Fall Colors

Our workshop is located in Oregon's wine country. Two vineyards are just north of us, both 2-3miles away. One is Willamette Vineyards, the state's largest. Our favorite is Ankey Vineyards, one of the state's oldest and smallest. The ploto above shows Ankeny Vineyards yesterday. At the base of the evergreen trees at the right is an old community cemetary. One day the winery guy loaded me into his "mule" (a small John Deere truck) and drove me up there. Very interesting!
This winery's official greeter is a chocolate labrador named appropriately, Hershey. And Hershey Red is one of their bottled wines.

My favorite visit to a winery was one fall day, when the grapes were still on the vines. We were invited to dinner at Grant and Elizabeth's. They owned a vineyard in West Salem, and Elizabeth oversaw the making of about a thousand bottles of wine each year; most of their grapes were sold to other wineries. But driving up to their house that beautiful September afternoon was one of the most beautiful sights I have seen. Purple grapes hung heavily of the vines, the hills were shouting out their fall colors, and then we sampled some of Elizabeth's wine from the barrel before dinner.
Our favorite wine of all time is "Elizabeth"--what we called the no-label bottles.