Wine Photographer and Writer Janis Miglavs

Help: visit my lonely photo trapped at the Newberg Cultural Center.

2012-01-30T18:06:00.000-08:00

When my photograph was selected into the juried Oregon Artists Showcase competition, I thought the judge's dog must have bitten her the very instant she looked my piece. Regardless, there it is hanging on a big wall all by itself, lonely as can be. The photograph (pictured below) needs visitors.

This is probably cheating, but there is a "People's Choice" award given out at the end of the show about March 29–which just happens to be my birthday. As the name implies, People's Choice is determined by the vote of the People, as in visitors. So check out my lonely photo and vote appropriately. (I'm told they do not take phone-in votes.)

Oh yes, show details:
January 31 - March30, 2012
Chehalem Cultural Center
415 E. Sheridan (behind the Newberg Public Library off of Hwy 99W)
Newberg, OR
503-487-6883

What should I include in a China Winery book?

2012-01-30T17:49:00.000-08:00

It's official. But now I need your help. I have a contract with a Chinese publisher to produce a China Wine book. They even paid an advance (in US dollars).

After the publisher, their adviser, Edouard Cointreau, and I choose 10 Chinese wineries as a focus, I determine text and photos. The book will be published in both Chinese and English for a Chinese and Western market.

So here's where I need your input.
What do you think should be included in the book?
What would you like to know about Chinese wine, wineries and vineyards?
Vineyard workers at Chateau Changyu AFIP, one hour out of Beijing. This Winery will definitely be in the China Winery book.

Help. What do you see in this image?

2012-01-24T13:31:00.000-08:00

This is my latest effort for the Africa's Undiscovered Myths portion of the Mumm Napa Gallery show. (Go figure, the gallery wanted both Myth and Vineyard images.) But I'm very nervous about how successful this one is; so I would appreciate feedback about what you see.
(It's OK, I can take harsh critics.)Haska Galeda, the most powerful Hammar tribe shamman (more about that in the show), went to the bush near the neighboring Mursi tribe. During the night he dreamed about a line of white cattle walking towards him. Suddenly, his deceased father appeared in the dream, telling Haska it was OK to take the cattle (more about that in the show), but do not kill the man with the cattle.

When Haska awoke, he saw cattle coming towards him lead by two boys. As his father commanded in his dream, the shaman took the cattle but did not kill the boys.

Should I focus on sales or education in my next gallery show?

2012-01-18T21:00:00.000-08:00

Help.

I am in the process of choosing about 21 vineyard/winery-related photographs to include a one-man (relax, it's politically OK to say man since I'm male) show at the Mumm Napa Gallery in Napa Valley. This will be a huge show from the March 10 to October 5. And it's a fabulous gallery that once showcased Ansel Adams' work.

All together I will show about 50 pieces, 1/2 relating to the vineyard, the remainder from my Africa's Undiscovered Myths Project.

Originally, I was going to show beautiful light on the vineyard landscapes in the hopes of selling work to support the Africa Myth project (and my thirst for good wines). Then I started to show friends, relatives and neighbors a handful of the 75,000 or so photos in my world-wide vineyard collection.

Darn. Their reactions presented an unexpected dilemma. With some of the images, instead of ooohing and ahhhing, the viewers asked lots of "what's-going-on-here" questions. Unfortunately, this forced me to choose between beauty–with the hope of sales–and education, between potential income and documentary education.

Check out the examples below. Then tell me, should the Mumm Gallery show be potential income or education?

Below are potentials from the Beautiful Vineyard Light Landscape Category which I hoped would potentially sell:

Then, like an unwanted house guest, viewers asked lots of questions of images like those below. So I call them Education or Enlightenment Category:
More documentary in style, these show something most people have not seen. And they scream for a caption.

Should I choose beauty with the potential for a sale? Or Educational? Or the Bhuddist middle path?

See China via Her Wine Growing Regions

2011-12-10T08:12:00.000-08:00

I'm constantly asked what China's wine growing regions are like. Follow along on the map while you visit nine regions.

Yunnan province. These two photos are taken near the border with Tibet. The vineyards are generally at elevations up to 10,000 feet. (probably the highest vineyards in the world.) While other wineries–like Yunnan Red–operate at lower elevations near the provincial capital of Kunming, Shangrila winery sources fruit from these remote high-elevation vineyards. Except for the transportation logistics, in my opinion this is an amazing terroir for the likes of Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot.

Shaanxi province. Jade Valley Winery's vineyard seen from the soon-to-be-completed resort, takes on a mystical quality while a heavy-rain storm clears. Just a bit over one hours drive from the famous Xi'an's Terra Cotta Warriors, architect/owner Qingyun Ma's vision is to build this resort and winery in his home town.

Shandong province. China's best known and most developed wine region. The top photograph pictures the landscape around Chateau Junding Winery and Resort in the area known as NAVA Valley–a name that irks California's Napa Valley. The second photo is from the historic hill behind Treaty Port Winery looking out towards the area near where Lafite is planting a vineyard.

Ningxia province. The Yellow River cuts through this upcoming wine region in China's wide-open north central desert region. The top photograph shows one of Pernod Ricard's Domaine Helan Mountain vineyard. The second photo, taken from the winery roof, shows Helan Qing Xue Winery's vineyard–recent winner of Decanter's International Wine award–with Helan Mountain in the background. You can see just how sandy the soil is in the vineyard leased by Dragon Hollow Winery in the bottom images.
To help them survive, vines are buried during the freezing harsh winters.

Xinjiang province. This is China's wild west. Vineyards are planted in the desert in sand dunes as seen in the second photograph background. Irrigation water flows from the huge surrounding snow-capped mountains.

Shanxi province. Probably one of the most scenic vineyard sites sits above Yellow Valley. Grace Winery, pictured in the second photo, sources fruit from these vineyards.

Heibei province. Top photo is Rongchen's vineyard. Center is Bodega Langes and bottom is Great Wall.

Tianjin province. Dynasty Winery sources fruit from this vineyard. Note the other crops planted between rows of vines.

Beijing area. One freeway hour from Beijing, here's the view from Chateau Changyu AFIP.

Need Feedback on Creation of Man Image

2011-11-22T12:51:00.000-08:00

This is another image from my Africa's Undiscovered Myth series I'm creating for a gallery show in Napa Valley.Here I'm trying to illustrate the Ethiopia's Omo Region Konso tribe story where the first man was born from a termite hill. (Those are termite hills in the background.) To me there are lot of symbols in this story. And doesn't the Bible have Adam formed from mud?

What are your thoughts? Does this image work for you?

Is my baggage preventing me from accepting Chinese Culture??

2011-11-22T11:10:00.000-08:00

Is it true as one travel writer espoused: "Traveling, one accepts everything; indignation stays at home?"

This is Ganden Sumtseling Monastery, the largest Tibetan Buddhist monastery in China's Yunnan province and sometimes referred to as the Little Potala Palace. Built in 1679, it is blessed and cursed by being only 5 kilometres (3.1 mi) from the tourist city of Shangrila. So Chinese tourists flock to this spiritual site. Check out the wad of visitors climbing the stairs in the right background.

Among the swirling, camera-toting tourists, hundreds of monks try to conduct their lives and spiritual rituals.

Truthfully, I had trouble suppressing an uneasy indignation. Perhaps I'm bringing my own cultural baggage. Yes, tourism financially supports the monastery. But to me the balance between spirituality and tourism was like oil and water.
For some, the monastery was simply a Hollywood prop.

This lady focused her Canon camera on her shoes.

Is my baggage preventing me from accepting the reality of Chinese Culture?

Have you used this wine byproduct?

2011-11-17T10:21:00.000-08:00

I had never heard of it until a couple of years ago. One of the executives at China's Chateau Changyu AFIP told me they offered a grape seed oil spa at their European Village. So how do they process those tiny seeds? It must take millions for one spa.
I saw exactly how those seeds were gathered at Pernod Ricard's Helan Mountain winery in Ningxia province. After the winemaker has determined the juice has had enough skin/seed contact, these Cabernet Sauvignon grape skins and seeds are transported on a conveyor belt to this mesh wire tube to separate the skins from seeds.
The seeds are then spread out onto nearby streets to dry.
It's amazing what I learn hanging around Chinese wineries. Not only does Chateau AFIP use it, grape seed oil is actually a preferred cosmetic ingredient for control of skin moisturization. Since it's such a light, thin oil, it leaves a glossy TV-model-ready film on the skin. It's also used in aromatherapy. I've even heard some use grape seed oil as a lubricant for shaving.
But Chinese use it for cooking. Since grape seed oil has a moderately high smoke point, it is ideal for all the high temperature stir-frying cooking done in China.

And these little things actually have health benefits. Grape seeds contain antioxidants and sufficiently high amounts of resveratrol to be extracted commercially. Unfortunately, when cold pressed into an oil, negligible of these other biologically active compound remain.

What do you see in this African Myth Image?

2011-11-17T09:46:00.000-08:00

Besides photographing and writing about wine, I'm also working on a large project I call Africa's Undiscovered Myths. For the past 10 years I've gone to the most remote tribes in Africa–because DNA tells us that modern man walked out of that continent–to learn from storytellers, witch doctors, shamans and chiefs about their myths and archetypal dreams. Anthropologists tell me that I'm the only person to have recorded these oral stories. Then I create photo illustrations of those stories.
From the Suri tribe in Ethiopia's Omo region, this is an illustration of Chief Bolagadong's dream where his grandfather told him to take care of the orphans of the tribe. Dreams are very important to these tribes.

I will have a huge gallery show of this work at Napa Valley's Mumm Winery Gallery in March 2012, so I desperately need feedback. The final image will actually be at least 16X20.

What do you see in the image?

What mark will wine today leave on human history?

2011-11-13T20:37:00.000-08:00

Cathedral on canal in Venice, Italy.

Last night, one of the guests at a neighbor's dinner party, recently returned from two months in Europe, told of the great Medieval cathedrals he had seen in Germany, Italy and France. Some of the cathedrals had a guilds of skilled craftsmen who maintained the churches. I pondered out loud, what are we creating today that will be seen or felt 900 years from now? Will it just be three story personal yachts?

Immediately Treaty Porty, the Scottish castle winery in China's Shandong province, built by Shanghi-based mutual fund owner Chris Ruffle, came to my mind.

Chris' vision started as a simple sketch on a napkin during a red-eye flight. But that sketch evolved into something much more. Setting aside the Herculean task of working with local contractors and officials to actually build an castle from the surrounding granite, Chris tried to keep a larger vision. He named his hewn solid granite castle Treaty Port, to honor Chinese history of the old nearby treaty ports of Yantai (Cheffo) and Penglai (Dengzhou).

Then the location. It sits on the bottom shoulder of 139-metre Qiushan mountain peak where a climber can see the Yellow and Bohai seas, as well as the infamous NAVA Valley, a name which irks Napa Valley vintners. The name Qiushan is significanct for Daoists as the spot where Qiu Chuji (a famous 14th century Daoist) lead a strict religious life of ascetism and philanthropy. Qiu was outlived by his well-respected school of thought, which he evolved while living at the foot of Qiushan peak. Can you taste Qiu in the wine?

The peak also served as the fort for the Nian Army, a local rebel group, as recently as 1868. So the castle bathes in the light of history.

A Polish artist painted this mural of Chinese history in the main staircase.

The chef in her spacious castle kitchen. Check out the imported red stove and refrig.

What do you think? What will wine leave as a marker for our period in human history?

Is this like a Chinese Vineyard in Yosemite?

2011-11-09T23:50:00.000-08:00

I couldn't help but post one of the images from this series.
This steeply sloping farmer's vineyard near Yunling (Yunlingxiang) above the Lancang (also called Lantsang, Lansang and Mekong) River, is one of hundreds in northwest Yunnan Province, China. All of these vineyards, hacked out of these steep mountain sides in this region, supply Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot grapes to Shangri-la winery. Single handedly, the Kunming-based "wine brewery" has changed the economy of this high-mountain region bordering Tibet.

When the hour isn't so late, remind me to talk about the wine. Surprising.

Do We All Need to be Strangers?

2011-11-09T05:08:00.000-08:00

Part of the joy of travel for me is the chance encounters with billionaires, vineyard workers, CEOs and winemakers. We're all just people, nothing more, nothing less.This guy He was laughing at my attempt at Chinese during harvest at a Huadong Parry winery vineyard near Qingdao (sometimes spelled Tsingtao, a coastal town famous for its beer), Shandong province. Truthfully, he did have cause for laughter.

