One of the cooler things we did at the Wine Bloggers Conference (WBC12) took place in the afternoon on Friday.  Shortly after the Live Wine Blogging session, we were told just to go outside and get on a bus.  There were ten of them, I believe, all going to a different location, but no one knew where.  I am not a huge fan of buses—I spent more than my fair share on them in college as the means of transportation to our basketball games.  I am not all that tall as basketball players go (6’4”), but most modes of transportation are not made for people my height, so I am rarely comfortable.  Thus, being crammed onto one with a bunch of sweaty (it was 102 degrees) alcoholics none of whom had any idea where we were headed or how long it would take to get there would normally freak me out more than a little bit.  But I had been on a similar excursion a couple years ago when I attended the International Pinot Noir Celebration (IPNC), so I was able to cope.  I am so well adjusted.

As is my norm, though, I tried to game the system a bit.  First, I asked one of the conference employees which bus I should get on, laying on the charm rather thick.  Either the charm was too thick or I have over-estimated its effectiveness because I got bupkiss out of him.  Even though I am rather well adjusted (see above) I really do not like not knowing where I am going. (Once, while in college, I was traveling in Europe and had a Eurrail pass.  I went to the train station and decided to get on the first train I saw without looking at the destination.  I ended up in Bulgaria.)  So I tried again, this time, asking a woman (I am such a dope—the charm rarely works on men).  She said all she knew was that #8 was the bus for the vegans—so I got something.  Maybe the charm still has some life left, maybe not.  I am opting for the half full option on that one.  I avoided bus #8 like the plague and secretly hoped that their bus got lost or worse.  Being around wine snobs is bad enough already, I don’t want to be eating my animal flesh while someone is staring at me thinking I am both a killer of animals and one of the main causes for global warming.

After ensuring that it was not #8, I ended up getting on this bus (this was also the moment that I realized I had not been taking many photos, so I busted out my artistic side and took this beaut):

We got on the bus and a man stood up to tell us where we were going.   He turned out to be Ron Penner-Ash, the husband of Lynn Penner-Ash, of the eponymous winery and a bit of a rock star in the Oregon wine scene.  He alerted us that we were not going to their winery, but to Willakenzie Estate.  Everyone started to clap, so I took it as a good thing.  It was going to take about an hour to get there, so I was feeling a lot better: I knew where I was going and how long it would take to get there.  I even had a great conversation with the person next to me, even though she was a Canadian.  Don’t get me started on Canadians.

We pulled up to the winery and it really is in a beautiful location (check out the photo on their own website HERE).  Everybody else was snapping photos, so, not wanting to appear as the dork outsider, I did too (although I was really just looking to get my drink on):

As I mentioned, it was 102˚F (I put the ‘F’ there just in case there are still any Canadians out there reading) so I was looking to get out of the sun (the day before, when I was traveling around with my sister in similar heat, she insisted that it was a ‘dry heat’—well so is a blast furnace).

We got a bag of swag (a t-shirt and hat) and then we walked out into the vineyard.  There we learned first about the soil type that makes the Yamhill County AVA unique—which actually was very interesting, but I remember close to nothing.  We then went into the vines with Adam Campbell, the winemaker at Elk Cove Vineyards, who talked about ‘wings’ and dropping fruit.  Often, vineyard managers go into the vines and actually cut off some of the fruit (wine makers rarely refer to it as ‘grapes’ so yes, I am being a bit of a poser here) in order to make the vines concentrate their energy on the remaining fruit.  Ideally, they are looking to harvest about two tons of fruit per acre, so they will weigh the fruit, calculate how much it will weigh at harvest, and then determine how much fruit to ‘drop’ (just cutting the fruit off and letting it ‘drop’ to the ground, another winemaker term, I’m pretty much one of ‘them’ now).  They also cut off the ‘wings’: the offshoots of the main cluster that occur after the main cluster has formed and are later ripening (and therefore not desirable).  Here is a wing (unfortunately the camera chose to focus on the feet in the background):

We were told to cut those off, so I did:

They also had some pretty cool looking tractors.  When I was a kid, I used to travel around to farms with my grandfather, and I really like tractors.  Yes, I know I sound like a three year old.

After our time in the vineyard, we headed inside and sat down to several glasses.  Before we were to start drinking, however, we were told that there was going to be a contest–whoever sent the best tweet (a message via Twitter) would win a magnum of one of the five winemakers pinot noir.  I love contests. I love pinot noir.  Problem: I do not really know how to tweet….