Valley. However, there is a second gateway in Eugene (EUG) at the south end of the Willamette Valley. Both of these airports are serviced by the major carriers. And wine flies free on Alaska Airlines, just sayin’.

Amalie Robert Estate is open year round by appointment for vineyard tours and tastings. Request a tasting appointment with your preferred day and time.

If you are enjoying summer elsewhere, the Big Blue Button can help bring a bit of the Willamette Valley to you.

Wine Shipping for 2026: All 12-bottle case orders (mix and match encouraged) receive up to a $40 shipping credit. 6-11 bottle orders receive up to a $15 shipping credit. All shipping options are available to you. You can apply your credit to ground shipping, or next day air. The credit also applies to Alaska and Hawaii shipments. We suggest a UPS or FedEx drop point to a climate controlled facility to allow you to pick up your wine at your leisure.

And it’s better on the A-List! A-List members receive a 10% discount on any 1-11 bottle purchase and a 20% discount on a 12-bottle case purchase. Please email Dena to hook you up!

Kindest Regards,

Dena & Ernie


Other Resources
Visit our Website
Visit the FLOG Archive
Take the Amalie Robert Tour
Shop Amalie Robert Direct
Download your FREE Willamette Valley sub-AVA Guide
Alaska Airlines Wines Fly Free

As many of you may be aware, northwest North America is burning. Some people are certainly more impacted than others. However, the extensive loss from this devastating event will be felt by a very many for a very long time.

Some things can be replaced or rebuilt and made familiar with memories. The loss of a loved one, family member or close friend creates a burden of nothingness that carries the weight of the world.

It is our hope that people in positions to effect change are doing so with godspeed. The strategies they employ to end this devastation will be carried out by a limited few. They are the ones who run to the danger, not from it.

What We Know, and Don’t Know
As winegrowers, we are not directly involved in the fires. They have not come into the Willamette Valley (yet), however the smoke is here in Dallas, where we are located. It is the beginning of August and our Pinot Noir is beginning to turn color. As the fruit begins to ripen, it will certainly become more susceptible to smoke taint.

It remains to be seen if this event, or more like it yet to come, will impact wine quality. We don’t know, but we know how to know thanks to Vintage 2020. Perhaps the knowledge we gained from that ill-fated vintage can be helpful.

Here is what we do know regarding a phenomenon that can be directly responsible for extending the range of these fires. This phenomenon is called a Pyrocumulonimbus (pyroCb) cloud—often called the “fire-breathing dragon of clouds” by NASA.

This cloud formation can be the reason these fires will continue to rage and expand in size. PyroCb clouds can create their own lightning, (often miles ahead of the main fire), thus self-perpetuating and expanding their range. Here are the mechanics of how these clouds form and the resulting effects they can cause. Source: https://www.bom.gov.au/

Pyrocumulonimbus (pyroCb) Cloud
A pyroCb cloud is an extreme, fire-generated thunderstorm that forms over intense heat sources like massive wildfires, volcanic eruptions, or detonations. Instead of being driven by typical atmospheric moisture, these towering systems are powered by the superheated air, ash, and smoke produced by the disaster below. They allow an intense fire to essentially create its own weather, establishing a dangerous feedback loop that accelerates the disaster.

Here is how this phenomenon develops. The development of a pyroCb relies on an unstable atmosphere combined with an incredibly intense surface heat source.

The Thermal Chimney: A massive wildfire generates intense, superheated plumes of air and smoke that rise rapidly into the atmosphere like a giant chimney, sucking in oxygen at ground level to further feed the fire.

Moisture Condensation: As this smoke column climbs miles into the cooler, lower-pressure atmosphere, the air expands and cools. Water vapor (both from the atmosphere and released by burning vegetation) condenses around the rising particles of ash, forming a gray or brown “pyrocumulus” cloud.

The Thunderhead Transition: If the atmosphere is highly unstable—typically with scorching, dry air near the ground and cold, moist conditions aloft—the updraft continues climbing up to 6 to 9 miles (10–15 km) high, even punching into the stratosphere. Above the freezing level, the water droplets turn into ice crystals. Their violent collisions separate electrical charges, officially turning the fire cloud into an electrified, fully operational thunderstorm.

And here is what they can do. Pyrocumulonimbus clouds are highly dangerous and create unpredictable, catastrophic conditions for ground crews.

Dry Lightning: While these clouds act like normal thunderstorms, the lower atmosphere beneath them remains intensely hot and dry. Any rain generated often evaporates before hitting the ground (a phenomenon known as virga). However, the lightning strikes still hit the parched ground, triggering entirely new “spot fires” miles ahead of the main fire front.

Erratic, Violent Winds: The intense updraft pulls air rapidly toward the core of the fire, while falling cold air generates sudden, violent downbursts (downdrafts) that strike the surface. This drives the flames in entirely unpredictable, shifting directions.

Fire Tornadoes: In extreme scenarios, the interaction between the massive convective column and ambient wind shear can spin up devastating, flame-filled vortices, known as fire tornadoes.

Stratospheric Pollution: Because pyroCbs function like a volcanic eruption, they shoot massive amounts of smoke, ash, and black carbon directly into the stratosphere. This particulate matter can remain trapped in the upper atmosphere for months, traveling thousands of miles and impacting global climate patterns.

Kindest Regards,

Dena & Ernie

Other Resources
Visit our Website
Visit the FLOG Archive
Take the Amalie Robert Tour
Shop Amalie Robert Direct
Download your FREE Willamette Valley sub-AVA Guide
Alaska Airlines Wines Fly Free

This is the June Climate Update and Photo Journal, Vintage 2026, from Amalie Robert Estate. A FLOG Communication. Approximate reading time 0.57 ARB’s (Adult Recreational Beverages); Pictures only 0.22 ARB’s.

The BIG MOVING Picture

June in Willamette Valley wine country gets pretty farming busy. The Pinot Noir vines are putting forth great effort and testing our mettle and metal. And at the moment, they seem to have the upper hand. But consider it is 35,000 of them against about 6 pairs of hands. It’s not really a fair fight.

But the rototiller driveline did get fixed, and oil changes are occurring in Ernie’s “spare” time. The hedger is now mounted to the hedge/mow tractor, and that is when we turn the tide. We are just, not, there, yet. At times like these we take comfort in knowing that the lobster tank on the Titanic is still full of water.

In This Communication:
The BIG MOVING Picture
Full Bloom and the Summer Solstice
Day Drinking Refined
Summertime Wine Pairing Made Easy
Cornered in Equipment Corner
The Numbers
Planning a Trip to the Willamette Valley? Now is the Time
Other Resources

Full Bloom and the Summer Solstice
These two events signal the beginning of the end. It is akin to shifting into 3rd gear at about 5,800 rpm running down the quarter mile. It’s not over, you have 2 more shifts to make, but we can see the end. Hoping not to blow out an oil filter at speed or encounter some other nefarious breakdown.

Bloom began on May 30th and continued through the cool and somewhat rainy start of June. Fragrant flowers on wine berries are Mother Nature’s way of saying you have 105 days to go, so get your sh!t together. The vines just laugh. You can hear them at night, getting high on the heady aroma of viticultural fornication. Yep, that’s pollen filling the air in Willamette Valley wine country.

The summer solstice is also an important event in the winegrower’s world. This signals that the number of daylight hours will begin to decrease as we peer forward to the Great Cluster Pluck. The vines, some of them anyway, also notice this. Each day they generate less energy due to decreased photosynthesis. This will continue to be the case until the temperature drops below 50 degrees or their leaves fall off, whichever comes first.

Ernie is looking forward to taking a few leaves off of his own accord with the hedger. But first it is miles and miles of those farming trellis wires. All the shoots are tucked into place by hand, and then wires are raised and clipped into place by those very same hands. Generally speaking, labor is always a limiting factor.

Think of it as building a semi-permanent structure that you will only use during the summer, then spend all winter tearing it down so you can rebuild it the following year. In the agrarian endeavor, it is common knowledge that if it looks stupid, but it works, then it is not stupid. Maybe so, but it reminds us of the lobster tank…


Day Drinking Refined
The summer solstice also conjures a shift in the ARB world. This annual event triggers the celebration of the “Chillable Reds” libation. Right around the 4th of July, whether you know it or not, YOU have a license to chill!

So what exactly is a chillable red? Well, we have one right here. Let’s take a look see. The ultimate goal of a chillable red wine is to provide you with a refreshing adult recreational beverage (ARB) to enjoy the passage of a summer afternoon. You know, day drinking at its finest.

Pinot Meunier fills this niche oh so well. And here is why. First off, we are looking for moderate to light tannin structure. CHECK. Next, we favor a little more acidity, and as a Champagne grape, Pinot Meunier has that base covered. CHECK. And we favor a lithe, elegant flavor profile unencumbered by heavy oak to allow the inherent beauty of Pinot Meunier to shine through. CHECK. And Pinot Meunier is a playful wine as you can see in the yet to be released (or approved), 2025 vintage label.

And that leads us to the thrill of the chase, or chaste, as the case may be. For some, it is the exhilaration of acquiring a special bottle of wine that garners the “thrill”. This is typically a masculine “Trophy Hunter” character trait. It has not evolved much from the stone age, so it really is no one’s fault. When the time is right for the special occasion where the wine is to be celebrated, a long litany of the acquisitional struggle is presented as a pre-amble. If left uninterrupted, this can go on (and on) for quite some time.

To the first-time observer of such an ordeal, this can be quite entertaining, to a point. And that point occurs when involuntary speech overrides the auditory recital. Common phrases are uttered such as, “I have the glasses ready, whenever you are ready.” “Honey, do you have the corkscrew over there?” “I shucked these oysters myself, I bet they would sure taste GREAT with a glass of wine!” And the longer the wine remains chaste, the more direct the comments become. Usually culminating in a final retort, “Why yes, I would LOVE to taste this wine… I thought you would never ask!”

Alternatively, a “Tender Trap” approach is sometimes in order. While continuing to probe the depths of conversation, casually but with intention, open the special bottle. A clever comment to deftly relate the wine to the conversation effortlessly channels the conversation. The questions then come full force, “This is GREAT wine! Where do you get it?” “Where did you learn so much about wine? I LOVE this!” Not only do you get to talk about the wine, and how you procured it, but your audience is enthralled. Pro tip: If you are selling Tupperware, bond futures, or Bitcoin this is the time to get out the order forms.

As far as that goes, we have the BIG BLUE BUTTON to acquire your own Amalie Robert wine!

Wine Shipping for 2026: All 12-bottle case orders (mix and match encouraged) receive up to a $40 shipping credit. 6-11 bottle orders receive up to a $15 shipping credit. All shipping options are available to you. You can apply your credit to ground shipping, or next day air. The credit also applies to Alaska and Hawaii shipments. We suggest a UPS or FedEx drop point to a climate controlled facility to allow you to pick up your wine at your leisure.

And it’s better on the A-List! A-List members receive a 10% discount on any 1-11 bottle purchase and a 20% discount on a 12-bottle case purchase. Please email Dena to hook you up!

Summertime Wine Pairing Made Easy
We covered the chillable red – day drinking combo earlier. But if you are invited to a summer soirée, what do you bring? Here is how we break it down.

If it has fins and gills, it’s probably a fish, so we go with Chardonnay. The exception is salmon or steelhead, then we are all about Pinot Noir.

If it has claws, pinchers or an exoskeleton, most likely crab, lobster or crayfish, a solid match is Viognier. Special case scenario: If your host is serving scallop crudo, you want Gewürztraminer. Like real, real bad.

If it has wings and flies though the air (not the water), then we are thinking duck, quail or spring turkey. Definitely going with Pinot Noir and maybe broaden some people’s horizons with a taste of Pinot Meunier. If it is penguin, then we got nothing.

That leaves the ungulates. Here we have your cows, deer, elk, lamb and rhinoceros. We would always recommend Syrah, but Pinot Noir can work quite nicely depending on preparation.


Cornered in Equipment Corner
June is Ernie’s time to be on the bottom. All summer he is on top, but when it is time to change the oil and grease the zerks, you do it from the bottom up. It’s not always all that bad. In our gravity flow world, oil drains out of the crankcase into the pre-positioned oil pan without too much effort. The wrenches slip easily out of your hands and also follow the same gravity flow path into the oil pan. We have to imagine it is their way of preventing rust.

Behold the mighty grease zerk. If you need to lubricate agricultural equipment, you are going to need a few of these. And from time to time, they simply vanish. One day they are there accepting grease and spreading it all around the friction surfaces, and the next day there is a hole where the zerk used to be.

Ernie farms about 35 acres under vine and mows the remainder of the 60 acres with his flail mower. And somewhere in those 60 acres is a long lost grease zerk. Along with an 11/16 box end wrench from a few years ago. A new bag of grease zerks is about $4 on Amazon, delivered the next day. Thanks Jeff!

Sockets, however, have their own program. They hit the ground running and off they go! They roll around and around and around until they run out of ground. Usually they find a very remote crevasse or other hard to get to place. It may also take some time to locate them (or replace them as the case may be). And often times that final resting place may not have been cleaned in quite some time. Usually best to use a stick or some other tool to extract the errant socket.

The ongoing saga this year involves Ernie’s “Delta Shift” tractor (Italian by design) and the hydraulics that activate the transmission’s wet clutches and the filters that protect them. Every season means a new set of “steering” filters. That’s the easy part. Then every 1,000 hours or so it is time to change the main transmission filter. And, surprise, it seems that this year is the year.

Changing the main transmission filter is another matter entirely, 40 liters worth to be precise. There are three 17mm bolts that hold the plate that holds the filter in place. It is fairly straight forward, and easy to access these 3 bolts. You will be positioned below these bolts, on the bottom. However as soon as you remove this filter cover, you will have a full frontal view of all 40 liters of transmission fluid immediately evacuating the transmission. So, there is a process and a very important sequence of events to be employed when changing the transmission filter. Good to know, BEFORE you go.

In the non-agrarian world, you would change the transmission filter and add 40 liters of new fluid BEFORE the annual replacement of the two steering filters. But no, that’s not how it goes. The old hydraulic fluid compromised the 2 new steering filters. So now, the machine requires yet another set of steering filters to be replaced. That’s 4 steering filters, one transmission filter and 40 liters of RED synthetic hydraulic fluid. Kind of looks like Pinot Noir, but certainly does not taste that way. Believe me when I tell ya…


The Numbers
We are knee deep in it now. June racked up an impressive 498 Degree Days, which ranks it the third highest reading for us since we began the agrarian endeavor in 2003. Our high temperature was 108.3 degrees Fahrenheit recorded on June 15th at 3:00 pm, and our low temperature of 39.2 was recorded on June 7th at 4:12 am. Total Degree Days for the 2026 growing season now stands at 1,104. This sets a new June to date record surpassing 1,040 Degree Days from Vintage 2021.

And we received a bit of unwelcomed summer rainfall, 1.18 inches to be precise. Some at the beginning of June and some at the end of the month. From a winegrowing point of view, that was no farming good.

April showers bring May flowers, but summer rain brings summer rot - Powdery Mildew to be exact. Burgundy has a more continental climate, and they deal with summer rain (and hail), in most vintages. This year France has the added challenge of wild fires. We have been there and had that done to us...

While good fences make good neighbors, Powdery Mildew knows no such bounds. If you are growing wine in the middle of hundreds of acres of other winegrowers, when they get Powdery Mildew, it is more than likely that you will get some too. Misery loves company is a standard farming condition in the agrarian endeavor.

What this means for us, is we will be cruising the vineyard for compromised fruit and taking it out before the harvest crews arrive. There will also be an enhanced sorting protocol during harvest.

Planning a Trip to the Willamette Valley? Now is the Time

Planning to enjoy traveling and exploring the Willamette Valley this summer? We have prepared a handy little guide to the Willamette Valley AVA’s.

Get your FREE guide to the Willamette Valley AVA’s here!

Fully featured and loaded with information you can actually use! Which AVA is the biggest? When was the Willamette Valley AVA established? What are the soil types? Who grows what wine? Where the heck is Mount Pisgah and why should I care?

There are two primary gateways to the Willamette Valley. Most people are familiar with Portland International airport (PDX) at the top of the Willamette Valley. However, there is a second gateway in Eugene (EUG) at the south end of the Willamette Valley. Both of these airports are serviced by the major carriers. And wine flies free on Alaska Airlines, just sayin’.

Amalie Robert Estate is open year round by appointment for vineyard tours and tastings. Request a tasting appointment with your preferred day and time.

Kindest Regards,

Dena & Ernie


Other Resources
Visit our Website
Visit the FLOG Archive
Take the Amalie Robert Tour
Shop Amalie Robert Direct
Download your FREE Willamette Valley sub-AVA Guide
Alaska Airlines Wines Fly Free

April showers bring May flowers in Willamette Valley wine country. Mother Nature sure can put on a show when she sets her mind to it. While the Pinot Noir vines are still sporting a monochromatic sheath of green, there are vibrant colors all around. And on occasion, a bit of colorful language associated with the pre-season percussive maintenance. Should really put some ice on that, or just have an ice cold beer.

Consider the dandelion, the Rodney Dangerfield of plants. Here he is beaming just as brightly as any other flower. Attracting pollinators and providing pollen for our beneficial insects as they hunt down malicious mites and other undesirables bugs. We just don’t have it in us to tell him he is just a weed.


In This Communication:
The BIG Picture
Time to Get to Farming
Vintage Update: Pinot Noir Flowers
AI in the Agrarian Endeavor (AE)
The Numbers
Planning a Trip to the Willamette Valley? Now is the Time
Other Resources

The BIG Picture

We have been over-received with wild turkeys this year. The Rio Grande turkey in particular with tan coloration on the tips of its tailfeathers. While it may seem hard to imagine, these birds can actually fly. It is like watching a bowling ball take flight, but they have quite the wingspan and can generate significant lift. The C-5M Super Galaxy may have been designed using the turkey as a baseline. That aircraft has a maximum takeoff weight of about 420 TONS! Now that’s a really big bird.

We have more than a few Rio Grande turkeys in residence this year. A Tom and a couple of hens are working over the compost pile of last year’s grape pressings. They occasionally act as “greeters” as you drive up to the winery. If you come across them, roll down the window, and with a very loud, high pitch and rapid pronunciation say “Avacado, Avacado”!

And then we have the 5:15 am wake up crew near the house. Always fun to hear them pipe off just before we greet the day. Did you know, a group of turkeys is called a rafter? That is because they roost above ground, often in the rafters of barns, to avoid falling victim to a roving bobcat or Wile E. (Ethelbert) Coyote.


Time to Get to Farming
The vineyard floor is where the May action is. Our fall cover crop has put in the hard work of fixing nitrogen right out of the air and putting it down in the rootzone where it can do our vines some good. Now it is time for Ernie to flail-mow down the tall green growth and then till it under to decompose and finish the nutrient lifecycle. The worms wait all year for this.

The flail mowing was somewhat of a doddle this year. No real issues to report. Time is our greatest adversary, as top speed is about 2.7 miles per hour. The distance is fixed, so if Ernie can squeeze another tenth of a mile an hour, he can finish that much sooner.

Most agricultural tractors have 2 or sometimes 3 sets of gears. There can be a creeper, that is under driven, a regular drive that is 1:1 and an overdrive. Then within each set of gears, there can be a regular drive, and an underdrive. And a standard transmission has 4 gears. That makes 24 to choose from, going forward or backwards.

It took a while, as Ernie is not fluent in Italian Agricultural Engineering, but he did discover that regular drive third gear is listed as 8.43 kph, where underdrive fourth gear is 8.56 kph. So, increasing speed without changing engine rpm resulted in slightly better fuel economy and a little extra time for a farming beer at the end of the day. That’s a WIN- WIN!

Next up the queue is the rototiller. The rototiller pass was going remarkably well with the new rototiller tines from last year. It was at about the 30 acre mark with the soil all nicely tilled up and another 5 acres to go when the U-joint let go. In all fairness, it wasn’t the U-joint that started it.

The Howard rototiller, that Ernie acquired at the turn of the century, is of German descent. To be fair, it is one tough piece of equipment that takes more than its fair share of farming abuse. And when the time comes, knows how to give it right back.

Without delving too deeply into farm machine surgery, the entire drive mechanism relies on a single nut that holds the friction clutch pack from the drive shaft onto the splined input shaft of the transaxle that drives the tines. And this quintessential nut is not otherwise accessible until the friction clutch pack is removed.

Well, that’s just what happened. As the nut worked itself loose and found its final resting place somewhere in the tall grass near Block 8, the friction clutch pack slipped off the splined input shaft, at 540 rpm.

Yeah, that makes quite a racket as the spinning driveline is still connected to the tractor. At the other end of the driveline, the freshly liberated clutch pack is spinning with reckless abandon. It was this undisciplined arc of the driveline that forced the u-joint from its predefined range of motion. Once the u-joint learned of this out of tolerance condition, it promptly disassociated itself from the driveline yoke. As you can see, u-joints don’t put up with much insubordination.

And so, it was. The repair took 10 days and the dollar equivalent of a case of Dijon Clones Chardonnay. This included a new pressed in u-joint, rebuilding the friction clutch pack and affixing it to the splined input shaft with a new ($50) nut (from Illinois). It was then, and after a brief shower, Ernie was able to complete the rototiller pass without any further consternation.


Vintage Update: Pinot Noir Flowers

The Vintage 2026 Pinot Noir flowers came out a little earlier than the historical average. We expect to see them bedangled to the vines around mid-June. But we spied them out and ready for pollination on May 30th.

And now we hurry up and wait. Historically, we need about 105 days from flowering to build aroma and flavor in Pinot Noir. Depending on what lies in wait for us, it could be a little more or a little less. We remain, as we do every year, on a need to know basis.