I'm always amazed at how generous people can be. Here I am snapping with a camera costing perhaps 10 years of this woman's wages and she is offering me grapes. Just the thought makes me hopeful about we little humans.

This photograph was taken just after he hauled up two crates with 66 pounds of harvested Cabernet Sauvignon grapes up a steep mountain. This is in the Gushui Village vineyard above the Lantsang River, Yunnan Province for ShangriLa Winery.
Check out his outfit. This after he had been picking and hauling for half a day. Never did I look this debonair when I picked grapes in Napa. Also look at the ethnic diversity in Yunnan and Xinjiang provinces.

This is winemaker Emma Gao. One day her father, who managed vineyards, thought that they should make their own high-quality wine-something rare in China. He called Emma, who was studying in Russia, to ask if she wanted to make wine. "Yes, Papa." She then went to France, learned French in 4 months and studied winemaking there for four years. Back in China, Emma, with the micro family winery, Silver Heights, has earned a well-respected reputation for their wine. I even hauled a bottle back to the United States to share.

Oh, yes, her husband, Thierry Courtade, the winemaker at Chateau Calon Segur, and five-year-old daughter, also called Emma, both live in France.

And those towering new apartments in the background are the city of Yinchuan, Ningxia province, englufing the tiny family winery like a tsunami wave.

I like my job.

Would you plant a vineyard in China's Xinjiang province?

2011-11-06T20:34:00.000-08:00

Would you plant a vineyard in the scene below? This is my aerial view on the way to visit the largest vineyard in all of Asia. What you see is part of the massive desert in China's far western Xinjiang province, where (according to Wikipedia) only about 4% of province''s land area is fit for human habitation. It is most known for huge sand dunes, the ancient Silk Road, lots of ethnic groups including Uyghur, Han, Kazakh, Hui, Kyrgyz and Mongol, and Muslim uprisings. The capitol, Wulumuqi (also called Urumqi), is the furthest large city from any ocean on our planet. OK, it's desolate and remote.
Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region,the largest Chinese administrative area, spans over 1.6 million km² and borders Russia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India. It also has amazing amount of oil reserves and is China's largest natural gas-producing region. That's why all of the political unrest. And grape wine has a long history here. Back about 200 BC, when the Han Government dispatched General Zhang Qian to establish good relations with the Middle Eastern countries, the good general brought back vines and wine. I conjecture this was to help with his lengthy journey.
This is harvest in one of the vineyards out in that desert. Yes, that's a real sand dune behind the vineyard. Those snow-capped peaks in the background are a part of a range that separates Xinjiang's two huge desert basins. And did I say that it's perfect-for-growing-watermelons hot in the summer, instant frost-bite cold in the winter and the 50 ~ 150 mm (about 2 to 6 inches) of precipation rarely falls during the flowering and harvest time.
They flood irrigate (with water from the snowy mountains), the soil drains well but the vines have to be buried for the winter to insulate against bitter cold. Since the vines are on their own root stock, if the vines do die even when buried, they will sprout back up from the root. No phylloxera. Overall, these are perfect wine grape growing conditions. That's why the region's Citic Guoan Wine Company (formerly Suntime) not only produces for their own long list of labels but also for most of the major wineries in the rest of China.

Airline cuisine on Chinese Domestic Flights

2011-11-05T17:39:00.000-07:00

So I ended up taking 8 Domestic Flights in one month during this last trip to China, all on Chinese airlines. On most of the flights we received a small bottle of water. Here's the fare on a 3 and 5 hour flight.

* As a footnote, all of the airplanes seemed very new. But I kept wondering how safe the domestic flights will be in 10 years as the aging planes demand more maintenance?

Beijings Famous Tax Waiting Area

2011-11-04T17:36:00.000-07:00

Can you guess what this sign just out of the baggage area at Beijing's airport is suppose to say?
But then I can't read most of the Chinese characters.

Ever hear of Rose Honey Wine?

2011-11-03T11:11:00.000-07:00

My first encounter with Rose Honey was behind a church.

But no ordinary church this. First, it's a Roman Catholic church in China, where Christians huddled in fear under Mao's Communists. It probably survived that period because it's in the very remote village of Cizhong on the steep banks of the Lancang (Lantsang, Lansang, Mekong) River, in Yunnan Province near the Tibetan border. (How remote is this place? Originally, I was told that I could not visit CiZhong because the road was under construction. It was, but I insisted. So we drove over gravel threads hacked out of rock slides 1000-2000 feet above the rushing muddy river below. If the driver would have sneezed and jerked the wheel, we would have ended floating down the river all the way to Vietnam.)

Anyway, the church was built by French missionaries at the end of 19th century, incinerated by irate Tibetans, then rebuilt around 1905. Being normal French, the missionaries planted grapes to make wine. So the vines still survive behind the church.

While locals make wine from this fruit, I've heard that Yunnan Red Wine Company makes a Rose Honey red wine.
I even read that Jancis Robinson’s 2008 appraisal of The Rose Honey: it's perhaps a little sweet to drink with food, but it’s a perfectly good entry-level wine.
(Above) Rose Honey grapes.(Above) These vines are descendents from the originals planted by the French missionaries in the late 1800s behind the now-historic CiZhong Roman Catholic church.
(Below) Today the church is nearly surrounded by farmer-grown Cabernet Sauvignon vines, with all of the fruit destined for Shangrila Winery.

I didn't deduct China from my time on earth.

2011-11-02T08:12:00.000-07:00

Somewhere I read that the best travel seems to exist outside of time.
This last China Wine trip was like that. It's as if the month of travel was not deducted from my time on earth.
(Above) Way out in the remote western Xinjiang province, this is the Cossack ethnic neighborhood of Wulumuqi (Urumqi), the Province's capitol city. The whole town had the non-sleep energy of Las Vegas, but times 10. Time, however, can throw a tired traveler. Since the central government declares that all of China is to be on the same Beijing time, and Xinjiang is about 4 time zones to the West, dinner and night life don't begin here until about 10:00PM (Beijing time). Like Vegas, a peek at Google Earth reveals that the town sits like an oasis surrounded by huge sand dunes.

(Below) Out on the main street of Fukang, Xinjiang, we chose our food from the table and watched the husband and wife chefs cook it. Never heard of Fukang? Well, a 1003 kg meteorite crashed near here in 2000, it's a booming oil town sitting near what is reported to be more black gold reserves than the entire United States. And, for me, a branch of Citic Winery (formerly Suntime) has a massive wine factory and huge vineyards–like green islands in the sandy desert–on the outskirts of town.

In Search of Undiscovered Wine

2011-10-31T09:54:00.000-07:00

In the course of my wondering life, travel has changed. During my first trip to Africa, there was not even satellite phone coverage over the remote areas I visited. For 5 weeks my wife had no idea of my whereabouts or even if I was still alive. But for me, it was the Columbus-like thrill of discovery.

Today much of the world is connected and known. Just Google it. Now I regularly email the chief of the Bediks, a tiny cliff-top Senegalese tribe virtually unknown when I first visited.

So where's the thrill, the adventure of travel today? And for me, where's the excitement of stumbling upon an undiscovered wine, a wine that even Google can't find?

I found it in China.

During September and October I explored all of China's major wine growing regions, (I'm told I'm one of the few if not only Westerner to do so). It was a Columbus-like trip of discovery about terroir, people, culture and myself. It was a travel adventure.
The photo of Beng (Bu) village with it's vineyards hints at the terroir in Yunnan Province near the Tibetan border. At 2000 to 3000 meters (6000-9000 feet), the vineyards in this area are probably the highest in the world. The growing season is Continental-like sunny (3000-3500 heat units); the well-drained soil is gravel, sand, loam and little clay (the whole area was once a lake bottom); and virtually no rain during growing time. Days are warm, nights sweater cool. And the only winery to use all the fruit is Shangrila.

Please note that the lines scribbled across the landscape are both one-car-width gravel roads and human trails.

Wait till I tell you about the wine.

His attitude touched me

2011-10-24T22:18:00.000-07:00

I'm doing a book on Chinese Vineyards and Wineries. On this last trip, I traveled all over China to visit wine growing regions. People kept telling me that I'm probably the only Westerner who has actually visited all of China's wine growing regions.

This adventure is in the Yunnan Province, near Tibet.

With my 20 words of Chinese and an overwhelming desire to connect, I interacted this worker for about one hour. He harvested grapes. Over and over, he carried two baskets at 20 kilos (44 pounds) each of Cabernet Sauvignon grapes up a very steep hill to the loading truck. Hundreds of meters below roiled the muddy Lantsang (also called Lancang and Mekong) river caged in by steep rocky cliffs.

Now I look at the photos and wonder what this worker, about my age, is doing today. Harvest is done. Winter will begin soon. There but for fortune, he could be me. There but for fortune, I could be him.

How do you measure wealth?

2011-10-17T13:57:00.000-07:00

These workers harvesting grapes high in the Yunnan mountains get less than 50 cents for picking a 20 kilo (44 pound) basket full of Cabernet Sauvignon.

This guy is carrying three baskets of grapes, each weighing about 20 kilos (44 pounds). He is going up a 60 degree slope. Do the math. Feel your leg muscles.

When it was lunch time, the workers invited me to join them in the shade.So what exactly is wealth? In the USA, for many wealth means things and money. These workers, earning maybe $10 per day during harvest, are willing to share what they have with someone from the "wealthiest" country on our planet. Makes me wonder who is wealthier?

The world's highest vineyards

2011-10-16T14:25:00.000-07:00

We are probably about 2500 meters (8200 feet) above sea level in the above photograph. We're not far from the border with Tibet. That is the muddy Lantang River cutting through those sheer rock walls. The thin white line on the middle right–about 100 meters above the rushing river–is the main highway. It's a gravel track about one and one-half car-widths wide. Rock avalanches are frequent. But it's the only road. Yes, you can see it continue up the mountain in the background. All the while we're driving on that highway, I'm hoping our driver doesn't sneeze to distract his concentration.

And those are Cabernet Sauvignon vines in the foreground.

This is harvest in Yunnan Province of China.
This is how you get from one terrace to another. Yes, it's steep here.
Our next vineyard was at about 3000 meters (about 9800 feet). Many outsiders have troubles adjusting to the altitude.

I don't know of any vineyards in the world at a higher altitude than these in the Yunnan Province. And they're growing warm climate varietals: Cab Sauvignon and a little Merlot for a winery appropriately named ShangriLa.

China and Wine in One Photo?

2011-10-15T15:55:00.000-07:00

After a month of visiting all of China's major wine growing regions, this single photo sums up my findings.

The premium Cabernet Sauvignon vineyard in the photo foreground is in the wild wild west province of Xinjian, China's most remote region. Sitting way out in the far west bordering Mongolia and a list of stans including Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Pakistan, most of the province is wide open Taklimakan Desert where the most dangerous portion of the Silk Road winds through the world's largest shifting dunes moon-like landscape. Remote. The capital of the province is the world's furthest city from any ocean.

But, because of the warm summers and well-drained soil, it's a great grape growing region. This vineyard belongs to Citic Guoan Winery (formerly Suntime), which also owns Asia's–if not the world's–largest vineyard spreading out on Xinjian's sandy soil. The area is booming. A couple hundred kilometers from this vineyard near Fukang, sits an oil reserve that is suppose to be larger than anything in the United States. Dozens of Nuclear power plants dot the region like acne on a teenager. Yet in the distance tower incredible snow-capped mountains.

This is the China I experienced in September and October. Things are booming, including the wine industry. More adventures and observations to come.

Is Oregon America's Most Beautiful State?

2011-10-15T12:04:00.000-07:00

After just coming back from a month in China, I had to pull some photos for a calendar request. Wow, I feel so blessed to live in such a beautiful area. This is Harris Covered Bridge, built in 1929 over Mary's River in Benton County near Philomath towards Wren.

Wild horses

2011-08-18T07:26:00.000-07:00

The theme for one of the wineries I work with–14 Hands–is wild horses. So I decided to head out to Steens Mountain in Oregon's remote southeast corner to photograph wild horses. Let me tell you that those horses made me follow them for miles and miles. Here are a few snaps from that shoot.

Judging from all the scars, this poor guy has been in lots of battles.

