Le Vin Vineyard and Winery

We've just finished our week at Le Vin, and we had a great time! We met lots of people, drank lots of wine, played lots of music, spent a weekend with Korin, Brian, Charli, and Sam, and, oh yeah, worked a little too! Eric gave us a few of bottles to take home to share with family, and we were off on a drive cross-country back to Fort Collins. Here's the breakdown of our days at Le Vin (more or less):

April 1:
We arrived at Le Vin vineyards/winery in the afternoon. It is in hill country, in Mendcino county, pretty far off of the main highway. The property 168 beautiful acres of grape vines, olive trees, citrus trees, and an overgrown garden with asparagus and fennel, with spectacular views of the Russian River valley below. There's a room above the winery that the owners use as an inn, and a central house where Eric and Holly (the owners) and the WWOOFers stay.

Inside, the house is bursting at the seams with records, musical instruments, speakers, a grand piano, and wine. Here is a quick list of all the musical instruments I saw scattered around the house and other places: a cello, a violin, a viola, a mandolin, a harp, an electric bass, a steel guitar, at least 5 other acoustic or electric guitars, a mountain dulcimer, 2 box accordions, a drum set, 2 grand pianos, an organ, a case of harmonicas (I think about 10 of them), maracas, castanets, and a trumpet. And I didn't even open all the cases I found!

When we first arrived, there was nobody there but other WWOOFers. We took a nice walk around the property with Ben (a WWOOFer) and saw a very large wild pig. There's pig tracks all around here - they like the acorns from all the oak trees, apparently. We also saw a wild turkey on the way in. Did you know that turkeys eat grapes? Out here, people like to eat wild turkey whenever they can.

April 2:
Eric and Holly came in very late last night from pouring wine at an event in San Francisco, and we didn't meet them until today. Eric and Holly are eccentric, varied, interesting, and very sweet. Holly was one of the original creators of the Gumby television show, and has a wine label design company (she designed Le Vin's labels' and they're very nice), and Eric obviously loves music of all kinds, and makes darn good wine, too. He is constantly buzzing from project to project, and Holly is perpetually trying to keep him focused so that his projects get done. It's an interesting interplay to watch, but it seems to work well for them.

We learned to prune grape vines. Most of the pruning was done by the time we got there, but we got to see how it's done. It's really interesting how you have to visualize the entire plant and how its going to grow in order to prune - there's some real skill involved, which we don't possess.

We also finished building and filled a planter box that some other WWOOFers had framed.

April 3, 4, 5:

Brent stripped the outside of their sauna building with a pressure washer, and then spent several more days trying to repair the damage inflicted by said pressure washer. In rebuilding the front of the sauna, we worked a lot with Eric & Holly's friend, Zhdan. He's a master carpenter, and it was really neat working with him, seeing his level of craftmanship. He's also jazz guitarist and season subscriber to the Santa Rosa symphony, too. This place is full of musicians!

There seems to be a constant flow of WWOOFers in and out of this gig - more than we've met at any other location. I guess there aren't too many wineries in the WWOOF catalog, so everyone tries to come here.

Korin, Brian, Charli, and Sam came up - we went wine tasting, had a lovely picnic, and spent the night in Geyserville with them. The next day, we all went up for a wine tasting at Eric and Holly's vineyard, and received the royal treatment from them - a wine tasting with 9-10 different wines, several kinds of cheese, olives, and their home-grown olive oil. Holly gave Charli a Gumby book to take back with her, and Charli enjoyed chasing the little dogs (Jackie and Toby) around. Oh, and Korin and Brian bought some wine too. After they left I helped Eric plant the planter box we had filled before. We planted some strawberries, tomatoes, and other little stuff.

In the evening, Eric got out his cello and played some classical style duets with Brent. Recently he's been mostly doing pop/rock type stuff. He had a great time!

April 6, 7:
This is our last day here, and most of it was spent trying to undo our damage to the sauna. Zhdan came back to replace the trim and one rotted out panel on the sauna, and Brent and I scraped and brushed until the wood looked like it might hold paint again. This is as far in the sauna's rehabilitation we can go though. Once Eric and Holly got back from their errands in town, Brent and I picked up and drove to Korin's in San Francisco. We spent the night there, then left early in the morning to drive back to Fort Collins!

We got back to Fort Collins at about 2 am on the 8th. Brent and I agree that it's nice to be back somewhere familiar, where we have our own space, and we don't feel like we're trespassing in someone else's home. Though we had such a good time at Le Vin, we're already considering going back for a while at harvest time, in the fall. That should be fun!

kim