Journal

A Letter from Cleo: Three Months at Bluebird Hill

My grandfather was a farmer. Since Kevin and I began our journey at Bluebird Hill almost three months ago, we have learned a lot about farming, winemaking, and selling wine.

Long May You Run

Neil and Sue Shay share the bittersweet news of stepping away from full-time ownership of Bluebird Hill Cellars, welcoming the Zhang family, and reflecting on nearly a decade of wine, friendship, and community.

February Greetings!

Our ‘regular readers’ know that many of our blog posts feature a song or song theme. This month, after going out to see ‘A Complete Unknown’, we may not have a single song but are thinking back to the music of Bob Dylan. Not one song in mind this month (one of Neil’s favorite lines is: You don’t nee...

Home At Last… and Thanksgiving!

For those of you who have visited or follow us on social media, you probably are aware that Sue has been Indiana for more than a month, almost six weeks, first doing caregiving support for her mom, and then after Mom’s passing, taking care of her last wishes, the funeral arrangements, and all the su...

The Most Difficult Blog Post Ever!

Honest, we’ve been meaning to write this post for months, but there has been just so much uncertainty and hesitation about all the details, so here goes, we want to share this exciting, yet bittersweet news, we are retiring! With that, however, there are still a lot of unanswered questions: When are...

WINTER BREAK-SPRING HAS SPRUNG

It snuck up on us, month by month, but it turns out we took a ‘winter break’ from blogging. Wasn’t intentional, but we’ve been keeping busy in the vineyard, the winery, and out in the marketplace. So we have a fair amount to catch you up on, so read on: Vineyard Update – Spring 2024 We experienced b...

Thanksgiving Greetings

In this edition of the blog: - Vineyard and Winery Updates - New Release Wines - Thanksgiving and Other Upcoming Fall Wine Tastings - Black Friday Specials VINEYARD AND WINERY UPDATE: We’re very grateful, indeed, to have the always exciting, and sometimes frantic harvest and crush season behind us. ...

Long Time, No See!

Ok everyone, we know, we Know, we KNOW we’ve been bad, and neglected the Bluebird Hill blog this summer - - the last we were writing about, the 10-year anniversary celebration of the planting of Mom’s Block was still ahead… But now, that’s a memory (was indeed a great celebration!), the summer has c...

Happy Birthday, Mom’s Block!

So hard to believe our last blog post was about two months ago! We’ve been plugging away, trying to take care of things out in the vineyard and in the winery, all while taking care of business, and hitting the road for our winter wine festivals, off-site tastings, and wine walks. AND trying to stay ...

Catch Us If You Can!

This blog will be just a quick update on happenings around the vineyard and winery, but mainly we’re putting this out so you can hopefully put some of these dates on your wine and social calendar (see below!). We have mentioned in blog posts in prior years, even though the weather is not great, we L...

The Price is Right!

Happy New Year All! We wish you all the very best, here’s to reestablishing ‘normal’ protocols out and about, and around the tasting room and in the winery. FIRST UP , we need to share some great news! Our friend and wine and vineyard colleague Josh Price has joined the team at Bluebird Hill! Josh w...

2022 Year in Review

“It’s Raining Again!” – Harvest Roundup

For those of you regular readers of our blog posts, we thank you – and if you are one of those rare birds, we’re going to stay on the 70’s/80’s pop music trend again. As we sit down to write this post, we’re looking out the window of this first Sunday post daylight savings, and we are seeing a LOT o...

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

For those of you who regularly check out our blog, you recall our last post was titled: “The Waiting Game”, specifically regarding our vineyard conditions and the anticipated lateness of harvest this year compared to the past several years here in the Willamette Valley. We also referred to a couple ...

The Waiting Game

Been sitting out on the patio this afternoon, one of the hottest weeks of the summer so far, but it got a little hazy this afternoon which helped keep the high temperature here at Bluebird Hill from topping 92 F today. We hit 100.0F at one point over the weekend, that was our local high temperature ...

SPACE INVADERS!

Greetings winery friends! Neil sometimes jokes that the Bluebird Hill blog is a monthly publication which comes out eight times a year. This winter and spring is part of the reason we cannot keep up rigorously to a monthly publication schedule. Just too much going on! Care to be updated? Read on… Wi...

