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Christina Kelly,
Avalon Wine Senior Editor

Christina Kelly spent the first half of her career as a journalist for daily newspapers and magazines. She left daily journalism to work in corporate marketing/communications, but as a passionate wine enthusiast, she continues to write about the Northwest wine industry (since 1997) for many national publications.

Christina is a multiple fellowship winner to the Professional Wine Writers Symposium in Napa, including 2012. Christina has written for Avalonwine.com for the past 12 years. She can be reached at winewriter@comcast.net.

Jean Yates
Avalon Wine Owner

Jean first worked with the Oregon wine industry in 1989, when she helped develop marketing brochures for wineries in the South Willamette. She then started Avalon, and has supported the industry through her wine shop and web site ever since. Jean enjoys promoting Oregon and Washington wines and bringing Northwest wines to the notice of the wine-loving public across the country. She previously worked in high tech marketing and research in Silicon Valley.

Jean built and continually updates the Avalon web site, writes our Wine Club Newsletter, numerous e-mail articles on NW wine, and articles for the web site. Her twenty five years of experience working with NW wineries and winemakers gives Avalon a deep knowledge of the industry. She's judged NW wine at various competitions since 1997. Jean's favorite activity is photography, and many of the images on the Avalon web site are hers. She's from NC via Palo Alto, and lives in the South Willamette wine country.

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October 15, 2009, at 12:17 pm

Oregon Harvest 2009 – Winding Down

By Jean Yates Avalon Wine, on October 15th, 2009

The stretch of gorgeous weather in the Willamette Valley ended on Tuesday. So last weekend was non-stop grape harvestng and processing.

Patricia Green and her crew processed 35 tons of grapes on Sunday and were going for 40 tons when I was there Monday. Everyone was coated in grape juice.

Below, Melissa sorting grapes while one of the winery dogs sneaks a cluster from the rejects bucket

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Below, at Patty Green’s, bins of grapes lined up for sorting and destemming

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One of the new 2008 Pinots we really like is from Ayres.  The Ayres Willamette Valley 08 ($20.95/$18.86) is a super value. A darker wine,  when first opened, it has intriguing aromas of humus and espresso. Give it a bit of air and watch the evolution – a delicious combo of deep berry flavors and a streak of raspberry compote comes alive. A nice rich texture lets the huckleberry pie, brambly raspberry, licorice and graham flavors hang on the finish.

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Brad Ayres showed us his 2009 grapes, above.

At Beaux Freres, interns Allison Brown and Nate Wall were calculating and organizing the fermenters – every winery has an erasable white board covered with red and green and blue chicken scratchings that I suppose they can read. The harvest was almost over on Monday, with the wine in various stages of cold soaking, fermenting, and being moved into barrels.

Below, Allison and Nate in front of the Beaux Freres white board

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Beaux Freres’s actual winery space is quite small, although they completed an addition last year. When the new barrels come in, they are lined up outside the warehouse door, waiting to be filled.

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Below, a picture I took at the same time of year in 2001.

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October 15th, 2009 | Category: Jean's Blogs, Oregon Wine | Comments are closed

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