As I type this the last few flushes of grape stompers are trying their toes at the annual Willamette Valley Vineyards Grape Stomp down in Turner, OR.

The grape stomp is one of those Oregon activities you have to do once in your lifetime. I’ve had it on my list for quite a while, but until now I’ve always been too tired, too pregnant, or too not-in-town to participate.

This year was different. I had some grape plans to bone up on my stomping skills in preparation for this year’s event. You see, we have some liabilities as stompers to begin with. For one, I wear a size 6.5 shoe. Without webbed feet, or larger feet, I’d surely be at a disadvantage.

I’d like to say that I was listening to the theme song from Rocky to prepare, pretending to run the steps of the Philadephia Museum of Art to get my legs pumping in just the right foot-to-grape ratio. But we pretty much rolled up the hill at the last possible moment for our 11:00 flush. There were about a dozen other teams already in their barrels and one lonely barrel left in the middle of the row. I jumped in and Adam squatted down near the pipe to swab the opening and catch this juice.

This would be our big mistake — choosing this particular barrel.

I thought maybe I’d be caught up in the thrill of it, that the stompers aside me would throw my competitive bent into overdrive. But really, it was strangely meditative. I had my hands on my husband’s shoulders for support and we were working together like a machine. The grapes were soft and juice and popped easily under pressure. Within a few minutes I had stomped through them and all that was left was pulpy grape skin.

Adam noticed a tad late that the swabber has another job.

“Hey, that guy has his hands in the barrel!” he said.

Sure enough, the swabber’s role, it seems, is also to press the grapes out and usher the juice to the hole, not just catch the juice, as we had been told.

Yes, we lost, by a very large number. But at least we got to see a couple people get disqualified for not pulling their jugs awaywhen the ending whistle blew. Eat it suckers!

So, for your next grape stomp, may I propose some Strategic Tactics that do not Involve Listening to “Stomp!”

1. Arrive early and choose your barrel stratically
2. Have the person with larger feet do the stomping
3. Keep as much pulp as possible from going through your hole (the pulp gets funneled out before the juice gets weighed)
4. Don’t get yourself disqualified by doing something as stupid as not following directions
5. Don’t follow directions and have your swabber press out the juice and move it towards the hole
6. Have fun!

We certainly managed #6.

My friend Chris says this image of our neighbor’s leftover grapes looks like the world (our barrel barely had anything left in it; no joke).

Adam getting our juice weighed after the stomp. We already knew we had lost, but not going through procedure would just be sour grapes.

My feet after the stomp. It wasn’t as messy as I had anticipated. Also, wine glass for tasting wines afterwards comes with the $10 entry fee. May I suggest the Willamette Valley Vineyards Elton Estate for your next big event?

Besides all of the great times, I got this wonderful graphic from my friend Ryan Rogers, who told me that pic of me in the barrel makes me look like some kind of Award Ceremony statuette. He promptly put together a golden statuette Emily graphic. Yes, my week is made. Now, to figure out what kind of achievement the “Emily” would honor… it’s certainly not for grape stomping!

There is a carboy of magenta mash fermenting in a corner of my living room. I can feel it with the eyes in the back of my head, changing ever-so-slowly, day by day, into what will become our first ever batch of homemade pinot noir wine.

Just thinking about our stash over there, working in its corner while I work in mine, makes me feel inordinately lucky. Lucky to live in Oregon, lucky to be able to get my hands on some grapes for a household experiment, lucky to have found a pick-your-own grape hookup that I plan to cultivate in the years to come.

I’ve heard that pick-your-own pinot is rare indeed in the Willamette Valley. Ask any real winemaker if you can come and “help with the harvest,” and chances are good that you’ll get one of those incredulous, are-you-kidding-ma’am, you-really-don’t-have-a-clue looks in return. There’s a reason why vineyards hire migrant workers to accomplish the chaotic and frenzied harvest of grapes. It is hard work — and it is work. Some of us might get all googly-eyed at the very idea of spending a morning plucking plump pinot from the vine, but real winemakers need the deed done fast and hard.

Well, I still want to wake up to one of those oogly googly pinot morning. And a I did a few weeks ago when our neighbor invited us to come pick our own grapes at a vineyard south of Salem.