2021 Year in Review

Click below to download a PDF of our year in review:

Roundabout Thanks…

It’s the season for giving thanks, and on our end, it turned out to happen via a somewhat peculiar and roundabout way: this fall we had to do a significant plumbing repair, a long section of our main water supply line was starting to develop leaks, and we had to expose about forty or more feet of pi...

What a difference a year makes

HARVEST UPDATE: We talk about with winery guests all year long; the fact of the matter is that harvest time is the ‘Super Bowl’ of vineyard and winery operations throughout the year. After harvest, the vineyard gets a chance to rest, to sleep for a few months, before pruning begins in anticipation o...

Play it Forward -- COVID edition

September 2021 Blog Post We’re publishing this blog post to coincide with our ‘Play It Forward’ 2021 charity event. We’ve first offered this event in 2017 as a golf tournament and auction. As we’ve mentioned before, the event supports our local United Way with an emphasis on charitable organizations...

The Dog Days of Summer

Photo of Willie courtesy of our tasting room guest Julian Saaiman The Dog Days of Summer describes the most oppressive period of summer, between July 3rd and August 11th each year. But where did the term come from? And what does it have to do with dogs? You can check out what the Farmers Almanac has...

Happy Birthday to Bluebird Hill Cellars!

Photo courtesy of Steven Polansky We will close the blog with this news, but just to let everyone know what is going on, we are celebrating FIVE YEARS in business, our tasting room opened to the public at the end of May 2016. From a very humble start, opening with just barely 200 cases of wine in st...

March Madness?

AKA our March 2021 Blog Post It’s a cloudy and cool Sunday afternoon here at Bluebird Hill, and we’re taking some time to catch our breath and take stock of what’s been done to vine and wine and what still needs to happen. So read on, and we will catch you up on the latest happenings. In the vineyar...

A Stirring Story – January 2021

Snow Day - January 26, 2021 While the winery and vineyard work continues with the typical chores of the mid-winter, the big news here continues to be results from various wine judging events and blind tastings. Then, ‘ A Stirring Story’ follows this first section… We found out, and reported to you i...

Zooming Into 2021!

Since we first went into quarantine back in March, we are grateful that throughout the year, we’ve been able to keep up with so many of our good friends. For some it was by Zoom, email, or phone, and for some of you more local, although socially distanced, we did see you face to face during the warm...

Thanksgiving Blessings

Greetings Friends!! We are just trying to manage things, like everyone else in the USA, and we guess, around the whole wide world. We found out the end of last week, that all restaurants, bars and tasting rooms in the state were going to be shut down, on Wednesday November 18th, for perhaps two week...

“MY UN-FAVORITE YEAR – PART 2”

About a month ago, in our last blog post, right before Labor Day weekend, we were reflecting on the events of the year. Of course, almost everything most all of us have been doing has been put into the shadows cast by the Covid pandemic. A good deal of what all wineries do has been impacted, but may...

“MY UN-FAVORITE YEAR”

We KNOW the August blog went on and on and on, so we promise to be more concise here. Long story short, we are now about to start our 7th harvest and crush season, with the 2014 Zenith Pinot Noir being our very first commercially produced wine after more than a decade of amateur winemaking. We are a...

Playing it Forward and Giving Thanks

We decided last month, Neil, Sue and the group of South Benton volunteers that have worked with us the past few years, to postpone the 2020 “Play It Forward” charity event to 2021. A month or two into the quarantine, Covid-19 case numbers in Oregon were dropping, and it seemed that we would indeed ‘...

Hedging Our Bets

Either the “New Normal” or “New Abnormal” (as Neil says sometimes now), it’s hard to believe that during this crazy time, we can talk, or want to talk about normal things, typical things, things like vineyard goings on, and winery goings on. But to talk about these things gives us some relief from t...

Welcome Back!

We have to be honest; we received the news of our county being approved for ‘Phase One’ of reopening of businesses with equal parts of relief and anxiety. The relief is of course in response to the end of the eight weeks of quarantine we have gone through here at Bluebird Hill. We have tried in good...

First Things First

We are chomping at the bit to tell everyone about the latest goings on at Bluebird Hill, but as the title says, we need to say the most important things first…. First , everyone we know, as far as we know, has been able to stay heathy. Our cherished friends and loved ones, the folks at work, and the...

Flattening the Curve

Hello, Friends! There are a bajillion things we’d love to be starting with, related to wine and vine, but in the forefront now, is this other, most important matter. Impacting our own lives, our relatives, our friends, all of us in Oregon and around the country and world, is this unbelievable battle...