Naked Terroir in Washington state

2011-07-27T21:27:00.000-07:00

To see the scale of The Benches Vineyard (once called Wallula for Wallula Gap), check out the white cars, blue porta potty and–if you have great eyes–people working at the bottom of the center vineyard. Also check out the basalt rock under the dirt–quiz on that later.
This is the same view as above, but zoomed back a bit. Can you see the white cars toward the center right? Then check out the lower vineyard that seems to angle into the Columbia River.
This is a closer view of the lower vineyard.You can really see the basalt in this view.A zoomed back vies of the entire terroir of The Benches Vineyard, with some vines seemingly hanging off the cliffs above the Columbia River.

This is one of the most amazing vineyards I've experienced. The Benches Vineyard on the cliff edge of the Columbia River about 1 hour dusty-road drive from Pasco, Washington. The place is geology exposed raw. See those basalt outcroppings in the detail photos, they are the result of the greatest volcanic event ever on the face of the earth. I read that in some places, the basalt is 2 km deep–which translates to more than 15 American football fields on end.

Then, if that weren't enough, some 15,000 years ago came the Missoula floods. Water more than two American-football-fields-on-end high came gushing through this narrow gap at some 10 million cubic meters per second. That's about 200 oil tanker ships worth per second. I would not be surfing that wave. And those floods happened maybe 40 times.

These benches start at an elevation of 1400 feet and step down 1000 feet to the shore of the Columbia River, providing micro climates at the different elevations (and soils). Thus 15 different grape varieties can be planted. At the top are the cooler white varieties like Riesling, Chardonnay and Pinot Gris. Midway are the warmer climate grapes like Merlot, Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot. At the lowest and hottest levels are Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah, Grenache and Malbec. Other more exotic varieties like Nebbiolo, Sangiovese, Mourvedre, Dolcetto, Carignane, Barbera and Marsanne are planted in small quantities on various slopes of the vineyard.

Now, that's raw terroir.

Do vineyards have an ancient collective consciousness about humans?

2011-07-25T12:20:00.000-07:00

Janis Miglavs, while seeking Truth in the Hyland Vineyard near McMinnville, Oregon, is oblivious to the ancient ghost wolves flying overhead. Obviously, this is a simple case when Truth was within sight, yet he didn't see it.

The idea didn't sound crazy at 3:04 this morning.

Yesterday I read that plants can distinguish predator insects from pollinators. OK. But get this, plants also give off electrical impulses in response to threats.

To test this, a polygraph expert and former CIA interrogation specialist, hooked up a tropical dracaena–a common household plant–to a polygraph. Then he threatened the plant with a flame. (No water boarding here.) The interrogator reported that the plant displayed the same electrical signals that people do when they lie. Then he tested other plants–from lettuce to bananas. The results were similar.

Initial conclusions for wine lovers:
1) Check out how the vineyard manager and workers treat the vines before buying the wine.
2) Then on a personal note, the next time you walk past a vineyard, don't yell at the vines lest you ruin the future wine.

But wait, there's more.

While researching for my Vineyard Light book, I found that vines and humans have a long history together on earth:
• 130 to 200 million years ago Scientists estimate that Vitis vines first appeared on earth. (That's some serious old vine.)
• 6000 BC Radiocarbon dating of grape pips found near Tbilsi, Geogria. (For Rush Limbau fans, that's not a state in the USA.)
• Ancient Mediterranean cultures believed that the vine sprang from the blood of humans who had fought against the gods. (These predate the Christian Eucharist.)
• 5400-5000 BC Dating of resinated wine in a jar found in northwestern Iran.
• 4100 BC The oldest known complete wine producing facility in a cave outside the Armenian village of Areni.
• 2150-2000 BC The first written accounts of grapes and wine found in the Epic of Gilgamesh.

So if vineyards have coexisted with humans for at least 8000 years, and the CIA-trained interrogator proved that plants respond to stimuli, do the vines then pass on their stimulated responses through their DNA? Is there a collective pool of vineyard DNA response? Is there a collective vineyard conscousness? Have they been watching us humans (with amusement) all those 8000 plus years? Do they have a collective DNA knowledge of the human race?

Finally, can you taste this collective vineyard knowledge/consciousness?

Can 100 wine people provide insight into life on earth?

2011-07-23T11:39:00.000-07:00

Proposed cover my latest book adventure, Vineyard Light, 100 Life Lessons from the Vineyard. I'm looking for Light in a Windowless World.

Some say the deepest insights come during tsunami-sized personal crisis. My wife’s cancer provided that opportunity. A thread of hope pulled a boulder of fear at each step, the suspicious mammogram, the confirming biopsy, the hope-we-get-it-all surgery, waiting in oncology with a room full of dark-eyed women all wearing pull-down caps. We are but small specks in something very immense and mysterious. I wondered how others experienced their pilgrimage through the big unknown.

Inspired, I decided to take a different kind of biopsy. I wanted to take a core sample of humanity from one hundred vineyard workers, winemakers, and winery owners around the world. I hoped this sample could provide an X-ray snapshot of what it means to be human at this moment in history.

Thus every contributor becomes a collective hero, reflecting on his/her personal navigation in minute increments the course of life on spaceship Earth. Vineyard light is a metaphor for the light that shines from the wisdom of travelers who have worked in the vineyard.

But why choose a view from the vineyard? Perhaps rows of vines are to me what Walden Pond was for Henry David Thoreau, a park bench from which to watch life and the universe. Perhaps it’s the same reason that Noah planted a vineyard as soon as the flood subsided. Perhaps the same reason Jesus and Mohammed used the vineyard in their parables. Vineyard roots wander down through at least 7,500 years of human history. What a better perspective on human existence on our planet.

The day is waiting to happen.

How should I present god in Napa?

2011-06-29T10:29:00.000-07:00

Sometime during 1999, before my wine/vineyard projects, I started Africa's Undiscovered Myths Project. I traveled to the most remote tribes in Africa to interview the elders, shamans, chiefs, witch doctors and storytellers about their myths and archetypal dreams. Anthropologists tell me that I am the only person to record these oral stories for all but one of the tribes I studied. (And the elders of that single tribe tell me they had never heard the stories that were published.)

From those detailed oral stories, I create photo illustrations. In March of 2012, the Mumm Gallery in Napa Valley will feature these illustrations as a show.

So I need your help.

The illustration below is of god as described to me by the Mursi tribe elders. (The Mursi tribe is one of Ethopia's Omo River area tribes.)

What is the best way to present these illustrations–which will be about 2X3 feet in size?
1) Should I include small photographs of tribal people and village life below each illustration? See the example and cropped detail below.
2) Should I have the text of the story right on the image or on a separate title sheet next to the illustration?

The above illustration has no small photos or writing–except for the tiny title at the bottom.
The above illustration has both small village photos and writing. While the text is too small to see here, in the 2X3 foot gallery-sized version it will be visible but not dominant.
The above image is a detail of the small village photos at the bottom of the main illustration.

Obviously, any suggestions on how to present these illustrations would be greatly appreciated.

Can you taste sweat in wine?

2011-05-26T07:49:00.000-07:00

Memorial Day weekend is a big wine tasting time here in the Pacific Northwest. Many wineries, not normally open to casual visitors, throw open their doors to hordes seeking that rare wine experience. (What are they looking for anyway?) I too will be joining the masses.

But as I taste, images of vineyard and winery workers float through my mind. I'm amazed at the amount of sweaty backbreaking work, throughout the year in rain, snow and heat, that goes into each glass of wine. I picked grapes one year for college money. I'm also blessed by being able to photography in worldwide vineyards and wineries all year long. Check out this video I created on One Year in the Oregon Vineyard.

Can you taste sweat in your wine?

Why do you travel?

2011-05-11T11:59:00.000-07:00

Snuggly flying 35,500 feet above the Rocky Mountains towards destination Missouri Wine Country, I'm re-reading Phil Cousineau's book The Art of Pilgrimage: "We travel as seekers after answers we cannot find at home, and soon find that a change of climate is easier than a change of heart. The bittersweet truth about travel is embedded in the word, which derives from the older word travail, itself rooted in the Latin tripalium, a medieval torture rack."

So why did I heed the invitation of JaiMin Dierberg to visit Hermann, MO, exactly when I have two big article deadlines? I suspect that a journey without challenge has no meaning and one without purpose has no soul. My thread is finding Vineyard Light. My passion is discovering the spirit, the why of people.

Why do you travel?

Wine critic: Missouri's Norton grape will rival Europe's best

2011-05-11T11:32:00.000-07:00

At the 1873 Vienna World Exposition, a Norton wine from the Hermann, Missouri, region was named "Best Red Wine of All Nations," according to one historical record. (Can't confirm. I didn't catch that particular Expo.)

The same year as the Expo, one well-known wine critic of the time (I won't mention his name to prevent embarrassment to his grandkids) definitively declared that Missouri's Norton grape will rival the best Europe had to offer. (Of course, that was about the same time the Phylloxera louse wiped out Europe's vineyards.)

On the hill overlooking Hermann, Stone Hill Winery had become the second-largest wine producer in the United States by the late 19th century. (Take that Santa Cruz Hills and Napa.)

Then in 1920, puff, prohibition deflated the Hermann Norton balloon.

Honestly, unless you are from Virginia, like my assistant Tamarah, had you ever heard of the Norton grape?
But wait till you hear about the health benefits of Dr. Norton grape in my next blog. Pinot noir and Cabernet sauvignon, pull over to the slow lane.

Above: View of Hermannm, Missouri, from one of Stone Hill Winery's vineyards. In the distance is St. George Catholic Church (build 1915) and the courthouse– the only such public building in America erected entirely with private funds.
Above: Hermann, which sits on a bluff above the Missouri River, seen from the deck of one of the historic Inn at Hermannhof suites. Sorry about the foreground trees being in the way. I couldn't get a permit to cut them down.

Found this under Hermann, Missouri Wine Country

2011-05-09T13:55:00.000-07:00

About 4 feet under the ground in the dusty-with-history village of Hermann, is this cellar for Hermannhof winery.

Originally built in 1848, as a winery and brewery, hand-dug into the hill under the building was a system of limestone and brick catacombs used for the cellar. When prohibition shut down the operation, people simply dumped their trash into the cellar. Why not? Out of sight, out of mind.

Then come along Jim and Mary Dierberg, who bought the building in 1974, and spent four years cleaning out the cellar and restoring the winery. One of the finds was the candle holder designed to hang from wine barrels. People had to see in the damp darkness. Check it out in the foreground of the photo.

Oh yes, there is a spring that runs through a channel carved in the ocean-formed bedrock that is the cellar floor.

That's Paul LeRoy, the winemaker and general manager, in the background stirring the barrel contents.
This is the restored winery building, now listed as a National Historic Landmark. I believe that the vines in the foreground are Norton, since that is the big varietal in the area. Never heard of Norton? Well, Norton roots were grafted in the replanting of France's wine industry after phylloxera.

Spirituality of wine and savagery of man felt in one night

2011-04-27T11:05:00.000-07:00

At bedtime under the comfort of a down duvet, my wife Eddi and I are reading to each other Ruta Sepetys' novel Between Shades of Gray. The story starts one dark night when the Soviet NKVD soldiers banged the door of a family's home in Lithuania. "You have 20 minutes to pack." Mother was alone with her two children, Lina and her younger brother. Father mysteriously hadn't come home that night. Where was he? Then mother and two children are stuffed into a railroad cattle car with a librarian, teacher, housewife and dozens of other ordinary people. Their cattle car is only one of a long train of cars stuffed with hundreds, if not thousands of people. The NKVD soldiers shoot or beat anyone who speaks out. The trip takes weeks to reach the freezing Siberian empty wasteland, which will be their new home. Each cattle car of people is allotted one bucket of water and one bucket of gruel per day.

Stalin thought these defenseless people should have been banished because they are intellectuals and land owners. Is this same theme being played out today?

I personally know the cruelty spelled out in Sepetys' book. I am of Latvian roots, so her story stabs my heart. In Latvia, at the same time period as the Lithunainian novel, my father was arrested and scheduled to be killed. With the help of neighbors, he escaped and fled the country with my mom. They buried the silverware and left everything else. Otherwise I would not be here.

During their exodus, my mom's best friend and her husband turned their horse-drawn cart back to their home. Not long after, they were arrested and shipped in cattle cars to Siberia. One of their sons froze to death there.

Years later, during the tumultuous turning point of Soviet disintegration, I returned to Latvia to reclaim our farm. The capitol city, Riga, was free. But in our rural area, the Soviets still clutched control. The local Collective director had given our farm to one of his friends. But as a brash American living free, I spoke out against his judgement. Someone behind me whispered, "this man has the power to kill you."

