BOWBlog Page
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!
We make wine so that others may drink and find the pleasure of our lives in each drop.
Posted on: 6th November, 2009
Finally! A beautiful clear crisp fall weekend. Not just a Sunday and not just a Saturday but rather both days as it should be. The fire pits are lit and the smoke from the oak and walnut brings out the earthen memories of childhood running through forests of hardwoods and kicking mushroom caps. The mushrooms had it easy. We used to raise hell in the hills of my youth above Mendocino. One visit to our cousins house led to "tree crossings". Ten feet above the ground six of us leapt from thin lodge pole pine to pine, slowly bending them with our weight until a 300 foot length of forest had been pushed over. We laughed whenever someone fell or a tree gave way, yet none of us was ever badly injured. Somehow I held on to my youth till I was almost 38. It was all great fun but now some mornings I feel more like that stand of trees after we were finished having our fun.
The vineyards are still holding on to their last leaves. Yet we have already mounded the soil around the graft unions for the freezes to come. Soon all the vines will be naked and forlorn. (There is little that looks sadder than a shorn vine in winter). But for now, looking over the vineyard it is easy to see the leaves that clearly delineate the varietals. The deep red Chambourcin stand stubbornly and starkly next to the continually green and optimistic Seyval Blanc: crisply optimistic even now as the leaves fall all around.
The fall is accentuated by the hay bales, by the burning piles of collected branches, by the pumpkins spread around, by the corn stalks, by the stark colors still found in the rolling flanks of the Piedmont. Fall travels quickly through the countryside now, revealing so much more than the summer daze when once thick foliage obscured vision and understanding. Nature's summer wall has fallen and we pierce fecund veils to discover new-found natural appreciations. Before the fall a doe was close and hidden; now the herd of antlered bucks are far but immediately discernable. A stream's meandering pleasures are luxuriously discovered. The evergreen stands now stand clearly revealed for us to being the imagining of our own Christmas tree.
Sharon and Rick and their crack team of volunteers are on the tail end of a 12 week wine-making binge. She is so sweet from her immersion in grapes, juice and alcohol that the dogs gently lap her pant legs upon her late evening return and then pass out intoxicated and in delight at her attentions. Ten weeks of hard work to create delight : We make wine so that others may drink and find the pleasure of our lives in each drop. Even the Goldens get to play...
Three more weeks of hard work and then the wine will be laid to rest in barrel and we will celebrate with the giving of thanks. Our thanks-giving.
This is the season friends, and it is all passing very quickly. Join us won't you?
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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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- Read about our green building in the Piedmont Virginian.
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