2019 Year in Review

Thanksgiving is gone, and now the December holidays are here and we’re getting ready for the New Year, so for all those out there, this blog post is going to be our 2019 year in review. All in all, we feel like we’ve had pretty good year, and we are SO grateful for all of the great friends we have m...

Don’t Mess With Mother Nature!

In our last blog, back in September, we talked about getting ready for harvest. The beautiful summer weather continued into mid-September, and then Mother Nature threw us a pretty nasty, big-breaking curveball. Mostly in the second half of the month, we received over five inches of rain compared to ...

Sharpening Our Saws

It’s been said that you cannot cut wood effectively if all you do is cut wood, there needs to be some time sitting back and sharpening your saw. This came to mind a few weeks ago, as we began to get ready for the ‘Super Bowl’ of winemaking, the harvest of our crop and the primary fermentations that ...

Happy Holidays?

Certainly not the yuletide holiday season, but the winery season in the Willamette Valley unofficially kicks off for the summer over the Memorial Day Weekend. Sometimes we get in such a frenzy to get ready for our own opening, we need to keep a special remembrance for what Memorial Day is about – th...

Satisfying Work

Vineyard Update: We skipped our April blog, and it’s apparently clear if you look at the picture posted with our March blog post versus now: there’s a dramatic transition from the snowy vineyard picture from the beginning of March to where we are today in the vineyard, with shoots of 6” (or more) in...

The Weather Outside....

Well.... not exactly ‘frightful’, as the song goes, but after getting home a week ago yesterday from the Newport Seafood and Wine Festival, we woke up the next morning to 9-10 inches of snow at our place, simply beautiful, although the roads in Monroe were treacherous until afternoon! We have had so...

2018 Wrap Up

With the official start of winter at hand, we’re realizing that it’s been too long since we posted about the goings on here at Bluebird Hill, so here we are, reporting in... Fermentation: As we mentioned in the harvest update, we processed 15 tons of fruit this fall – almost exactly half from our vi...

2018 Harvest Update!

After months and months of waiting, the harvest exploded into action at Bluebird Hill on September 22 as a crew of eager pickers set out in the cool of the early morning and picked more than a ton of Pinot noir from the North Block for our 2018 BBHC Rosé. We picked some of each of our five different...

Harvest is coming!

We feel like we say this with nearly every blog post, but just cannot believe it is already two months since our last post. We are on track for that late September harvest that flowering predicted, as we mentioned at the end of June... Vineyard Report: We are just about 100% past veraison now, the c...

In the Summertime

Vineyard: After bud break seven weeks ago, we’ve had a pretty moderate season thus far, not too hot and not too cold! Granted, all of July and August are still to come, so we may wind up with a killer hot summer, but not as of yet... Almost all of the vines are up to the top wire already, and toppin...

Happy Mom’s Block!

Saturday, April 21 appeared to be our official bud break day at Bluebird Hill Vineyard. After weeks of variable weather: cool/warm/cool/warm/cool/cool, etc., buds all around the vineyard opened up to show the first evidence of 2018 foliage. At this point now (early May), we are just about through sh...

Spring Fever Update

We’ve been trying to deliver our blog posts on a monthly basis, but things have gotten set aside over the winter and now, here in mid-March, we have SO much to relay to you all..... Catching up in roughly chronological order, the tasting room remained open through the end of December. We’re happy to...

Mid-Winters Night Dreaming

Of course, our title this month is a shameless takeoff on The Bard of Avon’s masterpiece. But, the intent is more pure – here we are, nearly to the middle of winter, and want to keep everyone up to date on what is going on. Neil always maintains that February is one of his favorite months of the yea...

A Long Winter’s Nap

We have just experienced a rare stretch of about two weeks of great weather here at Bluebird Hill: lots of sunny days, and with that clear weather, it’s been a tad cooler than usual. With our hilltop location, we normally enjoy mostly frost-free nights during the winter, as the cool air tends to set...

Gratitude

Thank you, Thank you, Thank you! In the tasting room at Bluebird Hill Cellars, after the close of business on Sunday, November 26, we sat down and enjoyed a glass of wine and the barbecue we had been serving to our friends and guests during the day. It was a great feeling to look back at the two Tha...

A Pressing Engagement.....

