All the Difference posts are about those people (and ideas) who dared to step off the busy highway and to follow one less worn for wear. Away from the crowds, these individuals walk to their own beat, with unexpected and singular results that may not always be for everyone, but that, my guess, was never the point.
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Carleton Watkins. Just east of Oregon’s famed Multnomah Falls is a small gorge, named after my hometown, Oneonta, New York. Not looking like much from the Old Scenic Highway, it’s often overlooked; there are no monumental cascades visible from the road like some of the other parking-lot stops, just a dark, narrow, mossy chasm, where icy, rushing water squeezes between what looks like the stems of two basalt toad-stool protrusions growing from the rock walls, one on either side, their caps reaching out across the slippery current, as if about to touch. I always wondered why it was called Oneonta—there are a couple Oneonta’s across the US and I couldn’t imagine it had anything to do with my upstate New York birthplace. What did I know?
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Tags: Adirondacks, Ansel Adams, Carleton Watkins, Catskills, Central Pacific Railroad, Collis Huntington, Columbia Gorge, Columbia River, Gold Rush, individual, John Laursen, landscape photography, Lewis and Clark, Multnomah Falls, New York, Oneonta, Oneonta Gorge, Oregon, Portland Art Museum, Robert Vance, salmon, Terry Toedtemeier, Wild Beauty, Yosemite, Yosemite Valley
HIGHLIGHTS: Our first project fan. Pole building construction book. “Scott, do we have any kind of budget for this?!” The O’Neill Hay Barn (Mr. Gehry, we need you!).
COUNTDOWN: 42 WEEKS* (*Not knowing how long it’ll take for this project, I’m going to use the countdown to our inaugural wine release—around November 1—as something to shoot for, particularly since we can only fit 6 people in our camper comfortably – that’s not a very big party).
With Week One of The Little House On the Hilltop (TLHOTH) Project now behind us, let me share what’s happened.
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Tags: barn, Frank Gehry, Gehry, Gorge Games, inaugural wine, little house on the hilltop, New York, O'Neill Hay Barn, pole building construction, Powell's, Powell's Book Store, Ralph Wolfe, Simon Holloway, Sketches of Frank Gehry, Sydney Pollack, upstate New York, Western barn, wine, yurt
Following a link from The Pour yesterday, I came across a funny sight that still mystifies me: a photo of a man pretending to sniff wine from an empty glass. The man was Gianfranco Soldera, and I swear to god, not only did that glass have nothing in it, it had no appearance of ever having any red wine in it, at least any brunello di montalcino, which is what this man made. Now, this jovial and grandfatherly looking fellow makes rather expensive wine (as Eric mentions, and that’s why I followed his link, to check him out since we’re making sangiovese from the brunello clone)—the most I saw on a quick search was $350 for a 1991—so why this empty-glass photo?
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Tags: brunello di montalcino, Heidegger, Montalcino, red wine, sangiovese, Soldera, The Pour, wine
Looking at my daily dose of wine news yesterday, I came across the most beautiful picture of a medieval castle, its timeless quality framed by a pine forest behind and an enchanting vineyard out front. How it sat there, majestic in its quiet (Samuel had just gone down for a nap and “quiet” was my word of the moment). My first thought was “Oh, how I miss Italy,” where I imagined this castle was. “Wouldn’t a dose of sunshine—or limoncello— in that land of rustic comfort and fine leather hit the spot right about now?” (it was 10 AM, PST, the rain coming down on a grey January morn, as I sat with my own rustic Oregon comfort, coffee). Then I saw the story’s headline, Wine Tales of The Decade.
“Maybe another Italian scandal,” I thought, thinking of the Brunello troubles. “Or MAYBE,” and this is what I secretly hoped it was, “that old buck of a Prime Minister has a new 18-year old wine heiress-mistress?” and with that thought in mind I settled in to read the juicy news.
Well. I was had.
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Tags: Antiques Roadshow, authentic, Bavaria, Braveheart, Brunello, California wine country, castle, County Meath, Germany, gigantism, Ireland, James Conaway, limoncello, McMansion, medieval architecture, medieval castle, Napa Valley, Oregon, provenance, Vanishing America, vineyard, wine, wine news
There a few things I hope to accomplish in 2010:
- Work on that attitude of mine;
- Establish a horseshoe pit;
- Get our wine sold;
- Submit another story (or two, but one’s a start);
- Build some shelter on our hilltop.
Each one you’ll most likely hear something about here at The Uncultivated Life, but it is to the last, the shelter on our hilltop, that I now write because seriously, enough is enough.
Almost four years into this, we need something on our hilltop other than our camper. Just a small something where someone like you, dear Reader, can come out and kick back; to sit and survey, look out and see and enjoy the quiet and the expanse, like a small oasis from the rest of the busy world. And someplace where the dreamer inside can go free. (Not to mention, we also need a place to store our farming gear, get that cute little tractor out of the elements, and clean up the clutter that drives me NUTso). As much as we may have started this for ourselves, it’s always been our hope to share it with other individuals who get it: the inherent beauty of a Western landscape; the timeless, intrinsic connection shared between the earth, its bounty, and the people who work it; the idea of possibility and the determination to go for it; the appreciation of the simple and authentic.