Just before Eddi and I laid comfortably in bed reading this Soviet era novel, that stirs my personal memories of man's savage cruelty, I was reading about the spiritual aspects of wine in Sondra Barrett's book Wine's Hidden Beauty. In a spread sheet-like list she lays out all of the pagan wine gods and goddesses through history. Wine is also very important to the Jewish religious ceremonies and not surprisingly, it followed Jesus into Christianity. During the Last Supper, the night before Jesus was crucified, he urged his disciples to drink the wine that it would become like the blood he would shed.

Somehow the juxtaposition of those two themes–savagery of man and the spirituality of wine–stretched my inner being.

Thank you Jim Foliek at Santa Barbara County Wines

2011-04-07T11:27:00.000-07:00

I want to thank Jim Foliek, executive director at the Santa Barbara County Vintners Association and fellow Latvian, for introducing me to Santa Barbara vineyards and wineries. Wow was I surprised. Check out these landscapes. No wonder Ronald Regan wanted a ranch in the area.
A mechanical pruning machine cuts the longest vines in the flatter areas of the Bien Nacido vineyards. Skilled workers will follow up hand cutting to the final two vines.

The above four photographs are Bien Nacido Vineyards near Santa Maria, California. And yes, those are goats charged with keeping the healthy weed population at bay.

The above two photographs are Dierberg Vineyards and winery. The interior photograph is nearly a 360 degree view inside the rotunda of the winery. Just too bad that the winery is not generally open to the public because of neighborhood restrictions. While Dierberg has several vineyards, these are near Santa Ynez, California.

Rorschaching Vineyards into Mandalas?

2011-04-06T08:13:00.000-07:00

It started with such a simple we-did-it-in-high-school idea, flip the image to see what you get. So the cloud over Dundee vineyards was my first effort. Pretty rorschachie, eh?
Ok, then let's fip the same image six times and crop it to get the image Fall Colors in Brandborg Winery's Ferris Wheel Vineyard below. Can you figure out where the 6 images are? (Don't bother looking for Waldo, he left.)

Back in the old college days while working on my Masters of Fine Arts degree, the instructors would chide us little students to take an idea to the next step. Well, to me the next logical step was to create a Mandala, the sacred art of Hindus and Buddhists. Wouldn't that be the next step for you?
My thought thread, I studied with a bunch of Tibetan Buddhists in Nepal and Sikkim.
(I believe Mandala is a Sanskrit word that means circle. The art form usually has a square with four gates containing the circle. Check out Wikipedia or Google Mandala for a better explanation.)
The Mandala below is based on the flipped Brandborg Vineyard image seen above.
Below is another image I call Rower above Knudsen and Bella Vida Vineyards Mandala.
The two images below are details from the above Rower Mandala. Do you see where the details fit?
Check out the texture.

My hope is that these can be viewed from a distance and close up. Wait until you see the one I'm creating right now.

So what kind of ideas or suggestions do you have?

Chinese farmers bury relatives in the Vineyard

2011-03-30T08:39:00.000-07:00

These are graves in the vineyards. To bury the dead, one resident told me that first a vertical shaft is dug, followed by a horizontal one perpendicular to the vertical shaft. The body is placed in the horizontal shaft. I don't know what accounts for the difference in type of graves from the two different Provinces.
I found these elaborate graves among in the extensive vineyards leased by Dynasty Winery in Tianjin Province.
There are dozens of graves on this knoll surrounded by pine trees in Junding Winery's vineyards in Shandong Province. Some were built up with stone, others simply mounds of earth.

In China Size matters

2011-03-27T14:19:00.000-07:00

In China Big is Better. If you're not big, you're not good. If you're not big, you don't have ability, you're certainly not successful. Using big as a yardstick, how successful would you say these Chinese wineries are?

Above two photos taken about a year ago, the above photos show Dynasty Winery's new building under construction right next to their current Tianjin facility.
Above two photos are Chateau Junding, Shandong Province, China

Above photo is Huadong Parry Winery near Qingdao, Shandong Province, China. The General Manager said that this winery is large by French standards, but it's not big enough for China, so they are building a much larger Chateau near Penglai.

Here at Chateau Changyu AFIP Global winery, about one hour out of Beijing, I almost expect Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck to come out to greet the tourists in this Disneyland-like setting.

Is darker better in this photo?

2011-03-25T18:01:00.000-07:00

While selecting photographs for my upcoming Vineyard Light book, I came across this shot of a work bench at the Yalumba winery's barrel making shop in southern Australia. The tools, old photograph and warm rich colors make it look as if it could have been taken 100 years ago. But I found my eyes grabbed by the almost white seat cover and the pile of stuff near the neon green safety jacket. Light areas attract a viewer's eyes. Since these areas are simply distracting, I darkened them.

What do you think of the photograph below? Is darker better for those light distracting areas?

Can a teenager help create great wine in Napa?

2011-03-24T10:35:00.001-07:00

When I told Jean Hoefliger, winemaker at Napa Valley's Alpha Omega winery, that my attempt at blending wines produced olfactory manure piles, he sympathetically invited me to a personal blending lesson. "It's not rocket science," he reassured.
So on the appointed day, there we were with 4 bottles of 2009 Napa wine and 6 empty glasses each neatly arranged in front of us. Jean introduced the wines in terms even I understood: Merlot the sensual female, Cabernet Franc the energetic teenager, Cabernet Sauvignon usually the big masculine macho guy, and Petite Verdot the mysterious extra mask. When tasted, each of the components provided some interest, but none really shined.

That's exactly why Jean blends. (Pretend you're a Frenchman when pronouncing his name.)

But what percentages to blend? OK. My guess: 20% of the female (I like women), 25% of the teenager, 50% macho Cabernet Sauvignon–which wasn't really super manly in 2009 and 5% Petite Verdot.

We tasted my blend. Wow. My nose got a pleasant workout trying to identify all the aromas, much more complex and interesting than any of the individual components. But my poor palate felt like it was going over a Himalaya-sized washboard, not exactly a scenic drive through Napa Valley. And the tannins grabbed my tongue like a Sumo wrestler coated with sharp needles and he wouldn't let go on the finish.

Jean explained that the aromas would change over time, but not the complexity. So we want to maintain those. Let's cut back on the teenager and increase Mr. Cab Sauvignon. But won't Mr. Sauvignon's famous stinging tannins just increase that Sumo-sized tannic grip? No. Jean explained that adding tannin to tannin softens them. I confessed skepticism. But I did know that after being stung with nettle, stinging oneself again in the exact same spot actually pulls out the itch-causing toxins. Could the same be true for tannins?

But I took the professional winemaker at his word about tannin in tannin. So my reconfigured formula was 15% female, 15% CF teenager, 65% Mr. CS big guy and 5% mysterious PV mask. Jean was right. The Sumo tannic needles had lost their stinging grip. And my little taste buds were no longer bumping over a 28,000 foot washboard.

I had to admit, it was a better effort. But the finish was still too short for a great wine.

I suggested some 5% changes, then felt like an ax man. The pro agreed to changes, but used a much gentler touch. He cuts the feminine Ms M by 3% to 11%, increases the teenager by 2% to 17%, keeps Mr. Macho at 65% and increases mysterious PV by 2% to a total of 7%.

We taste.

Wow. How did he do that with those tiny 2 and 3% changes? The rainbow of aromas were still there, the palate had an interesting journey and the finish was extended without stumbling off a tannic cliff.

My come-aways from Jean's patient teaching:
1) Clearly identify each individual in the line up at the beginning. Characteristics change from year to year.
2) To mellow tannins, add tannin. (Can two wrongs make a right?)
3) Experience counts. Jean knew that the aromas would change characteristics but not necessarily in number.
4) I can trust my own nose and palate.

Thank you, Jean for the lesson. But you don't have to worry about competition from me.

A week at the CIA studying the effects of alcohol

2011-03-16T20:18:00.000-07:00

No, it wasn’t a CIA study to prevent alcoholics from becoming terrorists. I got a scholarship to an intensive week-long Master Wine Class at the Culinary Institute of America–the world-famous Napa Valley culinary school affectionately known as the CIA.

But this wine tasting is not the lean-against-the-wooden-bar-while-cracking-jokes most people experience. Rather picture clinical analysis. Each of us 17 participants sit at a station complete with light table–to analyze wine clarity, a sink–you spit not drink, and a tiled counter top with small squares to organize the 10 or more sparkling clean glasses each holding 2 ounces of the various wines for tasting.

Right at 9:00 on the first day we were introduced to STP, which stands for Systematic Tasting Process–a rigorous list of about 20 different criterea we analyze for flights of wines each day.

We did learn some important background information, like: the best time to taste wine is when the body is just beginning to get hungry–that’s why many tastings begin at 10:30 in the morning; increased levels of alcohol first affect abstract thought–I wondered if Einstein drank wine, then speech, fine motor, gross motor and finally passing out; and a prison study that basically determined a little wine helped inmates out perform a control group and a group given whiskey.

Then on to rigorous tasting of wines poured from bottles with bags, so that students could not tell varietals or winery. We noted specific color, nosed for fruit, non-fruit and type of wood (mostly American or French oak) used, if any, and finally tasted for those components. I filled a page for each wine in my tasting notebook.

Then, before the brown bag was taken off to reveal the wine, we discussed whether the wine came from a cool or warm climate, from the New World (America, Australia, New Zealand) or Old World (Europe as in mostly France) as well as the age and grapes used.

After only the second day and at least 25 wines later, I’m learning aromas I never knew existed. Have you ever experienced lanolool?

Biodynamic. Is Truth stranger than we can think?

2011-03-10T10:45:00.000-08:00

Here's another highlight from the Vineyard Light book I'm creating.
Before we plow ahead, first, a simple definition for those who are not familiar with Biodynamic farming, which is gaining popularity among vineyard owners. It sprouted in the 1920s, when Rudolf Steiner, yes, the very same founder of the Waldorf School, developed a rigorous farming system that’s organic agriculture–which prohibits the use of synthetic pesticides and herbicides–combined with an overlay of Steiner’s holistic philosophy and the use of nine preparations in miniscule doses applied according to planetary cycles.
So what's this planetary cycles stuff? And what the heck would the guy who developed a learning system know about farming? Some vineyard managers think it's pure voodoo, but more and more are adopting the techniques around the world.
That's Doe Ridge Vineyard pictured below. The part on the left is biodyanmically farmed, the part on the right farmed with more traditional techniques. (I organized a taste off between wines from the two parts. The results: surprising.)

The truth isn’t just stranger than we think, its stranger than we can think.
Niels Bohr 19th & 20 century Nobel Prize winning Danish physicist

I had an interesting experience with Matthew Baker, my BD consultant. Most of the biodynamic preparations are buried in the ground for a period of time to compost. When I told Matthew that I had buried some nettle in a clay pot out in the oak savannah, but had forgotten exactly where,he said, “lets go down and see if we can find it anyway.” Within a minute of walking through the field, Matthew said, “Kevin, it’s right there.” It was fascinating, the vetch and the grasses were all a foot higher in this circular area where I had buried the clay pot. Nettle is a stimulus. While it is also considered to be antifungal, its really used to stimulate plant growth, to move the plant from one physiological phase to the next. So if you want to encourage the vines to bloom earlier, you would spray some nettle on them. Kevin Chambers, owner/grower Resonance Vineyard and chief executive of Oregon Vineyard Supply, McMinnville, Oregon

So what do you think?

And I saw these vines dancing naked at night.

2011-03-09T14:26:00.000-08:00

While photographing at night in the Bien Nacido vineyards in Santa Barbara County, California, I captured these vines dancing naked under the starry night. And I was told vines were conservative.

Can doubt and boldness coexist?

2011-03-06T09:08:00.001-08:00

Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
German writer and polymath
How is it that I can start a marathon-like Vineyard Light book project so boldly, then, somewhere around mile 17, get overwhelmed with doubt? Will this project resonate with others? Who cares what a bunch of vineyard workers, winemakers and owners say about life, our planet, our character and spirit?
Forget it. For me, it's so much easier just to start another project.

What suggestions do you have?
How do you keep running with large projects?

Need your feedback on book idea?

