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Here at BOW, we sometimes like to write about what we're up to. This Blog page is our chance to report from the front line of wine making and we hope you like our silly little thoughts!
The Harvest of Significance
Posted on: 23rd October, 2009
It is a lovely weekend in the Piedmont. Looking out the office winedow I see the yellow orange and brown leaves carpeting the lawns. I watch them separate and fall from the trees. It is like they are harvesting themselves to compost the soils depleted by growth during the green season just finished. It is like the land is rusting to ochre from the greens of the summer. Fall is the fall. As the leaves fall from the trees, the Fall is clearly in play, making the hills a wonderful place to explore.
At BOW the season's decorations are up: scarecrows, gourds, pumpkins, corn stalks and hay bales and witches, and Chris the vampire (drinking our blood...bleahhh!) joined this year by Holly the mummy (wrapped just a bit tooo tight)!
We're huge fans of Halloween; the becoming of a new character in the season and in the character of our alter-egos dressed for fun and fright! Did our forefathers fear perhaps the coming winter? Our grandmothers did not; they collected the children before the fireplace and kept all safe in their arms. In the days of our age the memories linger as the Fall and Halloween meet for these two weeks at BOW. Living on the land drives home the sacred connections. The pumpkin decorating becomes personal as we try out the paints and colors and lipsticks on ourselves after they have been used to adorn the orange gourds of harvest.
Harvest. The harvest is almost complete with the fall moving into the lateness of this season. The leaves fall and the harvest completes its cycle of fruition. Fruition. The completion of the fruit; adding the yeast; metastasizing into the wine. Done correctly, this is the organically human moment of earth, growth, crop, harvest, and creation. Creation. The temporal becomes sublime: the grape in metamorphosis; wine as blood. The fall as resurrection, the land as revelation.
The harvest is our twelve week marathon. It paces the frenetic colorations and coronations of the season. Harvest began the week before Labor Day at the late zenith of the summer. Harvest leads to the crush and fermentation of the fruit which will end the week before Thanksgiving. Thanks will be given for the revelation of the land's gifts. The harvest is what defines this season of the Fall and being on the land makes us appreciate the significance of this amazing and beautiful season all the more.
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- One Journey at a Time. My brother Ben and his wife Kathy travelled around the country this summer with their two kids, Genevieve and Sebastian. Kathy wrote a storyu of the trip and she has posted her photos and story of their visit to us. Enjoy!
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- A visitor's blog and photos about BOW from late May, 2009
- A story about BOW's grand opening from the May 8, 2008 Fauquier Times Democrat.
- Editorial in the Fauquier Times Democrat regarding Green Business as Good Business. The editorialist, Joe Gumino, a good friend of BOW, died unexpectedly soon after this editorial was published and we miss him dearly.
- Check out a great article on Barrel Oak Winery's successes in the first year. Thank you Bill Walsh at the Fauquier Times Democrat!
- Read about our green building in the Piedmont Virginian.
- Read about BOW in the Wall Street Journal Online!
- The Unemployed Mom. See what a mom thinks about BOW as the child friendly winery of Virginia!
- BOWHaus Joy: The other other Red wine! Celebrate the 40th anniversary of Virginia is for Lovers with a bottle of our very special limited release. Have you seen it? Our beloved Bogart is racing up the label!
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