Releases in 2011

Designed labels in PowerPoint, had them laser-printed on standard white paper at OfficeMax, then cut & adhered to bottles with milk.  Let them dry, wiped clean with windex, then applied a heat-shrink cap.  The official titles, from left to right:

Overlook Vineyards 2008 Estate Cabernet Sauvignon
Santa Cruz Mountians

93% Cabernet Sauvignon, 7% Merlot

El Gato Dorado 2009 Fair Play Zinfandel

97% Zinfandel, 3% Petite Sirah

Little Red Wagon Red Table Wine

70% 2008 Cabernet Sauvignon (Santa Cruz Mountains)

30% 2009 Zinfandel (Fair Play)

Fall Glam Shot

The leaves seem to be holding on longer than usual - and I'm not complaining, loving the fall foliage look here in Northern California.

Fall Nutrients

As the vines slip into dormancy, we're doing some soil amending to ensure a healthy recovery and start to the 2011-2012 season.  This year, I'm digging in some organic plant food; I opted for a locally available product; so carefully evaluated for the one with the least nitrogen and most minearls we're deficient in - E.B. Stone Organics Tomato and Vegetable Food won.  

Dug up the topsoill above the root zone of each vine, and added about 1/2 cup of this supplement per vine.  Also sprinkled 1/3 c Epsom Salts per vine (for additional Mangesium), and a couple handfuls of compost (for general soil health).  

Next step is to wait for rain, then cover with mulch.

Stirring up lees

We've kept the must at roughly 65-70 degrees for the past week, and also stirred up the lees every other day or so.  Reason being all the gunk at the bottom of these carboys needs to be re-distributed through the wine to ensure MLF and alcoholic fermentation completes - plus, the wine just ends up tastier.

We have a single 75-watt lightbulb near the carboys to keep them relatively warm; and we've had some warmer weather that's helped also.

An early press

After only a week, it was clear that fermentation on our Cab had slowed down.  Usually, we keep our must in our primary fermenter all the way through secondary fermentation, even after the cap falls (thanks to our early investment in a CO2 tank).  However, given that there was a good amount of green still in the seeds, and we don't really care for vegetal-tasting wines, we decided to press on the early side, and go through a more traditional pattern of primary fermentation in an open fermenter; secondary in airtight carboys.

So, we rented a press and pressed both batches in one day.

Notes on pressing:

Zinfandel must is messy - we really need to learn to press in small batches; as it's a gloppy mess that will spray at all angles outside the side of the press.  But after pressing our 15 gallons of must, we got about 8 gallons of very young wine.

Cabernet must was much more straightforward to press.  We got a total of 18  gallons of wine out of the 30 gallons of must.

From here, we want to keep the temperature relatively warm to ensure malolactic fermentaion (MLF) completes.  This apparently takes from 4-6 weeks, and temps around 70 degrees is good for this. The juice/wine still has a lot of setiment in it; and we need to stir up each carboy every other day or so, to ensure the yeast and MLF bacteria is able to continue to do it's job (convert sugar to alcohol and convert malic acid to lactic acid, respectively).  

BBQ & Bottling

Once we press out all the wine currently fermenting, we're going to need carboys - MANY.

So, we figure we may as well pack all winemaking tasks into a few week window and bottle now.  After bottling by ourselves the past two rounds, we think we have the process down enough to invite others - so invite others we did! 

We started with BBQ lunch, followed by tasting the still young wines about to be bottled.  We then had a mini-blending party, deciding if the wines would benefit from blending with other wines and/or each other.  Final formulas will follow, when I get around to labeling.

 

We then set up our bottling shop in the garage (vs cellar) - which was MUCH better in that we were less cramped and it's a lot lighter and easier to see.  Being near running water, sterilizing solution, and supplies was another bonus.  

The process went so well I think we'll aim for this timing in future years too - with the garage already cleaned out, most equipment freshly cleaned and sterilized, and carboys fresh and ready to use after pressing make the tasks easier and decreased the net time required to scrub stuff.

Zin Cap's Fallen

The cap (of skins, seeds, etc) fell this morning - meaning fermentation is either done or very close to being done.  We immediately put an airtight lid on it, then sprayed in a bit of CO2 to protect the must.  Now it's officially in extended maceration; will probably keep it that way until we press the Cab (this is in the name of efficiency: renting the press once is simply easier than renting it twice.)

