edibleportland.com | 29 she heads to the winery, where she interviews associate winemaker Ryan Kelly-Burnett as he’s pressing the grapes. Sixteen years ago, Kelly-Burnett came to Oregon for a “gap year," and never left. He’s been working at Dominio IV Wines for 14 years now. In the winery, Stahl describes the barrels stacked to the ceiling—named after Wes Anderson movie characters—and discusses yeasts, fermentation, and barrel style with Reuter, Kelly-Burnett, and an exchange winemaker from Chile, Alfonso. Among other sounds, she captures the steady humming of carbon dioxide as it comes out of the bunghole of the barrel and the swooshing sound of topping off barrels. The documentary ends after the bottling of the wine in March, which is a team effort. (Even the young women from the tasting room help with the bottling.) Stahl says she went from knowing practically nothing about the winemaking process to being an expert—at least on Sauvignon Blanc. “The thing about doing an audio project is that you spend hours listening to all the interviews and all of the information so now it’s very much drilled into my brain. So there are things I know about winemaking that I can never un-know.” Stahl is referencing Reuter’s name for the wine: The Path of the Unknowing, which for him meant that he wanted to “unknow” the things that he assumed about Sauvignon Blanc, turning the process of making it a journey of discovery. One of her most significant discoveries during the 8 months of documentation was learning how hands-off the winemaking process is. “How much you are guiding rather than demanding of the wine,” she says. In the documentary, Kelly-Burnett says, “The #1 word in wine is: depends.” Stahl says she found a lot of parallels to her own creative process, where she comes in thinking she’s going to tell one kind of story, but then it goes in a different direction. “Winemaking is a creative process a lot more than I thought it was—on par with my creative process. Neither of us can control the product. It’s about intuition, choices, and adjustments and collaborating with the wine.” Stahl’s favorite recording session was in Chapter 2: Fermentation, the first time she’s invited to join the winemakers for a barrel tasting. “It was very social,” Stahl says of the barrel tasting. “People are comparing their opinions and making decisions. I found this sense of family—intimacy and joy in sharing something together- charming.” The slurping and spitting sounds are especially evocative. This is when she learned that tasting wine at 11:00 a.m.—though it may sound like fun—is a lot of work. “You have to spit or you’ll lose a lot of focus,” cautions Kelly-Burnett. “Take another sip of your wine,” Stahl tells her audience. “Can you taste the toasted wood? The structure from the oak barrel?” Reflective moments like this allow the wine drinker to listen from home and experience the Dominio IV Sauvignon Blanc on a deeper level. Bob Taylor, an at-home-winemaker in Washougal, Washington, says this was the first time he’s ever experienced an audio documentary of a winery—and he thoroughly enjoyed it. He liked that it covers the entire journey from the vineyard to the cellar and blending process. “I loved hearing from more of the people along the way—people in the field, in the winery—it pulled it all together in a more personal way,” Taylor says. He and his wife used to belong to many wine clubs but cut back during the pandemic. Dominio IV made the cut because it’s “quirky and interesting”—and they get to engage with Reuter. Says Taylor: “It’s not just another place that makes good pinot noir. Patrick is someone that thinks differently and is very experimental.” Reuter says one of his favorite parts is in Chapter 3: The Blend, when Stahl includes a collage of wine descriptors that he and his fellow winemakers share at the end of a 10:00 a.m. blending session. The descriptors ricochet back and forth, rapid-fire: green apple, citrus flower, verbena, lemon peel, baked bread, tartness in the mid-palate, a little cloudy on the finish, shaved fennel, and so on. The staccato music you hear in the background of this session is composed by Stahl, who is also a classically trained piano player. Reuter admits that sometimes, blending sessions are so exhausting that he’ll go home and take a nap. “Your brain feels like a crystal,” he says. Reuter says he loves the overall atmosphere that Stahl creates in the audio piece. “It sets you in the mood to drink wine,” Reuter says. “Sometimes you use wine as a social beverage. Other times, you really want to understand what’s going on. That quiet, studious environment she creates sets the stage for your perceptions.” Next up, Stahl is working on a second audio project with Reuter: her original idea of doing a “sound walk” of the vineyard. Unlike Sounds of Unknowing, this one is meant to be listened to as you wander the vineyard. “It’ll be kind of like a loop,” says Stahl. It will include a trip up a hill for 360 views of the Coastal Range, Mount Pisgah, and several AVAs. In addition to covering viticulture and local geology, it will cover the land's history—including indigenous histories and information about the pioneer families that lived at this particular farm.
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