Why So Quiet?

This blog has been quiet lately, with the blame falling squarely at my feet. After months of relative inactivity, punctuated by the occasional post, I decided it is time to talk a little bit about what has been keeping me busy as well as sapping my energy to post blog entries on a more regular basis.

This October, I started making wine for the first time. This is the real thing, and will be released as a commercially sale-able product when ready. I had initially picked roussanne and mourvedre to work with, but ended up with neither this year. The mourvedre was already allocated to people higher on the grower's customer list than I (typical and completely fair in this industry). The roussanne I so lusted after ended up being lost to Mother Nature, as the relentless summer sun caused the vineyard to lose around half its yield. What remained went to prior customers.

I ended up with petite verdot and tempranillo, two grapes I am thrilled to be working with. Total intake for 2012 was .82 tons of petite verdot and 1.1 tons of tempranillo from the Horse Heaven Hills AVA south of Prosser, Washington. The clusters on each were absolutely beautiful, with minimal raisining, no rot, and hardly any bugs!

Fortunately for me, I had a lot of assistance from the Kramers, especially Kim, in walking me through the process of selecting yeasts, must treatments (or lack thereof), barrels, and much more. The Kramers also helped with the nitty-gritty, punching down and pumping over the fermenting bins when I was away at my day job.

The day job. I began to look for another job in mid-July, when I realized I was not a good fit for Cathedral Ridge. To succeed in the wine business you must be passionate about the wines you are selling, and I simply couldn't find that passion. In September, I went to work for a distributor here in Oregon, working the Portland Metro area, selling Pacific Northwest wine and craft beers. The job is great in many ways, offering good compensation and benefits, while challenging me to see how far I truly want to go in sales. Each month I am amazed with what I've learned about selling for a distributor, and I'm taking away many things both good and bad from my experiences.

The last week of September saw me in Bordeaux with a group of wine bloggers including Jameson Fink and Joe Roberts. Balzac Communications and Planet Bordeaux were generous enough to include me on this trip, for whatever reason. I confess that despite the incredible experiences I had, I struggle to write about my time there. Whenever I begin to write about Bordeaux, I get frustrated that my writing skills aren't enough to suck you in, dear reader. You will see more Bordeaux posts from me in the future though.

2012 ended with a flurry of activity, and I proudly proclaim that in the last six to eight weeks of the year, I drank more Champagne than I ever have before. A rough guesstimate puts it at a case and a half. As you can tell, I am quite proud of this factoid.

What does 2013 promise then? The search for new grape sources. I haven't given up on my dream of working with grenache, and I may have a source for some of the finest domestic cabernet franc grapes, period. White wines also call to me, to that end I am actively seeking white Rhone varieties and sauvignon blanc. I hope that my Tempranillo will be released this fall, and that the petite verdot will be released in spring of 2014. Hope is just that, because as we know, the wines themselves will decide when they're ready to be released.

2013 also will bring some changes to this blog, when I move away from reviewing wine and more towards just talking about cool wines I drink. To my PR/Media friends, I'll still accept samples for review, but not nearly as many as before. I'm tired of all the crappy wines and Becky says they take up too much space in our house. She is right.

My personal journey with wine will see me buying more aged Bordeaux and Burgundies as well as continuing to explore Champagne, Alsace, and the Rhone Valley. Of perhaps some interest to my readers, I'm also embarking on a quest to find California Pinot Noir that my palate enjoys. After nearly a decade in California wine sales, I tasted most of the big name, "cult" pinot noirs, and can't stand them. The search is on for cooler climate, higher-acid, restrained examples of what the state can do. Of course, this will limit my search to more recent vintages, but that's ok.

Here now I ask you, did you make any wine resolutions this year? Did you have any wine epiphanies last year?

A toast to 2013, thank you for reading along!

Beau Carufel

Happy New Year!

As 2011 draws to a close, the inexorable march of time once again comes to the forefront of our consciousness. Since the beginning of the week, the wine blogosphere has been awash with posts highlighting "Top 10" lists, year-end wrap ups, and Champagne-education posts. Forgive me, but this won't be one of those.

I choose to look forward in 2012, to a job here in Oregon managing a tasting room, new wines on my radar, and a shift in the tone and direction of my wine blog. I also am setting some goals, both personal and professional, that I will endeavor to accomplish next year. Looking forward, I feel excited and invigorated about the prospects for next year and chronicling it will be very satisfying.

Since the internet wine scene is evolving quickly, so must wine bloggers. As more consumers start to read wine blogs and actively seek out blogs for information, what they read becomes far more important than whom they read. Therefore, the weight of integrity and transparency is upon all of us who call ourselves wine bloggers. Associated with those responsibilities is the need for better writing, and at the very least the use of spelling and grammar checks by most of us. You know who you are.

Part of the change in tone of my wine blog will seem strange to longtime readers, but I hope new readers will find it refreshing, and longtime readers will enjoy what I have to say. Since a large part of my posts are wine reviews, I won't change that focus very much. However, the majority of my wine reviews will not include grades anymore. If I like a wine, I'll recommend it and tell you why I like the wine. On the other hand, if I don't like a wine, I'll be precise as to why I don't like it and obviously will not recommend buying that bottle. In other words, I'll be a stricter critic of the wines I review, while striving to maintain at least a polite tone. What remains to be seen is how the marketing and public relations professionals adapt to that, if they do at all.

The shift in direction of my blog is a goal I've wanted to bring to fruition for a while, to shift away from almost 100% wine review posts to more focus on living in wine country, the people I meet, and finally, living the wine lifestyle. No, I am not writing a book on that, because there are certainly enough crappy books on wine out there already. The shift I'm talking about will be confined solely to my blog posts, and I hope you enjoy them as much as you enjoy my wine reviews.

Beau's Barrel Room wouldn't have survived in 2011 without you, my readers. I want to thank you all so much for taking the time to read and comment on my blog, whether we agree or disagree, I value your thoughts so much. With each post I try to become a better writer, a more engaging host, and a more adept communicator in the hopes that you will keep reading and enjoying my words.

To many of you, I suspect we'll get to share a bottle at some point this year, which only serves to heighten my anticipation for 2012. To others, I hope we finally meet in real life for the first time, because I would love to shake your hand and learn more about your own personal wine journey. To everyone, I offer my humblest Thank You for being a part of my life in wine.

Beau Carufel