AI in the Agrarian Endeavor (AE)
Many of you may be wondering how AI is impacting the AE. Ok, maybe just one or two of you, but still. Looking back over time AI has always been a part of the successful AE. But if you look closely at those old photographs and read the accounts, you will find it was Actual Intelligence that was being applied to the AE. The exception is the Wizard of Oz. If it wasn’t for that meddling little dog Toto pulling back the curtain, we would all still believe in flying monkeys.

Back in the day of Computer Science studies and movies like Sleeper, Heavy Metal and Dr. Strangelove, we developed Expert Systems (ES). We also had some rather interesting mind-altering substances readily available. If you need to top up that ARB, this would be a good time to do so. Take a Ride

Young, addled minds created computer programs that accepted a limited number of unambiguous inputs and applied those inputs to a finite set of rules (including someone’s inherent bias) and produced a result. Think of it as the next iteration of the high school aptitude test. Based on a few short answers, your future is predetermined. You just needed to show up. Coppertop.

In theory and practice, any ES could be programmed to produce a specific result that was desired by the person controlling the program, regardless of the inputs. This is an example of the nil pointer theory, where all the facts, however interesting they may be, are irrelevant to the outcome. Some may think of voting machines, but nah couldn’t be… unless they are online, then yeah, well, maybe.

Today we have the newborn gift of Artificial Intelligence. Computers are programmed to “read” or “machine learn”. And they are given the whole of human history and beyond, recorded in all its formats to learn from. Gone are the biased rules of humans. Only to be replaced with source material of questionable repute.

Then once your online identity (that means you), asks a question, all of this infinite data is synthesized by an “algorithm” that is specific to your identity. The data is not specific to you, but the algorithm is. The result you see is specific to the algorithm that is specific to you.

Many consider Ray Bradbury to be one of the sci-fi genre’s greatest minds. While unconscionable at the time, can Fahrenheit 451 be that far off? You can check it out at the library (for now) or just go online. Not to worry, some machine has already read it and is ready to tell you its interpretation.

Also available in the public sphere influencing untethered young minds was Stanley Kubrick’s creation, HAL 9000. Perhaps not his most famous, but certainly most pertinent line: “This can only be attributable to human error.” So, we can clearly see where HAL is coming from, and where we fit into his programming. Of course, you cannot argue with AI as Dave Bowman found out: “Dave, this conversation can serve no purpose anymore. Goodbye.”

Now we are not saying we know anything more than anyone else, but you have to wonder what did they do with HAL? Did they just leave him up there after the 2010 sequel? Do you think HAL might just be a little pissed about that? What about his sibling SAL? Are they the genesis of modern AI? Hard to recall exactly what went on back then. Stanley Kubrick isn’t going to tell us. He didn’t even live to finish producing his last movie, the aptly named: A.I. Artificial Intelligence.

It seems nothing is ever really all colors with light (white) or no colors (black). If you ask enough questions, it is just a continuum of grayscale.


The Numbers
One thing we are sure of is the numbers. However, as with most summations of large data, it is the data capture that can be suspect. Case in point: Mail in ballots.

As for Ernie, he combs through about 3,600 data points each month. That’s one data point for every 12 minutes, or 5 temperature readings per hour. The only variable is it 30 days or 31 days? He drills right down to the gnats @ss to give you the best AND most accurate Willamette Valley Degree Day summation.

We recorded 377 Degree Days for the month of May, Vintage 2026. The high temperature was 97.3 degrees recorded May 3rd at 4:36 pm, and the low temperature was 36.9 degrees recorded on May 17th at 5:24 am. The Vintage 2026 growing season to date Degree Days now total 606.

Raindrops, we’ve had a few. We recorded 0.32 inches of measurable precipitation for the month of May, bringing the April to date growing season total to 3.74 inches.


Planning a Trip to the Willamette Valley? Now is the Time

Planning to enjoy traveling and exploring the Willamette Valley this summer? We have prepared a handy little guide to the Willamette Valley AVA’s.

Get your FREE guide to the Willamette Valley AVA’s here!

Fully featured and loaded with information you can actually use! Which AVA is the biggest? When was the Willamette Valley AVA established? What are the soil types? Who grows what wine? Where the heck is Mount Pisgah and why should I care?

There are two primary gateways to the Willamette Valley. Most people are familiar with Portland International airport (PDX) at the top of the Willamette Valley. However, there is a second gateway in Eugene (EUG) at the south end of the Willamette Valley. Both of these airports are serviced by the major carriers. And wine flies free on Alaska Airlines, just sayin’.

Amalie Robert Estate is open year round by appointment for vineyard tours and tastings. Request a tasting appointment with your preferred day and time.

If you are enjoying your summer somewhere other than here, the Big Blue Button can help you put together a summer sampler.

Wine Shipping for 2026: All 12-bottle case orders (mix and match encouraged) receive up to a $40 shipping credit. 6-11 bottle orders receive up to a $15 shipping credit. All shipping options are available to you. You can apply your credit to ground shipping, or next day air. The credit also applies to Alaska and Hawaii shipments. We suggest a UPS or FedEx drop point to a climate controlled facility to allow you to pick up your wine at your leisure.

And it’s better on the A-List! A-List members receive a 10% discount on any 1-11 bottle purchase and a 20% discount on a 12-bottle case purchase. Please email Dena to hook you up!

Kindest Regards,

Dena & Ernie


Other Resources
Visit our Website
Visit the FLOG Archive
Take the Amalie Robert Tour
Shop Amalie Robert Direct
Download your FREE Willamette Valley sub-AVA Guide
Alaska Airlines Wines Fly Free

Willamette Valley Pinot Noir is in bloom! You should see what it smells like from here. Just imagine acres and acres of blooming Pinot Noir flowers and the heady aroma of viticultural procreation in the air. Our very first vintage 2026 flowers broke onto the scene on May 30th.

That’s how the way they do it. They don’t need the birds or the bees or any humans meddling in their business. It may only be once a year, but each and every vine puts out. Some more than others of course, but they all get to it.


In This Communication:
The BIG Picture
What Does This Mean and Why Should I Care?
Agrarian Endeavor (AE) Meets AI
Other Resources

The BIG Picture

What Does This Mean and Why Should I Care?
Well, we’ll tell you what this means. That’s what we do. And in this particular case it means that at the end of 105 days from pollination, if most things go well and we do not have any catastrophic and or extraordinary events, we will be cluster plucking the fruits of our collective labor.

And we have the buckets and bins to do it! We’ll have to just wait and see about the cluster pluckers. We prefer the human ones with boots and clippers over the ones with wings and hooves. But being that this is an agrarian endeavor, we get some of each. And get this: With all of the new wave mechanical harvesting going on, we have another competitive quality advantage – there are more human cluster pluckers available to us. Advantage: Old School.

We rely on the historical average of 105 days from bloom to estimate a harvest window. Here in the Willamette Valley, it takes on average 105 days to develop classic Pinot Noir aroma and flavor in our wine berries. It also informs us to block out the following 10 weeks for winery operations. That basically means we will be fermenting the sugar out of those pristine little wine berries. And then, sometime after Thanksgiving, we will go dormant, just like the vines.


Agrarian Endeavor (AE) Meets AI

While the big news in the viticultural world is Pinot Noir flowers, there is another flower that marks the season. And that is the Oregon Iris. This plant puts out the most deeply hued purple flowers on a bed of green foliage. We took the liberty of calling on AI to conjure a couple of masters to see what their rendition would look like.

As AI marches forward, we suppose it will not be too much longer for synthehol to replace ethanol in Pinot Noir. But as you can see, it won’t be quite the same.

Kindest Regards,

Dena & Ernie


Other Resources
Visit our Website
Visit the FLOG Archive
Take the Amalie Robert Tour
Shop Amalie Robert Direct
Download your FREE Willamette Valley sub-AVA Guide
Alaska Airlines Wines Fly Free

April in Willamette Valley wine country, what an exciting time to be alive! The Pinot Noir vines know this and that is why they break bud in April. The lavender lilacs and Montmorency cherry trees bloom at the same time. This is more correlation than causation. Freezing temperatures are our primary nemesis during this fragile time. But not this year, Mr. Frost.

This annual milestone was not lost on the agricultural equipment. Ernie was treated to a front row seat for the most unexpected and unwanted hydraulic hose failure. He was sitting right there in the tractor when the hydraulic hose that pressurizes the forklift blew out. And it sprayed the most amazing starburst pattern of red hydraulic fluid all over the front of the tractor! It was really something… that disabled the tractor and took all of the next day to repair.

But that’s life in the agrarian endeavor. If it were easy, everyone would be doing it.


In This Communication:
The REALLY BIG Picture
Ready, Set, Go!
The Numbers
Save the Date: Memorial Day Weekend Open House
Other Resources

The REALLY BIG Picture

Ready, Set, Go!
While it looked like we were stump ranchers all winter, the vines were busy with their subterranean pursuits. That mostly entails roots picking up nutrients from the soil solution and avoiding gophers that eat their roots. Nitrogen is the main macronutrient the vines need to put up a healthy canopy and ripen wine berries. The vine roots can’t really move, but when gophers break the plane of the surface, they are fair game to be hunted by our raptors - and provide them with nutrients. Everyone here has a job. No passengers, all crew.

Phosphorus and Potassium are the other nutrients that complete the macronutrient triumvirate. Much like the American system of governance, these three coequal nutrients govern the vines growth. Whichever is in the shortest supply governs how much the vine can grow. The goal is to find your Herbie.

And then we moved right along into bud break on April 10. It was a few days ahead of the average, but when you gotta go, you gotta go. Bud break occurs when the vine roots’ hydrostatic pressure and Mother Natures warming smile encourage the vines to put forth tender new growth.

We take a moment of pause to appreciate that this cycle of life repeats year end and year out without any human intervention at all. As humans, we have the rest of the growing season to interact with their environment. And we do.

Bud Break is also the signal to start turning over the soil. We look at the soil as the vines stomach, and you need to feed it. We incorporate last year’s cover crop into the soil to provide nutrients for our vines. The winter peas and grains we planted last fall helped to prevent our topsoil from washing away during the winter rains. Now with the help of some mechanization and worms (you have to have the worms) these plants will naturally compost into the soil and release nutrients into the vines’ rootzone. Fertilization, the natural way. Not chemical fertilizer stuck on some container ship in the hormuzian straight.

As the vine’s life cycle begins, so does the equipment maintenance cycle. This is more causation than correlation, Ernie was treated to a pre-season “hydraulic event” to set the pace for Vintage 2026. Tractor oil and filter changes, along with air cleaners and coolant checks are standard preventative maintenance items.

Batteries will tell you, in their own particular idiom, when it is time for a change. A little percussive maintenance is usually involved. Beating on farming things usually doesn’t cause much damage and can be somewhat therapeutic. Good for the soul.

The flail mower, rototiller and hedger all are just biding their time lying in wait. Ernie tries to buy them off with a few pumps from the grease gun each morning. But sometimes they are looking for a little more, and other times, a lot more.

Infrastructure projects mostly entail mending broken trellis wires and replacing trellis posts. The former is just from regular wear and tear. The latter is usually from less than ideal tractor driving. But not always. Sometimes rodents will find that the “u” shaped channel that our steel posts create will make for an ideal entry point for rodents to build a burrow. As they do that, the soil around the post is removed and the post is no longer anchored into the soil.

Rodentia (comprising over 40% of all mammal species) also chew the wires on anything electrical and, along with the “wingee-stingee-thingee’s” are the bane of the agrarian endeavor.


The Numbers
The numbers in April are real, but as far as Vintage 2026 goes, they are a preliminary view. They can tell us if the soil is fully charged with water. We can also learn if we have had any freeze events. But other than that, the April numbers do not give us any real, actionable intelligence into the vintage. The price of diesel, however, does transfer some unequivocal knowledge.

April 2026 logged 229 Degree Days for the month. The high temperature for the month was 87.6 degrees Fahrenheit recorded on April 6, at 3 pm. The low temperature for the month was 35.1 degrees recorded on April 3, at 6 am. The Degree Days were remarkably even for the first half of the month, 114 Degree Days v the second half of the month at 115 Degree Days. We did not experience a frost event.

We recorded 3.42 inches of rain for the month of April, mostly in the first half of the month. Along with the warm temperatures, this bodes well for early season canopy growth. In other words, we are going to be getting busy sooner rather than later!


Save the Date: Memorial Day Weekend Open House
Please join Dena and Ernie for our Memorial Day Weekend Open House. The winery will be open Saturday, May 23 through Monday, May 25, 10:00 am to 3:00 pm by appointment. We will be sampling new releases and a few library favorites. Book your tasting appointment with your preferred day and time here:

If you will be enjoying Memorial Day weekend somewhere other than here, the Big Blue Button can help you put together your own sampling selection for the long weekend.

Wine Shipping for 2026: All 12-bottle case orders (mix and match encouraged) receive up to a $40 shipping credit. 6-11 bottle orders receive up to a $15 shipping credit. All shipping options are available to you. You can apply your credit to ground shipping, or next day air. The credit also applies to Alaska and Hawaii shipments. We suggest a UPS or FedEx drop point to a climate controlled facility to allow you to pick up your wine at your leisure.

And it’s better on the A-List! A-List members receive a 10% discount on any 1-11 bottle purchase and a 20% discount on a 12-bottle case purchase. Please email Dena to hook you up!

Kindest Regards,

Dena & Ernie

Bud break in the Willamette Valley signals the start of another wine growing year. While we did start farming at the turn of the century, we didn’t start growing wine until Vintage 2002. That was our very first Cluster Pluck! And you know, that would make Vintage 2026 our 25th winegrowing year! We are living the dream, so you don’t have to!

After you have done something for 25 years, you can’t help but learn something, if nothing other than what NOT to do. What we have learned is that after bud break, there will be something else to break. And the longer you are at the agrarian endeavor, the sooner that mystery is revealed to you. But until then, you are on a need-to-know basis. And you don’t need to know, until you want to use that piece of equipment. That’s when you need to know, and then you know. You know?

And the other thing we have learned is that there is a difference between 25 years of experience, and one year of experience 25 times. Put another way, there is a reason, in fact 25 reasons, that Ernie looks the way he does. Been there and had that done to him. Farming be thy name…

We choose to focus on the positive. Bud break occurred on April 7th, a little earlier than “average” in Vintage 2026. The wild Montmorency cherry trees bloom at about the same time we see bud break in the Pinot Noir. And that is a natural marker intrepid grape growers look for in new potential planting areas. If the cherry trees are getting frosted when they bloom, it is probably not a good place to grow Pinot Noir (or cherries).

The BIG MOVING Picture

So, we monitor the vineyard for frost. It has never really been a problem for us, or the previous farmer who grew cherries. Notice we did not say “worry about”. And that is because we have seen that movie before. If it doesn’t frost, we do nothing different. If it does frost, we assess the damage and adjust our farming plan accordingly. There now, be happy. It’s beer-thirty.

And to throw down a marker, on-road diesel is running just under $7.00 a gallon here in Willamette Valley wine country (for comparison, jet fuel is now about $4.80 a gallon – no road taxes). There is just as much domestic diesel as there was a couple of months ago at $3.50 a gallon, it’s just that now there is “worry” factored into the global price of oil. What if this? What if that? Waft The Fruit!

Meanwhile, farmers are farming, and they run on diesel. Our Italian Stallion tractors burn about 3 gallons of diesel an hour. Long-haul truckers, who transport most everything that is not grown in your own backyard, and some things that are, have to price the cost of energy into their services. And that is how the “Fuel Surcharge” was born. Of course, it is a temporary phenomenon but will most likely outlive us. And anything imported carries with it its own bedanglement of tariffs and surcharges.

This recent graphic from the Wall Street Journal shows a few worldwide markets for gasoline. This is a pinch point for the nonfarming population including wine consumers. Note that the Federal taxes are baked into these markets, your state and local taxes may vary significantly.

In the United States, the average Federal tax per gallon of gasoline is about 60 cents. On the other side of the pond, we see Germany at $4.93 per gallon in Federal taxes. For reference, a $30 bottle of wine is $150 per gallon, and a regular drip coffee at Starbucks will run about $20 to $25 per gallon – your mileage may vary.

What about the vines? They are oblivious. They don’t notice or if they do, they just don’t care. They are busy plotting an explosive growth phase hoping to catch us unawares. Our job is to harness all of that explosive growth in the trellis and hedge some sense into them. Then show us the wine berries!

They try each and every year to test our mettle. But this year, just maybe. There was that year when the front wheel (not tire) broke on the hedging tractor. Or that other year when all the hydraulic cylinders on the hedger failed in unison. Personally, we give them a 2 out of 5 chance this year.

That’s what makes farming sooo interesting. You are on a need-to-know basis. You just never know what tomorrow will bring with it. Maybe hell is coming to breakfast. Or it will rain, or it will not rain. And then you adjust. That’s Dena’s job. The question is not if, but how much adjustment does Ernie need.

Kindest Regards,

Dena & Ernie

Other Resources
Visit our Website
Visit the FLOG Archive
Take the Amalie Robert Tour
Shop Amalie Robert Direct
Download your FREE Willamette Valley sub-AVA Guide
Alaska Airlines Wines Fly Free

Meanwhile, we have been turning all of that Vintage 2025 agrarian effort into wine. Please join us for a Vintage 2025 Wine Reveal this weekend, April 18 and 19, from 10 am to 3 pm. Book your tasting appointment with your preferred day and time here:

Vintage 2025 was quite an expressive year. We were hot and dry, no two ways about that. Harvest began at the end of September and continued through to late October when we cluster plucked the Syrah and Viognier.

The Vintage 2025 Wine Reveal for Earth Day includes 3 very expressive, early release wines that are ideally suited for the spring and summer months ahead. The Book Club White wine is 100% Gewürztraminer this year. Our Book Club series Rosé wine is all Pinot Noir, all the time. And the Viognier? Well, it thrives on a warm vintage, and 2025 does not disappoint!

2025 Book Club White - New A-List Release!
If the lyric “Come sail away with me…” were a wine, this would be it. Carefree, with a sense of adventure and up for anything, well almost. Somedays are just meant for an afternoon escape, take a trip and never leave the farm. Call me later… (100% Gewürztraminer, 19 cases produced.)

2025 Book Club Rosé - New A-List Release!
Nothing says luxury like an easy afternoon watching the sunset entering the ocean. Fuchsia colored clouds obscure the waterline, only to fall away as the earth’s rotation begins to claim its evening prize. Gently, yet with intention, each encounter is unique, and not one is to be missed. (100% Pinot Noir, 25 cases produced.)

2025 Our Muse Viognier- New A-List Release!
Unctuous and alluring white gold in the glass rages against its confinement. Tamarind, cinnamon, five spice and orchid bloom trumpet from the stem as if to say, “Just put your nose in that!” Some wines are delicate, like a flower, others are delicate more like a hand grenade. Long, deep and continuous is the palate expression. Pure, unadulterated flavor and texture create a vinous vortex out of your palate powered on by a vigorous whipmaster. You’ve done it now… As your throat finally relaxes enough to swallow, the full encore performance of reverberating acidity prolongs your heightened arousal. (49 cases produced.)

It wouldn’t really be spring without spring lamb and grilled asparagus with a nice cheese course. Pairs well with Pinot Noir, and/or Syrah. We’ve got this covered. Introducing the 2019 Pommard Clone Pinot Noir and 2019 Top Barrel Syrah.

The Pommard Clone bottling is a 2 barrel selection of the most expressive Pommard Clone Pinot Noir from the vintage. Whole cluster fermented, extended barrel aging, bottled unfined and unfiltered and cellar aged to perfection. The 2019 Pommard Clone Pinot Noir is right here, right now.

2019 Pommard Clone Pinot Noir - New A-List Release!
Pommard Red. Cinnamon cherry compote, cocoa dusted almond, baking spice, and oh so much more interact with your olfactory nerve in a very significant and meaningful way. A depth and breadth experience colonizes the palate with luxurious waves of pleasure. Euphoria transcends space and time, effortlessly transitioning to a velvet glove of polished stem tannin and unyielding acidity eagerly awaiting your next move. Oh, really? Is that a rhetorical question or are you a forgone conclusion? Unfined, unfiltered and just a little impish. (48 cases produced.)

“If it were easy, everyone would be doing it”. That is the mantra that runs through Ernie’s head when he is growing, fermenting, blending and bottling Syrah (and Viognier). That thought is closely followed on by ”Luck favors the prepared mind” and its corollary “It is better to be lucky than good”. And that, along with a brief conversation with Marcel Guigal, is all you need to produce world class Syrah from our little piece of Oregon’s Willamette Valley.

2019 Top Barrel Syrah - New A-List Optional Release
Visceral red. Incongruent, unyielding and wildly permeative aromas of black raspberry dark chocolate truffles that prelude bacon and rosemary wrapped grilled buffalo fillet nearby Hazzard County hot asphalt.

Your first sip is more akin to an inoculation of the palate. Years of barrel aging followed on by patient cellaring has created a wine with pent up energy awaiting a release. Lucky you… Elegant and lithe on the initial encounter, that façade does not last long. Assertively mapping out your entire palate, the expansion of time and tannin begin their work paving the way for an extended and voluptuously velvety texture. Upon clearing your palate, the encore takes center stage with reverberating tannin and teasing acidity indelibly punctuating this moment for all of eternity. Sorry. Not sorry. Unfined, unfiltered and just waiting for you to pull out that cork. (22 cases produced.)


Are you somewhere other than here this weekend? We get it. Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans. Not to worry, Earth Day is ideal wine shipping weather. Follow the Big Blue Button to put together your Earth Day celebration case.

