Amalie Robert Estate Update: Open House July 25-26 & Tractor Bypass Surgery

Hello and Welcome,   This is an Amalie Robert Estate Update: Open House and Tractor Bypass Surgery. A FLOG communication from Dena and Ernie. Amalie Robert Willamette Valley Pinot Noir.   Please join Dena and Ernie for our next Open House on Saturday, July 25 & Sunday, July 26, from 10 am to 3 pm by appointment. An Evite will arrive shortly to schedule your preferred tasting day and time. You may also reach Dena by email at Cuvee@amalierobert.com and by phone at 503-88-CUVEE (503-882-8833) to schedule your appointment, or to place an order if you cannot join us.
Well, we have turned the corner in the vineyard. Our three sets of catch wires are up and clipped into place, the first hedge is completed, and the vineyard crew has done their best at removing the proper amount of leaf coverage to just partially expose our wine berries. We wouldn’t want to show too much skin this early in the game. The fruit set looks to be light, but the numbers are not yet in.

Vineyard inspector number 527, without an appointment, ready for a little outdoor tasting @AmalieRobert

Open air outdoor wine tastings are happening from 10 am to 3 pm each and every weekend now through Labor Day. Make an appointment and come on by, you just don’t know who you might see. Here is the tasting protocol under the new shade canopy overlooking 35 acres of Amalie Robert Estate Vines.

Upon arrival you will be offered your choice of barrel station. Each barrel station is at least 6 feet away from any other barrel station and is equipped with a bottle of sanitizer to be used on your hands. Lip sanitizer, by definition, is part of the tasting program.

Your barrel station will include a new Amalie Robert Riedel glass (they make these just for us) for each person in your party and an unopened bottle of water that you may share among your party to rinse your new stemware. There will also be a double-sided all-in-one tasting program and order form. We may also include some laminated marketing SWAG that is sanitized before and after your tasting appointment. The tasting fee is $15 with the Riedel tasting glass and $10 is refundable on any two bottle purchase per person. You may also opt for the Riedel Burgundy glass for $25 and $10 is refundable on any two bottle purchase per person. The now christened Amalie Robert Riedel glass is yours to keep and may be rinsed again.

We understand travel is somewhat of a challenge this year. If you find that you cannot make it to the vineyard, let us pack up a little of our terroir and ship it to you, weather permitting. Use the Big Blue Button to pre-order for pick up, or to place an order for shipping.

If you are spending some quality time watching films, may we suggest some timeless classics such as the Agatha Christie Hercule Poirot series, or maybe the ever-thrilling Alfred Hitchcock or the short lived original Star Trek series. All very Pinot family friendly.

Now if you find yourself at the corner of confused and bewildered, you may have just crossed the border into the Twilight Zone. Or our local Safeway, where you can find the depleted shelves being restocked with never before seen products, such as this.

And so now that the vineyard is cruising on autopilot, you are probably wondering what Ernie is doing with all his spare time between now and harvest. Well, let’s just say he is keeping himself amused.

Has this ever happened to you? You sit down to peruse the daily inoculum of mayhem from your E-mail productivity program and it shows you nothing. Your first clue that something has gone awry is that you are using software written by the world’s second greatest marketing company, whose stock symbol is MSFT. The first greatest marketing company is, of course, Lionel Trains.

You click the little blue button with your pointing device (whose idea was originally stolen from Digital Equipment Company) and a medium sized blue screen appears that informs you that your (MSFT annuity based revenue stream) E-mail program is starting. Then the screen disappears, and that’s all you get. Sweet F@ck All, is the phrase Ernie picked up in MSFT Ireland.

Standard operating procedure is to shut down, pour another cup of morning accelerant and start up again. Rinse and repeat - same result. At this point you realize you are not the only person to have had this problem, just the latest one. Off to the wonderful word of web browsing to see just how bad this problem is, and how one might once again gain access to one’s E-mail file – in a timely manner.

Fortunately, this problem is unfortunate, but not uncommon. A quick little diagnosis reveals you may start the offending program in safe mode with this run command: Outlook /safe. You will notice there is a space in this command. Must be a typo, Ernie thought. Nope, it’s there on purpose. Remember, first and foremost, this is a marketing company.

And lo and behold Outlook starts in safe mode and right there in front of you are all of your E-mails and subfolders containing even more E-mails! And a history of every E-mail you have ever sent, just in case. Now the fix here is simplicity itself, just disable the add-in (that added itself in) that is causing Outlook to not start up on its own. Right, what’s a cubit?

