Our club release has been rescheduled to the weekend before Thanksgiving, November 20, 21 and 22. We will be releasing both the summer and the fall pickup wines at the same time.
Our summer pick up included one Sweet Dragon Semi-sweet Riesling, one Dragon’s Kiss Rosé of Pinot Noir and our 2018 Dragons Lair Pinot Noir. The fall pick up will include one 2017 Crystal Dragon Chardonnay, one 2017 Dragon’s Lair Pinot Noir and one of our newly released 2018 Dragon’s Revenge Pinot Noir Select.
If you prefer a substitution in the selection of wines let me know two weeks in advance and we will gladly accommodate your wishes. We will send out more particulars as the event gets closer.
DVQ Q4 2020
Compadres;
Never have I looked forward more to a holiday than I do the upcoming New Year’s Eve. It simply cannot get here fast enough. Putting this pestiferous collection of months in the rear-view mirror, alive, is all one can hope for at this point. I do not anticipate throwing a party; there will be, however, a celebration of life for the lucky among us that are still above ground hale, hearty, and hopeful, always hopeful. Wrung through the proverbial wringer, trampled by tumultuous times, straining muscles struggling to survive the pitiless storms and yet we rise like Sisyphus, shouldering our burdens, facing our duties and bravely soldiering onward. As we have said before, despair is not a word in the broad expanse of our lexicon.
That doesn’t mean that I can’t wait for this year to be over. The Covid, Tiger King, Murder Bees, countless hurricanes, unprecedented fires, the slow-motion train wreck that is our national election; I am kind of over 2020 at this point. Just yesterday I was reading about a zoo in England that has a flock of parrots that have all taught each other how to swear like drunken New Jersey stevedores. They can’t be trusted to hold their tongues around the children. Even the animals have apparently had enough. It was a year that began with such promise, at least for Dragon Six and myself as regards the tasting room, that devolved into a Frank Miller/Mad Max post-apocalyptic horror show, only I thought there would be way more opportunities to wear black leather biker gear, jackboots, and hockey masks. Nope. I didn’t even get out of my robe for the better part of March. It is pretty hard to take on Lord Humongous in your robe (Little Mad Max reference there). Nothing weird, just this huge guy wearing leather hot pants and a hockey mask trying to murder Mel Gibson.
Mad Max, as Mel Gibson portrayed him was gritty, tenacious, and smart. I am none of those things. If I have a talent, it is a knack for getting out of Dodge when the going gets even slightly difficult. The Tuesday after Labor Day found me preparing to leave Oregon for my other job by pulling a rather substantial branch off the truck with the tractor, this being the day of the worst fires we’ve endured in no one knows how long. I threw my bags in the truck, made my way to the airport in Eugene and winged it across the country through a series of deserted and soulless airports to Fayetteville, NC. Knowing that there are, as there must be, some denizens of North Carolina and the Deep South receiving this newsletter I will keep my rather strong opinions of this locale to myself. I cannot say that it has changed all that much since I was a young paratrooper stationed here in 1979. I will leave it at that.
Of course, the minute I got to my hotel room and picked up the phone to call the beloved, all Hell had broken loose. It has always been thus. The minute I leave the state and go to either another state or another country washing machines explode, pipes clog, cars crash, and toilets spew. One has only to wait for frogs raining from the sky. At this point I can honestly say it wouldn’t surprise me.
This trip was no different. The sky turned orange, friends parked their valuables in our yard and prepared to move bag and baggage to our house. More branches, now mixed with ash and soot, littered everywhere. Dragon Six slogged on, cleaning the furnace filter multiple times, trying to keep the animals and her from inhaling the noxious soot, and providing succor where and when needed to our friends. For my part I cheered her on from my hotel room, beer in hand. And now comes the harvest. And here I am inn North Carolina. I am not proud of this. But I am getting paid. So there’s that.
But there is a much-anticipated light at the end of this tunnel (in the past it has been rather a moving target), a light for you, our valued and wonderful family of customers. As you know we postponed the release of our club wines because it simply wasn’t seemly, it wasn’t right, and it would have been callous to have a club pick up during such a difficult time for this, our beloved state of Oregon. But now that the worse seems to be behind us (not, of course, for our fellow citizens who have lost so much; though it may sound hollow and trite we truly grieve with you) we are resuming our club release.