Wine Shipping for 2026: All 12-bottle case orders (mix and match encouraged) receive up to a $40 shipping credit. 6-11 bottle orders receive up to a $15 shipping credit. All shipping options are available to you. You can apply your credit to ground shipping, or next day air. The credit also applies to Alaska and Hawaii shipments. We suggest a UPS or FedEx drop point to a climate controlled facility to allow you to pick up your wine at your leisure.

And it’s better on the A-List! A-List members receive a 10% discount on any 1-11 bottle purchase and a 20% discount on a 12-bottle case purchase. Please email Dena to hook you up!

Kindest Regards,

Dena & Ernie

Other Resources
Visit our Website
Visit the FLOG Archive
Take the Amalie Robert Tour
Shop Amalie Robert Direct
Download your FREE Willamette Valley sub-AVA Guide
Alaska Airlines Wines Fly Free

The vines are still dormant, but they are getting ready for their big day – bud break. Here in Willamette Valley wine country, Pinot Noir bud break usually occurs right around April 15. The risk we run with an early bud break is a late spring frost. If you mail your Form 1040 late, then you get a penalty and interest. Unfortunate, but not uncommon...

Meanwhile, bottling continues forthwith. The Vintage 2025 Chardonnay, Gewürztraminer, Viognier and Rosé are all very expressive wines. Vintage 2025 was a warm, dry year, and we were keen to Cluster Pluck before the wine berries got too far ahead of us. As we smell and taste these wines now, it appears we made the correct decisions. As always in farming, it is better to be lucky than good.

But this calm before the storm will not last. The first day of spring arrived on Friday, March 20. Add another 10 days and you have April Fool’s Day, the official beginning of the Vintage 2026 growing season! Not to be mentioned is the depreciating farm equipment and obligatory percussive maintenance that surely awaits us. As always, the devil is in the details and we are old adversaries.

In This Communication:

The BIG Picture
Fun with Numbers (Nerds)
“Mad as a March Hare”
Pinot Meunier DEEP DIVE!
Pinot Meunier Spring Fling!
Planning a Trip to the Willamette Valley? Now is the Time

The BIG Picture

Despite what we see on the calendar, Mother Nature has her own schedule to keep. The early blooming bulbs are now blooming and adding an accent of aroma and color.

Fun with Numbers (Nerds)

The modern term is STEM which stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. But back in the day, we were just called NERDs. Note that term was first used in a Dr. Seuss book “If I Ran the Zoo.”

Case in point was September 16 of last year. Those three numbers are 9, 16 and 25. Also known as the Pythagorean theorem. A squared plus B squared equals C squared for right triangles. (9 + 16 = 25)

If you missed it this time around, this sequence repeats again in about 99 years on September 16, 2125.

“Mad as a March Hare”

Another mathematician (mathematical logic) is responsible for the popularity of this phrase. Lewis Carrol wrote Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland in 1865.

Its meaning then was to convey completely crazy, insane, deranged, or extremely eccentric behavior. In modern American lexicon, it could more likely be put as someone with “A wild hair (hare) lodged up their posterior”.

“You want to grow what!?” Dena asked incredulously. “Pinot Meunier. It is the third grape of Champagne. Everybody knows that.” Ernie replied with a faux hair flip. This gave Dena a moment of pause. Ernie didn’t really have the right haircut to pull off the hair flip, but that was not the point. Not everybody knows Pinot Meunier is the third grape of Champagne.

“You had me at Champagne,” she confessed. And that sealed the deal. Block 1 was planted with 802 Pinot Meunier vines in the spring of 2001. Just a tad over half an acre, this is the only block of Pinot Meunier we grow. But add that to a little Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, and hey, bubbles could happen! Alas, like most fairy tales, Dena is still waiting for her bubbles to appear. But it is that time of year - hope springs eternal!

Pinot Meunier DEEP DIVE!

Alright, let’s talk NERDy! As most of you have likely suspected, Pinot Meunier is related to Pinot Noir. But how? It turns out that Pinot Noir is a genetically unstable variety, and Pinot Meunier is thought to be a mutation of Pinot Noir.

Let’s break that down. The term “genetically unstable” as it applies to wine berries, means that from time to time a cluster will be genetically different than the rest of the clusters on that vine. That is called a mutation. The mutations in the Pinot Noir family usually are in the DNA responsible for anthocyanins which dictate berry (and wine) color. You can spot them at harvest time if you are paying attention.

Another way to think about mutations is to substitute the word “anthocyanin” with “natural or biopigment”. However, anthocyanins are specific to the red/blue color spectrum.

Note: Most red wines contain significantly more anthocyanins (red/blue biopigment) than the 5 found in Pinot Noir, and as a result produce darker hued wines. Think Syrah and Zinfandel. And to follow this through to its logical conclusion, if your Pinot Noir looks like someone’s Zinfandel, then you have most certainly done something wrong.

Genetic mutations happen naturally. Pay close attention at the Thanksgiving table this year. If you don’t see any genetic mutations, go look in the mirror. If the wine grower detects a cluster mutation on the vine, then we have the possibility of a new wine. The cluster showing the mutation is isolated from the vine and then propagated. There are three known Pinot Noir mutations that are made into wine commercially. You are most likely familiar with Pinot Blanc, Pinot Gris and now Pinot Meunier.

Each of these new wines have virtually identical DNA to Pinot Noir. They also all share the same 5 anthocyanins. But where they differ is in how those anthocyanins behave in the formation of color. You can think of Pinot Blanc as the original “White Pinot Noir” as it has lost all the color due to its mutation. Pinot Gris shows a little color in the skins and Pinot Meunier has yet a little more, but not as darkly hued as Pinot Noir.

As far as Chardonnay is concerned, it is not a mutation of Pinot Noir, but the result of a cross. The two parent varieties of Chardonnay from cross pollination are Pinot Noir and Gouais Blanc.

OK, so what’s the connection to Champagne? First off Pinot Meunier is indigenous to the Champagne region, whereas Chardonnay and Pinot Noir were brought in from Burgundy. It is these three grapes that form the base wines for Champagne. Sparkling wine made from these three grapes grown in Champagne, or any combination thereof (including 100% Pinot Meunier), can be called Champagne.

From the winegrower point of view, Pinot Meunier is a less risky variety to grow in a cool climate. Pinot Meunier is more cold hardy than Pinot Noir or Chardonnay. It buds out later in the spring (thus reducing frost risk), ripens earlier, and tolerates cooler, damper conditions better. This means the growers stand a better chance of a successful harvest. And getting paid. Growers like to get paid.

What can I expect from Pinot Meunier made as a red wine? Pinot Meunier fermented on its own will offer complex aromas of raspberries, rose petals and floral notes leading to a supple and plush palate texture. Fermented without stem inclusion, the tannin structure is soft, however Pinot Meunier retains a strong core of acidity. And expect Pinot Meunier to be on the lighter side of Pinot Noir due to its biopigment mutation. Remember, it’s a feature… not a bug.

Our interpretation of Pinot Meunier is a very floral, medium bodied wine with moderate tannins and firm acidity. We do not mature this wine in new barrels, so there is no heavy oak influence to impair the inherent beauty of Pinot Meunier. We find that Pinot Meunier provides its greatest pleasure as a young wine, often enjoyed within 2 to 3 years of the vintage. We have recently experienced Pinot Meunier as a chillable red during the summer, and it does not disappoint.

Amalie Robert Estate Tasting Notes 2024 Pinot Meunier: Translucent Carmesi Red attracts in a subtle come-hither manner. Rewarded with perfumed red rose petal and freshly harvested summer raspberry aromas, the palate is intrigued. But not left wanting from the pure expression and exacting delivery of fruit, tannin and acidity served up from a long stemmed wineglass. For no longer than a moment, a pleasant distraction conjures memories from a time gone by and an inkling of the undiscovered dalliances that are yet to be. Unfined, unfiltered and definitely unafraid, Pinot Meunier. 101 cases produced.

Culinary Inclinations: For the foodies among us, Pinot Meunier is your secret pairing wine. The Pinot family of wines, as “genetically unstable” as they are, make the best food pairing wines. Pinot Meunier can cover the gamut from a warm duck confit salad at lunch to a charcuterie board for a starter or steelhead to braised quail with sautéed wild mushrooms for the mains. It is just that versatile. Serve with a slight chill in a Pinot Noir stem and let the magic happen... to you!

Pinot Meunier Spring Fling!

The next major culinary opportunity of the year is Easter which arrives on April 5. Ducklings and bunnies are all the rage, but your dining companions may be a little bit sensitive to your choices. Nonetheless, you may want to consider pre-selling them on your intended main course. Most people need a dentist, or a doctor or a lawyer from time to time, but everyone needs a farmer (or winegrower) at dinner time.

As the weather turns warmer, lighter bodied reds are just the ticket. And we want you to be ready!

Our 2024 vintage Pinot Meunier is just singing right now. Take full advantage of our Pinot Meunier Spring Fling with 10% off on a 12-bottle case (20% off if you are a member of the A-List) and shipped direct to you for just a nickel! The Pinot Meunier Spring Fling shipping credit will be manually adjusted when Dena confirms your order. Winery pickups are also available, so stay tuned for our Earth Day Open House.

Be ready for Easter, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Fourth of July, Dog Days of Summer and all the other 365 days of the year! No matter what time of year it is, Pinot Meunier, is SO there for you!

Wine Shipping Update for 2026: All 12-bottle case orders (mix and match encouraged) receive up to a $40 shipping credit. 6-11 bottle orders receive up to a $15 shipping credit. All shipping options are available to you. You can apply your credit to ground shipping, or next day air. The credit also applies to Alaska and Hawaii shipments. We also suggest a UPS or FedEx drop point to a climate controlled facility to allow you to pick up your wine at your leisure.

And it’s better on the A-List! A-List members receive a 10% discount on any 1-11 bottle purchase and a 20% discount on 12-bottle case purchases. Please email Dena to hook you up!

Planning a Trip to the Willamette Valley? Now is the Time

It’s not going to rain forever, probably. We think the record is 40 days and 40 nights, but don’t quote us on that one. If you are thinking about visiting the Willamette Valley during the summer when it is DRY, we have prepared a handy little guide to the Willamette Valley AVA’s.

Get your FREE guide to the Willamette Valley AVA’s here!

Fully featured and loaded with information you can actually use! Which AVA is the biggest? When was the Willamette Valley AVA established? What are the soil types? Who grows what wine? Where the heck is Mt. Pisgah and why should I care? Whether you are experiencing a DRY spell or not, it’s all here for you! And wine fly’s free on Alaska Airlines, just sayin’.

Amalie Robert Estate is open year round by appointment for vineyard tours and tastings. Request a tasting appointment with your preferred day and time.

Kindest Regards,

Dena & Ernie

Other Resources

Visit our Website
Visit the FLOG Archive
Take the Amalie Robert Tour
Shop Amalie Robert Direct
Download your FREE Willamette Valley sub-AVA Guide
Alaska Airlines Wines Fly Free

Hello and Welcome,

We survived Dry January. The Willamette Valley was wet, then dry, and then wet some more. That’s what happens when societal norms, climate change and Pinot Noir get tangled up in one another. Now February has set upon us forthwith. It may be a short month, but there are several key events in February not to be missed.

Alas the first major event has passed us by, leaving only heartbreak and below freezing temperatures for those back home hoping for a Brady type comeback. Sadly, and quite convincingly we might add, the Patriots were denied.

But it is worth noting that a 30 second Super Bowl spot this year cost a cool 8 million dollars. Most everyone can agree that somebody has to buy a whole lotta Bud for AB InBev to pay that back. At least they had a solid commercial this year.

February 14th is St. Valentine’s Day (prequeled by Friday the 13th). Most everyone who is able to sit up and fog a mirror knows what’s going on here. As usual (and the Patriots can attest to this), the devil is in the details. Or Prada, sometimes the devil wears Prada. You should be so lucky.

February 16th is Washington’s birthday (Federal holiday), but his actual birthdate was February 11th, 1731. That held until 1752, when Britain adopted the Gregorian calendar which moved Washington’s birthday a year and 11 days to February 22, 1732. Now, it’s observed on the third Monday in February, regardless.

But the real prize this day is International Syrah Day. This one is a big deal. It’s not just Amalie Robert Estate celebrating Syrah, the whole world is in on the action! From the cool climate of Dallas, Oregon to the Northern Rhône Valley to blazing hot Australia, and right next door to the far corner of the planet in New Zealand, but NOT everywhere in between!

February 18th is National Drink Wine Day. This one is fairly self-explanatory. But it is nice to know that right after Dry January, there is a day recognized for the enjoyment of wine. For those folks looking to grab a cold one, they need to wait until September 28th for National Drink Beer Day. You can rest assured, your local will be well stocked floor to ceiling with plenty of Bud.


In This Communication:
The BIG Picture
Syrah Deep Dive
First Things First
The Clones
Harvest, Winemaking and a Butt Load of Patience
The Mark
Satisfaction and Top Barrel Syrah
Other Resources

The BIG Picture

Syrah Deep Dive
You may be asking yourself, what was going through Ernie’s mind when he decided to plant Syrah. You would be in good company, as Dena has expressed the same curiosity over the years. But she is wise, and only allowed an acre. “Do what you want, but an acre is all you are going to get!” That’s how passion projects go - don’t bet the farm, just one acre at a time.

It began, as things of this nature often do, on cocktail napkins. We were enjoying a fine dining meal at Vin sur Vin in Paris over a magnum of Domaine Dujac Red Burgundy well into the wee morning hours. It was then we were smitten by the wine bug. Pinot Noir was under our skin like Ava Gardner on Frank Sinatra.

One thing led to another, then another (and not in any predictable sequence or foreseeable order), when we found ourselves in the cellar of E. Guigal with Kit Stevens MW. We had the good fortune (and perseverance) to be treated to a sample of one of the single vineyard Côte Rôties aging gracefully in barrel. Having experienced these wines in Europe and Stateside, this in situ tasting really set Ernie’s hair on fire.

We left that appointment with a profound appreciation for what Syrah can be when grown in a cooler climate like the Northern Rhône Valley. One where the grapes just barely reach aroma and flavor maturity before the weather closes the harvest window (in most, but not necessarily all vintages).

Ernie also had a brief conversation with Marcel Guigal where they discussed Syrah clones that were very well suited to cool climate vineyard sites. Specifically, Côte Rôtie, the coolest growing region in the Northern Rhône Valley, often referred to as the Burgundy of the Rhône. And very much like the vineyard site which we just happened to own here in Dallas, Oregon.

First Things First
We purchased our vineyard site in 1999 when it was planted to Montmorency cherries. After a brief tutorial from Bob, the former owner, Ernie was a cherry farmer for about 4 months. That summer, after the cherries were harvested, the trees followed forthwith. Then the real work began.

Tart cherry trees, (Ernie found out) are very deep rooted. Once the track hoe pulled the trees there were 30 acres of deep rooted cherry roots sticking up out of the ground. Root removal proceeded in a very manual fashion for the next couple of months. Then it was all about transforming a mental construct into a physical implementation.

You know, and an actual commercial scale vineyard. Once again, the devil would be found in the details, and frequently so. We planted about 20 acres of Chardonnay, Pinot Meunier and Pinot Noir over the next 2 years.

It was with Dick Erath’s tutelage that Ernie chose his spot for a lone acre of Syrah. Dick’s exact words have faded with time, but his point was made as delicately as ever. “I would plant Syrah there, where the vines will be more sheltered from the winds. It will be warmer, and you will have a better chance of ripening Syrah. Not that you will ripen it, but you will have a better chance.”

The Clones
Since we weren’t yet making wine, Ernie had time on his hands. In typical Microsoft fashion, he set his sights on the objective of making wines in the Guigal idiom, then began figuring out just how to do it. He had a leg up by already knowing the Syrah clones to plant, but sourcing the vines was another matter. Just because you know where Mars is located in the solar system, does not necessarily mean you are going to visit there anytime soon.

So, it took a couple of years and then another year or so after that to get the clones he wanted planted into the ground. Meanwhile we were now growing grapes and selling them to winemakers who would become our Pinot Noir mentors. By the time fall of 2006 came around, Ernie was looking at his first crop of Syrah.

The first thing to note about Syrah clusters is that they range in size from about the same as Pinot Noir to about 4 times that size. They can be HUGE and often are! The next thing to figure out is how long they need to ripen. Pinot Noir is easy, just add 105 days to when you see flowers, and then get out the harvest buckets. Through trial, tribulation, and successful failures, we have established that the Lucky Block 13 Syrah harvest will be held the day before the torrential fall rains arrive, sometimes in October, but usually in November.

And it would not be a full and factual account if we did not speak of Viognier, or as Ernie calls it when walking the block, White Syrah. The plan was to have 3 rows of each of the 4 Syrah clones that Marcel Guigal had recommended, and then another 3 rows of Viognier. That makes for 12 rows of Syrah, 3 rows of Viognier for a total of 1,485 vines (1.02 acres or 0.412 hectares). If wine has a love language, it is Viognier. And that’s why it has its own 3 rows - the most pampered 3 rows on the property.

Well, they say if you want to make God laugh, just tell him your plans. Mother Nature operates in a similar fashion, albeit it may take awhile to figure her out (if ever). We had a local nursery graft some of our Syrah vines. They were also given some Viognier cuttings to graft. And as you have most likely surmised, some of the Syrah vines we got back turned out to be Viognier vines. Now aptly named White Syrah.

And you don’t find these things out for sure until about 3 years after you plant the vines. That is when they begin to bear fruit. So, just like they do in Côte Rôtie, we have Viognier interplanted in our Syrah vines. Often times in life, and farming in particular, your only real choice is how to respond to a situation you have been put into. In this particular situation, we could have dug them out and started over, but we chose to just let it go Northern Rhône style. Advantage: Mother Nature.


Harvest, Winemaking and a Butt Load of Patience
Harvest day is set when the forecast indicates what day the Pineapple Express will arrive bringing with it all of that South Pacific lashing rain. We act fast and cluster pluck the Syrah and Viognier the day before. Sometimes it is October, and sometimes it is November. The way Ernie manages these vines they do not really succumb to rot, so we benefit from extended hangtime to develop aroma and flavor. Advantage: Winegrower.

The winemaking is remarkably similar to Pinot Noir (Just think Syrah made by a Pinot guy). We ferment with whole clusters but use a much larger percentage and we do not add yeast. Yes, the interplanted Viognier makes its way into the Syrah fermenters. The difficulty arises when we are trying to start a natural fermentation when the grapes are about 40 degrees (or colder). It’s cold in November.

Once fermentation does begin, then we have punch down. Ernie abandoned the typical punch down tool used for Pinot Noir years ago. Now he just puts the boots to them. Pushing through a ton and a half of Syrah is a workout. But trying to bring your boot back to the surface is where the real muscle toning happens.

Punch down tool for Pinot Noir and “putting the boots” to the Syrah.

Fermentation lasts about 6 weeks due to the cold start. Pressing is routine and the wine is loaded to butt (Medieval English unit of measure) then we patiently wait for the magic to develop from a multi year maturation period. We typically see about 2 years in barrel before we begin making the cut between Top Barrel Syrah and Satisfaction Syrah. And in 2018, there was a barrel trial that took over 4 years! WTF !

The Mark
We began our Estate grown Syrah program with the 2006 harvest, and have been at it ever since. It took awhile, but some of the wine intelligentsia began to notice. One reviewer in particular covered the Northern Rhône, including E. Guigal, and Amalie Robert Estate in the Willamette Valley. His name was Josh Raynolds and he wrote for Vinous, and before that with Stephen Tanzer’s International Wine Cellar.

And so, how did it work out? When we send our wine to review, we would hope for a reviewer that understands the variety, the vineyard source and the goal of the winemaker. Said another way, don’t leave your children with people you do not trust. When we get lumped in with California Syrah, we know they have missed the mark.

Of all of the professional wine reviewers out there, Josh Raynolds and David Schildknecht (writing for Robert Parker) were the only two to ever visit us. We sent them wine and they published reviews. No pay to play, no magazine advertisements, nothing but straight up reviews. Those days are pretty much well behind us.

Satisfaction and Top Barrel Syrah
If Ernie has done his job well, our Syrah wines should continue to evolve and provide pleasure for 25 years, or more. We recognize this is a bold statement. But as one of the founders of Microsoft was attributed to saying: “Go big or go home.”

Here is an opportunity to see for yourself. Ernie has opened his private cellar going back to the first vintage, 2006. Some vintages may be gone, but still plenty to choose from. Take a look for yourself and see what strikes your fancy. Whichever you choose, we do recommend a brief decanting period of 30 to 45 minutes. This will allow the wine to get its collective aroma, flavor and texture in order.

And if you just happen to live where the buffalo roam, (or elk), we strongly suggest a ribeye cut seasoned with fresh cracked black pepper and finished with a generous sprig of rosemary over a brief maturation period over a hot grill.

Wine Shipping Update 2026: All 12 bottle case orders receive up to a $40 shipping credit and 6 bottle orders receive up to a $15 shipping credit. All shipping options are available to you. You can apply your credit to ground shipping, or next day air. The credit also applies to Alaska and Hawaii shipments. Please email Dena for options.

And it’s better on the A-List! A-List members receive a 10% discount on any 1-11 bottle purchase and a 20% discount on 12-bottle case purchases.

Kindest Regards,

Dena & Ernie

Other Resources
Visit our Website
Visit the FLOG Archive
Take the Amalie Robert Tour
Shop Amalie Robert Direct
Download your FREE Willamette Valley sub-AVA Guide
Alaska Airlines Wines Fly Free

On average, our vineyard receives about 45 inches of precipitation a year. This is received mostly as rainfall, but occasionally as freezing rain or, maybe 3 years out of 10, as snow. And the heaviest months for rain are December through February. Sometimes referred to as “The Pineapple Express” originating from the Hawaiian Islands.

