A couple of months ago I got an email from Alice Feiring asking if I had any plans to be in the US this May. Hmm, I didn't really have any plans to go, but it could be arranged, why, I asked? Well, it turns out Alice - blogger, wine writer, and now wine book author extraordinaire - is organizing a seminar on Natural Winemaking for the Portland Indie Wine Festival, and she was thinking I might be a good person to invite to participate in the seminar. Wow! Me? I'm certainly no expert, we're just trying to figure things out here, I don't even have an enology degree or anything, and it seems like we've had nothing but problems from the get-go. Well, for Alice that was precisely the point, I could be a real-live witness to the trials and tribulations of natural winemaking. But just that phrase already poses a problem...
Here in France there is a big movement taking place called; "Vins Naturels." A vin naturel here is a wine made without SO2 a preservative that is added to most wines. Not to add SO2 is taking a big risk, bigger than using naturally occurring yeasts, not adding enzymes or not filtering, all of which we do, except the SO2, we add SO2. So to me, I wasn't sure if Alice wanted to include me. It turns out that I am natural enough for her definition, especially given that our total SO2 numbers are way lower than most. So I've been invited and I am thrilled to be taking part in the Portland Indie Wine Festival!
The seminar is on May 2nd from 3-5pm at the Hotel Vintage Plaza in Portland, Oregon and is entitled: Natural Winemaking in the Age of Technology and Robert Parker. Other participants in the seminar are Clark Smith of Vinovation and Doug Tunnell of Brick House Vineyards in Oregon. It should make for a very interesting discussion! I just hope I can hold my own with these guys, after all, I don't consider myself a winemaker, we're really just farmers who make wine with their grapes. Alice will also be celebrating the publication of her new book, The Battle for Love and Wine - or- How I Saved the World from Parkerization .
It's a whole weekend packed with great winetasting events and seminars. There's two afternoons of Grand Tastings at Urban Wine Works and a VIP Cellar tasting which will allow you to taste rare wines from the Indie Wine Festival Cellar. Oh wait, I forgot to mention that the wineries at Indie are small producers, people producing 2000 cases or less, people just like us. It will be a great way to find new wines and talk directly to the people who are making them, not to mention to get a better idea of the "young" Oregon wine scene.
So, if you can't make it to France, why not come to Portland for a great wine and food weekend?! Matt will be coming along too, and he'll certainly have some interesting things to add to the discussion, we'd love to see you there!
Congratulations, Amy! Sounds like a great event. Any chance of you and Matt stopping on the East Coast en route?
Posted by: MrTaz | March 07, 2008 at 07:25 PM
I would call the lack of an enology degree an asset. But, hey, that's just me.
Posted by: Steve Lanum | March 08, 2008 at 02:18 AM
Genevieve and I just bought our tickets and are looking forward to a great weekend. Horizon Air direct from Sonoma Co. to Portland makes life easy! I have been a naughty "Lurker" on your site for a while now and look forward to meeting you. Cheers!
Posted by: Oenophilus | March 15, 2008 at 05:55 PM