Talked to a friend at a bigger winery. They’re appointment schedule is basically full. Most cvisitors are still local to Portland. We keep batting around what to do. Our main vineyard source is managed by a couple that would unquestionably be high, high risk, and since Megan and I host the appointments neither of us wants to ge them sick on a vineyard visit. We do keep distance up there but that still isn’t a sure thing.
We, like Walter Scott, are working on some form of to go option.
We have opened up as of Monday. We are in a fortunate position in that we can reasonably host 100% of tasting outdoors in attractive and socially distanced settings. We are incorporating a digital presentation that people can review on their phones that includes visual aids and information about the wines and vineyards being tasted. This allows for less direct interaction with staff and less talking through a mask for our folks as well. We’ve noticed that there are more out of state people than we expected and a disturbingly broad level of care about protocols (one guest said he wasn’t really “into Covid”) so we expect that there will be more of that as time goes along. We have “a busy” weekend coming up meaning busy by the limitations we are placing on our appointment schedule to allow staff to clean and decompress between tastings.
To update my post - Portland (Multnomah county) indeed went to Phase 1 today, which is important to this discussion because it’s a bellwether for our general progress with reopening in the broader Willamette Valley. Good news. Hoping it sticks.
Jim, I’m curious about the digital presentation. Is it a PDF that visitors can download while they are doing their tasting and then review as they are tasting through the wines? Are you guys pouring your entire flight at once?
Created them on Google Docs and saved as PDFs. I think we even send the links to people with their secondary confirmation the day before the tasting. We are doing sort of “less direct contact” tastings for a variety of reasons and this helps on the info side of things. We pour the flights into carafes and then people just pour for themselves as they go along. It’s been pretty well received.
We are going to start staggering appointment start times. Realized it was organizationally problematic to have, say, 2 or 3 groups of 2-4 people all show up at the same time and finish at or around the same time. Still learning how to best handle this whole thing.
He will be more “into Covid” when he gets it.
Just a bit of anecdotal info. I’m heading down from Seattle this week for a quick, impromptu couple days of tasting. In doing some planning today I am finding quite a mixed bag in terms of wineries and restaurants being fully open, fully closed, or open in a very limited sense.
With that said, anywhere I shouldn’t miss?
![[winner.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/0/07ec25c9fd71159fe15d7f1ba5fad64e91238d0e.gif "winner"){kind=small}
I’m a fan of most of the board darlings here:
Smaller:
Kelley Fox
Vincent
Crowley
Walter Scott
Violin
Twill
Biggio Hamina
Middle:
Evsham Wood
Belle Pente
PGC
J. K. Carrier
Eyrie
Bigger:
Bethel Heights
Drouhin
Thank you so much for this Marcus.