2011-03-03T21:33:00.000-08:00

For almost two years I've been interviewing and gathering material for a book I call Vineyard Light. (Originally called Lessons from the Vineyard.) To this point I've asked nearly 100 winemakers, vineyard workers and winery owners around the world what lessons they have learned while working with the vineyard. It's like taking a core sample or biopsy of our human character, spirit and life on earth as seen from the vineyard.
Why vineyards? The simple answer is that Vineyards have more than a 5000 year relationship with humans. The more complex answer asks why Jesus and Muhammad both used the vineyard in their parables. And, after a cataclysmic flood, why would Noah plant a vineyard as soon as he stepped off the boat?

My book vision is to combine quotes with photographs on the layouts. Below is one possibility:
About one-half of the world’s population lives on less than $2 per day. World Summit on Sustainable Development

"Our people are very, very poor. Not enough food; we struggle for survival. In those kind of times, you really cannot think about how to do something beautiful, you only think about how to survive. So for a long time most Chinese people struggled to survive. In 1980, I was very poor. When you are young and you are very, very poor, you are very afraid. But you have chances. And then as you get the money you feel safe. I worked very hard to make money. This is very popular here in China.

"Then when you are successful making some money, you really can consider other things. We make a lot of money here in Shanxi Province; we take a lot of profit from this place, but we left lots of pollution.

"Now, I really feel guilty. First, I am a very educated person. Second, I travel everywhere and I can compare here to other countries. I like to think that you feel guilty, if it is like this, so dirty, even if everyone makes a lot of money.

"I know that dirty pollution is not natural. Human beings create the pollution. Even if we start doing something now, we need a long time, a lot of effort and a lot of money to re-clean the environment. It is not easy to become clean. Today if I am rich, I can build a very beautiful village here, but if the window can not be opened, and we cannot be outside, we can’t enjoy it.

"Still many rich people continue to pollute. I believe most of them do not get it."
Mr. Chan Chun Keung, Industrialist, owner Grace Vineyard Winery, Shanxi Province, China

I would appreciate any feedback.

A Year in the Oregon Vineyard

2010-12-14T07:32:00.000-08:00

Rare Holiday photograph proves it's true

2010-12-14T07:05:00.001-08:00

A couple of nights ago when all was quiet on the earth, suddenly I heard this swishing roar in the sky. I wondered if it was a bird, a plane or even Superman. But then I saw a mysterious red glow coming towards me. My eyes nearly bugged out from fright. It had to be aliens coming for my body parts.
But wait, what was that? A jolly Ho Ho Ho filled the sky. Instantly I knew the mystery riders of the dark Winter sky. It had to be Santa with his reindeer delivering good cheer on earth.
No, it can't be. Did I have too much Pinot? Those are reinrhinos. Fortunately my Venus-flytrap reflexes enabled me to grab my trusty Nikon to snap this one frame. Otherwise I didn't think that you would believe me.

Thanksgiving blessings

2010-11-24T11:51:00.000-08:00

Here I'm blessed to share a meal with a group of Karo in the Omo region of Ethiopia. This is where the man in the T-shirt–he was my interpreter–lived unless it rained. His wife, in the foreground, cooked our meal. Anyone who happened by on the trail was welcomed to join us. We all ate and drank from a couple of communal dried-gourd bowls. No one went away hungry.

Thanksgiving reminds me about a presentation I gave at a college about my Africa's Undiscovered Myths project. I was showing photos of life in the remote villages I visited. During question time at the end of the presentation, a 20-something student in the back asked: "You mean people actually live like that in those mud huts with no electricity, no running water, no air conditioning?"

His question was asked in all sincerity. I answered something like, "I would guess that about 1/4 of the people on our planet live like that." He had no idea how blessed he was.

This is my youngest son–at an earlier age–finishing a picnic meal.

Here's hoping that you have lots of little blessings to count this Thanksgiving time.

Why was I put here on earth?

2010-11-16T21:25:00.000-08:00

Coming home from an other-worldly Salud–the Oregon wine industry's over-the-top auction, dinner and wine celebration to raise money for vineyard workers–with my head still spinning from luscious food and tasty wine all compliments of Ste Michelle's Erath winery, I laid my whirling head on my pillow to read an article about photographer Frans Lanting. I've admired his work because he thinks big.

In the article, he talked about making a long-term commitment, for him it's to preserve nature. He says it's one measure of commitment to take a picture of an old-growth forest or a glacier and move on to the next topic. It's quite another to devote long stretches of time and significant resources to become fully immersed in all of the intricacies, concerns and realities of why that forest loses trees every year or why that glacier recedes so dramatically. Communicating those stories in images is the crux of what a conservation or environmental photographer does.

Those words stirred something inside of me. I realized I have put Africa's Undiscovered Myths Project–where I've interviewed the elders, shamans, witch doctors and storytellers of Africa's most remote tribes about their myths and archetypal dreams–on the desktop where it has gathered dust. Anthropologists still tell me that I'm the only person who has ever recorded those oral stories for almost all the tribes I've visited. And the Dogon tribe elders and "Pope" told me that they had never heard of the stories that were attributed to them.

Before I die, I need to finish the Undiscovered Myths work. But now I am loving doing wine stories and getting paid for it. Yet I've spent 8 years on the Myth project. Ringing in my ears is what an Omo elder told a couple of invading tourists: "We were a lot closer to god before you came."

So what am I suppose to do while here on earth? Why was I put here? What is my purpose? Myth, wine, good life, hard work, father, husband or .......?
Warrior with face paint. Karo tribe, Omo River area, Ethiopai
The elders told me that god had colorful wings, a rainbow-colored chest, no legs, flies through the sky and can kill a man easily. Mursi tribe, Omo River area, Ethiopia.

Photos etched on wine bottles

2010-11-11T09:29:00.000-08:00

For Salud–Oregon wine industries' fund raising event to provide health care for vineyard workers–we donated 4 vineyard photographs to be etched and painted onto 3 liter bottles of Erath wine. These will be auctioned at the event this weekend. Check out the great work Scott Schoenen and his crew at Fresh NW Design did in etching and painting the images onto the bottles. Let's see how much the effort brings in.

Vineyard Light

2010-11-11T09:17:00.000-08:00

A selection from my upcoming book, Vineyard Light, Insights on our Earth, Character and Spirit.

Vineyard Light Book Cover Choices

2010-11-10T09:21:00.000-08:00

Thank you to everyone who provided feedback as to which photograph we should use as a cover for my upcoming book, Vineyard Light. Here are your top three choices. Of course even with these results the big-boss publishers usually have the last say in the cover photo.

Choice #1 Morning light on Five Mountain Vineyard and Mt Hood

Choice #2 Morning light after storm on Red Hills vineyards

Choice #3 Sunset over vineyard

Dream Assignment

2010-11-09T20:33:00.000-08:00

Talk about a wonderful life full of blessings. Last week I spent 3 days photographing landscapes in central Washington for Ste Michelle Wine Estates. The scenery had to look like wild horses, if they existed in the area, would run there. Most of these were taken in the Yakima River Canyon, some along the Columbia River. And they paid me to do this. How can life get any better?

Oregon Harvest 2010

2010-11-04T09:19:00.000-07:00

Some claim Oregon never saw a summer this year. It did rain. Our neighbor and one of our winery friends didn't even harvest because of rot. But I photographed vineyards which were carefully managed and sprayed often that produced some great tasting fruit. Harvesting in late October and early November permits some great hang time. Ask the early Oregon wine pioneers who regularly harvested in November. While I'm not an expert, I'm looking forward to some interesting 2010 wines.
For me, it's always great to brush up on my Spanish to photograph Oregon harvest workers. These photographs are from Turner-area Willamette Valley Vineyards and Dundee-area Prince Hill vineyard which provides fruit for Erath winery.

40 years to Wine Spectator article

2010-10-31T21:37:00.000-07:00

It only took 40 years (yes, it's years not days), to write this article for Wine Spectator magazine. Forty years ago my extensive college-wine-expertise declared that Mogan David blackberry wine beat anything from France. Then I was sure that Peking duck would pair well with any Mogan David flavor.

So 40 years after my college Mogan David period, I'm writing about Chinese wine. Check out pages 79-83 of Wine Spectator's latest issue (Oct 31) to see the Chinese winery story I did–writing and photography. Who knows, in another 40 years I might be ready to do an article on Myanmar or Ethiopian wine.

Regardless, the article's China wine facts, culture, personalities and predictions of the future will surprise (at least entertain) even hard-core Asian wine lovers. After all, I personally drank a boatload of wine in China as background research.

(A quick thank you shout to Thomas Matthews for long-term faith and Mitch Frank for gentile editing.)

Sorry, the WS magazine folks would frown if I posted the entire article here. So if you don't want to spring for a copy, head to your local bookstore magazine rack. Or you can swing by the studio here to read it while looking out the window at our neighbors' vineyards. Just bring a bottle of blackberry wine.

Help choose a book cover

2010-10-30T22:58:00.000-07:00

Vineyard Light on our Earth, Character and Spirit is the working title for one of the new books I'm creating. The text is quotes from 100 winemakers, owners and vineyard workers plus excerpts from my personal vineyard journal telling what we have learned while in the vineyard. Heavy and humorous stuff, all synergistically combined with knock-your-booties-off photography.

I've done a layout with the title as a sample, but those PDF cover photos are dull.

Need your help with the cover. Which would you choose? Why?
(Note that the numbers and titles are below the photo.)

Sample cover
Sample cover
Photo #1 Morning light on Five Mountain Vineyard and Mt Hood
Photo #2 Sun streaks on Red Hills Vineyard
Photo #3 Breaking storm at Sunset
Photo #4 Morning light after storm on Red Hills vineyards
Photo #5 Sunset over vineyard
Photo #6 Stormy light on Napa vineyard
Photo #7 Sunrise after storm Napa vineyard
Photo #8 Foggy sunrise over Red Hills vineyards.

Compact

2010-10-28T21:49:00.000-07:00

This unretouched picture might not be worth a 1000 words, but probably a couple.

Essential Photo Equipment: Flu shot

2010-10-27T19:58:00.000-07:00

Part of this photographer's gear is the flu shot.
When I travel to China, I don't want to be responsible for quarantining the entire airplane for 7 days. But the nice shot lady didn't even give me a band aid with pictures on it.

Which has more magic, a pencil or camera?

2010-10-25T21:25:00.000-07:00

Reading a book about pilgrimages and vision, art critic Robert Hughes said that back in the 19th century every educated person drew on a regular bases. He said: "Drawing was an ordinary form of speech used as a pastime or aide-memoire (something I find I need more and more), without the pretensions to 'high' art." His contention was that drawing was gradually abolished by the mass camera market and implied that now we see less.

While working on my Masters degree in drawing and painting, often we would strengthen our ability to see by closing our eyes and drawing while touching the subject, or drawing models without looking down at our paper. With practice and trust, amazing results happened.

Now, after some 30 years as a pro photog, I find myself doing two different kinds of photography: 1) documenting the subject 2) looking for the magic in the subject. There's a world of difference. Zillions of photographs cluter our planet. Only a small percentage have magic.

What do you think? Would you see more with a pencil than a camera?

China & Cancer 2

2010-10-05T22:27:00.000-07:00

Thank you for the hundred or so emails confirming that I made the right choice about not going to China. Wife Eddi and I have been studying intraductal carcinoma with surgery scheduled the day I would have gotten back from China.

2000 years of China wine history gone?

2010-10-04T21:51:00.000-07:00

From what I can tell, wine was first recorded in China's northwest region of Xinjiang Province during the Han Dynasty, beginning about 200BC. That's when one of the emperors brought back both grape seeds and wine makers from the Middle East. While the Han emperor enjoyed the flavor of these wines, somehow the plants and techniques were not passed down.

That's why, when Zhang Bishi decided to build his own winery–which he called Changyu Winery–in Yantai in 1892, he found only a few edible grapes in China. So he first brought 2,000 plants from the United States, but few bore fruit and were not sweet enough. Then half of those vines rotted before harvest. Being persistent fellow and a Chinese ambassador to other countries, he bought 640,000 more from Europe. Unfortunately these plants too found difficulty growing in China, with only 20 to 30% of them surviving.

Changyu's first winemakers. Check out the foreign influence.

In order to save his venture, Zhang Bishi brought back wild plants from northeast China that produced a bitter fruit but were hardy. They were grafted to the foreign vines and planted in the Shandong Province vineyards. The new vines survived, granting fruit rich in sugar with good color and were insect, disease, and cold resistant.