This particular vineyard is owned by a former doctor who spent many years growing a range of pinots on his property, harvesting them, making juice and bottling it for commercial sale. After an illness interrupted this cycle, he began inviting the public to pick grapes on his property. Yes, he so loved his grapes that he gave his only begotten vines to the world.

I cannot tell you how much we paid for these grapes, since it involves deciphering a strange rubric concocted by our neighbor and the winemaker, and which we were only privy to through our relationship with the former.

I will not tell you how much we paid for these grapes because the price was ridiculously low, and I still feel kind of guilty for having achieved such an “in.”

But I will say that we picked about 200 pounds worth of pinot noir grapes from 3 choice rows at Salem Hills Vineyard and Winery and paid less than one would pay for a really nice two-person dinner at Morton’s Bistro.

The mash is fermenting and we are waiting. Waiting. Waiting.

We are, both of us, the carboy and I, fermenting in our respective corners. I’ll give that mash a year or more and then it had better watch out.

If there is a book that one should absolutely not read while pregnant, chances are good that I have it stashed in my library rotation.

Deformed children?

Check.

Lost pregnancies?

Check.

Doom and gloom?

Most definitely, check.

Give me your destructive narratives your poorly protaganists, your no-win scenarios and I will be drawn to it like dry rot to your front porch. And though every pregnancy book I have read warns strongly against surrounding yourself with books that might bring you down (you’re depressing your baby, too!) I keep picking them up and holding them to my chest and snuggling with them before discovering the scenes and moments that make it oh so clear that this is not a book I should be reading at this moment in my life.

Indeed, my pregnancy canon is looking a little too much like Law & Order: SVU.

The worst book of all? Portland writer Brian Doyle‘s The Grail: A Year Ambling & Shambling through an Oregon Vineyard in Pursuit of the Best Pinot Noir Wine in the Whole Wide World.

Yes, if you really want to make yourself feel bad about all that you are giving up by having kids, I suggest you read  Mr. Doyle’s frilly, funny, delightfully comprehensive book about the year he spent at Lange Estate Vineyards in the Red Hills.

Doyle’s style can take a little getting used to. After Thomas Mann and James Frey, he’s the world’s biggest fan of the run-on sentence (Check out that subtitle to his book! Even if the marketers are the ones who make up the titles, it is clearly inspired by his prose).

Also, his personality is all over the page. If you don’t go for cheeky writers who don’t take themselves too seriously (and like to see them interacting with serious people), it can grate a bit.

But by a few chapters in, I rather enjoyed sitting at the table with someone so clearly unafraid to take himself out of a story. And what a story it is.

Winemakers! Originally from Iowa! In Oregon! Making the best wine in the world! And doing it that oh-so-Oregonian way of complete commitment to craft without the rubbings of pretension.

Love it.

How unpretentious can they be,  you ask? Well, I’ve heard through the grapevine har har that quite a few of the main players at Lange haven’t even read the book (though they sell it in their tasting room).

And why would they, other than to get a great primer on pinot, a cultural history of the grape, an anthropological study of the winemaker’s persona, and captivating descriptions of vintages that they get to try every single day.

Man, I really need a drink.

I invite someone to take me out for a glass of Lange pinot in exactly 1.5 years.

Make that a bottle.

My sister Ashley lives in Palo Alto, CA and will be getting married next fall to a wonderful Chinese-American man (he was a card-carrying communist until the age of 7). They have spent the last weekend driving up and down the California Coast to Napa to check out wineries.

My mom, who has been privy to stories of these adventures in wedding planning, has started calling Napa “the Disney World of weddings.”  It’s big, it’s fun, there’s a lot going on there, and you had better plan on shelling out a fortune to come home with some nice pictures.

Everything I read and experience about Oregon’s wine-producing regions reaffirms my decision to move here and make a life in the Willamette Valley. As far as I can tell, it’s the anti-California — and not necessarily because of the often virulent anti-Cali bias shared by many Oregonians.

My latest exploration of place has involved a close reading of Janis Miglavs’s stunning photo essay Oregon: The Taste of Wine. Miglavs, a longtime adventure photographer and contributor to National Geographic magazine, isn’t really writing about Oregon wine per se, but about the people who make it.