Right now, the camper is probably too simple. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: authentic, California quail, horseshoe pit, Hungarian partridge, juniper, Laura Ingalls, lupine, meadow lark, Missoula Floods, native grass, Oregon Trail, pheasant, pole barn, rammed earth, robin, sage, scrub oak, sparrows, straw-bale, The Dalles, vineyard, wheat, wine
Hip hip, hooray! It’s December’s last day! And wouldn’t you know – the sky is grey.
The drizzle may fall and the snow’s almost gone, but how the juncos flit along,
Through branches bare that drip with rain, like jewels (or bubbles of champagne).
A full year it’s been, with twists and turns, but that’s what makes each moment firm,
The memories and the days so clear — we welcome most the changing years.
Our Top 10 Highlights of 2009
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Tags: bird netting, Columbia Gorge, juncos, kestrels, LaTourelle Falls, owl
Last week we tasted our very first bottled wine we made from our vineyard. What follows are some particulars regarding it.
The goal for our Riesling is to make it bone dry. No residual sugar. We planted Riesling because that is Scott’s favorite white wine. We have 4 rows’ worth on the south side, and around 3 acres on the north, for around 3.5 acres in total. Since our budget has only allowed us to trellis the south side, it is from here, some of the steepest ground on our site, where we take our harvest to date.
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Tags: 2008 harvest, minerality, residual sugar, Riesling, sugar/acid balance, vineyard, white wine, wine
[We tasted some of our wine last week. A Riesling. What we thought of it is in the next post.]
There it was. A bottle of wine from our vineyard on our kitchen table. Our wine. That we made. At long last. I couldn’t believe it.
You ever look at a “long-term project,” could be something or someone—like finally doing that remodel, the long-awaited high-school graduation of your more “difficult” child, that friend who simply never learns, making peace with an in-law or own parent…—and in a moment of realization, no matter how brief or lasting, you are simply thrilled by what’s there? “Ahh, look,” you might think, “all the WORK and TIME and EFFORT and SACRIFICE worked out. For all of us.” You pat yourself on the back, thankful that you never stopped believing. Or, if you did stop believing somewhere along the journey, it could go the other way, and you think, “[Expletive!] All that and for what? This?!”
I must confess: I was pretty excited by the fact that there was a bottle of our wine—OUR VERY FIRST BOTTLE!— sitting on our table, and secretly hoped I would be in my former category of long-term project reactions. But I am torn in this endeavor. I am. At times glowingly on board, I am a great believer, at others, I wish for my own quiet mountaintop to simply get away. But I am on no mountaintop, and there was our wine. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Bistro Cooking, bull snake, charcuterie, Chris Van Allsburg, Patricia Wells, Riesling, Rob McMillan, Silicon Valley Bank, SVB Wine Division, The Polar Express, vineyard, wine
Hooray! The Dalles has been named a “True Western Town” in True West Magazine’s top 10 list of, you guessed it, “True Western Towns” for 2010.
I’ve always had the feeling, from the first time we showed up and actually spent some time in The Dalles looking for vineyard ground—instead of simply rumbling by on 84 as I imagine most do, because honestly, from a car window, The Dalles kind of shows its ass to the world and who would want to stop? The auto repair and RV spots, the strip malls and former old rundown Aluminum factory site now razed to a bunch of bare earth and that’s probably enough—that it was, at its soul, a quiet, Western town. And it is: at its center you’ll find restored, 19th century Victorians; one-way down-town streets lined with high-windowed brick buildings; farm rigs and big hats going by; cowboy boots and western wear; plus all what the article in True West speaks of. And all against the backdrop of enormous, grassy hills that echo Connemara to me—or pictures I’ve seen of New Zealand—on the Washington side, and heights of basalt outcroppings with scrub oak and sage on the Oregon side; the Western character is hard to miss. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: basalt, Big West, Cascade Range, Columbia Gorge, Columbia River, frontier, Hood River, kestre, kestrels, Leone western, Lewis Mumford, Mt. Hood, Portland, sense of place, The Dalles, vineyard, Western town
You know how when you meet someone and you immediately bristle with dislike? The very next morning after our Ireland return, greatly jetlagged yet fresh-faced, we would drive out to meet the person potentially interested in selling us some land, Old Wise All. At that time, he would be our only chance because from all the ground Scott had identified as prime for our venture, he was the only landowner who would show any interest in letting some go. Scott would have the vineyard fever in him, and somehow it would feel like we had crossed a now-or-never threshold. Whatever it took.
Of course our budget would determine just how far we could go. And Old Wise All would be privy to the numbers; his interest in our budget and Scott’s willingness to hand it over land (physically) unseen, man unmet, would put me on high alert towards the whole deal from the get go: why would someone just interested in selling land want to know our entire budget for the endeavor? And why would Scott hand that over to a stranger?
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Tags: 1950s, bare wheat ground, female intuition, land sale, linguistic, martini, meadow lark, Oregon, Portland, The Dalles, The Grande Dalles, vineyard