This is the main Changyu winery's huge factory-like facility.
Each of these Changyu factory winery fermenting tanks holds enough wine to fill a Southern California swimming pool.

All day long this beautiful Chinese woman imprints the Changyu logo on corks. My Chinese was not good enough to ask her if she counted her work.

Chinese wine security is tight in the Changyu cellar. These guys look as if they traveled the 2000-year Chinese time warp from the Han Dynasty. But they aren't as stoic as the British Royal Palace guards as I could get these Chinese guys to crack a smile. Just in case you were wondering, they are not allowed to drink on the job.

After the Flood, first thing, Noah plants a vineyard

2010-10-02T07:13:00.000-07:00

If you had just spent more than a month on a cramped wooden boat packed with two of all the planet's animals–think huge smelly number of beasts and critters, perhaps getting seasick floating on a flooded earth, what would be the first thing you did when you stepped on dry ground?

If you were Noah, you would plant a vineyard and become a winemaker. Why? That Bible story in Genesis 9 always amazed me. I picture a waterlogged earth covered with flood mud much as the Willamette Valley was covered with silt brought down from Montana and Washington by the Missoula floods some 40,000 years ago. Then I picture this old bearded guy–some 600 years old–with the foresight to have taken grape cuttings with him on the boat, stepping off the arc into the gooey flood mud to plant a vineyard. What are the priorities here?

Then Noah's after-the-flood vineyard story continues as a drunken affair where he curses one of his sons–Canaan–to become a slave, affecting the rest of human history. Now that's a vineyard story that's hard to match.

So why do vineyards and wine take on so much importance in Biblical history? Any ideas as to what varietal Noah planted?

Leave room for action

2010-09-30T22:06:00.000-07:00

Originally I took this photograph trying to do a self portrait. (Look carefully for a large moustache in the water reflection.) It turns out clients wanted to use it too. (Obviously they had bad vision so didn't see my face.)

Then by chance I saw one of those uses. It was cropped. Something was missing. Somehow the photo seemed wacked off at the knees, like someone was choking it. I want to see space for the water drop to fall into, room for action.

Thoughts?

China & Cancer. Did I do the right thing?

2010-09-21T18:19:00.000-07:00

This past week my core values felt waterboarded. I'm not in China as scheduled. Nor will I be going anytime soon.

Let me paint the moving picture. For about the last 5 months, I, along with my Hong Kong friend Houghton, have been making arrangements to interview key people and photograph 9 different Chinese wineries in Yunnan, Xinjiang, Ningxia, Shaanxi and Hebei Provinces. If you look at a map, that covers all of China-about the same size as the USA. While making the arrangements, there were boulder-sized snags, hundreds of emails and the Silk Road.

I wanted to visit the Shangri-la winery vineyard sitting at more than 9000 feet in Yunnan Province near Tibet. But the road was under construction, making a 7 hour journey into a 3-4 day bone-jarring Genghis-Khan type expedition. I'm told that when the construction is finished, it will be a 3 hour trip. And winemaker Emma Gao in Ningxia Province invited me to stay with her family during my visit. And Loulan winery sits right on the Silk Road–I could have walked in the footsteps of Marco Polo. That area, way out in western China, is the second lowest dry spot on our planet . Talk about adventure city.

Plans were set. Seat assignments–window in front of the wing–confirmed. Airport pickups arranged. I spent 2 weeks fine tuning my packs, making sure that every sock and piece of photographic equipment was absolutely necessary. Heck, I didn't even pack my hair dryer.

Then Wednesday before I'm to leave, Erath Winery asked me to postpone for one week to complete some web and newsletter projects. With some teeth gnashing, I did that. I will leave one week later. This quick change of plans only took 5 or 6 hours to make all the contacts.

Then yesterday, "Microcalcifications," the doc called them. Oh yes, there was also another spot. A follow up mammogram for my wife Eddi showed these "abnormal" areas. "The soonest we could schedule a biopsy is next Tuesday," the white-coated doc says. "We went ahead and scheduled a consultation with the surgeon the following Monday."

"But my husband goes to China this Friday," Eddi interjects.

The cold water of reality splashed on us right there in the Mammogram waiting room. Mentally I canceled my China trip. Pain. I needed to be with Eddi through this. That's what family means. That's what the marriage vows mean "for better or worse." That night after she went to bed, I just looked at my meticulously packed suitcase and sobbed at the whole situation. How the big winds of chance can so easily change the course of our little ships. Who can say why?

Did I do the right thing?

Judgement day Dec 21, 2012

2010-09-08T09:56:00.000-07:00

When an oak seedling sprouts, is its nature to dominate the space it will fill?

What if all of humanity on our planet were judged as a group on December 21, 2012? It's up or down, Heaven or Hell for everyone.

We will be judged not on individual merits, but rather on:
How well we all take care of each other.
How well we all accept each other's beliefs.
How well we all take care of our planet home including other species.
How well we all help each other rather than let selfish greed rule.

How well are we doing? Are we as humanity in Heaven or Hell?

(Sorry, I just had to get this out of my system.)

Which would you hang on your wall?

2010-09-02T13:51:00.000-07:00

Tamarah, my Digital Asset Manager, and I are getting ready to reinvent our fine art website. As we were pulling photographs, we got into a discussion about which photographs people would hang on their walls. Tamarah insisted more people would like her selections. Naturally, I am right.

Please help us regain peace in the studio.
Which of the following photographs you would hang on your wall, at home or at the office? Oh yes, please tell us why you chose that particular photo or photos.

#1 - Aramenta Cellars Vineyard reflected in a still pond

#2 - Oak and Vineyard Mandala, taken from Cain Vineyard in Napa

#3 - Full Rainbow over Grinnell Point and Swift Current Lake, in Glacier National Park, Montana

#4 - Giraffe Couple in Etosha National Park in Namibia

#5 - Feather Shaped Cloud, Sherwood, Oregon

Was I right to charge a fee? Update

2010-09-01T20:47:00.000-07:00

About a month ago I blogged that I had discovered a wedding web site using one of my photographs without permission. When I sent an email to the business inquiring as to where they had gotten such a beautiful photograph, the reply, "from the internet."

When I explained that the photo was copyrighted with the US Copyright Office and, as such, I am entitled to collect $10,000, in addition to all attorney's fees and the regular usage fee. An intern immediately called back, on the verge of tears, explaining she had downloaded the image and put it on the wedding photographer's site. She also said that her boss had just fired her and she would have to pay any fees.

Later the intern called explaining that she would make monthly payments on the usage fee I charged the wedding business, but that her husband was unemployed and they had two kids.

In the end, the boss wrote a check for almost 1/2 of the fee. Since the intern was to pay the rest, I said we were even and refunded the $25 the intern had already paid. It also turns out that the intern did not get fired.

I have so many mixed feelings about the whole downloading (as in stealing) photos from the net situation.
• Should the intern be held responsible? I use interns all the time.
• How do we stop people stealing copyrighted photographs from the internet? Many young people feel it is their right to do so.

Oh, yes, a day after I found the wedding site theft, I found another site using one of my images illegally. Since they are associated with a very large company, they shuffled me around a bit, but they are paying the usage fee. Should I have charged the punitive fee? You would recognize this company.

What are your thoughts?

Am I the visual vineyard porn king?

2010-09-01T18:50:00.000-07:00

I came across an article in an old radical environmental journal, Wild Earth, titled: "Eco-porn and the Manipulation of Desire."

So the author wrote how he had "struggled for, rose before dawn for, thawed an ice-filled coffee pot for" this particular sunrise moment. Right next to the cameraless author was a photographer who "trapped a sacred moment like a rabbit in a snare" using a camera. And worse yet, the photographer's "fragment of this brilliant dawn could be re-experienced by someone warm and comfortable in an easy chair, leafing through a magazine or calendar."

The author likened landscape photography to pornography, "a physical persona of unsurpassed beauty has been grotesquely trivialized by being removed from essence and context."

He thought that "landscape photographers resort to the methodology of creating a pornographic image," but also that "the intention of most landscape photographers is to appeal to, even seduce, the beholder with an image removed from its physical context, amplified into a commodity by technique to evoke a subjective response for commercial gain, to sell calendars and magazine subscriptions or to connive contributions."

Now there are even web sites that tell a photographer when is the best day and time to take a snap at scenic locations around the United States. Bring your coffee, camera, easy chair and show up.

So then am I the visual vineyard porn king?

Results Most Scenic Napa Vineyard competition

2010-08-24T14:12:00.000-07:00

#6 Spring clouds hang over the valley view seen from Newton Vineyard in the Spring Mountain district.

Hands down (3 to 1 if your into numbers) the above photograph of Napa's Newton Vineyard in the Spring Mountain district was the winner in our Most Scenic Napa Vineyard competition. Respondents commented on the Springtime feel, clouds and distant valley.

While only a few comments were posted on the blog, both my assistant's and my own email boxes were inundated with votes. It seems that many of you do not want to become Googlers. One typical comment was: "I don't want to get more accounts and have to remember more passwords." Amen.

One comment by a famous Napa winemaker declared than none of the photos could be the most scenic Napa image because they do not really show the valley. He reminded me that it's Napa Valley.
My under-the-breath response: shucks, while growing up in Napa I hiked all over those hills so I must be a hillbilly who just likes pretty pictures.

Here's the distant second place:
#1 Spring-time mustards grow between the rows of Screaming Eagle vineyard from Silverado Trail, valley floor looking west.

Nervous about new Mandala-Photo work at gallery

2010-08-24T13:34:00.000-07:00

A new group of photo images I call the Mandala series will be shown for the first time ever at the Art Elements Gallery in downtown Newberg beginning Thursday August 26. The free-wine opening is Thursday evening from 5 to 7.

Frankly, I'm a little nervous about reaction to the works as they obviously do not look like traditional photographs. I'm putting it out there.

This Mandala–a Sanskrit word meaning circle–series is inspired by the meditation art in the Hindu and Buddhist religious traditions I first encountered while traveling in the Himalayas in 1976. The basic form of most Hindu and Buddhist mandalas is a square with four gates containing a circle with a center point. Each gate is in the shape of a T.
While the Buddhist and Hindu mandalas have spiritual and ritual significance, as a grasshopper-like novice, I simply tried to work on a theme and chose images in a synergistic way. They became like meditations while doing them.

In various spiritual traditions, mandalas are employed for focusing attention of aspirants and adepts, as a spiritual teaching tool, for establishing a sacred space, and as an aid to meditation trance induction. According to David Fontana, its symbolic nature can help one "to access progressively deeper levels of the unconscious, ultimately assisting the meditator to experience a mystical sense of oneness with the ultimate unity from which the cosmos in all its manifold forms arises." The psychoanalyst Carl Jung saw the mandala as "a representation of the unconscious self," and believed his paintings of mandalas enabled him to identify emotional disorders and work towards wholeness in personality.

I'm excited about where this Mandala series might go with future work. Naturally, I would appreciate any feedback. Come to the show.

Tamarah, my digital asset manager delivering the new Mandala work to Art Elements Gallery.

Oh yes, Gallery address:
604 East 1st Street (The main drag going north)
Newberg, OR 97132
(503) 487-6141

Ouch! Getting ready for China

2010-08-23T17:39:00.000-07:00

To find out what shots I needed for China, I made a quick call to Kaiser Permanente Travel, my health care provider. After our thirty minute depressing conversation, I wasn't sure I wanted to go. Here's what they told me I could get, especially since I was headed to Yunnan province.

Dengue Fever, a virus-based disease spread by mosquitoes (specifically the little blood sucker Aedes aegypti), begins with a sudden high fever in the 104 - 105 degrees Fahrenheit range. Then a flat, red rash appears over most of the body 2 - 5 days after the fever starts, and then a second rash, which looks like the measles, appears later. Other symptoms include: Headache (especially behind the eyes), Fatigue, Joint aches, Muscle aches, Nausea, Swollen lymph nodes and, of course, Vomiting.

Malaria. I remember guys in Africa telling me about getting the disease. Not fun and many die. It's caused by a parasite called Plasmodium, which is transmitted via the bites of infected mosquitoes. These are different mosquitoes than the Dengue Fever carrying Aedes aegypti suckers. No offense to the species, but all mosquitoes look the same to me.

Encephalitis literally means "inflammation of the brain" resulting from a viral infection.

Avian Flu. Yes, that's bird flu. The Kaiser nurse told me not to come in contact with birds in the Yunnan province. But I eat chicken.