It would be easy to look at a book like this and wonder if it was commissioned or supported by the winemakers themselves — it struck me initially as a public relations vehicle, albeit a really sexy one. But the more I have explored this book, the more I have come to appreciate its uncommon format — yes, the requisite gorgeous photos of vineyards, barrels, people, grapes, and the people who care for them — and hell yeah!,  a narrative of the Oregon wine industry crafted through pull-quotes from individuals.

The story is told in these quotes, most of them little more than a few hundred words. This approach can make for a sometimes incohesive story, but it also provides a lot of really pithy and personal anecdotes and some really great overarching stories about how Oregon wine got where it is.

Here’s one of my favorite examples, from Myron Redford, President of Amity vineyards, about how he created his wine:

“I wanted to make the skeleton that Lett did really nicely, sort of a Twiggy wine, and combine it with — who is that country singer with the big boobs — yea, Dolly Parton. So I wanted to combine it with Erath’s voluptuous Dolly Parton kind of wines. I wanted to make a Meryl Streep sort of thing in the middle.”

To me this encapsulates so much of what I love about Oregon and about Oregonians — a laid-back attitude coupled with motivation for greatness.

The book paints a portrait of the Oregon wine industry that suggests that its success has been based entirely on the willingness of the area’s winemakers to share approaches — and even vine cuttings — with their neighbors and competitors.

That’s a place I want to live.

And if you haven’t made it out to any of the wineries this weekend, you’re not too late! Many of them are open for special tastings today.

Happy Memorial Day!

Top Ten Things to Do in Salem, Oregon

10.  Run, don’t walk past the Oregon State Hospital.

9.  Take in a flick at the Northern Lights Pub Theatre. Assuming they’re not still playing Twilight. (Don’t tell me it’s Theatre Pub. I say if the movie theater is serving beer, it’s going first).

8. Check out some consignment furniture at Encore on Commercial Street SE.

7. Pop in for a spin around the galleries (Tuesday is free) at Willamette University’s Hallie Ford Museum of Art.

6. Chat up the booksellers at the Book Bin or Tea Party Bookshop.

5. Pick a wine off the wall at Morton’s Bistro in West Salem.

4. Stroll among the cherry trees at the State Capitol (they’re almost out!).

3. Chat with Jim Bernau at Willamette Valley Vineyards.

2. Gaze with wonder at how tchochkes can be stylish when grouped by color or theme at Engelberg Antiks.

1. Stop in for a make-your-own cannoli at the Little Cannoli Bakery in the Reed Opera House.

“California pinot noir is like a beautiful woman in a red dress that’s cut up to here and down to there,” Jim Burnau told me in the tasting room of Willamette Valley Vineyards the other day. “You absolutely have to date her, and you should.”

“Oregon pinot noir is like a beautiful woman in a slinky black cocktail dress,” he continued. “Just gorgeous — and you want to take her home to mom.”

I knew there was a reason I settled in Oregon.

We had some friends from Iowa drive across the country (they made it in 2 days!) to visit us during Spring Break. I’d like to think that they were coming just to see us, but knowing how Oregon can take hold of the newcomer’s imagination and not let go, I felt inclined to give them a one-day best-of visitor’s tour.

Problem: I’ve been here three months and don’t yet have a best-of visitor’s tour.

So we did what they thought they might love based on our descriptions on their visit on Tuesday.

Morning: Sleeping and breakfasting for a few hours.

Mid-day: 5-mile hike at Silver Falls

Afternoon: Willamette Valley Vineyards tasting

Evening: Momiji sushi

Late-evening: Drinking of WVV’s Tualatin Estate Mueller-Thurgau varietal

Sorry, South Falls, a personal pouring session starring Jim Burnau beats waterfalls any day of the week. Jim’s this amazing character. He has a great ability to draw people into conversation, and comes across as a generous spirit eager to introduce newcomers to Oregon’s wine bounty. You might say he is an excellent salesman (we walked out with a couple of bottles for the group), but I much prefer a sincere and passionate salesman to one that isn’t interested in talking to me.

Strangely, though we came for pinot noir, we stayed for the Mueller-Thurgau. I think it has something to do with the world being so springy and puddle-wonderful.

Like so many of my experiences with Salem and it’s surrounding environs, I go out seeking something specific and find that want I want is something I had never even heard of (or in this case, tasted).

By the way, Jim spent St. Patrick’s Day at Johnny’s Bar and Grill on 1729 Center Street NE. He claims that they have the best bar food in town.