Vashon Winery Journal (vashonwineryjournal.com)

We, my family, survived the pre-Christmas storm, I guess. My home got power after four days. The winery got power on the fifth day.

By that time I missed the busy weekend prior to Christmas weekend and business was down considerably prior to Christmas.

My business was down about 50%. Luckily, I had just raised my prices back in October. But still losing that much business was tough.

 Vashon Island was a disaster. Some people had power early on, while others waiting about ten days. Regardless, most of us were still digging out, if not physically, then mentally.

Now I have the dreaded three months of the year to look forward to: January, February and March.

Oh well, this is a good time to get a lot of barrel work done. Transfering wines into clean barrels, washing the used barrels and tucking the wines back into bed.

It is also a time to set my books straight, entering my checks into my computer and making sure the sales are in there. Then I get to submit my federal summary of inventory and sales and pay the annual federal excise tax.

That is one of the benefits of being a small winery: I only have to do the federal taxes annually. Most wineries have to do them quarterly or monthly. But larger wineries hire people to do their accounting and compliance things.

According to my year end books, I sold about 375 cases of wine, not including cider. That’s nothing. But I am convinced that is the perfect size for me…….I can’t make money, but, I can’t lose it either.

It allows me to find other ways to make money such as teaching, or helping other wineries sell their wine.

Believe or not, I actually believe I can make money if I can expand to 500 cases and get all of my prices up to $25 with my reserve about $30. But that is based on selling the wine mostly at retail.

Thursday night was a wild one. I was supposed to teach my last class at South Seattle Community College and give my students their final exam. I was in Seattle, at Cafe Ladro, a coffee house in West Seattle on California Avenue. It started raining really hard. I didn’t realize how hard until I left to go to class. Water was running down the roads in torrents, like small rivers (not creeks). I realized that California Avenue is at the base of a large hill starting at the highest point in Seattle, called High Point. The school is not quite that high but to get there I had to go up and over. At each intersection was was pooling and I just tried to avoid the worst intersections by driving up and around.

At the school I entered the parking lot and it appeared to look like a huge lake and I was apprehensive to drive across it. I did and I did fine.

When I got to the classroom a couple of my students were studying for the exam. I sent them home immediately counseling them to caravan with one another. One of the students later emailed me to say that at the entrance to the West Seattle freeway cars were floating in a lake. She went another way only to find the road blocked by a tree. I don’t know how she made it home.

I ended up having about twelve students show up, some from another class. One of the students offered a wine that he brought, a Leonetti 2000 Merlot. I thought it was very good. It wasn’t a big soft chunky style but rather more stylish. I then opened a 2002 Anniversary Reserve Red by Vashon Winery. It was really good. I read a poem that I wrote called My Wine. One of the students ordered a case right there.

I got home that night around 7:30. It was starting to get windy although it didn’t kick in until we were in bed. The wind howled and roared all night. Our house is somewhat protected as we are in a slight canyon and buffeted from strong winds. However, we have a lot of trees around us, in particular madrone, maple and fir. Most of the firs are huge but they are on the northeast side of our house. We can hear them but we don’t fear them.

When we got up in the morning there was debris everywhere, mostly branches. We had probably four or five trees come down behind our house and then about the same down by our driveway. Our driveway was blocked by mostly limbs and branches of madrone and some alder. Our neighbor Nathan called and offered to bring his tractor up to help push any debris off of our driveway. It was really cool. It accomplished in an hour what would have taken my wife and daughter and myself six hours to do.

As it turns out we were without power for four days, until Monday evening.

Boy, did a shower feel good this morning. And oh, to be able to flick on the lights with a flip of the switch. And heat, oh heat, that soft heat of baseboard heat. What a luxury. I even watched the Sonics lose to Memphis last night and enjoyed it…..just the marvel of television.

The winery is still without power. I wasn’t able to open this last weekend, one of my busier weekends prior to Christmas. I can’t really do much but I was able to add sulfur dioxide to some of the wines we had just pressed. I also checked for malo-lactic and was able to add SO2 to some of my whites aging on the lees.

I’m hoping to get power soon. I have a bunch of labeling to do in addition to selling.

I hate to admit it but I really depend on the Christmas season to pay my bills, mostly my grape bills. The next dozen days are going to be crucial.