Yeah, don’t hold your breath. After disemboweling the Outlook program, and rebooting each and every time, still no joy. “Aye captain, I’ve got some bad news for yea. I am afraid it is time to eject the warp core.” No, there is an even easier and faster solution that Ernie picked up working at MSFT. You quite simply and with great pleasure, uninstall the offending program! It is really simple and quite gratifying. Another half cup of mid-morning accelerant and a high fiber bran muffin is your reward as you watch the little blue bar get longer and longer as your Intel Core i7, 7th Gen x86 based processor vanquishes the malignant software. Now we are making an impact!

By the way, when are we moving off the x86 architecture? We really should be 4 valves per cylinder, direct injection twin turbos by now. Or hydrogen power, or warp drive.

Next up, install a clean, uncorrupted version of the offending software. A quick download is the norm, but here in the middle of nowhere with nowhere internet service, we have some time to bake a fresh batch of high fiber bran muffins. A quick reboot, and there it is. Everything is back to “new-normal” and you may resume your early afternoon onboarding of mayhem. Maybe time to back-up your files.

And then it hits you. It’s tractor maintenance week at Uncle Ernie’s work farm. Three Italian tractors, one German rototiller, one French hedger, one Canadian sprayer and an Irish-American mower. This year, we have a nice little crop of issues that really should have been non-issues except for the fact that the Italians seem to have lost a few pages in translation getting to ISO 9000.

After 20 years that overly tight zip tie finally cut through a heater hose going to the cab in the tractor in which Ernie spends a significant amount of quality time spraying the vineyard. No big deal you think, we really do not need heat in the cab this time of year, and besides the air conditioning was just repaired.

Tractor bypass surgery

Except for the fact that the heater hose is connected to the water pump which is connected to the radiator which cools the 100 horsepower diesel engine that powers the whole shebang. Lose all of the coolant and what you have left is a really big paperweight stuck in the middle of 35 acres of vines. At least the wheel studs are tight this year.

And then there is the ever-expanding puddle of transmission oil dripping off of the muffler mounted directly below the transmission. No matter how you spin that, it does not come out well. There is a single oil line coming from the engine compartment disappearing underneath the cab, behind the interior panels and reappearing just before the rear axle.

Turns out we have a metal clamp, without a protective rubber gromet, that secures this metal oil line to the transmission housing. And get this, there is a whole bundle of electrical wires zip tied to that metal oil line! Much like the Grinch, you can only put up with this for so long before metal fatigue becomes a rupture. What could this possibly operate? Doesn’t really matter, it is an oil leak that leaks on the muffler. You don’t have to be a winemaker to realize oil dripping on a hot muffler is not a sustainable condition. What is it with the Italians and their zip ties?

You know, these cell phones have incredible cameras these days. Who remembers The Eastman Kodak Company? A picture may well be worth a 1,000 words but sending off an image to the engineers who designed the equipment is priceless. And much less is lost in translation, even with the Canadians, eh?

Here we have a chain drive pump with an idler bearing. A classic and farmer tested design that has not evolved much, if at all since it was invented. And if it works, you don’t get to fix it - yet. But if the idler bearing is wearing out in less than 1 season, you cannot escape the conclusion, and $107 plus freight, that something is askew. And in this case it is the out of alignment lower pump drive sprocket “walking” its way back along the input shaft where it will meet certain doom when the chain comes in contact with the frame. This is a priority one repair, as in do it right farming now. Yabba Dabba Do It Now!

What the engineer sees

What the winegrower sees

Leverage. When you have applied the maximum amount of force with the hammers you have and are not making an impact, you need leverage. Leverage in the form of a 4 foot bar and your best hammer not so gently coaxing this sprocket back to its original factory installed position. Hence, we apply the principle E=mc2 where the mass does not change, however it does absorb significant energy. And over time, directly applied energy slowly realigns the lower pump drive sprocket with the upper sprocket, thus extending the life of said idler bearing. You learn Einstein’s theory of relativity in school, but applied percussive maintenance is learned on the job. Please refer to page 118 of the May issue of Modern Agrarian.

And of course, there are the standard oil, lube and filter chores for 5 diesel powered machines. Nice to see a pack of field mice thought the air cleaner was a good place to build a nest. Top off the radiator, check the tires and don’t forget to grease the zerks. They really appreciate it. And so, that is what gets Ernie out of bed in the morning, albeit very cautiously. Almost as much fun as opening E-mail…

But the vines sure look nice!

You can reach Dena by email at Cuvee@amalierobert.com and by phone at 503-88-CUVEE (503-882-8833) to schedule your appointment, or to place an order if you cannot join us.

Kindest Regards,

Dena & Ernie