I've forgotten the rest, except I'm not suppose to pet or touch pigs.

I wonder if wine helps thwart these diseases?

Searching for Chinese wineries along the ancient Silk Road.

2010-08-18T13:04:00.000-07:00

For my upcoming China winery trip–Sept 17 - Oct 13–it's high mountains, dry deserts, the Silk Road and ancient scrolls about wine. So here are my current winery choices rationally arranged by province. Follow along on the map but remember that China is disputably about the same size as the USA. Any suggestions or insights gladly accepted.

Shanxi province. On the thoughtfully provided map look for a vertical fat-pinply-hot-dog shaped yellow area at the top center-right of China hanging like an udder below Inner Mongolia.
The dusty Terra Cotta Warriors march here and the ancient Yellow River Bed meanders through.
Here I already visited one of China's most highly regarded wineries in terms of drinkable wines, Grace vineyard.
On this trip it's Jade Valley winery for it's scenic location and famous architect owner. Perfect photo combo.

Ningxia province. On the map look at the left side of the big green Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, located at the top of China. The Yellow River and the Great Wall of China flow through the province. While it's sparsely populated, probably because it's mostly desert, the vast plain of the Yellow River in the north has been irrigated for centuries through an extensive system of canals. Wine production flourishes in the eastern part of the Helan Mountains Region, so that's where I'm going. Jancis Robinson–a famous wine writer–says that Ningxia seems to be a seriously up and coming region for vineyard investment. So we will find out if lots of money guarantees great, even good wine.
Targeted wineries include Helan Mountain, operated by Pernod Ricard–my how those French get around, Dragon's Hollow, which surprisingly produces mostly for export and Silver Heights, where Emma Gao is winemaker.

Xinjiang Province That big orange amoeba-shaped area on China's far left side, is Xinjiang, which literally means "New Frontier." It's home to the restless Muslims you might have read about in the news. It's also home to the largest vineyard in all of Asia. Lots of ancient history here, incl With the Silk Road trekking right through the area, there's lots of ancient history, including mention of wine in the BC time. This province, containing the Gobi, is renowned for its grapes and, no sunny surprise, raisins.
Summers tend to be hot and dry, so the grapes have higher sugar content and fewer problems with disease than in coastal regions, though they sometimes lack acidity. Winters are extremely cold and the vines need extra protection to survive by being buried with dirt, which then blows away later.
Wineries under scrutiny– Loulan and Suntime–are located way to the center left of the oversized province.

Inner Mongolia Autonomous Province Crowning China on the map, the big green squished water balloon-shaped area is Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. (Why certain provinces are called Autonomous is a topic for another blog.) While there are some wineries in this sand-dunned area already, some growing adapted vines that can withstand the -35 degrees C (-31F), I've heard about a mega project near Bayan Nur City to create a vineyard in the Ulan Buh Desert. According to the municipal desert control authority–how would you like to be in charge of shifting sand dunes, the project will cover a total area of 26,667 hectares (65 895 acres), yield 600,000 tonnes of wine grapes a year. Will that help quench China's thirst?

Yunnan Province Finally, the orange squished amoeba looking province is Yunnan. Here one winery is suppose to be at 3000 m (9000 ft) elevation.
Here I'm looking at Shangri-la Winery and Sunspirit, where one winery building is Tibetian style. More about this later.

Wine's Unsung Heroes

2010-08-17T10:10:00.000-07:00

You don't see their names on the bottle label. You don't hear visitors talking about them in the tasting rooms. To most wine drinkers, they are invisible. Yet the manager of one of the world's 100 best vineyards says they are the winemakers. He's talking about the vineyard workers, the unsung heroes of wine.

They know the vineyard more intimately than most winemakers. In the dead of winter, they prune the vines. During long summer days they pull leaves so the sun ripens the grapes. In the hot summer sun they weed, often by hand with a hoe. They thin by cutting individual clusters of fruit to maximize the quality. And finally, sometimes in pouring rain or scorching sun, they harvest the wine grapes.

I've been fortunate enough to meet and photograph quite a few vineyard workers around the world. Can you tell which country the photograph is taken?

Which is Napa's most scenic vineyard?

2010-08-10T07:31:00.001-07:00

Yesterday, Tamarah, my Digital Asset Manager, and I were pulling photos for an upcoming gallery show. Besides the new Mandala-like images and visual illusion composites, we wanted some straight beautiful images of Napa vineyards. As we pulled the photos, we got into a debate (again) as to which of these photos depicts Napa's most beautiful vineyard view. Please help us settle the debate by voting in the comments.

Which one of these photos is your favorite Napa vineyard view? (For you Oregon wine lovers, Napa does have some nice scenic views. I grew up there, but matured in Oregon.)

Since I'm trying to learn how people respond to my photos, please comment with a Tweet-sized note explaining your choice.

#1 Spring-time mustards grow between the rows of Screaming Eagle vineyard from Silverado Trail, valley floor looking west.

#2 Shafts of evening light, breaking through a cloud crack, hit Oakville Ranch Vineyards' Summit Vineyard looking NW up valley.

#3 View from Graeser Winery vineyard on Petrified Forest Road, near Calistoga in the Diamond Mountain District, looking across the north end of Napa Valley.

#4 Edge-of-storm scattered clouds allow spots of light to drop over view from Artesa winery of red barn-like Blue Creek Vineyard building surrounded by vineyards in the Carneros AVA.

#5 Diffracted sunrise seen from Cain winery's vineyards overlooking St. Helena at the top of the Spring Mountain District.

#6 Spring clouds hang over the valley view seen from Newton Vineyard in the Spring Mountain district.

#7 Napa Valley in the distance with Hess Collection winery and Christian Brothers buildings (on right) in the lower hills seen from Hess Collection winery's Veeder Summit vineyard on Mt. Veeder.

#8 Spring-time view of John William's white barns and water tower seen from mustard-flowering Cabernet Sauvignon vineyard next to Del Dotto Winery along Highway 29.

#9 Soft sunrise light over winter-bare Saintbury's vineyard in the Carneros AVA.

Do you trust photography?

2010-08-10T06:39:00.001-07:00

Nice Photoshop work, eh?

Actually, this is the real thing taken 42 years ago by Colonel William Anders during the Apollo 8 mission on December 24, 1968. This was the mission which put humans into lunar orbit for the very first time and gave human eyes the opportunity to see the far side of the Moon for the first time ever. (Robots had taken photographs on previous lunar missions.)

This image is declared by many as one of the most influencial photographs ever taken. Some credit the whole earth movement to this one image. Most of the time, however, we see this famous Earthrise over the Moon with the moon horizontal for the earthrise. (Tip your head sideways.) Actually, Anders took the original as you see it here.

Here's the rest of the story:
In order to take photographs of the far side of the moon, the Apollo spacecraft had been rolled so that its windows pointed towards the lunar surface. During this time, the Moon was between the spacecraft and Earth, cutting-off all radio communication with Mother Earth. As Apollo 8 emerged from the far side on its fourth orbit, crew commander Frank Borman rolled the spacecraft so as to position its antennas for radio contact with mission control. Looking to the lunar horizon for reference he exclaimed - "Oh my God, look at that picture over there! Here's the Earth coming up!"

It turns out that in fact, three photographs were taken, one in black and white and two in color. The black and white shot was taken first - by Commander Borman, and the two color shots were taken moments later by William Anders.

So we have two photographers, each with different perceptions of the same view. Frank Borman saw the 'Earthrise' as a moonrise on Earth, with the lunar surface horizontal and the Earth rising above it.

William Anders, however, framed his photographs from the perspective of being in orbit about the lunar equator. So his horizon was the plane in which he was traveling. This meant he framed it so the edge of the Moon was vertical, with planet Earth a little to the left but with its North and South poles aligned the same way as the North and South poles of the Moon.

So even in space, two photographers see the same subject differently.

Regardless of which way the photograph was taken, the image shows our Mother Earth from space. No Photoshop at Mission Control 42 years ago.

Has our perception of photography changed in 42 years?

Find 5 differences between the two photos

2010-08-05T20:49:00.000-07:00

As part of my day job, I'm just in the process of finishing this photo assignment for one of the largest franchises in the world. The client asked me to make 4 big changes to the photo. Then I tweeked a few other things to make it a more exciting image. OK you eagle-eyed photographers, can you spot the differences between the before and after snap.

A clue to one change: they did have a problem with swallows making nests toward the top of the building before the mitigation. The client asked me to remove the bird stopping mitigation.
This is the RAW file from Adobe Raw Converter.

Alas, the above photo is the final optimized image.

For those with short attention span because they constantly watch their in box or have carpel tunnel thumb from texting, and thus are not willing to actually look to find the differences, here's a screen shot of the adjustments to the final photo.

Is Vineyard photography more than f16 and be there?

2010-08-01T21:07:00.000-07:00

Back in the old film days when I did heavy-duty studio advertising photography, when one art director found out I did landscape photography for fun, he told me that landscape photography was simple: f16 and be there. I didn't try to convince him otherwise. For example, even the being there is most often more than mere chance. I watch weather and especially like the drama found along edges of storms.

This photograph is a perfect edge-of-storm example. This is in the Umpqua region of southern Oregon. It had rained all day, but the forecast called for a small chance of some clearing. So I drove up into the mountains to this private little vineyard called Ferris Wheel owned by the kind folks at Brandborg winery and waited. Sure enough the clouds started to break–for about 15 minutes. I shot like mad everything I could think of.

Here's the RAW file of one shot:

This is one of the two RAW layer exposures I used. Please note that I open the RAW files as smart objects, but in this case had to unsmart the layers to combine them in the way I wanted.

Here's a screen grab of the work I put into this vineyard landscape.

Here's the final photo as I originally experienced and visualized it.

So was the pimple-faced art director right? I was there, after asking lots of people where I could find the most scenic vineyard, some careful listening to the weather forecasts and lots of luck. I didn't look in the EXIF file, but I probably used f22 on my 18mm lens to get both the foreground leaves and the distant clouds stuck in the Doug fir covered mountains all in focus.

What would you put in a China Wine book?

2010-07-28T21:37:00.000-07:00

I've been working on this book for about one and one-half years. It's time for a step back and see where we are going.

What do you think should be in the China vineyard/winery book I'm doing?

Why photograph vineyards?

2010-07-28T20:33:00.000-07:00

Storm breaking over Fall-colored Brandborg winery's Ferris Wheel vineyard near Elkton, in the Umpqua region of Oregon.

Yesterday, I was trying to figure out why I love photographing vineyards, wineries and the whole world-wide wine industry.

First, I love the outdoors and nature. At 62, I still go backpacking into the wilderness with my 25-year-old son. (Please don't tell Ryan that I put a large rock in his pack last time to slow him down.) Watching a sunrise in a vineyard with two screeching hawks circling overhead, a bob cat meandering ahead of me and a ladybug crawling on a vine is a Yosemite-like experience for me.

I'm also intrigued why the vineyard and wine are mentioned something like 412 times in the Bible, and why Jesus used the vineyard so often in his stories. Even the Qur'an has vineyard stories. So why is that?

I also enjoy people, especially the vineyard workers–the unheard heroes who never make it to the tasting room.

Finally, I love art. My background is drawing and painting. (Heck, while working on my Masters degree, I even learned to color outside the lines.) So I'm intrigued with the whole process of making wine, from choosing the varietal to plant all the way to producing the wine. There's technical know-how, craftsmanship and something like creative vision.

All of these loves come together in the vineyard with enough elbow room for me to stretch my craft, technical abilities and vision.
It's raining while Tim harvests Pinot Gris at Henry Estate winery vineyard in the Umpqua region of Oregon.

World's largest energy consumer uses a cows to plow the vineyard

2010-07-26T18:21:00.001-07:00

This weekend I heard that China has become the world's largest consumer of energy, a title the country vehemently denies so the government can blame global warming on the world's "more developed" countries.

But, as this photograph hints, the per capita energy consumption in China is far below that of USA citizens.

On my last China trip, I photographed these friendly workers using an energy-efficient cow to plow soil around peanuts planted between rows of vines in vineyard operated by Dynasty winery, near Jixian village, Tianjin province.
Break time for man and beast.

Have you ever seen one of these?

2010-07-26T18:00:00.000-07:00

Ok, you Pinot noir lovers, have you seen one of these? And they do have a fragrance. This is part of my Seasons in the Vineyard photographic series.