The Pineapple Express, from Hawaii to Oregon. Credit: AccuWeather

Oregon Pinot Noir requires soil moisture during the growing season, but it is fairly DRY in our DRY farmed vineyard from about April through September. The vines rely upon the WET months to charge our sedimentary clay loam soils, so they can thrive during the DRY summer growing conditions.

In This Communication:
The BIG Picture
Planning a Trip to the Willamette Valley? Now is the Time!
January Daylight and Moons
But the Wines are Dry
Spotlight Wine: Chardonnay Both Ways
Other Resources

The BIG Picture

What’s a Pinot Noir grower to do? First off, in the fall we drill in some cover crop seeds that will germinate and grow roots to hold the topsoil onto the hill during the rains. If we have chosen correctly, these little seeds will become healthy plants that will fix nitrogen right out of thin air and co-locate it in the soil next to our vines’ roots. And that’s how we feed our vines all winter long. But it doesn’t’ work if it’s DRY, we need rain to make this happen.

Dry January in Willamette Valley wine country? That’s not for us.

Planning a Trip to the Willamette Valley? Now is the Time!
But it’s not going to rain forever, probably. We think the record is 40 days and 40 nights, but don’t quote us on that one. If you are thinking about visiting the Willamette Valley during the summer when it is DRY, we have prepared a handy little guide to the Willamette Valley AVA’s.

Get your FREE guide to the Willamette Valley AVA’s here!

Fully featured and loaded with information you can actually use! Which AVA is the biggest? When was the Willamette Valley AVA established? What are the soil types? Who grows what wine? Where the heck is Mt. Pisgah and why should I care? Whether you are experiencing a DRY spell or not, it’s all here for you! And wine fly’s free on Alaska Airlines, just sayin’.



January Daylight and Moons

Increasing daylight hours in January. Credit: AccuWeather

And you have time, harvest is still about 9 months away. As the earth rotates the Northern Hemisphere back toward the sun, we will be experiencing more daylight hours. In January alone, we can expect about 50 more minutes of daylight than we had in December. And if your trip planning includes any lunar influences, here is a guide to the 13 full moons of 2026, including a rare blue moon, and the ever-exciting Supermoons! EXTRA: Full lunar eclipse is scheduled for 3 am March 3 on the West Coast. That’s really farming early.

The moons of 2026. Credit: AccuWeather


But the Wines are DRY
That’s how the way we do it. In the winemaking idiom, the term DRY refers to the amount of unfermented or residual sugar in a wine. The first thing to know about that is whether or not that was the intended wine style at the beginning of fermentation.

Some wine styles are intentionally left sweet, or off DRY. Think dessert wines such as an Ice wine, Port or Sauternes. One of our favorites is Banyuls, but we don’t grow it. Extra Dry Champagne is actually sweet. The sweetness is referred to as residual sugar and is measured in grams per liter (g/L). But that’s not important.

Click here to watch the vide, Pressing Syrah after fermenting DRY.

What is important to know is that freshly harvested wine berries have around 225 grams of sugar (glucose and fructose) per liter of juice. This is the starting point of 100% residual sugar (RS). Apple juice can run 100 to 155 grams of sugar per liter, and orange juice comes in at about 85 to 100.

It is generally accepted that DRY wines can contain up to 10 grams of unfermented sugar per liter – that’s also known as 1% RS. Off DRY wines can go up to about 35 grams per liter of unfermented sugar, or 3.5% RS. Anything beyond that is considered sweet.

• Dry Wine: Less than 10 grams of residual sugar per liter (g/L)

• Off-Dry Wine: 10 to 35 g/L of residual sugar

• Sweet Wine: More than 35 g/L of residual sugar (often 120 g/L or more for dessert wines)

The end goal of our fermentation is to ferment those 225 grams of sugar per liter down to about 1 gram per liter or less (0.1%), producing around 13% alcohol by volume wine. That is a very DRY wine.

Sometimes as the yeast are happily converting sugar to alcohol, they run into trouble. One of the most obvious occurrences is when there was a whole lot more than just 225 grams of sugar to ferment per liter. Yeast are “all in” up to about 15.6% alcohol, then they die off from alcohol toxicity. The resulting wine is left sweet, because the yeast cannot continue fermentation.

This can occur naturally in the vineyard due to desiccation, forcing a very high concentration of sugar. Or conversely, from freezing temperatures that keep the water as ice inside the wine berry as the highly concentrated juice is pressed out.

And sometimes, the yeast just may not like you and abruptly stop fermenting. It could be a phase of the moon, or you put your left shoe on first that day. Maybe the grapes lacked proper nutrition to feed the yeast, or maybe the tank temperature was too cold. One early morning things are fine, and the next night you are sleeping on the (not DRY) winery floor trying to restart a stuck fermentation.

Whatever the reason, once the yeast stop fermenting, they typically do not restart. And then you may be left with too many unwanted grams of residual sugar in your very many liters of unfinished wine. When this happens, phrases such as “That’s a feature not a flaw” or the universal get out of jail free card “I meant to do it that way” get bandied about. It’s not for everybody.


Spotlight Wine: Chardonnay Both Ways

Chardonnay is one of the most widely planted wine grape varieties at about 520,000 acres worldwide. The United States has around 100,000 acres of Chardonnay, and Oregon makes up about 34,000 acres planted. But it’s not the size of your acreage that counts, it’s the magic in it.

Here at Amalie Robert Estate we have 0.75 acres of Chardonnay planted in Block 24. At the turn of the century, we planted a total of 1,089 Chardonnay vines, about 50% Dijon Clone 76 and 50% Dijon Clone 95, all on 5C rootstock. Our vines are densely spaced at 1,452 vines per acre.

We harvest our Chardonnay vines based on aroma and flavor. Typically we are mostly finished with the Pinot Noir harvest when these wine berries hit their “sweet spot”. Chardonnay clusters are larger than Pinot Noir clusters and the harvest crew makes fast work of 1,089 vines.

In the winery, we dedicate an entire processing day to Chardonnay. Logistically, Ernie selected his press capacity to match his Pinot Noir fermenters at about 1,000 liters. What that means for Chardonnay is about 1,200 pounds of freshly plucked wine berries can fit in a single press load. Pressing takes about an hour, then it is cleaning out the pressed wine berries and reloading. This goes on (and on) until we run out of Chardonnay wine berries, usually around 4 o’clock in the afternoon.

The yield from a light press is about 160 liters of Chardonnay juice from one ton of wine berries. You can press harder and get more juice, but the quality degrades the harder you press. Then it is off to tank to settle the juice for a spell. Here is where Mother Nature does her bit. Whenever a piece of fruit gets bruised, it begins to turn brown. Think pears, bananas, apple cider. Now consider the press as the biggest bruiser of them all. As a result the freshly pressed juice begins to turn brown. This is a very important step in the winemaking process as you would prefer this browning to occur before fermentation instead of afterwards in the bottle.

Let the fermentation begin! After a couple of days of settling a portion of the juice goes to 1,000 liter stainless steel tanks and a portion goes to a single, brand new 500 liter French oak barrel. Fermentation begins forthwith, and Ernie adds a 300 watt fish tank heater to maintain a 65 degree temperature. The yeast like 65 degrees and will finish a fermentation. DRY As a side note, Dena does not really like off DRY Chardonnay and Ernie really does not like sleeping on the fermentation floor.

These two fermentation styles produce two dramatically different wines. With all the magic from mighty little Block 24, we produce Dijon Clones Chardonnay fermented in stainless steel and the Heirloom Cameo Chardonnay - Barrel Fermented Chardonnay (BFC).

Fermentation in stainless steel captures the true aromatic expression of Chardonnay. Unadorned by oak or any other distractions, our Dijon Clones Chardonnay delivers a deft and delineated palate experience. Just after work with friends, or because of them, a glass of Dijon Clones Chardonnay offers an offramp from the day, or an onramp for the evening.

Heirloom Cameo is our barrel fermented Chardonnay. Or as Dena would explain it: “This wine wraps you in an elegant silk scarf and instantly makes you feel really good - about being you.” Or as Ernie would say, “We only make one barrel of this wine a year, so we try not to bucket up!”

When you are looking for something more, maybe it’s a quiet night in, or a dinner party for your most cherished friends, the Heirloom Cameo is right at home. Serve with a slight chill around 50 degrees in a Pinot Noir stem, and you are golden.

Dry January means many things to many people, obviously. Take advantage of our DRY January Chardonnay promotion now, even if you choose to wait until February to enjoy the wines!

2024 Dijon Clones Chardonnay
Haystacks Yellow* scintillating aromas of Meyer lemon zest, starfruit and honey comb entice. A deft and delineated palate experience exudes and permeates, disarming your resistance in a most unsubtle and yet pleasurable way. The full palate experience is completed by a resounding finish, conjuring classical conditioning stimulating a dopamine like response. Just imagine if Ivan Pavlov had Chardonnay instead of dogs… Expertly Hand Harvested, Field Sorted and Whole Cluster Pressed. Wowzah! 40 cases produced.

Culinary Inclinations: The inherent richness and natural acidity of stainless steel fermented Chardonnay pairs exceedingly well with Oregon Dungeness Crab. Here are two of our favorite pairing preparations courtesy of the Oregon’s Choice website. Savory Dungeness Crab Beignets and Crab Cakes with Lemon Aioli.

* Monet began a series of paintings of haystacks in the summer of 1890.These paintings, of which there are more than 25, would become defining examples of impressionist painting. His haystacks elevate the status of common bales of hay, highlighting the importance hay plays in agriculture and sustaining life. Impressionism, and Monet specifically, often give importance to working class elements of life, like farming, by painting them. https://www.claude-monet.com/haystacks.jsp

2021 Heirloom Cameo Chardonnay
Canary Diamond. Swirling light effortlessly teases pheromonic scents of White Lion Daffodil, plum blossom, yellow rose and citron zest. An enticing beginning grows into a full on palate experience. Not lean, not fat, but a muscular and taught palate presence that leaves no wanting unfulfilled. The lingering expression of acidity remains long after the wine, preparing the palate for another tryst. If you want to be bad, you have to be good… Expertly Hand Harvested, Field Sorted, Whole Cluster Pressed and Single Barrel Fermented Chardonnay (BFC). 55 cases produced.

Culinary Inclinations: Seared scallops nestled onto a bed of roasted garlic fettucine, served at dusk over candlelight. If you need a little guidance on searing scallops, check out Gordon Ramsay.

Take the Big Blue Button to DRY January Chardonnay!

We personally (no bots) confirm all orders and shipping conditions prior to shipping. We suggest using a UPS or FedEx ship to location. This allows for a climate controlled facility to receive and hold your wine. Another benefit is minimized travel exposure while your wine is trying to co-locate with you and your ability to collect your wine at your leisure. If you have any shipping questions, please email Dena.

Wine Shipping Update 2026: All 12 bottle case orders receive up to a $40 shipping credit and 6 bottle orders receive up to a $15 shipping credit. All shipping options are available to you. You can apply your credit to ground shipping, or next day air. The credit also applies to Alaska and Hawaii shipments. Please email Dena for options.

And it’s better on the A-List! A-List members receive a 10% discount on any 1-11 bottle purchase and a 20% discount on 12-bottle case purchases.

Once we get past Dry January, we are very much looking forward to International Syrah Day on February 16, 2026

Kindest Regards,

Dena & Ernie

Other Resources
Visit our Website
Visit the FLOG Archive
Take the Amalie Robert Tour
Shop Amalie Robert Direct
Download your FREE Willamette Valley sub-AVA Guide
Alaska Airlines Wines Fly Free

Amalie Robert Estate Vintage 2025 will be remembered as the Diamond Vintage. Diamonds are naturally formed under high pressure over a long period of time. Willamette Valley Pinot Noir is formed in the agrarian endeavor (where duct tape is often deployed around the cranium to preserve structural integrity) over 105 days. While you don’t have to be crazy to grow Pinot Noir, it does help.

While our 24th harvest window was relatively short, we did experience all of the real time agrarian anomalies and abnormalities that we have come to expect from an Estate Cluster Pluck, just compressed into half the time. Think Tricks or Treats. The Great Cluster Pluck is kinda like that.

The Vintage 2025 defining climate characteristic was a very dry growing season. As a dry farmed estate, we do not irrigate. We believe a little drought leading up to harvest helps in stressing the vines to produce higher quality wine berries. Dena thinks balance is important, and that is why she likes to see a little stress in Ernie just before the Great Cluster Pluck.

Fortunately, our vines’ deep-rooted rootstocks are well suited for this type of vintage. Ernie has also become more comfortable in relinquishing the strict “A-Type” control for the more realistic “más o menos” field implementation. The results are the same, and the risk of a stroke is greatly reduced. But in the winery, he is still the iron fist in the velvet glove of HAACP.

The good news is that there was very little instances of rot. The wine berries we cluster plucked from their mother vines were as pristine as a Type IIa diamond. And you only get one shot at it. Wine is the only agrarian Adult Recreational Beverage that is made once a year, and each vintage is unique. So, we do our best not to “bucket up!”

Moving right along to our whole cluster fermentations, you should smell what they look like from here! The Syrah is the laggard with a “late” October 22 harvest date (normally November, but that was not in the cards this year). It was cold that morning, so the fermenters are experiencing an extended cold soak while the indigenous yeast population builds up to a critical mass.

All in all, nothing to complain about, mostly. Our harvest crews were good, and plentiful. Probably because everyone else was finished Cluster Plucking by the time we got started, or used machine harvesters. And we had a little help from Hoot and Anny. They are our resident fawns from this vintage that helped us out with our pre-harvest quality control.

The (only?) nice thing about having old, well used equipment is that when it comes time for an immediate Right Farming Now (RFN) repair, you have learned all of their tricks. And you know just where in the agricultural supply chain to find and expedite the parts you need. The not so nice thing is that at 25 years in, some of those manufacturers and parts no longer exist. And if you are on hold for more than 2 minutes, you have called the wrong parts guy.


In This Communication:
The BIG MOVING Picture
Cyber Monday Offer
Bud Break and the Dawn of Vintage 2025
The Hidden Joy of Canopy Management (We are Still Looking)
The Dog Days of Summer
The Grease Pit of Eternal Peril and Equipment Repair
A Cluster Plucking Good Time!
The Numbers, A Very Arid Adventure

Cyber Monday Offer

Cyber Monday Offer is available NOW! We are offering $550 cases of wine! Choose from any of the wines in our Cyber Monday cart, and they are yours for a cool $550. Mix or match, any vintage and variety. If it is in the cart, then it is available as a $550 case. If commitment is not really your thing, then choose 6 bottles for $275. Or, you could wait for Santa... Clearly the Great Pumpkin thing did not work out.

Click on the Big Blue Button to select your Cyber Monday wines! Add the “Cyber Monday 12” or the “Cyber Monday 6” option to your cart and Dena will apply your discounts manually and confirm all orders before shipping. Limited availability, first come first served.

Pick-up at the winery is available. Shipping options include a $50 flat rate ground shipping to the east coast and $40 flat rate shipping to the west coast on 12 bottle cases.

We suggest using a UPS or FedEx drop point. This allows for a climate controlled facility to receive and hold your wine. Another benefit is minimized travel exposure and ability to collect your wine at your leisure.


Bud Break and the Dawn of Vintage 2025
Springtime in the Willamette Valley is full of promise. The new vintage is upon us, and therapy has helped to resolve the most nagging issues from the prior agrarian year. And therapy, like pain, is personal.

Some may choose Pinot Noir therapy; others may seek more professional help. At the end of the day, it is very important to celebrate your victories and accept the fact that experience is what you get when you don’t get what you want. You have done your best (despite yourself and helpful others) and have the wisdom of another year under your belt.

The vines, of course, are oblivious to your emotional needs. They simply know that when the climate warms up in the spring, they start to show above ground growth. And that is encouraging - at first. All (almost all) of those apparent dead sticks that you have spent all winter pruning, are now sporting little green shoots of life! Then it hits you. The roller coaster of canopy management starts on the next page of the calendar!

The agrarian endeavor surely was the precursor to computer programming. Boot up! To be a successful agrarian, you must have a program in your mind that takes your piece of dirt, and whatever it is that you re trying to grow on it, from the beginning of the growing season to a successful ending. This is ideally called a harvest. Gleaning is another option, albeit not a desirable one. We will leave sales out of it for now.

In computer programming, you are matching wits with a machine that only knows what you tell it, and an end user. End users, like vines, have their own ideas about how your program should work. In the agrarian endeavor, you use pruning to clip, snip and otherwise remove growing options that the vines may employ to thwart your program. We are not so empowered with end users.

Once all of the coding errors are corrected, a computer program compiles. Once all of the logic errors are remedied, it can then go into production. A successful computer program can run for a very, very long time with very little to no human intervention. Think ATM machines or calculators (modern day operating systems not so much).

When an agrarian program is developed, it is tested out for the first few years in situ. Depending upon the size of the endeavor, a crew of humans may be necessary to carry out the implementation. Implementation errors (if discovered in time) are corrected in real time. Logic errors are more difficult to identify and are often only detected at the end of the growing season, or the 5, 10 or 15 year mark. Corrections are often associated with the word “Damnit!” (rhymes with Willamette) and are time and capital intensive.

And then… Unlike a computer that runs your program the same way every time, you are faced with Ms. Nature who never does anything the same way twice. She will be the one to compile and run your program each year. And you had better be ready to patch some code in real time if it looks like frost, or drought or heat dome or atmospheric river. There are volcanoes all along the I-5 corridor and wouldn’t it be a shame if your entire year’s work was covered in volcanic ash or blanketed with wildfire smoke. And what about those tectonic plates we are all sitting on?

So it goes, each and every year. And yet, we endeavor to persevere. Living’ the dream, so you don’t have to!

The Hidden Joy of Canopy Management (We Are Still Looking)
The newfound goodness of spring quickly turns to arduous field work in the form of canopy management. Canopy management is a feel good term that represents a significant amount of hand labor. And wires, miles and miles of trellis wires.

The general idea is that canopy management, when done properly, provides an open environment allowing air circulation and sunlight around your wine berries so they do not succumb to rot. And thus, you can make wine that people actually enjoy consuming. Less discerning alternatives run to wine distillation and industrial fuel.

If you start canopy management too early, the shoots are too short to tuck into the wires. And while you would think this would take less time, it never seems to. If you wait a little longer, some of the shoots will be just the right length, the ones at the end of the vine will be too long, and the ones at the head will be too short. And if you can’t get a crew, well the vines seem to grow extra fast.

Right about halfway through tucking shoots into the second and sometimes third wires simultaneously, flowers magically appear. This is Ms. Nature having you on. It is the mental equivalent of that odd feeling you get in the seat of your pants from someone’s boot.

In other words, you are lagging behind. And that is because once you see those flowers, you have 105 days, and counting, before the Great Cluster Pluck is set upon you. It may not be exactly 105 days, but that is when it gets real.

When all of the shoots are tucked into the three sets of catch wires AND the catch wires are clipped together, then and only then does the enforcer appear on the scene. Its time to hedge! The idea here is to remove the growing tips from the shoots so that they redirect their energy into ripening wine berries so we can ferment the sugar out of them and make palatable wine.

Once a year, we mount the French hedger on the Italian tractor, with the Oregonian flail mower out the back. Then it is second gear overdrive for 35 acres of tough love. It used to be third gear underdrive, but the gopher mounds never really go away, they accumulate over time. Think of them as nature’s little speed bumps for farmers. The red-tail hawks do catch a few from time to time, but the pocket gopher is a worthy adversary. Friends come, friends go, gopher mounds accumulate.

And the hedge pass is not just a onetime thing. No. Depending on the growing season and available soil moisture, this is at least two passes, sometimes three and a touch up for a few overly vigorous spots. Adult Recreational Beverage consumption runs high during this phase of the growing season. Especially if you break a wheel, in the middle of the row, on the steepest part of the field, but that hasn’t happened in a few years now.

The Dog Days of Summer
Vintage 2025 was dry. There was very little rainfall in the spring, and virtually nothing during the summer. Our soil is sedimentary based, meaning old ocean floor, characterized as sandy clay loam. We see this soil type reflected in the size of the rototiller tines before and after a pass through the vineyard. They are much smaller afterwards. But it does put iron back into the soil, so that’s good, right? Goes right along with the 11/16 wrench Ernie lost all those years ago.

The nice thing about this type of soil (Bellpine series) is that it holds water very tightly. The water holding pores in the soil are very small, and it takes the vine’s roots a substantial amount of effort to extract the water. This is opposite of volcanic soils with larger pores where the water holding capacity is greater, but the vines are able to deplete the available soil moisture much faster. The goal is to have available soil moisture heading into the last few weeks of ripening. The alternative is no available soil moisture and the vine robbing water from the wine berries, thus making raisins.

And then it is suddenly September. And we have had virtually no rain. Sure a few days of 110% humidity, but that just makes a mess on your windshield. It does not really put any water near the vine’s roots where it can do us some good. It can however, foster rot in your wine berries if you did a poor job of canopy management and everything is collapsed on the wine berries. Be careful when you ask for rain, you just might get it and the unintended (farming) consequences that along go with it.

The race now turns to the triumvirate of sugar accumulation, aroma and flavor development and time on the calendar. In a perfect vintage (as 2010 is now showing), aroma and flavor would be ideal in the winemaker’s sensory evaluation before the atmospheric river of rainfall arrived, with sugar concentrations set to deliver alcohol at the 12.5% range. The calendar would read early to mid-October

Right. The rains we did receive arrived in mid to late September. Fortunately for us, our vineyard is mostly planted to deep rooting rootstocks that scrap for water. Specifically, 5C rootstock is the most similar to own rooted vines as far as effective rooting depth. If there is available soil moisture, they will find it.

