May 26. This is not the warmest part of the Estate Vineyard and this is a 43 year old vine in one of the coolest spots in the block it’s in. If there’s flowers here there’s (wait for it)…nothing but flowers!
Hello, August harvest.
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Naked was a really underrated album.
And I appreciate that this isn’t just the one plant that’s flowering somewhere in the vineyard that usually gets posted to social media to scare people. I guess I might finally be able to travel in October this year!
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Come on guys get a vintage thread for Oregon going! 
Thanks Jim! I was tucking my little vineyard yesterday and could smell some blossoms and thought I was mistaken. I looked and found a few in the warmest part of the vineyard.
Further investigation this afternoon shows two blocks nearly in full flower (west and southwest facing) and spotty flowering all about.
Mother of god that’s early. Hello from Hong Kong, will be back Friday and have to check Armstrong on Ribbon Ridge, always earlier to flower than our Eola sites.
Saul’s right, maybe October travel will be in the cards this year after the earliest harvest ever.
Nothing up on top of the hill yet, but it’s looking close.
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White ferments wrapped up in 30 days?
Hahahahahahahaha.
In all seriousness, I didn’t mean the first half of October (or really that I was actually going to travel in October) but I often feel like warm-vintage fermentations have gone faster and things are often at “cruising altitude” (ie: things have slowed down and barrels are topped up/consolidated) within 45 days or so. (And therefore I could head out for a week or so.) If we used “fully dry” as the standard, I probably couldn’t travel until May or June the next year!
But also I have changed a few of my earlier picking sites to cooler ones over the last couple years, so even if Ribbon Ridge Pinot is getting picked on 9/1, I probably wouldn’t start my harvest for a bit.
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Still no flowers at WR, but it will be very soon.
That said, this looks a bit like 2014-15. Probably good to be ready to go on 9/1.
It’s interesting though. For all the sun there’s been a few decent to heavy rain events. The vines look happy in these high 70s days, but we have modest canopy growth (vineyard floor loved the sun too). I like the balance we have if it’s going to be warm this year.
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2014 was an unexpectedly (from my humble perspective) great white wine vintage so a repeat of those conditions sounds great!
Yep, I’ll definitely be ready to be picking by then, and it’ll be interesting to see what the rest of the season brings. When we’ve had warm springs/early flowering dates, the harvest windows seem to be in the end-of-summer heat, rather than proper early-fall weather, which certainly throws out the 100-days rule (to me). I think there were some really nice wines made in 14/15, but generally by people who weren’t afraid of curious looks when they called their picks “too early”.
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Was up in our Wadensvil block that runs the width of Whistling Ridge Vineyard both this morning at around 7:30 and this afternoon around 3:00. No flowers in the morning (drove down the same row) and definitely flowers in the afternoon. Not a full flower but from nothing to something in around 8 hours.
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Just back in the Valley after a couple weeks in Asia. To follow on Marcus’ comment about happy vines with the intermittent rains, I’m surprised/happy to see so much green in the field grasses still. I didn’t necessarily expect that. Will be getting around to the vineyards in the next few days to assess flowering by Doug Ackerman sent pictures yesterday (actually this morning when I was still in Hong Kong!) that Pinot Noir is 50% bloom at Armstrong on Ribbon Ridge, down the road from Brick House so on the opposite side of the AVA from Whistling Ridge. I’ll be provocative and forecast an Aug 30 first pick in the lower block there. 
Not Oregon - but Interesting to see an Instagram photo/post from Vincent Dureuil today of a vine with flowering complete in La Fosse vineyard in Rully. I do believe that is an earlier ripening vineyard and certainly it’s further to the south than much of burgundy - and of course no context as to how widespread among other missing details. But still pretty early.
I went out on Monday morning to check our vineyards up north and saw 0-5% flowering. Monday and Tuesday it was 90 degrees and my vineyard manager texted me on Wednesday saying we went from 0-40% in two days.
Went to a non-Estate Ribbon Ridge site, a high elevation Chehalem Mountain site and 4 Dundee Hill sites. All in at least 50% flower. Dundee Hill sites were basically all 100%. A block of 9th leaf Sauvignon Blanc was completely through and the flowers were dropping off.
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Freedom Hill PN Liberty was about 30% bloom, ahead of Heritage and Chardonnay in the lower sections. Eola Hills sites are tracking pretty close. Anything not full bloom is gonna get royally interupted by the current weather but North Valley seems ahead by some distance from “mid willamette”
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Great timing for an inch of rain today. 
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