Portland Here i come!!! (wink wink)

the weekend after the wedding i took a quick weekend trip up to portland to "talk" to a old friend from sonoma that now works at a winery in dundee. its not really a winery, its a wine company, basically clients source the grapes and arrange everything and the facility makes the wine, also called custom crush, producing about 40,000 cases a year about 8 times that of Edenvale Winery where i'm currently working and about equal to that of Valley of the Moon Winery were i was working in Sonoma California. it was exciting to be in a large winery again, and this place was high tech too, latest gadgets and tools, crossflow filtration, micro-ox, open-tops with lids ;), pulsair, and they are expanding, looked like they might be doubling in size. the coolest part was the fermentation cellar with a couple hundred open-top, jacketed, stainless steel small batch fermenters all in perfect rows, can't imagine how much that cost...each has to be at least a few thousand?
After my "visit", got a bottle of Erath '06 Pinot Noir that they were bottling when i got there...a fine vino!, went down to McMinnville for a burger at a great brew pub and headed up to portland to see if i could run into some old college roommates. Of course everyone was busy in the afternoon so i headed into town to see what i could find, randomly ended up in the pearl district, one of my favorite parts, and had a pint at the rogue ale house! later met up with matt and his girlfriend, had a burrito for dinner (best in a while) then later headed to this little french patisserie (bakery) for Bastille day, a french revolution day where they blow up the prison in paris long ago. later dan showed up and then ryan and in all of our surpise henry!!! it was great all 5 of the roommates all together!!! first time in about 4 years. had a few drink, listened to some weird bands, there was a raffle and matt won like half of the stuff, i won a wine tasting class but traded it for a bottle of pear champagne but left it there on accident. i miss those guys, i hope sometime soon i can hang out with them. ;)
heres a couple pics (LINK)