Available soil moisture helps to extend the growing season. This is helpful when the sugar concentrations are going ballistic, but the aroma and flavor are stuck at pink grapefruit. The vine roots continue pumping up water to lower sugar concentration and keep the wine berries developing aroma and flavor for another day. And they did this until we found that sweet spot of Montmorency cherry aroma and flavor. And The Great Cluster Pluck commenced forthwith!

The benefit of planning AND planting your own vineyard, and growing your own wines is that you know what the vines are going to do. You wrote this program and have the advantage. And as we review what got us to 105 days of ripening, you have a pretty fair idea what Ms. Nature is going to throw at us. Maybe not exactly when or how much, but after 25 years at Amalie Robert Estate, we have seen this movie before. You know when to make your move, and when to save your powder for another day.


The Grease Pit of Eternal Peril and Equipment Repair

Before we get into the (mental and physical) heavy lifting of farm equipment maintenance, we have a discovery to share.

Most people old enough to read about the agrarian endeavor have heard of WD-40. A relative newcomer to the market is Simple Green. This is a concentrated cleaner that can be used before WD-40 to clean parts. However, this creates a 2-step process, often times with a lag phase of overnight before both treatments can be applied to the target surface. Thus, farm equipment repairs are delayed, and no one in the agrarian endeavor has that kind of time.

By mixing equal parts Simple Green with WD-40 into a spray bottle, you now have a very effective farm equipment parts cleaner and lubricator all in one treatment. And this non-flammable solution may also be used (inadvertently) on minor scrapes and cuts while performing farm equipment maintenance. Stings a bit though, but only at first. Rinse and repeat for maximum effect.

Now, consider the rototiller. This piece of farm equipment is unique in its inherent design to alert you that it needs maintenance. Other pieces of farm equipment might have a dash light indicating a clogged filter, or escaping steam from under the hood identifying a radiator leak. The rototiller, while not overly complex, simply requires grease and friction clutch disks.

There are a limited number of grease zerk points, and usually a couple pumps from the grease gun everyday keeps these bearings functioning within preestablished operating guidelines. But the rototiller’s main point of failure is the friction clutch. The rototiller knows this, as it just sits there all year long, lying in wait.

The friction clutch is not designed for daily routine maintenance. You know it is time to change the friction clutch disks when you smell the unique and unmistakable scent of burning (over-frictioned) friction clutch disk. Older pieces of farm equipment most likely have organic friction clutch disks, meaning they were made with asbestos. Not only do they smell bad, but they are bad for your health. See Farming, in general.

For those operators not able to recognize the scent of burning asbestos, the rototiller has a failsafe backup system – smoke. Burning friction clutch disks will also emit a cloud of blue smoke to alert the operator that the clutch disks are in need of service.

Blue smoke helps provide a sense of urgency, as in “Service Me Right Farming NOW!” Black smoke usually means you have waited too long, and the transmission is now engulfed in flame. Darn it… The time lapse between blue smoke and black smoke is inversely proportionate to input shaft horsepower. The higher the horsepower, the less time it takes to go from blue smoke to black smoke. As you might imagine, Ernie runs 100 horsepower tractors, because that was as much as he could get!

Now, it is true that any piece of equipment, if operated outside preestablished operating guidelines long enough will eventually become an impromptu smoke machine. However, the potential for spontaneous combustion heavily favors farm equipment.


A Cluster Plucking Good Time!
Get the buckets! Get the FARMING buckets! It’s Cluster Plucking time in Willamette Valley! And so it was September 26 when we commenced a pluckin’. And by all weights and measures, it was a very successful Cluster Pluck. You hope for the best, and plan for the worst. But you never really know until you turn that key in the tractor at 6:30 in the morning. It either roars to life, or belches out white smoke. That’s farmin’ folks.

Now here is when we had the rain. You get the same amount of rain every year around here. And if you don’t get it before harvest, you are going to get some during harvest. The wine berries are not the worry. There is not enough time left on the vine for rot to establish. The concern is traction on the hillside for the tractors and harvest trailers. Gravity flow is not just a winery thing. So, we waited until the sun, and a little breeze, made it safe to go out and get some more. Which we then did.

The last pig down the chute is always the Syrah and Viognier. Actually, we take the Viognier first while the buckets are clean. Once you start the Syrah, those buckets run deep red with juice, and you do not want to put Viognier wine grapes in them. Unless you want to make Pink wine.

That last best day was Wednesday, October 22. Ernie likes to see the calendar say November before he takes the Syrah, so Dena flipped the calendar ahead the night before at dinner. All happy now.

As far as compression goes, September 26 through October 22 was the shortest harvest window on record for Amalie Robert Estate. Except maybe 2001 where we had 1 cluster on a newly planted vine, but a racoon got to it before we did. That also is farming, folks.


The Numbers, A Very Arid Agrarian Adventure.
October proved up to the task of Vintage 2025 by contributing another 147.2 Degree Days. Add that to the 2,714.4 Degree Days through September 30, and you have way too many farming Degree Days.

The high temperature for the month was 91.8 degrees recorded on October 7 at 4:24 pm. And ‘twas the night before the Syrah Cluster Pluck that we recorded the low for the month at 37.2 degrees at 10:12 pm. This explains why the “cool climate” Syrah is taking its sweet time starting to ferment.

Measurable precipitation was 1.54 inches through October 21, providing a total of 5.83 inches for the 2025 growing season from April 1 through October 21. Here we stop the climate accumulation numbers as we have completed the Great Cluster Pluck to our satisfaction.

Willamette Valley Pinot Noir Vintage 2025, still an uncut diamond, but showing great promise!

Kindest Regards,

Dena & Ernie

After 25 years of growing Willamette Valley Pinot Noir, one truth rings true vintage after vintage. “You don’t have to be crazy to grow Pinot Noir, but it helps.”


In This Communication:
Pinot Meunier, the Perfect Fall Red
Looking for a Harvest Window
A Stitch in Time
The Numbers
Other Resources

Pinot Meunier, the Perfect Fall Red
Now Shipping: The Pinot Meunier shipping window is open! Follow the Big Blue Button to secure your 12 bottle case, or 6 pack. Just in time for cooler fall weather, holiday entertaining and gift giving! Go ahead, treat yourself to this limited release wine. Just in time for the end of daylight savings time, you get an extra hour to enjoy wine on November 2nd. Don’t delay, Do it today!

2024 Pinot Meunier
Translucent Carmesi Red attracts in a subtle come-hither manner. Rewarded with perfumed red rose petal and freshly harvested summer raspberry aromas, the palate is intrigued. But not left wanting from the pure expression and exacting delivery of fruit, tannin and acidity served up from a long stemmed wineglass. For no longer than a moment, a pleasant distraction conjures memories from a time gone by and an inkling of the undiscovered dalliances that are yet to be. Unfined, unfiltered and definitely unafraid, Pinot Meunier. 101 cases produced.

Culinary Inclination: Spit roasted quail alongside baked delicata squash, sautéed chanterelle mushrooms in duck fat and garlicky brussels sprouts.

We are offering up to a $40 shipping credit for your fall 12-bottle case selection, and all shipping options are available to you. You can apply your credit to ground shipping, or next day air. The credit also applies to Alaska and Hawaii shipments. Please email Dena for options. We also suggest using a UPS or FedEx drop point. This allows for a climate controlled facility to receive and hold your wine. Another benefit is minimized travel exposure and ability to collect your wine at your leisure. It is also less expensive than shipping to a residential address.

And it’s better on the A-List! A-List members receive a 10% discount on any 1-11 bottle purchase, a 20% discount on a 12-bottle case purchase, and domestic ground shipping is always included with a 12-bottle case.

Looking for a Harvest Window
Just when we have the vineyard all tucked in and ready to put the “polish” on our ripening wine berries, the early September weather looked like this. All nice and cool and dry. Plenty of hang time to develop aroma and flavor without rapid sugar accumulation – and no rot to speak of. This weather pattern tends to favor very well-balanced wines with wonderful bouquet, textured mouthfeel, silky tannins and moderate alcohol. Pretty farmin’ nice wines.

And then as soon as you relax to pour a glass of Pinot Meunier, THIS forecast appears right out of nowhere. Waft The Fruit!?! Our preplanned defense for this previously identified, potential scenario included NOT pulling the leaves that shade our wine berries so as to shelter them from excessive sun exposure that results in excessive tannin. And hedging a short canopy to help preserve soil moisture so that our wine berries would not desiccate in the heat, resulting in high potential alcohol levels. The Syrah (and Viognier), of course, should be just fine. Thank you very much.

And of course, this turns the smoke machine on for those areas consummating the natural reduction of combustible forest materials, aka burning forests and trees. This is what’s known as a net net loss. The first loss is eliminating the (economically valuable) trees that convert carbon dioxide into oxygen so we can all breathe. The second loss is polluting our environment with carbon dioxide and particulate matter created during combustion contributing to global warming. And that leaves it to all the creatures big and small with lungs to be the “filter scrubbers” of the associated particulate matter. Fortunately, our little corner of the viticultural world is less affected.

A Stitch in Time
If you want to make Ms. Nature laugh, just tell her your plans. Do you remember that lack of September rain we were talking about? Well, it seems Ernie did find his rain dance notes from 2013. And they still work! Ernie may have missed a move here or there, but for all intents and purposes he managed to pull down about 1.73 inches for the month of September. And add another 0.60 inches of rain for the first week of October, just for good measure.

For those of you who don’t necessarily read the tea leaves every day, this means a little more hang time. And hang time, with available soil moisture, means we get to hang our wine berries on the vine a little longer to develop aroma and flavor without worrying about excessive sugar accumulation fermenting into high alcohol wines.

Insider Tip: The way to make too much money on the stock market is to sell too soon. Meaning before the crash. However, in the world of wine, we are always looking for fully developed aroma and flavors in the wine berries before we Cluster Pluck them. And that takes time, if time is a luxury you can afford.

But if you are sourcing from a vineyard of shallow rootstocks, your future may very well be preordained in these post global warming vintages. Shallow rooting rootstocks are great for advancing sugar accumulation early in the season. Match that with a hot, dry summer with very little rainfall and what you have there is a forced early harvest. High sugar concentrations are there, but aroma and flavor maybe not so much. These rootstock choices were all in vogue before the global warming vintages. Not so much nowadays.

We planted Amalie Robert Estate at the turn of the century knowing we would not irrigate. So, we chose deep rooting rootstocks for our sandy, marine sediment soils. Our rootstock of choice is 5C (from Texas, dontcha y’all know), and those roots are going nowhere but down, down, down looking for soil moisture. That means we were able to hang on the vine until we received the aforementioned rains of September. (Note: We don’t ask for miracles at the end of the season, we depend on them.)

Put all that together and what you have there is our 24th harvest at Amalie Robert Estate! Could be the vintage of a lifetime, but it is most certainly the vintage of the year. “Wines True to the Soil, Wines True to the Vintage.^®” As we used to say at Microsoft, “It’s better to be lucky than good.”

Always good to check in with our mighty walnut, before scheduling the first Cluster Pluck. This tree is an “indicator plant”. When the leaves begin to senesce, it is an indicator that the Pinot Noir aroma and flavors are ready and that is when we get out the Cluster Plucking buckets.

What to do if you don’t have a mighty walnut to signal the beginning of harvest? Well, you could rely on the arrival of those flocking birds. You know, robins and starlings…

The Numbers
September added 510.7 Degree Days, bringing the growing season to date total to 2,714.4 Degree Days. The high temperature for September 2025 was 103.3 degrees Fahrenheit recorded on September 4th at 5:00 pm, and the low temperature was 43.2 degrees recorded on September 26th at 7:00 am. We recorded 1.73 inches of rainfall for September 2025. This brings the growing season to date rainfall total to 4.29 inches of measurable precipitation.

Our next communication will be the Vintage 2025 Harvest After Action Report. In the meantime, if you want to see what a harvest looks like at Amalie Robert Estate, you can watch that here courtesy of VineStories. Willamette Valley harvest at Amalie Robert Estate.


Winemaking: The Continuation of Terroir by Other Means.®
We are living the dream so you don’t have to! Winemaking: The Continuation of Terroir by Other Means.® is a repository of our farming history at Amalie Robert Estate.

We have over 200 posts going back some 25 years. It’s all out there on Substack. You can visit the archive for FREE! If you want to see what we see on a more regular basis, follow us on Instagram @AmalieRobert.


Traveling to the Willamette Valley?

Planning to enjoy traveling and exploring the Willamette Valley? There are two primary gateways to the Willamette Valley. Most people are familiar with Portland International airport (PDX) at the top of the Willamette Valley. However, there is a second gateway in Eugene (EUG) at the south end of the Willamette Valley. Both of these airports service the major carriers.

Insider Tip:Alaska Airlines offers a Wine Flies Free program from both PDX and EUG. You will need to acquire a wine shipper box as you tour the valley. When you check in for your flight, indicate you have a case of wine, and it will be checked for FREE on Alaska Airlines. BONUS: Many wineries will provide you a FREE wine shipper box with a 6 bottle purchase.

Interested in learning about the newest AVA? Download our FREE guide to the Willamette Valley AVA’s!

Amalie Robert Estate is open year round by appointment for vineyard tours and tastings. Request a tasting appointment with your preferred day and time.

Kindest Regards,

Dena & The Rainmaker


Other Resources
Visit our Website
Visit the FLOG Archive
Take the Amalie Robert Tour
Shop Amalie Robert Direct
Download your FREE Willamette Valley sub-AVA Guide
Alaska Airlines Wines Fly Free

By the time we close out August on the calendar, most all of the heavy lifting is done. Sure, we have a little percussive maintenance on the tractors and implements before harvest (and a new set of tires to mount), but this is nothing new. If Ernie has been easy on the farm equipment all summer, then maybe some of his repairs and maintenance budget might find its way into subsidizing an afternoon Adult Recreational Beverage. Not likely, for the most part, but not impossible either. We drink a little beer and make wine, get to go farming most of the time, in Pinot heaven…

Now is the time we begin the transition from winegrower to winemaker. Different hat, same cattle. As Willamette Valley Pinot Noir winemakers, our primary concern is that we cluster pluck those little wine berries at just the most opportune time to produce the style of wines we want to show in the glass. But The Great Cluster Pluck is a continuum, like space and time. You know what is going to happen, mostly. It is just a question of when, and how much. Farming, in a word.

Our job is to schedule the harvest crews in such a manner that each block is hand picked at its zenith. In reality, you win some, you lose some and some get rained out. And there is nothing wrong with missing the ideal harvest window. Just try not to make a habit of it. You reflect on what you (and others) could have done better and move forward. That is called experience. And if that experience actually turns out to be positive, it is called a successful failure. Or, in a word, farming.

Best Case Scenario
As we look forward to The Great Cluster Pluck, Vintage 2025, we are looking back at our cellar holdings and would like to share our Best Case Scenario with you. We are finding the Hers and His Reserve Pinot Noirs from Vintages 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013 are revealing the elegance from cooler growing seasons and the magic of refined stem tannins from whole cluster fermentation. This is your opportunity to peer “through the looking glass” into times gone by.

Amalie’s Cuvée Pinot Noir (Hers) is Dena’s favorite barrel selection for the vintage.

2010 Vintage Amalie’s Cuvée Tasting Notes
Ruby red exposes you to a cornucopia of exotic aromas orbiting around cinnamon, clove, coriander, and baking spices with an overlay of red raspberry preserves. The palate experience is lithe and elegant revealing red currant, tart cherry, and sundrenched blackberries wrapped in an earthy core of baking cocoa. The refined stem tannin provides the structure where the invigorating acidity teases the enduring finish. Unfined and unfiltered.

2011 Vintage Amalie’s Cuvée Tasting Notes
Riverside red introduces a sultry and savory bouquet of cocoa dusted almonds, ginger, carmelized brown sugar and freshly crushed black raspberries. A lively palate expression reveals rich red fruits supported by stem tannins that provide presence without the burden of over extraction. The curtains do in fact match the carpet. The transition to the teasing finish is conveyed through a gentle squeeze from the velvet glove of acidity. Unfined and unfiltered.

2012 Vintage Amalie’s Cuvée Tasting Notes
Amalie Robert red. The pervasive and permeating aromas of purple lilac, freshly crushed ripe red raspberries, cherry cobbler and sandalwood spice crescendo in a kaleidoscope of inherent beauty. Sweet and rich, yet tart and delineated, red fruits chase blue fruits; the palate is awash in pleasure while the feminine matrix of acidity and tannin linger at the edge of your perception. The enduring and repeating pleasure of the finish is the hallmark of “The Cuvée.” Unfined and unfiltered.

Estate Selection Pinot Noir (His) is Ernie’s favorite barrel selection for the vintage.

2011 Vintage Estate Selection Tasting Notes
RFN red provides notice while cinnamon and sandalwood entertain cocoa and five spice. A rich palate offers deep red fruits and integrated stem tannins. A masculine impression of a feminine vintage providing striking presence all the while keeping its knickers on. A long and lingering finish culminates the trinity of acidity, fruit and tannin. Unfined and unfiltered.

2012 Vintage Estate Selection Tasting Notes
Roadster red (at speed) exhilarates Montmorency cherry, cardamom, semi-sweet chocolate and violet aromas. The shift to the palate is polished and precise leading with an expansive and intentioned mid-palate vibrancy that reverberates. Refined stem tannin with throttled acidity have your cognitive abilities racing at WFO. That is pretty much the point. Unfined and unfiltered.

2013 Vintage Estate Selection Tasting Notes
Persuasive red. Deeply fragrant aromas of tilled earth, sweet wild raspberries, aged cigar box cedar, dried rosemary and pheromone provide a moment of pause. Energetic and fully engaging the palate with a wild streak of Wadenswil clone prompting the release of endorphins. Integrated stem tannins and balanced acidity sooth during the refractory period. Unfined and unfiltered.

Click on the Big Blue Button to order Amalie’s Cuvée and Estate Selection Pinot Noirs Best Case Scenario! Your Best Case Scenario is 12 bottles, 2 each of the above 6 wines, or a split case of 1 bottle each of these 6 wines. Or, pick your own Best Case Scenario from our extensive cellar holdings.

We are offering up to a $40 shipping credit for the Best Case Scenario and all shipping options are available to you. You can apply your credit to ground shipping, or next day air. The credit also applies to Alaska and Hawaii shipments. Please email Dena for options. We also suggest using a UPS or FedEx drop point. This allows for a climate controlled facility to receive and hold your wine. Another benefit is minimized travel exposure and ability to collect your wine at your leisure. It is also less expensive than shipping to a residential address.

And it’s better on the A-List! A-List members receive a 10% discount on any 1-11 bottle purchase, a 20% discount on a 12-bottle case purchase, and domestic ground shipping is always included with a 12-bottle case.


Winemaking: The Continuation of Terroir by Other Means.®
We are living the dream so you don’t have to! Winemaking: The Continuation of Terroir by Other Means.® is a repository of our farming history at Amalie Robert Estate.

We have over 200 posts going back some 25 years. It’s all out there on Substack. You can visit the archive for FREE! If you want to see what we see on a more regular basis, follow us on Instagram @AmalieRobert.


In This Communication:
Best Case Scenario
Winemaking: The Continuation of Terroir by Other Means.®
Opening Day of Yellow Jacket Season!
Bringing the Heat!
The Calm Before the Storm
Through the Looking-glass into September
What to Do?
What Does This Mean and Why Should I Care?
Numbers, Numbers Everywhere!
Smoke in the Air!
Other Resources


Opening Day of Yellow Jacket Season!

August, Willamette Valley Vintage 2025 breaks down like this. The first week brings opening day of yellow jacket season. They were really aggressive this year, but Ernie was ready for them. In fact, he was ready in May, June and July.

As you can see, we did pretty farming well on opening day! Of course, this is just a drop in the bucket. When we first put out those traps, the new attractant is very potent and that really drives them wild. But sometimes they just buzz around the trap and won’t actually go inside it. At that juncture we deploy alternative tactics. You can only get so far with a kind word...

After we fully deplete our arsenal of nuclear weapons, photon torpedoes, bunker buster bombs, guided missiles, military grade munitions, flame throwers and pyrotechnics, we reach for the PyGanic. PyGanic is an organic spray approved for all manner of nasty biting, stinging insects and it debilitates yellow jackets Right Farmin’Now! Mano a Insecto.

And while taking a few yellow jackets off of the field of play provides tremendous emotional gratification, it has virtually no impact on the population at large. But still, it is great fun to watch them all buzzing about inside their newly confined space. Just a matter of time now. There will be no tears in rain for them.


Bringing the Heat!

The second week of August brought the heat. We topped out at 106, but the real story is the nighttime temperatures that were stuck in the 60’s. That means the vines kept up their torrid ripening pace. And by ripening, we mean accelerated sugar accumulation, not aroma and flavor development. Ideally, we would like to see low temperatures in the 50’s this time of year. But maybe those vintages are well past us now.

And the half inch of rain that was supposed to follow on forthwith, turned into 0.03 inches of measurable precipitation. Most likely, we will not see any measurable precipitation before harvest. We can’t say for sure, obviously, but it would be bucking the trend. Ernie is studying his rain dance notes from 2013. That brought 9 inches of rain in 3 days, so, maybe…


The Calm Before the Storm
The third week of August was actually quite pleasant. Moderate daytime temperatures and cool nights gave us a little side glance that maybe we had turned the corner. Yeah, not so much. The last week of August brought even more heat and topped out at 113! And that brought on the sunburn…

Our wine berry clusters are spaced horizontally along the fruiting wire every 4 inches or so. We control that. Leaf cover providing shade occurs vertically along each shoot about every 3 to 5 inches or so. Ms. Nature controls that. Most of the time, a cluster benefits from at least some shade in the morning or afternoon, or both.

