My mind has been drifting lately to the image of our family’s future estate winery and the pleasures of that life. Maybe it’s because Macy and I have been bonding over the 220 pounds of Pinot Noir grapes we got in from California a couple weeks ago. She’s an old hat now at every step of the winemaking process. She helped crush and destem, punch down the grapes during fermentation, and rack the new wine into glass carboys. She would have helped me press the must as well, one of her favorite tasks, but I had to do it after her bedtime.
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| Drew, Hal, Macy and me. Two families, two generations of winemakers. |
How many wine aficionados do you know that can describe,
from harvest, every step of the winemaking process and the tools you need to
complete the task? At seven years old,
Macy can recite it for you now, and she doesn’t even drink (yet). While we were moving the freshly pressed wine
to the basement for aging yesterday she asked me if I’d decided where we were
going to have our winery someday.
“Will it be in Maryland, or on an island, or somewhere else?”
I told her “yes, in fact it may be in a place called Long
Island, but Oregon would be nice too.
The problem,” I said, “is that it’s really expensive to buy the land and
build a winery, so we have to keep saving money first.”
“Well, it’s your dream, Daddy, so that’s ok.”
I swear to you I almost cried when she said that.
She went on to tell me that she thinks she would want the
job of working in our tasting room, because it would be fun to pour and tell
everyone about the wine.
I told her the job was hers, and that made both of us happy.
I’ve got some money to save first, not to mention a lot to
learn, but like Macy says, “that’s ok.”