For the past two and half weeks since our last post, just eighteen days, we’ve been fermenting fruit from our own vineyard, and our vineyard partners: Zenith, Walnut Ridge, and Aurora Colony. Bluebird Hill fruit from our warm site came in first, followed by Zenith Pinot noir, Walnut Ridge Pinot gris...

Bringing in the Grapes!

Upcoming Events October 4th 5:30 to 7:30 pm Women & Wine Wednesday Join us for an evening of Wine, Fun & Fashion on the Hill LuLaRoe Fashion with Rosey Gording and Jewelry by Jan - Inspired by nature, Jan's designs are bold, organic and tribal, with an earthy flair. We will be serving light bites to...

Whew!

Once again, we’re sitting down to catch our breaths and send out this update!! When people have asked us ‘how are you doing?’ this summer, we’re answering ‘great, but busy – just like everyone else!!’ Bluebird Hill Cellars is having a good summer of business! Our wine sales are up from last summer, ...

Sunny Daze on the Hill

As I write this, it is a beautiful, sunny, pleasant day, we are now seeing many of these in a row. Sometimes, it winds up being hot near the end of the day but, at the top of the hill, we really don't see a lot of heat buildup until the middle of the afternoon. The drip system for the vines planted ...

Catching Up

The last of winter and most of spring have gone by in a whirlwind. It does give us a great deal of satisfaction, however, when friends or regular visitors will stop by and say ‘Wow – I can’t believe how much has happened since last time I was here!!”. Working our way backward, this is what has been ...

Spring 2017 at Bluebird Hill

Our vines have been sleeping during the cool and rainy winter, and the barrel room has been pretty quiet, too! But other things have been hopping, behind the scenes, to get our new releases ready for the spring and to get the vineyard ready for bud break. The weather this winter has been interesting...

Holidays 2016

WINERY UPDATES: After the two open house weekends flanking Thanksgiving, we were thankful to have a slow weekend at Bluebird Hill. We spent a good part of last Saturday tasting though all the barrels and tanks of wine that we plan to bottle in the next two to twelve months. This includes three barre...

Thanksgiving 2016

Happy Thanksgiving!! We had a really nice pre-Thanksgiving weekend up on the hill and we're looking forward to seeing many more friends noon to 5 pm Friday through Sunday this coming weekend. We made a few changes in the tasting room to accommodate more people and reorganized our crush pad to provid...

Bluebird Hill Gives Thanks!

The summer has wound down, all of our 2016 wines have been put to bed for their winter slumber and we are now looking forward to two great weekends of wine tasting at the winery! Since opening over the Memorial Day Weekend in May, we’ve had the pleasure of hosting an incredible group of visitors, tr...

Indian Summer

I’m sitting here with a wonderful glass of Rosé in the late afternoon of what has been a spectacular weather day. When people talk about Indian summer, this is it: temps in the high 70s, full sun, beautiful blue sky, and just a little bit of a soft breeze now and then. A great time to collect our th...

Happy Happy Harvest!

W e’re in the midst of the most exciting, most frantic time of the year, we are at HARVEST!! The Bluebird Hill Estate fruit is in, we picked our first Pinot gris grapes ever early last week, and a half-ton of Pinot noir at the end of last week. Fruit has been looking really good, with no evidence of...

Dog Days of Summer

I’m not sure if the grapes hanging on the vine call this the ‘dog days of summer’, because I can almost hear some of those clusters talking to me, saying ‘Mmmm Mmmm Good’ in response to this stretch of sunny, warm weather we are in the middle of! We’ve had a whole string of days with high temperatur...

July Musings and Reflections

Sunday July 10: I’m sitting here in the wine tasting room contemplating rare summer weather: rain and clouds! More typical of March than July, we had a weather front travel through overnight and perhaps we had the good part of an inch of rain. Maybe good for the grapevines, but we’ll have to keep an...

Bluebird Hill Cellars Summer Events

We’re gearing up for the sunny summer weather and have two events we want you to consider yourself invited to! Sunday June 26th will be a special after-hours event to mingle with friends of the winery and our winemaker, Bobby Moy . The event will be held from 5:00 – 8:00 pm and will feature a catere...

Bluebird Hill Grand Opening Recap

With a sigh of relief and a feeling of gratitude, we can sit back, breathe deep and relax for a moment to reflect on our opening, held Memorial Day Weekend, May 27-30. Each day, we welcomed a lot of great people, some old friends and some new friends as well. We’re grateful for our sister wineries i...