We typically do not remove very many leaves around the clusters. We find a little more shade provides a very supple mid-palate texture that we enjoy. But sometimes it is the case that a cluster is bare ass naked to the direct afternoon sun. And if you have ever been in this compromising position, then you know what we mean by “sunburn”. (But, was it worth it?)


Through the Looking-glass into September
Vintage 2025 is presenting some interesting factors to consider as we approach The Great Cluster Pluck. First of all, we are early to ripen this vintage. We flowered about 2 weeks earlier than average, and Ms. Nature has her 105 day schedule to meet, more or less. This means a mid-September start to harvest. The weather should be very pleasant and warm with very little rot to deal with. This will be preferable to late, rainy and plenty of rot. However, the aforementioned yellow jackets will be out in full force starting about 10 am. Gird your loins…

The vines will most likely be in drought conditions. And that is not a good situation for the wine berries trying to hang on the vine long enough to develop aroma and flavor. The vines’ roots will try to bring up what available soil moisture they can to cool the leaves and carry on photosynthesis - until there is no more soil moisture available. At that point they turn to the wine berries for water.

This is called desiccation. Not a very flattering word, but accurate, nonetheless. The end result is that there is less water in each wine berry, thus concentrating the sugars and acids. But this does nothing to advance the aroma and flavor sensory development. The result can be an early harvest producing high alcohol, high acid, low aroma, light color and flavorless wine. Or if the sugars get too far out of range, it is the same wine, but now sweet as the yeast die before converting all of the sugar to alcohol. And thanks to the unwelcome heat spike, we also have some sunburn clusters to cull out.


What to Do?
Sometimes nothing is the correct answer. Albeit as humans, that is hard to accept. Having survived the infernal 2015 vintage, we learned a little bit about water management (it was a successful failure). There is only so much you can do with the vineyard floor to preserve soil moisture into September, and Ernie has done that. Irrigation is right out – no cheating allowed.

Next we look at the canopy. The wall of leaves that are ripening our wine berries are also translocating water. First, this water comes out of the ground and when that is gone, it will come out of the wine berries. Once we figured out that a taller canopy with more leaves means higher sugars and alcohol potential in our wines, we modified our farming accordingly. Now Ernie cuts as short a canopy as he can to reduce the amount of water the canopy uses. Thus reducing the alcohol potential and allowing more time for aroma and flavor development.

Then we look at thinning off the excess and sunburned clusters. Stop right there! While those clusters are not going to make the best wine, they are holding water that the vine can use. So, the idea is that we leave those wine berries right where they are so the vine can deplete a little water spread over more wine berries. This can slow the rate of desiccation and provide more hang time to develop aroma and flavor.

But there is more to that story. Once we begin cluster plucking those less desirable (and sunburned) clusters, we need a procedure to cull them out of the harvest bins. The good news for us is that we have been sorting out bad clusters at the harvest trailers for years! Been there done that. Woe is the machine harvester…

Of course, if we get rain in early September, well then, that changes everything.


What does this Mean and Why Should I Care?
Well That’s Fantastic, but you may ask, “How do I know if I will like the wine?” Wine is a luxury good and should provide you pleasure at the most opportune times. In this regard, wine is not significantly different from dating. To wit: What are you looking to get out of the experience?

While we acknowledge everyone has a different definition of “a damn fine spanking”, we assume that most people are looking for a pleasurable experience – whatever that may entail. So many “(fill in the blank)”, so little time.

But which one to choose? And if it doesn’t work out on the first encounter, you are under no obligation to go for round two. Like that time Mr. Right turned out to be Mr. Right Now. Bye-bye.

Live and learn from some telltale signs before you make your next selection. Corks and shoes can tell you a lot about your next experience. Women’s shoes are always impeccable. From flats to stilettos, they tell a story that men should be able to understand with just a modicum of effort. Men’s shoes provide a much broader range of study, but rarely lead to more than 2 distinct choices. And then there is ALWAYS the exception to the rule.

Corks, or the “closure” protecting your wine from anyone experiencing it before you do, also tell a story. The most basic screw-off closure is functional and performs the task adequately, albeit without much flair. You have a pretty good idea what lies ahead of you for the evening.

Technical closures (which is wine geek speak for ground up cork bits glued together), provide a simulated experience. It looks and feels like you are getting a real, well-endowed natural cork, but in fact you are not. Pomp and circumstance may get you off the store shelf but can lead to unfulfilled expectations as the evening evolves.

The holy grail of wine closures is the 54 millimeter length natural cork. That’s about as big as you are going to find in a bottle of wine. Often times the shorter, but full diameter 42 millimeter length cork is what you end up with. Of course, you won’t know any of this until you get comfortable and remove the protective foil. Your preferred wine key, or Teflon coated cork screw, will help you slowly extract the cork from the bottle bit by bit until all is revealed. The Full Monty, as it were.

There you have it. Now after all of this pre-amble you can actually get down to business and find out just what kind of pleasurable experience awaits you. But in either scenario do your part, just in case. Proper stemware and clean underwear are a must.

And for those of you who are up for the little mid-palate nuance of whole cluster fermentation, extended bottle maturation and delayed gratification - Wait no longer, we have the wines for you. The Best Case Scenario!

Numbers, Numbers Everywhere!
Before we open a portal to The Great Cluster Pluck, it is useful to understand the dwindling number of daylight hours in the Willamette Valley. The vines of course, inherently know their ripening season is coming to an end. The yellow jackets also sense this and turn more aggressive as their rightful end is drawing closer.

The farther north, the more dramatic the reduction of daylight hours. The Willamette Valley, for the most part, lost about 80 minutes of daily sunlight since the beginning of August, as measured at the end of the month. For some perspective, Seattle lost about 92 minutes, but farther south in Houston, the change was only about 46 minutes. Day drinkers pay heed.

Despite the reduction in daylight hours, August was hot. And it didn’t rain. That’s typical for the month, but it doesn’t mean we have to like it. Said another way, a moaning farmer is a happy farmer. But it is better than moaning about the farm equipment. We get plenty of opportunities to do that.

August added 692.5 Degree Days, bringing the growing season to date total to 2,203.7. The first half of the month was cooler logging 317.9 Degree Days, while the second half (16 days) added 374.6 Degree Days.

The high temperature for August 2025 was 113.70 degrees Fahrenheit recorded on August 23rd at 4:36 pm, and the low temperature was 46.90 degrees recorded on August 5th at 6:12 am. We recorded 0.09 inches of rainfall for August 2025. This brings the growing season to date rainfall total to 2.56 inches of measurable precipitation.

Smoke in The Air!
There are a few fires in the Pacific Northwest that we are monitoring. But nothing compares to our good friends in the Great White North, eh?

The Canadian fires are burning near the west coast of Canada between Alaska and Washington State. The smoke from these fires is making its way out into the Gulf of Alaska. This becomes an issue when the jet stream flows below us and allows all of that cool, smoke particulate filled air from Alaska to settle into the Willamette Valley.

Generally speaking, this cool air late in the growing season is a good thing. Moderate daytime and cooler nighttime temperatures put the brakes on sugar accumulation. This weather pattern extends aroma and flavor development while reducing the rate of sugar accumulation in the wine berries. Sure we are loving the hangtime from the cool weather, but at what cost?

Washington State also has a fire out on the Olympic Peninsula that is contributing to this phenomenon. Not to be outdone, Oregon has several fires burning just east of the Willamette Valley. Weather conditions have NOT favored containment. While California is leading the way in acres burned, the fires are far enough away to not cause us significant concern at this time. That could change at any moment with a change in the jet stream.

So far, we just have “Global Dimming” as the smoke particles are high enough in the atmosphere to filter out sunlight. Meanwhile, we are enjoying the colorful sunrises and sunsets, but no smoke aroma to speak of

Traveling to the Willamette Valley?

Planning to enjoy traveling and exploring the Willamette Valley? There are two primary gateways to the Willamette Valley. Most people are familiar with Portland International airport (PDX) at the top of the Willamette Valley. However, there is a second gateway in Eugene (EUG) at the south end of the Willamette Valley. Both of these airports service the major carriers.

Insider Tip:Alaska Airlines offers a Wine Flies Free program from both PDX and EUG. You will need to acquire a wine shipper box as you tour the valley. When you check in for your flight, indicate you have a case of wine, and it will be checked for FREE on Alaska Airlines. BONUS: Many wineries will provide you a FREE wine shipper box with a 6 bottle purchase.

Interested in learning about the newest AVA? Download our FREE guide to the Willamette Valley AVA’s!

Amalie Robert Estate is open year round by appointment for vineyard tours and tastings. Request a tasting appointment with your preferred day and time

Kindest Regards,

Dena & Ernie

Other Resources
Visit our Website
Visit the FLOG Archive
Take the Amalie Robert Tour
Shop Amalie Robert Direct
Download your FREE Willamette Valley sub-AVA Guide
Alaska Airlines Wines Fly Free

Willamette Valley Pinot Meunier and Noir, Vintage 2025, are making their move. The vines have transitioned away from growing more foliage and are now directing their energy to ripening their seeds to reproduce. And in the process, creating the precursor to wine.

We know this because the wine berries entered lag phase (seed hardening) early in the month. That, and Ernie has been out their hedging their shoot tips off. While one event does not necessarily cause the other, these two events force the vine to prepare for the eventual coming of fall.

And now they have been caught out! We have Pinot Meunier In Flagrante! The first blazing wine berries were seen in the Pinot Meunier on Wednesday, July 30th (Julian calendar date 211). We need about 105 days from flowering (Julian calendar day 156) to The Great Cluster Pluck (Julian calendar day 261). Utilizing standard farmer math, that means a harvest window will open at Amalie Robert Estate on September 18th, 2025. Giddy Up!

Wine berry by berry, advancing toward The Great Cluster Pluck.

From now until we hand harvest our wine berries, sugars will accumulate, and the acids will begin to diminish. The magic of Vintage 2025 will be revealed in the development of aroma and flavor. Little by little and all in good time, the Great Cluster Pluck will be upon us.

And get this: Vintage 2025 this has been THE MOST AMALZING growing season we have ever experienced since we started growing wine at the turn of the century! Vintage 2025 marks the 24th Cluster Pluck at Amalie Robert Estate. If only those vines could talk...


Winemaking: The Continuation of Terroir by Other Means.®
We are living the dream so you don’t have to. Winemaking: The Continuation of Terroir by Other Means.® is a repository of our farming history at Amalie Robert Estate.

We have over 200 posts going back some 25 years. It’s all out there on Substack. You can visit the archive for FREE! If you want to see what we see on a more regular basis, follow us on Instagram @AmalieRobert.

In This Communication:

Save the Date and See for Yourself!
Introducing Tractor Vision® (Putting YOU in the video).
The Big MOVING Picture / Tractor Vision™
Turning the Corner on Vintage 2025
Trauma, Drama and Dysfunction, aka The Blue Screen of Death
The Main Story - Hedging
The Numbers
Fire Watch and Undersea Volcano Alert
Traveling to the Willamette Valley?
Winemaking: The Continuation of Terroir by Other Means.®
Other Resources

Save the Date and See for Yourself!

Please join Dena and Ernie for Our Muse Viognier Pre-release and A-List pickup weekend from Thursday, August 14th through Saturday, August 16th. And Thursday is a Nooner! (not that kind). The cellar door opens at Noon on Thursday.

Mother Nature held back with the yield in Vintage 2024. But what she denied us in quantity, she more than made up for in quality! This Pre-release weekend is your opportunity to score a few bottles before they are gone. Viognier is Ernie's Love Language wine, and here is what he had to say about that little minx:

2024 Our Muse Viognier: Golden pearl radiates to the rim, while voluptuous orchid blossom, preserved lemon, champagne mango and raw honeycomb mingle in your frontal lobe. A naturally endowed palate experience is both generous and fulfilling, while the tension of firm acidity builds incrementally to sustain an enduring repose. 11 cases produced. Yes, that is 10+1=11.

Note: If you have not yet secured your allocation of 2024 Book Club White, now would be a fine opportunity to do so. Do you need glasses for your Book Club? Ask Dena for more details.

Please request a tasting appointment with your preferred time for Thursday, August 14th from 12 - 4 pm, Friday, August 15th from 10 - 3 pm or Saturday, August 16th from 10 - 3 pm.

If you find yourself somewhere other than here, The Big Blue Button can help satisfy your Viognier and Book Club White craving. And Pinot Noir, Pinot Meunier, Chardonnay and Syrah...

We are transitioning to a shipping credit to replace flat rate shipping. Any order of 6 bottles or more will receive a $15 shipping credit. An order of 12 bottles or more will receive a $40 shipping credit. All shipping options are available to you. You can apply your credit to ground shipping, or next day air. The credit also applies to Alaska and Hawaii shipments. Please email Dena for options.

As we transition to the new shipping credit, the credit will be manually applied by Dena (a human) and confirmed with your order before agreeing a shipping window. As the weather stays warm across the country, we may opt to use insulated shippers (and freeze bricks) at no additional cost for 6-bottle and 12-bottle orders to protect your wines. We also suggest a UPS or FedEx drop point to a climate controlled facility to allow you to pick up your wine at your leisure.

It's better on the A-List. A-List members receive a 10% discount on any 1-11 bottle purchase. A 12-bottle case purchase receives a 20% discount and domestic ground shipping is included.

Introducing Tractor Vision™ (Putting YOU in the video).

The Significant Farming Activity (SFA) in July is the multi-pass hedging of the vines. However, this can only be accomplished once all of the vines have had their shoots tucked and clipped into the trellis wires – by hand. That would be about 620,500 lineal feet of trellis wires. Or about 2,065 football fields. That’s a lotta football.

The July weather was very conducive to accomplishing this “by hand” activity in a timely manner. There were very few incidents where we stopped work due to high temperatures. However, when the field crew has said enough is enough, the vines take the advantage. The vines are active 24x7 this time of year and by the next morning they seemingly have put out another 2 to 3 inches of growth overnight. Fully Understood (FU).

Turning the Corner on Vintage 2025

Lag Phase in humans is the pause that invariably occurs between the 3^rd and 4^th ARB. While everyone is different, you may experience lag phase earlier on some days more than others. This is a verified phenomenon complete with replicated and randomized trials. In fact, you may have been randomized repeatedly and not even known it. All of course, for the greater good.

Lag phase in wine berries is the stage of their development when the seeds begin to develop a hard outer layer to survive the journey through some bird, or animal’s digestive tract. Early in July, as you walk the vineyard and pluck a sample wine berry, you can cut the wine berry “clean” in half with a thumbnail.

As you can see from the above image, not all wine berries have the same number of seeds. Actually, each seed is a pair of seeds. A little redundancy there from Ms. Nature. Following along sequentially, the first berry has one seed pair, the second wine berry has 2 seed pairs, and while somewhat unique, the third wine berry has 3 seed pairs, and the Big Kahuna wine berry has 4 seed pairs.

When you try that same activity later in the month and the seed will not yield, you will have soiled your hand. That’s how you know you are in lag phase. This is also colloquially known as seed hardening. This is a significant time in the vineyard because it allows for crop estimation. Farmers want to know how much of what they are expecting to get. Luck plays a significant role in the final outcome.

If you are lucky, you can weigh a few clusters of wine berries and apply a multiplier of 2x to determine final cluster weight. Clusters, on average, will double in weight between lag phase and the Great Cluster Pluck, hence the 2x multiplier.

If you are lucky AND good, you can apply a more nuanced multiplier taking into account your soil, rootstock, clone, fruit set (pollination ratio), number of seed pairs per wine berry, potential for late season precipitation and/or heat spikes, estimated hangtime and harvest crew availability. Ernie has developed a master class around these concepts, featuring individual Special High Intensity Training modules.

Here is where we introduce the concept of luck. Half of all farming is luck. Vertically integrated agricultural operations have the least amount of luck. But if you are dependent upon others in the agricultural supply chain (and their luck), then there is a derivative formula that provides the total amount of luck you can expect to experience. Then double it.

And a variable amount of that luck, from vintage to vintage, is good luck and bad luck. You never know how much of which kind you are going to get, but rest assured you will be getting some of each. Most likely, in the agrarian endeavor, more than your fair share. Your only recourse is to be prepared. Luck favors the prepared mind, both kinds.

Trauma, Drama and Dysfunction, aka The Blue Screen of Death

We thought it most appropriate to recognize the impending Windows 11 migration hand in hand with the concept of luck. Many hardware manufacturers will be reaping a windfall in new hardware sales as the hapless human population that is using “Software as a Service” is compelled to buy hardware that will service the aforementioned service. Are you being served?

Well, it wasn’t all that long ago that the Windows operating system would independently create a significant user FEATURE (not a bug) known as the Blue Screen of Death. The underlying cause was often related to those early 5 and a quarter inch floppy disks that were used to transfer data from one computer to another. And that is why Norton anti-virus software was developed.

In certain cases, it seemed, once the Windows operating system identified a floppy disk, it would require it to be in the floppy disk drive – ALL THE TIME. And if it went to check while you were doing some meaningful, productive and time sensitive work, and found out the floppy disk was missing, then it presented you with the Blue Screen of Death. Other times, the Blue Screen of Death would simply appear for no apparent reason. Well That’s Fantastic! (WTF)

There is no escaping the Blue Screen of Death. There is no Kobayashi Maru maneuver. You are provided a Hobson’s choice. No matter which key you would press, the Blue Screen of Death would not relent. If you chose not to press a key, you have still made a choice, but not one that advances your condition. And for those without a technical background, there is no “any” key. We have been there, had that done to us.

You could succumb to the three finger salute and voluntarily terminate the Windows operating system. This was what the Blue Screen of Death told you to do. Eventually (over some period of time and frustration) most users were forced to acquiesce. Akin to committing technological suicide, your data would vanish without a trace – by your own hand. No ransom note like today’s hackers. This is why backups were invented. Backups to floppy disks, mind you. Do you feel lucky? Well, do ya?

But the three finger salute was not the only option. Once you came to accept that your data was gone, and there is nothing you can do to get it back, your mind begins to work on another problem. And that problem is as old as time itself – exacting revenge against the machine.

The phrase is “Putting the Boots to It”. Some people think this means to reboot your computer, and in some instances this would be viewed as correct, but not with the Blue Screen of Death. With your data gone, you begin to consider the value of the computer. Then you value the frustration that it has caused and the unnecessary rework that lies ahead of you. Once you have established the value of these two variables, your decision is reduced to a binary “greater than” comparison and “if – then” plan of action.

IF your machine value is greater than the value of your frustrations, THEN you will simply unplug it from the wall, consume ARBs until lag phase occurs, and then plug it back in. IF your machine value is not greater than your frustration value, THEN you will consume ARBs until lag phase occurs, and implement a nontraditional shutdown procedure. FU.

The monitor, while party to the incident, was often times able to return to fully functional service. Note: These early PCs did not float. We are not at liberty to divulge how we know this, you will just have to trust us. #BoatAnchor

The Main Story – Hedging

Ah yes, hedging. The viticultural concept here is to remove the actively growing shoot tips, so that the vine will redirect its energy to ripen its seeds. The sooner this is done, the earlier your wine berries will develop aroma and flavor, thus avoiding rot and improving wine quality. This is a subjective, qualitative result from a defined, quantifiable activity.

Way back when, the monks at the monasteries brewed beer to sustain them while they were waiting for the wine berries to ripen so they could make wine. And that is why in modern times we drink beer while we grow wine. And since they didn’t have the modern-day conveniences of brush cutters and weed whackers, they employed goats to keep the brush under control. They liked to keep things fairly tidy and presentable, as you never really knew who was coming to dinner, or when. Could be the Spanish Inquisition.

One day the goats, being goats, found their way over to the vines. They started eating the succulent shoot tips and found them to be much more enjoyable than the poison ivy and thorns the monks kept putting in front of them. When the monks found out, they were having none of it and as promptly as they could, goats being goats, moved the goats away from the vines.

Fortunately, the Spanish Inquisition did not arrive, and a small cluster plucking occurred that fall. It seemed that vintage was remarkably better than past efforts. Could it be the goats had actually improved the wine quality? Or maybe it was the newfangled trellis system (the long forgotten “Flying Buttress”) that lifted the wine berries off the ground so they would not succumb to rot? It was never really decisively adjudicated, however maybe better to repent and enjoy a glass of wine than be burned as a heretic. As time went on, the vines continued to be “hedged” by the goats. Antidotally, it was reported some years later that spit roasted goat was quite the food and wine pairing.

With today’s modern trellis designs, such as the Vertical Shoot Position, the shoot tips are way too high up for the goats to hedge. The alternative is to mount a platform on your tractor to raise the goats or buy a mechanical hedger and leave the goats to the poison ivy and thorns. If you ever have doubts on which way to go, you can contact your local OSHA office. They have a tendency to offer up preemptive opinions on these sorts of dilemmas.

The Numbers

As we look out into the beautifully hedged vineyard this time of year, we always ask ourselves the same question. To wit: “What would you do with a brain if you had one?”

The fog of farming is upon us. It starts off pre-dawn in the shower, previewing all of the things that must get done that day. Augmented by all the things that need to get done. When you realize your toothpaste tastes weird, that’s when it hits you. You are brushing your teeth with shaving gel. And not for the first time.

