It seems appropriate to begin with a memory. As a child I had the good fortune to sail aboard a few small vessels on the East Coast – even to help build one or two – and among my memories is one of a varnished box containing a ship’s log. This was not the written log of the ship’s daily passage, from which we get today’s term web log, contracted to “blog”, but the actual wooden instrument, tied to a length of rope, which by its twisting through the water in the wake of a vessel would measure the distance traveled.

As one who enjoys, among other things, wine, words, tradition and discovery, I take pleasure in exploring such origins and connections. While the world whirls along in a sea of information, I hope to take some time describing my own slow path toward a particular destination.

I have set my sights on bottling, from at least one vintage in my lifetime (and hopefully more) a wine that I can truly point to as having definitive regional character. The place I’ve chosen to do this is a little-known wine-growing area called the Rogue Valley, here in Southern Oregon. How I achieve this is what I hope to document here.