Off the Cliffe

It is, amazingly, almost that time of year again:  our annual Harvest Festival (sixth annual, this year) runs October 2-4 at Cave B Estate Winery.  The big day full of all Harvest Festival activities is Saturday, October 3rd.  And the best thing?  All activities on the 3rd are free.  There is a price for the BBQ and wine tasting, but, if you live within Grant, Kittitas, Chelan or Douglas counties, kids 12 and under receive their lunch for free…not a bad deal at all!

And truly the best part of the Festival is the family-friendly nature of the event…this is the Cave B event to bring your boyfriend, your mom, your best friend and your kids.  Three guest experts are lined up:  Amy Mumma, CWU’s Wine Program Director, who will give several fantastic wine seminars, Greg Atkinson, Wine and Food author and columnist extraordinaire will do three interactive cooking demos, and a Cave B favorite, Wine Trails Northwest author Steve Roberts will be on hand to sign and sell his book.  Plus, Harvest Festival will also give us a chance to introduce our new Tendrils Chef to all of you–he will turn out a fantastic BBQ, and will also head up several cooking demos throughout the day. 

And what about for the kids? –Pumpking carving and cookie decorating, tractor-driven hayrides, apple juice-making with an old-fashioned apple press, and much more.  And, for kids and grown up kids-at-heart, there’s the ever-popular Great Grape Stomping Competition–an absolute not-to-miss!

There’s a great special on Cave B Inn rooms for the weekend, as well as a bevy of wine specials at the winery, so read about it all by visiting www.caveb.com, then plan to come on out!  The weather has been nothing short of spectacular, the grapes and apples are rich and dark with color, the leaves are changing to their fiery hues, and we’re ready to give you a weekend of good, pure fun.  We look forward to seeing you!

  Spring is finally here!

My fellow canines I am very happy to report that my humans have pruned the vineyards here at home. It’s like a doggy paradise! There are sticks everywhere and I love making them my chew toys, and tossing them around. My doggy senses have definitely been tingling the last few days and they say spring is right around the corner, which means warm weather and green grass. And finally we can all enjoy the rose gardens around the Inn.

It’s starting to get sunnier and brighter here day-by-day and that means more hiking for our guests and more hiking trips for me to go on. This is good news for me, since that means after a long hard day of showing off our property I can go swimming in our pond!

Finally the birds are making their way back from the warm south and I have been chasing them like crazy; one of these days I’ll get one. Make sure to look out for me on your next stay, I’ll be the much-loved dog running around our property showing or guests where to go, and showing my fellow pups all the property hot spots.

Happy Trails,

 Cuvee, The SageCliffe Dog

I hope to see all of you on your next stay!

Right now, nearly mid-October, the SageCliffe land is going     through as many changes as a ‘tween;’ not quite far enough long in the year to be pre-teen or teen, but certainly past the child days of summer.  To walk the property right now is to see everything from green, green grass around the Inn and the pond, to the bumpy orange and white squash lying among their own vines and leaves–which are starting to brown and decay–to red-red and partly-red apples on the orchard trees, to rock-hard pans of dirt in the cold early-morning hours.  There is, sometimes in the scope of just a few minutes, sun, warmth, breezes, high winds, cool wet showers, dark massing clouds, baby-blue cloudless skies, and sun yet again.  Emotional and dramatic; much like a ‘tween.  The ground is both browns and greens; the Columbia River 900 feet below the property loses its Paul Newman-blues and takes on a blue-grey sheen that echoes the layers of basalt in the cliffs above.  Wild mustard grows in healthy tufts among grey-green sagebrush.  The vineyards are no longer lush green; the vine leaves are a darker green now, and begining to brittle.  The colors are a mottled sunset of reds, oranges, yellows, ochre. As the vines lose their leaves, the vines themselves take on a larger, more noticeable role:  thick, sinewy brown vines that look too wooden to have twisted themselves into such elegant scarecrow poses; arms draped down along the trellis wires; not-quite straight stems rooted in their mounds of hardened, rock-pebbled earth.  The poplar trees that soldier in their straight lines along each side of the entry drive skip the red, changing apparently overnight from green to yellow; the undersides of their small, disc-shapd leaves catching the late afternoon sun like showers of countless falling gold coins.  Soon the green will all but disappear, and then, as the snow comes, so will the brown.  But for now, the palette is broad, and the colors deep and rich.  ‘Tweens, it seems, can be breathtakingly beautiful.