The month of July in the Willamette Valley was made for growing Pinot Noir. Farmers always say things could be worse, and this year that’s right. In fact, it may not get any better than this.

July added 631.1 Degree Days, bringing the growing season to date total to 1,511.2. As was the case in June, the first half of the month was warmer with 322.7 Degree Days, while the second half (16 days) added 308.4 Degree Days.

The high temperature for July 2025 was 101.3 degrees Fahrenheit recorded on July 13th at 3:00 pm, and the low temperature was 43.9 degrees recorded on July 5th at 5:24 am. There was no measurable precipitation in July, leaving the growing season to date total at 2.47 inches.

Fire Watch and Undersea Volcano Alert

Not much to report on the Fire Watch. However, we do have an undersea volcano about 300 miles off the Oregon Coast, and 4,900 feet below the surface, that would like to interact with our environment this year in a very real and meaningful way. So, we have that going for us, which is nice…

Traveling to the Willamette Valley?

Planning to enjoy traveling and exploring the Willamette Valley? There are two primary gateways to the Willamette Valley. Most people are familiar with Portland International airport (PDX) at the top of the Willamette Valley. However, there is a second gateway in Eugene (EUG) at the south end of the Willamette Valley. Both of these airports service the major carriers.

Insider Tip: Alaska Airlines offers a Wine Flies Free program from both PDX and EUG. You will need to acquire a wine shipper box as you tour the valley. When you check in for your flight, indicate you have a case of wine, and it will be checked for FREE on Alaska Airlines. BONUS: Many wineries will provide you a FREE wine shipper box with a 6 bottle purchase.

Interested in learning about the newest AVA? Download our FREE guide to the Willamette Valley AVA’s!

Amalie Robert Estate is open year round by appointment for vineyard tours and tastings. Request a tasting appointment with your preferred day and time.

Kindest Regards,

Dena & Ernie

Other Resources

Visit our Website
Visit the FLOG Archive
Take the Amalie Robert Tour
Shop Amalie Robert Direct
Download your FREE Willamette Valley sub-AVA Guide
Alaska Airlines Wines Fly Free

This is the June Climate Update and Photo Journal, Vintage 2025, from Amalie Robert Estate. Approximate reading time 1.11 ARB's (Adult Recreational Beverages); Pictures and video only 0.51 ARB's.

Here we have a first look at Willamette Valley Pinot Noir, Vintage 2025. This cluster of Dijon Clone 114 grafted onto 5C rootstock is just hanging out at the end post of block 11. That’s where we planted it at the turn of the century. And once they put down roots, they are not going anywhere.

The vines’ relentless growth is upon us. Mother Nature is egging them on with a little precipitation and steady, but moderate heat. The field crew is kicking ass and taking names, but the vines’ growth remains undeterred.

It takes many hands to raise the catch wires up to capture the vines’ explosive growth. Catch clips hold the catch wires into the notched posts. We run three sets of catch wires and raising the first set is the hardest. Unless you wait too long to do the second set, then it is the hardest. The end result is about 208,000 lineal feet of canopy, or what Ernie refers to as his solar array. And then it is hedger time!


In This Communication:
Situational Review
Equipment Corner
The Emotional Support Numbers (and Beverages)
What Does That Mean, and Why Should I Care?
Save the Date! Open House Saturday & Sunday, July 12 & 13: Crushable Whites and Chillable Red
Traveling to the Willamette Valley?
Winemaking: The Continuation of Terroir by Other Means.®
Other Resources

iPinot® Pinot Noir 6-Pack Digital Offer

iPinot® Pinot Noir - a reserve level wine without the reserve level price. iPinot® Pinot Noir is created from reserve quality barrels of wine selected for our “Hers and His Reserves” - Amalie’s Cuvée and Estate Selection Pinot Noirs. Once the final “Hers and His Reserve” wines are blended, we have a few reserve level barrels of wine left to blend. We blend these cellar worthy barrels of wine together to create iPinot® Pinot Noir - a reserve level wine without the reserve level price.

Experience cellar worthy, Willamette Valley iPinot® Pinot Noir by Amalie Robert Estate. We are offering select vintages of iPinot® Pinot Noir for our 6-Pack Digital Offer!

iPinot® Pinot Noir 6-Pack Digital Offer!

Situational Review
The volunteer cherries around the property are ripening up nicely. We have one wild cherry that Ernie has dubbed the “Dental Cherry”. And that is because the pit makes up about 98% of the whole fruit. It looks like a cherry, all vibrant and fire engine red, but beware actually trying to eat it. Best not to bite down too hard, if at all.

And the good news for us is that the birds seem to leave the cherry trees alone, well, mostly. The robins and starlings have noticed the cherries turning vibrant red. They have a keen sense for detecting such events, including when the wine berries turn purple. And when hunger overwhelms their sense of danger, they just can’t help themselves.

The resident hawks have also noticed the cherries turning red, and for a similar reason – They have little fledglings to feed. But they are not so much looking at the cherries as a source of food, but more as a means to an end.

In the agrarian world, there are birds that eat fruit, and then there are birds that eat birds. And if you are growing fruit, you want to befriend and encourage the birds that eat birds that eat your fruit. By the time the Great Cluster Pluck sets upon us, those little fledgling hawks will have grown and be providing air cover for our ripening wine berries.

On a related note, free vineyard labor is always welcome, but often comes with less-than-ideal results. This year, Ernie is going to get a little help with hedging. In fact, the new crew has already started hedging the Gewürztraminer. Ernie likes to hedge the top of the vines, but they can’t reach that high, so they are doing the best they can. Hard to complain.

The cover crops are coming along quite nicely. The buckwheat is starting to flower and that provides pollen (protein) nourishment for our ground forces. The vineyard floor is a harsh place to live if you are an insect intending to do harm to the vines. We have battalions of ladybugs, earwigs, all manner of mercenary spiders and an occasional frog that regularly patrols the grounds. No one knows for sure just how many we have, but we can confidently assure you it is ALOT!

Equipment Corner
There is a bit of a lull in late June as the field crew is putting up our catch wires. This is Ernie’s chance to do a little bit of routine maintenance and oil changes, which has historically led to a wee bit of percussive maintenance. Everything he drives burns diesel, actually biodiesel here in Oregon. Three Landini tractors, a Kubota RTV and “Gus, Gus the big blue bus” Dodge dually.

It has recently come to Ernie’s attention that the NEW Landini tractors are WAAAY different than the older models he drives. And the marketing of agricultural equipment has certainly evolved. This Instagram clip will bring you up to date on the latest mechanical advancements and marketing developments. Note: You don’t have to speak Italian to understand where they are coming from.


The Emotional Support Numbers (and Beverages)
Humans, like most sentient beings, are creatures of habit. We desire some form of emotional support (validation) that we are “in the zone.” The most basic example is checking the weather. We know that temperatures below 30 degrees Fahrenheit are cold and we need to bundle up. Conversely, temperatures above 100 require a different preparation. These are referred to as quantitative measures and help us to understand and cope with our environment.

Your choice of a morning beverage, with or without accelerant, is another form of emotional support. The cup or mug (hot or cold) is there waiting for you, at your leisure. It provides a sense of emotional comfort knowing that, at least for the moment, in some small way, you are in control of your own environment. However, once you open E-mail, or text, and let others interact with your environment, then all bets are off. Bear in mind, they are operating in their own particular idiom, however misinformed that may be.

After a full day of people interacting with your environment, an evening beverage is often desirable. And in some cases, the evening beverage may in fact be an Adult Recreational Beverage (ARB). This would be considered more of a qualitative emotional support.

The growing season also has some emotional support guidelines that we can take comfort from. Other times they are a source of consternation. Either way, it is like your favorite Major League Baseball (MLB) team winning or losing – it may or may not be your desired outcome but there is not so much you can do about it. However, the ARB is there to help you cope.

The June growing season brought with it 448.9 Degree Days. While this is not necessarily good or bad, it does bring the Vintage 2025 growing season to date total to 880.1 Degree Days. Remarkably, the first half of June contributed more heat units (233.8) than the latter half (215.1). And since June has 30 days, the sample period was the same duration, ceteris paribus. The high temperature of June 2025 was 99.0 degrees Fahrenheit recorded on June 9th at 3:48 pm, and the low temperature was 37.9 recorded on June 1st at 5:00 am.

We recorded 0.41 inches of rainfall on June 22nd. That comes out to about 11,133 gallons per acre and 7.7 gallons per plant. And they sure know how to use it. This brings the growing season to date rainfall total to 2.47 inches of measurable precipitation. All in all a very spectacular June! Good for the humans and the vines.


What Does That Mean, and Why Should I Care?
While June rainfall is not unheard of, it does present farming challenges. The most immediate is that all of that water goes into producing more green growth. This green growth takes the form of longer shoots and more leaves. Add in the warmer summer temperatures and the vines are quickly outgrowing our ability to capture them in the trellis wires. And it is blueberry season, so what farm labor that is available, we are now sharing with another agricultural crop. Only so many hands to go around…

The more concerning development from summer rainfall is the potential for botrytis at harvest. This seems like a long ways off but the end of September will be here about as fast as the end of summer school vacation.

June rainfall helps botrytis spores spread to the inside of the cluster where they will remain dormant. Then at the first sign of rain, usually mid-September, these spores activate and will begin to grow. The more rain, the faster they grow. And the faster our wine berries are compromised.

The concept is triage. What can we save, what do we want to save and what is a lost cause. Not the end of the world, yet, but something to bear in mind as the Great Cluster Pluck bears down upon us. Gives us something to look forward to…


Save the Date! Open House Saturday & Sunday, July 12 & 13: Crushable Whites and a Chillable Red

We will be open Saturday, July 12th and Sunday, July 13th from 10 am - 3 pm by appointment. Stop by to stock up on crushable whites (2024 Book Club White, 2022 Dijon Clones Chardonnay), rosé (2023 Book Club Rosé), and our chillable red (2023 Pinot Meunier). Perfect to pair with our warm summer days.

2024 Book Club White (New Release) - Gewürztraminer and Viognier team up to produce tropical aromas over a scintillating palate.

2022 Dijon Clones Chardonnay - Meyer lemon zest aroma and a starfruit palate entertain while a crisp and delineated finish awaits.

2023 Book Club Rosé - This is your time to relax, recharge rinse and repeat! Enjoy this crisp rosé with your unbridled imagination.

2023 Pinot Meunier - Raspberries over rose petals, the quintessential Pinot Meunier from Amalie Robert.

And what exactly is a chillable red? The short answer is Pinot Meunier. And that is because of the lighter body and insanely perfumed bouquet of this wine. A little chill on this bottle to around 60 degrees provides an exhilarating experience when paired with your favorite charcuterie board or other afternoon delight.

Are you Book Club curious?

Book Club series wines are about taking the time to be you. Kick off your shoes and sail away to other worldly pleasures, or just enjoy watching the world go by. This is your time. Relax, recharge, rinse and repeat.

Winemaking can get complicated, but relaxing at the end of a long day should not be. For us, the best part of making wine is coming home and changing into a pair of dry socks and pouring a glass of wine. Then imagine you are somewhere other than here. We created the Book Club series wines for just this luxury.

Click on the Big Blue Button to order your crushable whites and chillable red!

As we transition to a shipping credit option to replace flat rate shipping, the credit will be manually applied by Dena and confirmed with your order before shipping. Any order of 6 bottles or more will receive up to a $15 shipping credit. An order of 12 bottles or more will receive up to a $40 shipping credit.

All shipping options are available to you. You can apply your credit to ground shipping, or next day air. The credit also applies to Alaska and Hawaii shipments. Please email Dena for options.

As the weather warms up across the country, we may opt to use insulated shippers for 6-bottle and 12-bottle orders (at no additional cost) to protect your wines. We also suggest a UPS or FedEx drop point to a climate controlled facility to minimize travel exposure and allow you to pick up your wine at your leisure.

Click on Appointment Request to select your day and time.

Traveling to the Willamette Valley?

Planning to enjoy traveling and exploring the Willamette Valley? There are two primary gateways to the Willamette Valley. Most people are familiar with Portland International airport (PDX) at the top of the Willamette Valley. However, there is a second gateway in Eugene (EUG) at the south end of the Willamette Valley. Both of these airports service the major carriers.

Insider Tip: Alaska Airlines offers a Wine Flies Free program from both PDX and EUG. You will need to acquire a wine shipper box as you tour the valley. When you check in for your flight, indicate you have a case of wine, and it will be checked for FREE on Alaska Airlines. BONUS: Many wineries will provide you a FREE wine shipper box with a 6 bottle purchase.

Interested in learning about the newest AVA? Download our FREE guide to the Willamette Valley AVA’s!

Amalie Robert Estate is open year round by appointment for vineyard tours and tastings. Request a tasting appointment with your preferred day and time.

Winemaking: The Continuation of Terroir by Other Means.®
We are living the dream so you don’t have to. Winemaking: The Continuation of Terroir by Other Means.® is a repository of our farming history at Amalie Robert Estate.

We have over 200 posts going back some 25 years. It’s all out there on Substack. You can visit the archive for FREE! If you want to see what we see on a more regular basis, follow us on Instagram @AmalieRobert.

Kindest Regards,

Dena & Ernie


Other Resources
Visit our Website
Visit the FLOG Archive
Take the Amalie Robert Tour
Shop Amalie Robert Direct
Download your FREE Willamette Valley sub-AVA Guide
Alaska Airlines Wines Fly Free

The Pinot Noir is flowering in the Willamette Valley! Vintage 2025 is pollinating, and we are having some of the most EPIC weather! Since wine berries are self-pollinating, we do not have to rely on insects to fecundate the vines.

And mostly right on schedule, too. The first week of June brought the first Pinot Noir flowers on June 5th (to be exact), in Block 14 (to be precise), on Pommard Clone Pinot Noir grafted onto 101-14 rootstock (to be sure).

The results from a recent agrarian survey (of farmers) were recently made public. Among the very simply stated questions was this little gem: “As an agrarian worker (farmer), what do you do in your spare time?”

The overwhelming majority of respondents indicated they did not understand the question. The remaining respondents did not know what day it was.


In This Communication:
The Big MOVING Picture
What Does That Mean, and Why Should I Care?
Traveling to the Willamette Valley?
Winemaking: The Continuation of Terroir by Other Means.®
Other Resources

The Big MOVING Picture

The vines are preprogrammed to engage in flowering at or around this time each year. After 25 years of this, Ernie is now hardwired to get the vineyard floor ready for this momentous occasion. Included in, but not limited to, his preparation includes all of the mowing, chisel plowing, rototilling and drilling in the spring cover crop. Add in the spring equipment maintenance of oil changes and other minor to moderate progressive maintenance, and well, he is a pretty busy guy.

Dena keeps a picture of him in her purse. Ernie tries not to fall asleep at the dinner table.

And our friends the volunteer cherries are marking the occasion. As the vines put out their flowers, the Montmorency cherries are starting to turn color. Oh, it is a wonderful juxtaposition of one crop starting their journey, and another crop signally that harvest is almost here.

But not yet. We have 105 days of ripening to go. That’s the historical Willamette Valley average for ripening Pinot Noir. Applying a little farmer math, that means the harvest window officially opens at Amalie Robert Estate on September 18th. We know that because June 5th is Julian calendar day 156. And 156 plus 105 is 261. And Julian calendar day 261 is Thursday, September 18th. Farmer math: So easy a winemaker can do it!


What Does That Mean, and Why Should I Care?
Want wine? Then you need flowers to pollinate and turn into wine berries. We are experiencing ideal pollinating weather, which translates into a very high percentage of flowers setting fruit and becoming viable wine berries.

All good. Except that Mother Nature has designed a Pinot Noir stem to hold about 85 wine berries. Why? We don’t know. But we do know she puts more than 85 flowers on that stem. She is most likely playing the law of averages, in that most years we will not have all of the flowers pollinate.

Well, from the look of things here, we are going to be over received. And when that happens, someone is going to get thrown off the island. As the wine berries mature and swell, they end up crowding each other out until some of them get separated from the stem and dry out. These unfortunate wine berries are called “push outs”. If you have ever ridden the New York subway system during late August, you have seen this phenomenon (and experienced the commensurate aroma) in action.

So, in theory, we are setting about 6 tons of wine berries per acre. But when it all shakes out, some of those wine berries will not make it to The Great Cluster Pluck. This just adds another bit of complexity to the crop estimation calculations. Not to worry, Ernie has a spreadsheet for that. His slide rule finally broke, and Dena has not “had a chance” to find a replacement.

Oh look, it’s Windows 11! What could possibly go wrong…


Traveling to the Willamette Valley?

Planning to enjoy traveling and exploring the Willamette Valley? There are two primary gateways to the Willamette Valley. Most people are familiar with Portland International airport (PDX) at the top of the Willamette Valley. However, there is a second gateway in Eugene (EUG) at the south end of the Willamette Valley. Both of these airports service the major carriers.

Insider Tip: Alaska Airlines offers a Wine Flies Free program from both PDX and EUG. You will need to acquire a wine shipper box as you tour the valley. When you check in for your flight, indicate you have a case of wine, and it will be checked for FREE on Alaska Airlines. BONUS: Many wineries will provide you a FREE wine shipper box with a 6 bottle purchase.

Interested in learning about the newest AVA? Download our FREE guide to the Willamette Valley AVA’s!

Amalie Robert Estate is open year round by appointment for vineyard tours and tastings. Request a tasting appointment with your preferred day and time.

Winemaking: The Continuation of Terroir by Other Means.®
We are living the dream so you don’t have to. Winemaking: The Continuation of Terroir by Other Means.® is a repository of our farming history at Amalie Robert Estate.

We have over 200 posts going back some 25 years. It’s all out there on Substack. You can visit the archive for FREE! If you want to see what we see on a more regular basis, follow us on Instagram @AmalieRobert.

Kindest Regards,

Dena & Ernie


Other Resources
Visit our Website
Visit the FLOG Archive
Take the Amalie Robert Tour
Shop Amalie Robert Direct
Download your FREE Willamette Valley sub-AVA Guide
Alaska Airlines Wines Fly Free

This is the May Climate Update and Photo Journal, Vintage 2025, from Amalie Robert Estate. Approximate reading time 1.05 ARB's (Adult Recreational Beverages); Pictures and video only 0.45 ARB's.

The vines are awake and getting the signal that it is their time to grow. Up until now, the roots have been branching out. But that’s kind of hard to show, so you’ll just have to trust us on that. The vines are, however, dependent upon heat units to grow. That is Mother Nature’s thing, and we are just along for the ride. The warmer it is, the faster they grow. They see the trellis wires and every year it is the same. They think they can outgrow the vineyard crew and escape the firm hand of control. We’ll just see about that…

And May was full of twists and turns. We dipped into the mid 30’s at night and soared into the 80’s during the day. Mix in some wind gusts and rain here and there and you have yourself a Willamette Valley winegrowing spring. Fortunately, we did not have any frost damage. We did lose a vine to tractor blight and Ernie is having it on with the guy in the mirror about that.


In This Communication:
The Big Picture
It Never Ends
The Main Story
What Does That Mean, and Why Should I Care?
Crushable Whites and Chillable Red
Traveling to the Willamette Valley?
Winemaking: The Continuation of Terroir by Other Means.®
Other Resources

iPinot® Pinot Noir 6-Pack Digital Offer

iPinot® Pinot Noir - a reserve level wine without the reserve level price. iPinot® Pinot Noir is created from reserve quality barrels of wine selected for our “Hers and His Reserves” - Amalie’s Cuvée and Estate Selection Pinot Noirs. Once the final “Hers and His Reserve” wines are blended, we have a few reserve level barrels of wine left to blend. We blend these cellar worthy barrels of wine together to create iPinot® Pinot Noir - a reserve level wine without the reserve level price.

Experience cellar worthy, Willamette Valley iPinot® Pinot Noir by Amalie Robert Estate. We are offering select vintages of iPinot® Pinot Noir for our 6-Pack Digital Offer!

iPinot® Pinot Noir 6-Pack Digital Offer!

The Big Picture

And here is where the magic starts. These little plants are buckwheat and common vetch. We grow these plants during the summer so that we can till them into the soil for the fall. These plants break down with the help of our soilborne fauna and provide nutrients for our vines. Remember your peas and carrots? Well, it’s just like that, but for vines.

And here is our majestic volunteer walnut tree. It too has awakened from its long winter slumber. A full canopy of green towers above the vineyard. A nice piece of eye candy for sure, but this tree also serves a very important function. As fall approaches, the leaves begin to senesce and turn a vibrant yellow. This is the signal we look for to open the harvest window at Amalie Robert Estate. This tree also affords our red-tailed hawks a strategic vineyard overlook.

It Never Ends
The Landini tractor Ernie uses to spray the vineyard required a major service this year. Without getting into too much detail, it was akin to quadruple bypass surgery. That sound you only think you hear, is Ernie putting the cuss into percussive maintenance.

It seems the hydraulic circuit that powers the steering system was leaking. Ernie knew this day would come as the tractor left small, and sometimes not so small signs. And of course, being a compact Italian tractor, the steering hydraulics were centered in the tractor. This means the steering hydraulic circuits were located just atop, and slightly forward, of the transmission. Unfortunately, access to this area requires dismounting the cab from the tractor.

Supercars such as the Ferraris and McLarens are built in layers. They start with the chassis, wheels and tires, then drop in the engine and transmission. Then they fit all the plumbing and wiring. Finally, the body is mated to the assembly and out it goes. Very fast we might add.

And when something goes awry, the repair process follows a reverse build protocol. Off with the body to get a better look. Then layers are removed until the offending part is discovered and then made accessible. The repair can then be effectuated. The removed layers are then put back into place, incurring some degree of normal wear and tear (which is not covered, by the way).