Recent work: mind over camera

2010-07-26T17:38:00.000-07:00

For the last several years, I've been searching for something more to photography than photography. While looking at the work of some early 20th-century German painters called The Blue Rider, which includes my all-time favorite artist, Wassily Kandinsky, I came across this journal entry by August Macke. Somehow it hit home.

"A work of art is a parable, it is man's thought, an autonomous idea of an artist, a song about the beauty of things; a work of art is the noble, differentiated expression of man who is capable of something more than merely saying: 'Isn't that beautiful!'"

The first part of Macke's thought is easy for me. I often have troubles getting past the "Isn't that beautiful."

Was I right to charge a fee?

2010-07-21T13:58:00.000-07:00

Three weeks ago while Googeling the web for "beautiful vineyard photographs" I came across one of my images on a wedding photographer's site. (Name not listed to protect the guilty.) Since I couldn't remember selling them the rights, I sent an email asking where they had gotten such a beautiful photograph. The reply, "from the internet."

Oh. I responded with a strongly worded email explaining that they were in violation of Federal copyright law. In addition, since the photo was registered with the US copyright office, I was entitled to collect up to $10,000 statutory damages, plus all attorney fees and the normal usage fee. (Lesson here: register your images.)

Never have I gotten an email back so fast–we're talking nano-seconds, along with an immediate apologetic follow up phone call from an unpaid intern. On the verge of tears, she explained that she had done the wedding photographer's web site and taken my photo from the internet. She was a little unclear as to the exact source of the photo, but it sounded like one of the Google's image galleries they list by subjects. On those galleries in small print are words something like "these photographs might be copyrighted". (Lesson here: should we let Google post our images for free with all the intended or unintended consequences?)

Now in tears, the intern explained that there was no way they could afford $10,000 and the wedding photographer had just fired her. She had been working for free with the hopes of being hired sometime in the future. As we talked, the intern said she would have to pay out of her own pocket whatever I demanded.

Wow, what to do? I consulted 5 people for advice. All of my advisors agreed that I should charge her something. So I sent an invoice to the intern's private residence for a discounted web usage fee of, as I recall, $225. The intern asked if she could make payments, else she would have to take it out of the family food budget. Of course.

Did I do the right thing by charging the fee?

(Amazingly, just today, by accident, I found another site with one of my photos illegally used. What would happen if I actually started looking?)

The Winner: Oregon's most beautiful vineyard view

2010-07-21T12:06:00.000-07:00

At the end of June we asked viewers to vote for Oregon's Most Beautiful Vineyard View from 7 posted photographs. We were amazed at how many people voted. We were also amazed at how many people emailed their vote directly to us instead commenting on the blog (mostly because they didn't want to sign up for a gmail account which Google requires to comment).

These three views were by far the front runners, with a difference of only a few votes between them.
Number 1 vote getter. Mt. Hood with fog in the Willamette Valley seen from Elk Cove Winery's five Mountain Vineyard. Many voters said that Mt. Hood in the background made it Oregon. One of the most unusual comments declared that she loved the photo but thought that the man-made harvest crates along the left ruined the photo as a beautiful landscape.

Number 2 vote getter. Stormy morning light on Knudsen vineyard seen from Bella Vida vineyard in the Red Hills above Dundee, Willamette Valley. A number of voters remarked that this is the photo they would like to hang on their wall.

Number 3 vote getter was only three votes behind #1. Sunrise over the northern Willamette Valley seen from the David Hill Winery vineyard near Forest Grove.

What does this photo say?

2010-07-19T13:13:00.000-07:00

"What do you want the photo to say?" is one of the first questions I always ask clients before starting a new assignment. The answer helps guide me while executing the vision. Just today, I re-learned that what the photo says to me is not necessarily what it says to another person–like the editor.

On and off for the past month I've been working on a story about a system of rigorous farming techniques developed by the founder of the Waldorf School, Rudolf Steiner. Called Biodynamics, it's organic farming, which prohibits the use of synthetic pesticides and herbicides, but with an overlay of Steiner's holistic philosophy and the use of homeopathic-like preparations. Today, an increasing number of vineyards and wineries–especially in Oregon–are adopting Steiner's intensive techniques.

Since Steiner taught that the whole environment, moon and other planets influenced vineyard plant growth, I wanted to create a photograph illustrating the concepts. Somehow I wanted an ethereal, other planet-like feeling with the moon dominating the sky over the vineyard. So I went to the Doe Ridge Biodynamic vineyard on a full moon night, set up my shot with the rolling hills in the background and the full moon dominating the sky. Perfect.

But how to make it feel ethereal and other-planet like? I didn't have any preconceptions, so I winged it. Setting my D3 on a tripod, I stopped down to f14 with ISO set at 200 so I could have a long exposure–81 seconds. After clicking the shutter, I ran up and down the vineyard rows manually flashing my Nikon SB 900 strobe holding a bluish filter over the head to light the posts and vines. Using the small aperture creates the starburst effect.

I liked the look, but wasn't sure the photo really illustrated Steiner's ideas. I haven't spoken with the editor, but her choices spoke. While she was suppose to choose 3 total photos to illustrate the story, she chose 9, which always feels good. But she didn't choose this one.

What do you think? What does this photo say to you?

Can you taste biodynamic farming?

2010-07-07T08:06:00.000-07:00

Doe Ridge Vineyard in Oregon's Yamhill-Carlton AVA. The left half is biodynamically farmed while the right half is sustainable LIVE. Will there be a difference in the wines from these halves of the vineyard?

Can you detect any difference between wines made from biodynamicaly grown grapes as opposed to more traditionally farmed fruit?

Tomorrow a panel of 14 tasters will blind taste wines to answer the question. (Don't tell the tasters, but it will be a double blind situation.)

The idea for this blind-panel tasting germinated while I was dreaming up a dramatic finish to a biodynamic farming story I'm doing for Wine Enthusiast and Oregon Wine Press.

Here's the situation. One half of the approx 40 acre Doe Ridge Vineyard is biodynamically farmed, the other more traditionally. It's one vineyard on the same hillside separated by a wooded ravine all in Oregon's Yamhill-Carlton AVA. So both parts have the same Pinot noir clones, the same geographic orientation, with vines the same age. The wines are made by the same winemaker, Laurent Montelieu. The only difference: one side is farmed bioD and the other sustainable. Wines tested will be from 2008 (the first year of full harvest) and 2009. While Demeter hasn't yet formally certified the vineyard, winemaker Laurent confidently says, "any day."

I want to thank Laurent Montelieu, winemaker & proprietor of Grand Cru Estate/Solena/NW Wine Company and Anthony van Nice, general manager at Four Graces Winery (owner of Doe Ridge Vineyard) for having the guts to allow us to do this impartial blind taste test.

What's your vote? Will they taste a difference? Why?

Are we here to subdue the earth?

2010-06-30T18:16:00.000-07:00

7:30 AM. Patrick Sullivan, winemaker at Napa's Rudd Vineyards Winery, had just finished hand spraying biodynamic (check it out) 501 silica mixture on the Edge Hill Vineyard. He and I started talking about how there was something special about this five-acre, head trained vineyard tucked in oak forests just above St. Helena.

This was the perfect setting to ask what kind Lessons he had learned while working in vineyards. Somehow the conversation turned to what Lessons he wants to pass on to his grandchildren. His simple reply: " We need to remember that we are here for the earth. The earth is not here for us." And doesn't biodynamics teach that a vineyard is part of a whole rather than an entity unto itself.

As I was driving to my next appointment, I reflected on Patrick's Lessons for his grandchildren. "We are here for the earth." Biodynamics. We toil on the earth. But weren't we Christians taught at an early age about man's dominion over animals and plants. Genesis 1:28: "And God blessed them [that's our forefathers], and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth."

While driving up the steep grade past Angwin towards a winery striving to be gold LEED certified (check it out if you don't know what that means), on the radio comes news that the BP oil spill was much more serious than first reported. Millions of gallons a day more serious.

So I'm trying to figure out what is the Lesson from the Vineyard here. What exactly does God mean that we are suppose to "subdue" the earth? And have we as Judeo-Christians taken that statement too seriously, out of context or gone too far? Is Patrick's statement, "that we are here for the earth" in conflict with the Bible?

What are your thougths?

One immigrant's thoughts about illegals.

2010-06-22T20:27:00.000-07:00

OK, here we go. Although it's a subject close to my heart––I came as an immigrant who had to take tests to gain citizenship––I don't often make a big deal about the immigration problem. However, I couldn't help but respond emotionally when NPR interviewed some people about the Arizona's check-for-immigration-papers law. My response wasn't about the law, rather to what one of the speakers––a legal immigrant from Mexico–-kept repeating.

He said that the 12 million (his number) illegals were here to better themselves economically. His contention was they are forced north because they don't have jobs in Mexico. That is a big problem. (He was from Mexico and didn't talk about Central or South America.) After talking with hundreds of Mexicans in the vineyards, I agree with the radio speaker. While some (I can't say what percentage) have adopted the United States as their new home, many come for a better job and still speak of Mexico as their home. No roots here.

I'm not at all prejudice against any people, just want to look at motives. To me, coming to earn money is far different from the motive my family had when we came to the United States. We needed to find a new home. The Communists had imprisoned my father to kill him. When some friends broke him out of jail, my parents escaped from Latvia.

We were looking for a new homeland. My parents chose the United States with the intent to plant roots. In my mind, that created a huge difference in attitude than someone coming simply to make a buck.

Not to sound too cotton candy-like in today's culture, but proudly, the United States is my home.

OK, Which is Oregon's most beautiful vineyard view?

2010-06-21T21:22:00.000-07:00

Tamarah, my Digital Asset Manager, and I disagree which of my photos depicts Oregon's most beautiful vineyard view. Please help us settle the debate.
Which one of these photos is your favorite vineyard view? With your selection number, please make a 7-word note why your choice.
(Also sorry about the big spaces between some of the photos. I can't figure out how to get rid of them in blogger.)

#1 Chardonnay vine view at David Hill Vineyard and Winery near Forest Grove.

#2 Mount Hood and the Willamette Valley seen from Elk Cove Winery's Five Mountain vineyard.

#3 Knudsen vineyard seen from Bella Vida vineyard in the Red Hills above Dundee in the Willamette Valley.

#4 A Fall storm hangs over the grain silos at the edge Seven Hills Vineyard on the Oregon side of the Walla Walla Valley AVA.

#5 Fall colors on Abcela vineyard in the Umpqua Valley.

#6 Sun crashes through a summer storm over Valley View Winery's vineyard and winery barn in the Applegate Valley AVA near Jacksonville.

#7 The Pines 1852 winery's old Zin vines originally planted in 1852 or so now in the Columbia Valley AVA above The Dalles with snow-covered hills in the distance on the Washington side of the Columbia River.

The fine print:
• Almost all of these vineyard views are taken from private land. Please do not enter any vineyard without permission. You just might kill the vineyard by unknowingly carrying in phylloxera or some other disease.
• Please note that the photos are not in any particular order.
• All of these images are copyrighted with the US Copyright office. If you use any unauthorizedly–which just happened Friday–you pay me usage fee, plus $30,000 and attorney's fees.

Will vineyards survive humans on earth?

2010-06-17T19:14:00.000-07:00

This Lesson from the Vineyard i-post card number 2 really speaks to me: the wild stormy earth image with words about basic human survival. Primortial.

The genesis: I was fortunate enough to spend about a half day with Chris Howell, the general manager and winemaker at Cain Vineyard & Winery while he drove me around the vineyard in his 4-wheeler. As we stood in the howling wind on the narrow ridge that divides Napa Valley from Sonoma, Chris started talking about really heavy stuff. As we stood outside, I couldn't take notes as the wind buffeted my notebook and all my little Olympus digital recorder captured were powerful wind sounds as it wiped over the stereo microphones. Dummy me, I didn't think to have our life lessons conversations inside his car. But somehow the powerful wind somehow matched his words. So I got only a small sampling of Chris Howell's Lessons.

The next morning barrels of rain flooded Napa streets. Perfect.

So I spent about a half day on the Cain vineyard ridges in the rain huddle under my tiny red umbrella with my plastic-bag covered D3, waiting for cloud breaks. Pure magic happens during those breaks. Waiting. Waiting. Woa, suddenly clouds lift off the mountains, pieces of sun gently touch the soaked landscape. All the while brooding threatening clouds hover just overhead. Perfect. Click. Click.

Who else should I interview for Lessons from the Vineyard?