| Hello everyone, For those of you who don't live in Oregon, I can only hope you have had a drier fall than we have. After a cool summer, we experienced the usual nightly temperature drop and mid 70 degree days which characterize the growing season in this part of the world. In fact, September is what really makes Oregon Pinot what it is. If it stayed as hot as it typically is in August, we probably wouldn't get the hang time needed to make great wine. Well, this year, we got a little more than we bargained for. On September 24th I took samples of all of our blocks and we were sitting between 23 and 24 degrees Brix with ph's that were right for picking. Brix is a sugar measurement and we normally like to pick around 24. My plan was to pick it all on Thursday the 27th before the rain set in. Not so fast my friend. In steps David O'Reilly. I saw him the day after we ran the sample and all he said was," you rookies get so nervous with a little bit of rain coming. I think we should pick when they are ripe." So out he came to the vineyard and we tasted through all the blocks. There is a difference between a sugar measurement and the kind of ripeness we are looking for. We are looking for the seeds to turn from green to brown and the stems the same and the skins to loose some of that green astringency. So after tasting, I agreed, we would pick the younger block behind the tasting room, but let everything else hang. Then the rain came. With rain can come a lot of problems. Vines can take up the water diluting the flavors and also splitting berries. When the berries split, then you have other problems, namely botrytis. Botrytis gets into the bunches and dehydrates the berries and produces a floral aspect which is fine in dessert wines, but not in Pinot Noir. There is also the problem of rot. This has been one of the worst years for powdery mildew with some producers having lost up to 40% of their crop. And we had another problem. How would we get the fruit out on a steep hill if it kept on raining. Well on October 6th, after a week of showers, we decided that the Dijon clones were ready to pick. We got all the fruit picked by 1 pm and started loading. About 3 it started raining and we had 12 totes of fruit in the middle avenue up the hill. Thank god the rain let up because I wouldn't have been able to make it up the hill to get them. We were slated to pick the Pommard the following Wed. On Tuesday the guys from Owen Roe were going to get bins up to me. I was getting a little worried because rain was in the forecast. I set up the pickers and it was relatively dry on Tuesday. I was getting a little worried when the bins still hadn't shown up by 7 that night. Well, turns out Owen Roe was slammed all day and the bins finally showed up at around 11 that evening, just about the time it started raining. I managed to get the bins up the hill and staged in the rain. It was the first time I had driven in the vineyard at night to be honest, but the tractor has good lights front and back so that was no concern. My bigger concern was the rain and getting up to it in the morning. Then next morning the rain let up and the pickers arrived. It was a muddy mess. You couldn't stand on the middle avenue, but fortunately you could drive on it. The showers started picking up later in the day, but thankfully, we got all the fruit out and loaded. It was all rot and botrytis free. If anyone will make good wine from this vintage it will be us. All the expense we go through all year, pulling leaves, shoot positioning, spraying, it is all geared to ripen fruit in a year just like this and contain disease pressure. I think we pulled it off beautifully. Our final numbers were all between 23.5-24 degrees Brix with ph's in the normal range. More importantly, the flavors had developed and the seeds and stems browned. We took a total of 26 tons of fruit off the vineyard this year. We will make about 1000 cases of wine and sell the other fruit to Owen Roe which will pay for making our wine there. David told me yesterday that again this year, we are the best Pinot in his winery. I can't tell you definitively about the quality of the wine. We just pressed it out yesterday...some of it. It is really hard to tell what you have until it goes through the secondary fermentation. In early January, I will have a good idea of the quality level. The wines won't be like 2006, which are opulent, but very high in alcohol. These wines will be more Burgundian, probably means better balanced in some ways. I think the wines should be full of flavor and live longer than the 2006 wines, but not as soft out of the gate. I have to say I really enjoyed this harvest. It was stressful, but I learned a lot about picking decisions and a lot about our site and what it is capable of. We are lucky in that we have all this wind so we don't fight disease pressure like other sites. And, I would still rather be a warm site in this part of the world versus a cool sight. Maybe that will change someday with global warming, but for the foreseeable future, it is an advantage. It was a big help having Kim and Jim Waddle here during harvest day. They also helped yesterday when we went over and cooked pizza for the crew at Owen Roe and watched them pressing out the 115 and 777 clones of ours. Many thanks. On another note, I would like to welcome Gene and Lynda Corbin to the partnership. Gene and Lynda came from San Diego and now live in McMinnville. They were in the wine club at Anne Amie and I am happy to have them as partners. I will probably accept 3 to 4 more partners at some point early next year to help pay Duncan's first note and then we will close the offering. I anticipate we will start returning some capitol to all partners next year. Besides the tax information this year, I will send everyone a p&l statement from 2006 in January and also the budget for the upcoming year. I anticipate having partners wine ready in November, we are just waiting for labels. We will be giving each partner a mixed case of 3 2006 LeNez, and 3 of the Lenné Estate, 3 of the Jill's 115 and 3 of the Karen's Pommard. We separated the Pommard and 115 out to make two more wines so we would have some variety in the tasting room. They are all under the Lenné Estate label. Jill is my mother in law, by the way. Steve... Steve Lutz Owner Lenné
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