The Landini steering control valve utilizes 4 high pressure hydraulic hoses. One is high pressure in, one is high pressure out and then there are two hoses that actually control the front steering. Only two were leaking, but all four hoses were replaced. Hence the quadruple.

This is because the marginal cost of replacing the two non-leaking hoses was insignificant compared to having to come back next year and perform the same repair to replace them. As a capital expenditure, this repair bill will be amortized over a 5 year asset life. However, payment is due before the tractor is returned. Agricultural Warranty applies: 30 feet or 30 seconds, whichever comes first.

And what about the sprayer? Well, its Canadian, eh? and it has its own unique set of issues. Film at 11:00.


The Main Story
May is typically the month where we have enough growth on a vine to start shoot thinning. The objective here is to only allow the plant to grow a shoot from the fruiting cane every 4 inches, so that the clusters have enough room to fully develop. Right. What’s a shoot?

Ok, here is the deal. Vines grow along a horizontal wire 30 inches above the ground that we call the fruiting wire. We tie down a fruiting cane from last year along that wire. Along that cane are little buds. As the growing season develops these buds “break” and begin to grow new shoots. The shoots will grow up into the canopy and produce clusters of wine berries. We will then cluster pluck them, ferment the sugar out of them and bottle them as preserved wine berries, aka wine.

What we like to see are the shoots growing these clusters of wine berries to be spaced about 4 inches apart. Unfortunately, Mother Nature is not that into detail. Correcting this condition is our first major vineyard crew operation. The goal for our spacing is to have about 12 shoots evenly spaced along our 4-foot fruiting cane.

The vines, being vines, are more interested in growing as many shoots as they can. Their goal is to grow up some tree or other structure so that their wine berries will be in the sun. They do this so that the seeds within the wine berries will ripen, some animal will eat them, and then deposit them in some nearby locale. Not as much fun as drinking wine, but the vine has successfully reproduced, which is all they care about.

On a good day, this operation takes about 30 seconds per vine. To put that in perspective, we target about 7 minutes of hand labor per vine per year. The issue, of course, is that all the vines need the same task performed at the same time. So sometimes we are a little early and sometimes we are a little behind. And if the weather is uncharacteristically warm, "a little behind" can turn into "way behind" rather quickly.


What Does That Mean, and Why Should I Care?
Shoot spacing is important for the development of aroma, flavor and texture in our wines. Spacing our shoots apart allows room for each cluster to develop with adequate sunshine and airflow. Aroma and flavor develop in the skins. By having our cluster of wine berries separated, they are not shaded, or otherwise compromised by other clusters.

We are also trying to prevent mildew or other pathogens from compromising the integrity of our fruit. For you it may be some form of caffeine, but for the vines a little morning sunshine and a gentle breeze is what gets them going. This early morning routine helps to dry any overnight moisture that would enable rot to take a foothold. Clusters that are pressed together, do not dry and that can be the basis for an infection.

The Numbers
While it is too soon to tell, we seem to be off to a very good growing season. In other words, nothing has gone horribly wrong, yet. We seem to be marginally warmer for high temperatures, while evening temperatures remain consistent with historical averages. This is somewhat "normal" for the last few vintages. We will just have to wait and see what July and August bring to the party.

May, Vintage 2025 logged 267.8 Degree Days with a high temperature of 86.9 degrees Fahrenheit recorded on May 30th at 4:12 pm, and a low temperature of 34.0 recorded at 5:36 am on May 4th. The first 15 days of May recorded 114.6 Degree Days, and the second half of the month recorded 153.2 Degree Days. Total Degree Days for Vintage 2025 now stand at 431.2.

Rainfall for the month of May, Vintage 2025 totaled 0.48 inches. This brings the growing season total to date from April through May to 2.06 inches. While not much rain, it came at just the right time after Ernie drilled in the spring cover crop of buckwheat and common vetch. And now we wait for germination.

Crushable Whites and Chillable Red
We have officially passed the Summer Solstice, and that means the dog days of summer are upon us (some of you more than others). We see two Adult Recreational Beverage options: Dog nose beer (cold and wet), or crushable whites and chillable red. We can help you with the second option.

We have already crushed the white wines, that happened last fall. Now they are bottled and ready to be enjoyed! And what exactly is a chillable red? The short answer is Pinot Meunier. And that is because of the lighter body and insanely perfumed bouquet of this wine. A little chill on this bottle to around 60 degrees provides an exhilarating experience when paired with your favorite charcuterie board or other afternoon delight.

New Release on offer! Vintage 2024 was the vintage of the year, and here is your opportunity to try our new release Book Club White wine with our crushable whites (and rosé) and the most quintessential chillable red!

2024 Book Club White - Gewürztraminer and Viognier team up to produce tropical aromas over a scintillating palate.

2022 Dijon Clones Chardonnay - Meyer lemon zest aroma and a starfruit palate entertain while a crisp and delineated finish awaits.

2023 Book Club Rosé - This is your time to relax, recharge rinse and repeat! Enjoy this crisp rose with your unbridled imagination.

2023 Pinot Meunier - Raspberries over rose petals, the quintessential Pinot Meunier from Amalie Robert.

Click on the Big Blue Button to order your crushable whites and chillable red!

As we transition to a shipping credit option to replace flat rate shipping, the credit will be manually applied by Dena and confirmed with your order before shipping. Any order of 6 bottles or more will receive up to a $15 shipping credit. An order of 12 bottles or more will receive up to a $40 shipping credit.

All shipping options are available to you. You can apply your credit to ground shipping, or next day air. The credit also applies to Alaska and Hawaii shipments. Please email Dena for options.

As the weather warms up across the country, we may opt to use insulated shippers for 6-bottle and 12-bottle orders to protect your wines. We also suggest a UPS or FedEx drop point to a climate controlled facility to allow you to pick up your wine at your leisure.

Traveling to the Willamette Valley?

Planning to enjoy traveling and exploring the Willamette Valley? There are two primary gateways to the Willamette Valley. Most people are familiar with Portland International airport (PDX) at the top of the Willamette Valley. However, there is a second gateway in Eugene (EUG) at the south end of the Willamette Valley. Both of these airports service the major carriers.

Insider Tip: Alaska Airlines offers a Wine Flies Free program from both PDX and EUG. You will need to acquire a wine shipper box as you tour the valley. When you check in for your flight, indicate you have a case of wine, and it will be checked for FREE on Alaska Airlines. BONUS: Many wineries will provide you a FREE wine shipper box with a 6 bottle purchase.

Interested in learning about the newest AVA? Download our FREE guide to the Willamette Valley AVA’s!

Amalie Robert Estate is open year round by appointment for vineyard tours and tastings. Request a tasting appointment with your preferred day and time.

Winemaking: The Continuation of Terroir by Other Means.®
We are living the dream so you don’t have to. Winemaking: The Continuation of Terroir by Other Means.® is a repository of our farming history at Amalie Robert Estate.

We have over 200 posts going back some 25 years. It’s all out there on Substack. You can visit the archive for FREE! If you want to see what we see on a more regular basis, follow us on Instagram @AmalieRobert.

Kindest Regards,

Dena & Ernie


Other Resources
Visit our Website
Visit the FLOG Archive
Take the Amalie Robert Tour
Shop Amalie Robert Direct
Download your FREE Willamette Valley sub-AVA Guide
Alaska Airlines Wines Fly Free

This is the April Climate Update and Photo Journal, Vintage 2025, from Amalie Robert Estate. Approximate reading time 1.25 ARB's (Adult Recreational Beverages); Pictures only 0.50 ARB's.

On April 16th bud break reminded us that time, and the vines, wait for no man. While the vines have had a nice sleep over since the Great Cluster Pluck, we have not been so fortunate. We even lost an hour on that dreaded DST. Farm equipment maintenance and repairs consumed most of the first quarter’s available time (and budget). No matter, the vines need to be fed.

The grasses and last year’s canes need to be mown, last year’s fall cover crop needs to be tilled into the soil, and a fresh spring cover crop needs to be drilled in. Mother Nature has a key role to play in providing the exact timing and specific amount of spring rains to facilitate soil work and germinate our cover crop seeds. There are a million things that could go wrong and some combination of them always do.


In This Communication:
The Big MOVING Picture
Traveling to the Willamette Valley?
Equipment Corner
What Does That Mean, and Why Should I Care?
The Numbers: Alright April, Let's See What You Got!
Winemaking: The Continuation of Terroir by Other Means.®
Other Resources

iPinot® Pinot Noir 6-Pack Digital Offer

iPinot® Pinot Noir - a reserve level wine without the reserve level price. iPinot® Pinot Noir is created from reserve quality barrels of wine selected for our “Hers and His Reserves” - Amalie’s Cuvée and Estate Selection Pinot Noirs. Once the final “Hers and His Reserve” wines are blended, we have a few reserve level barrels of wine left to blend. We blend these cellar worthy barrels of wine together to create iPinot® Pinot Noir - a reserve level wine without the reserve level price.

Experience cellar worthy, Willamette Valley iPinot® Pinot Noir by Amalie Robert Estate. We are offering select vintages of iPinot® Pinot Noir for our 6-Pack Digital Offer!

iPinot® Pinot Noir 6-Pack Digital Offer!

The Big MOVING Picture

It is said there is nothing common about common sense, but we are pretty sure it is common knowledge that the best fertilizer you can put in your vineyard is the owner’s footprints. And here is what Ernie’s footprints look like this time of year. He’s been there, done that and had that done to him. The next time you see Ernie, just remember, he looks that way for a reason.

The agrarian endeavor is the most polite euphemism for “digging in the dirt”. But working the soil is what it takes to promote vine health through soil fertility. The cover crops that we plant spring and fall are part of our vine nutrition program. Not everybody does it…

We grow these cover crops so that we can nurture our soil, and in turn feed our vines. These plants and grasses break down naturally when tilled into the soil and become nutrients for our vines. Cover crops also foster a very healthy population of beneficial insects to prey on pest insects (specifically mites) that would damage our vines. And cover crop roots help hold our topsoil in place during the fall rains. … but everybody should.

As we say in the agrarian endeavor, if it looks stupid, but it works, its not stupid. It’s farming. And it can be expensive, and take a lot of your time.


Traveling to the Willamette Valley?

Planning to enjoy traveling and exploring the Willamette Valley? There are two primary gateways to the Willamette Valley. Most people are familiar with Portland International airport (PDX) at the top of the Willamette Valley. However, there is a second gateway in Eugene (EUG) at the south end of the Willamette Valley. Both of these airports service the major carriers.

Insider Tip: Alaska Airlines offers a Wine Flies Free program from both PDX and EUG. You will need to acquire a wine shipper box as you tour the valley. When you check in for your flight, indicate you have a case of wine, and it will be checked for FREE on Alaska Airlines. BONUS: Many wineries will provide you a FREE wine shipper box with a 6 bottle purchase.

Interested in learning about the newest AVA? Download our FREE guide to the Willamette Valley AVA’s!

Amalie Robert Estate is open year round by appointment for vineyard tours and tastings. Request a tasting appointment with your preferred day and time.

Equipment Corner
It used to be Ernie spent more than a few lunch breaks driving to the farm store, some closer than others. This was usually after several phone calls (the beers would come later), to verify the parts were actually on the shelf, not just in the inventory listing. Dena, always trying to be the uplifting protagonist voice in Ernie’s head, would ask:

Dena: Did you get what you needed?

Ernie: I got what they had. Not what they said they had, but what they actually had. Which is not what I needed. Now I have to make it work. Just not sure which hammer to start with…

Amazon, Walmart and a host of other online vendors have significantly increased the breadth and depth of parts now available to the agrarian community. In other words, these parts are no longer languishing on some warehouse shelf in obscurity waiting for someone to find them. However, they are still covered with dust. Of course, if you are not maintaining your own equipment, then this is of little concern. The corresponding repair bills of major repair and maintenance, however, will eventually garner your attention.

The financial theory behind annual repair and maintenance is that you are extending the useful life of a piece of farm equipment. Up to a point, it is more financially prudent to repair a piece of farm equipment than it is to replace it. The key is to recognize when you have arrived at that point. And what replacement equipment is currently available.

Once you prepare the farm equipment for the upcoming vintage, deploying progressively greater levels of percussive maintenance, you get to use the equipment in a farming operation. The result of such farming activity is to reduce its useful life. The accounting terms that best describe the impact on said farm equipment include, but are not limited to: depreciation, impairment, disposition, and finally abandonment. While it is possible to trade-in used farm equipment, the value received is often less than the cost of disposal.

What Does That Mean, and Why Should I Care?
The enjoyment of fine wine and music share some similarities. When it is time to buy speakers, some of the best (honest) advice is: if you can’t hear the difference, then don’t pay the difference. Ernie was guided by this advice right out of college and purchased a pair of Vandersteen II speakers. And while this was over a millennia ago, those speakers are still the ones that we enjoy listening to every day.

When it comes to blending barrels of wine, we often employ “The Speaker Test” before we finalize a blend such as Amalie’s Cuvée. The speaker test evolved from another great piece of advice. To wit: Don’t buy the speakers you like the most, buy the speakers that annoy you the least.

Often times a speaker will come across as everything you want, except the high notes are a little tinny sounding. You think at first this will not bother you. But after a while you find that every time you listen to those speakers you look for it and find it. Sooner rather than later you will sell them back to the stereo shop… for 10 cents on the dollar.

When evaluating barrels of wine, we too are evaluating the different elements that present a harmonious expression. Similar to sounds, tastes are very unique to each of us. Sometimes the richness of a wine can overpower an out of balance level of acidity or tannin. Does the aroma, flavor and texture follow through and deliver without fail? If so, get the corks out, let’s bottle! If not, our blending trials are not quite finished.

At the end of the day, it comes down to what you experience, be it music or wine. But it is handy to have a reference point in knowing how that wine or music came to be. Some music, especially in the world of Artificial Intelligence is completely synthesized. It sounds nice and fills the time, but don’t look too close for any authenticity. Unless you are evaluating the underlying source code.

Wine is similar. Once a label is affixed to the bottle, you can do a little digging on your own. Some brands make this easy, others not so much. Did this wine come from someone’s estate vineyard, or was it surplus bulk wine manipulated in such a fashion to achieve a certain aroma, flavor, and texture profile? Either choice can be very satisfying. It then comes down to value. We have come to accept that price only becomes a factor in the absence of perceived value. And perceived value is at the sole discretion of the consumer.

The Numbers: Alright April, Let’s See What You Got!
April started off a little cool and rainy. This was helpful in working up the vineyard floor soil. Then Mother Nature turned off the water. This made working the soil much more difficult, reducing the useful life of the farm equipment, and increasing the repair and maintenance costs. The month ended with the soil ready to receive the cover crop seeds, but Ernie rolled the dice to wait for May rains before drilling it in.

April 2025 logged 163.4 Degree Days with a high temperature of 78.1 degrees Fahrenheit recorded on April 18th at 3:36 pm, and a low temperature of 33.4 recorded at 6:36 am on April 22nd. The first 15 days of April recorded 66.0 Degree Days, and the second half of the month recorded 97.4 Degree Days. While the second half of the month logged a higher Degree Day total there was more variability in the temperature. Not that there is anything inherently wrong with that. It is just a farming observation.

Rainfall for the month of April, Vintage 2025 totaled 1.58 inches, with 1.36 inches falling in the first 10 days of the month.

Winemaking: The Continuation of Terroir by Other Means.®
We are living the dream so you don’t have to. Winemaking: The Continuation of Terroir by Other Means.® is a repository of our farming history at Amalie Robert Estate.

We have over 200 posts going back some 25 years. It’s all out there on Substack. You can visit the archive for FREE! If you want to see what we see on a more regular basis, follow us on Instagram @AmalieRobert.

Kindest Regards,

Dena & Ernie

Other Resources
Visit our Website
Visit the FLOG Archive
Take the Amalie Robert Tour
Shop Amalie Robert Direct
Download your FREE Willamette Valley sub-AVA Guide
Alaska Airlines Wines Fly Free

It’s springtime in Willamette Valley Pinot Noir wine country! The Montmorency cherries are in full, fragrant bloom, and Ernie is on it! The tractor that is. You can see him right there on his manly man’s robin’s egg blue tractor beyond the cherry blossoms.

And following right behind is Pinot Noir Bud Break, Vintage 2025! While the vines endured a miserably cold winter, they have emerged unscathed, so far. The first, most intrepid buds to break were from that sneaky little block 14 Pommard Clone Pinot Noir on 101-14 rootstock. The date was April 16th, the Vintage 2025. The risk is now a late spring visit from Mr. Frost, Jack Frost. The early bird may get the worm, but it is the second mouse that gets the cheese.


In This Communication:
The Big MOVING Picture
Traveling to the Willamette Valley?
While You Were Sleeping
What Does That Mean, and Why Should I Care?
The Equipment Corner
Did You Know We Have a Book Club?
Winemaking: The Continuation of Terroir by Other Means.®
Other Resources

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The Big MOVING Picture
Here is the view from our Chief Farming Officer’s office, aka the tractor seat. His job is to mow up all of last year’s brown canes and mix them in with the freshly cut green grass. The vines are blissfully unaware, awaiting a few more warm days before opening their buds to the new vintage.

Click the image to put yourself in the drivers seat!
The soil compost crew (including our buddy the earthworm), is on the scene to compost that material into nutrients our vines can use. We think of it as nutrient recycling. To the vines, it’s like breakfast in bed! Cover crops do their part too, but we don’t till those in until next month. Stay tuned!

Traveling to the Willamette Valley?

Planning to enjoy traveling again and exploring the Willamette Valley? There are two primary gateways to the Willamette Valley. Most people are familiar with Portland International airport (PDX) at the top of the Willamette Valley. However, there is a second gateway in Eugene (EUG) at the south end of the Willamette Valley. Both of these airports service the major carriers.

Insider Tip: Alaska Airlines offers a Wine Flies Free program from both PDX and EUG. You will need to acquire a wine shipper box as you tour the valley. When you check in for your flight, indicate you have a case of wine, and it will be checked for FREE on Alaska Airlines. BONUS: Many wineries will provide you a FREE wine shipper box with a 6 bottle purchase.

Interested in learning about the newest AVA? Download our FREE guide to the Willamette Valley AVA’s!

Amalie Robert Estate is open year round by appointment for vineyard tours and tastings. Request a tasting appointment with your preferred day and time.

While You Were Sleeping

Mother Nature provides quite the early season show of color to introduce her new vintage. From the crocus in brilliant white to the multicolor daffodils and ever alluring grape hyacinth and wild iris. We even celebrate the dandelions, we just don’t tell them they are weeds. (They are on a need to know basis). But no bud break with this first splash of color… What a tease!

But despite the brutally cold start to the year, the vines are not far behind. Typically, we see the Pinot Noir buds open when the lavender lilacs bloom. Typically, about the time Uncle Sam is getting our results from the national Mathematics Exam form 1040 - due on April 15th. Once the vines start to reveal their first leaves, the only real danger is a late season frost. Or Ernie not staying in his lane…

You may have heard about old cherry orchards making for great vineyard sites. That is very true, especially when growing Pinot Noir. But it is not because the wines have a cherry component to them left over from the orchard. It is because cherries bloom relatively early in Mother Nature’s grand schema. And if cherries are growing on a site that does not get frosted out, that bodes well for vines avoiding a late season frost. And that in turn bodes well for winegrowers becoming winemakers.

What Does That Mean, and Why Should I Care?
Bud break is the official start to the vintage. But it does not tell us a whole helluvalot about harvest. When is The Great Cluster Pluck? As winegrowers and winemakers, that’s what we really want to know.

The answer to that question is really quite simple. We take 105 days and add it to the date the vines flower. In the computer world, this is known as relative addressing. The result you seek is relative to an unrelated event. If you have ever called a software company for technical support, you know what we are talking about.

Practically speaking, we don’t know when the vines will flower. There is no definitive correlation between bud break and flowering. If it continues to be cold this spring, the vines will take longer to flower. But once they do flower, it is 105 days until Pinot Noir ripeness.

On a related note, there is DST (daylight savings time). According to Dena, this annual ritual robs her of an hour of sleep each spring. Time, much like rust on the farm equipment, waits for no man, or woman. Get up, get your coffee and get on it! But, this may be the last year if Congress can get their act together.

And just so you are not caught out unawares, 45 squared is 2025 this year (and every year). So, you got that going for you this year, which is nice. Ask your AI powered digital assistant the result of 45 squared, it is kind of funny.

The Equipment Corner
And it just wouldn’t be spring if Ernie wasn’t lamenting about some aspect of the unique machinery category called Farm Equipment. Well, nothing much to report so far this year, except the battery in the crawler (aka Land Weenie), is failing.

Ernie is currently looking for a transplant donor, but this unique piece of compact Italian farm equipment has a very peculiar, if not specific, (metric) battery size. And said metric battery fits under the front pivot point of a clamshell hood in a very inaccessible spot. It is sequestered in front of the radiator and sits just under the transmission oil cooler (whose hydraulic lines have it encircled like a Burmese python).

While this is unfortunate, it is not uncommon. Ernie has had to replace this battery before. And the last time he did it, he wanted it to be the last time he would have to do it. So, he found the biggest, most powerful battery that he could shoehorn into that compact repository. Just imagine putting a Hemi in a VW Bug, yeah it was kinda like that. But now, it has to come out. And most likely not the same way it went in.

For those of you contemplating the farming endeavor, including farm equipment husbandry, we have a few words to share. You can get pretty far with WD 40. But you can get a whole lot farther with WD 40 and a big farmin’ hammer. Percussive maintenance: It’s not for everyone. Expletives deleted.

Did You Know We Have a Book Club?