While at it, we checked the Cabernet - it's still actively fermenting away, and is now down to 1/2 sugar depletion.  That's a bit later than ideal to add Fermaid K, but we did at a slightly smaller amount: Should be 1 tsp / 7 gallons at 1/3 sugar depletion, BUT I added about 1 tsp / 10 gallons at 1/2 sugar depletion.

Time for Yeast

24 hrs later, we pitched good ol' D254 by sprinkling the dry yeast on top of 72 degree must.  I was worried it wasn't going to take off very well, but seemed to take off quite nicely.  A mini-heatwave here in the Bay Area may have helped.

8 hrs later, we added our Malolactic Starter (Viniflora Oenos), this time we sprinkled on top and gently stirred it into the top inch or so of must.

By the next day (10/12), a nice cap of skins & seeds had formed, and it was clear that it was on its way to becoming wine.

Chapitalization = adding sugar

Never thought we'd need to add sugar to our must, so we needed to get up-to-speed on the art of chapitalization.  Not too surprisingly, we turned to the Web only to get a variety of advice and a mix of good and bad equations on how to figure out how much sugar to add.

My husband is a genius, however, and shared with me that the calculation is "super simple":
1. weigh the fermenter
2. subtract 5 lbs cuz that's what the bucket weighs
3. assume 80% of the weight is juice (this is the dodgy part, i'm just guessing)
4. to get sugar, multiple brix times weight: (0.20 * 84 lbs) = 16.8 lbs in the must
5. to get target sugar: (0.23 * 84 lbs) = 19.3 lbs
6 2.5 lbs = 19.3 - 16.8

Even simpler is to just multiply the difference: (sugar to add) = (target brix - current brix) * lbs of juice.

OK Cab Sauvingnon, your turn

Still a bit sad about this year's grape quality, but when life gives you under-ripe grapes, chapitalize!

Here's what we did with the Cabernet Sauvignon must:

1. Separated into A and B (A is 15 gallons from the lower rows and higher quality; B is 10 gallons from the top rows, even less sweet / more acidic)

2. Added 50 ppm potassium metabisulfite

3a. To "A" - remember the 1.5 gallons of extra sweet juice we took off the Zin?  That's right, we added that juice to A, hoping to bring the sugars up and acidity down.  Re-measured and got 21.75 Brix; a bit lower than we like, so we decided to add 2 lbs of sugar to bring the must up to 23.75 Brix.  Note that when we added the sugar, we actually stirred REALLY well, then let sit for a few hours, then stirred REALLY well again before testing.  Sugar needs to fully dissolve, and we've read tales of winemakers that over-chapitalized his wine by not letting the sugar dissolve enough.
3b. To "B", we went straight to the sugar: added 3 lbs of sugar to bring the Brix up to 23 Brix.

4. Divided a 1-oz package of pectic enzyme up proprotionally between the two bins.

5. Added 2 tsp Fermaid K

6. Let sit until tomorrow.

10/10/10 = 2010 Harvest Day

Exhausted from fending off critters that want to eat our crop, combined with a chance of rain later this week and less-than-optimal sun exposure this time of year, we decided to harvest today. A bit early, which is bad, but it IS 10-10-10, which I can't help but be happy about.

We're in our groove - sent that last-minute invite to friends that are known to enjoy picking grapes.  Got started around 7:30am by removing the bird nets from the lowest row, picking them, repeating our way up the hill. 

We walked away with about the same yield as last year - 30 gallons of must.  But, our numbers were way worse. Our goal is to get to a sugar content of 23-25 Brix, and acid level of 6-7.5 TA. 

Instead, the two batches were:
Batch "A" (bottom rows mixed with unfermented Zinfandel juice):
21.75 Brix
9ish TA
Batch "B" (top rows, just grapes):
19.75 Brix
9ish TA

A bit surprised that the acids are so similar on both batches.  We'll be deciding what to do with the grapes over the next 24 hours - stay tuned!

Let's get the Zin started

We were not expecting the Zin must to be so high in sugar / low in acid - so here's what we did:
1. Combined the must into one Brute; there's about 17 gallons total
2. Removed 1.5 gallons or so of the free run juice
3. Added 2 quarts of water, to bring the sugar down to 26 brix.  TA (0.64)  & pH (3.9) stayed the same.
4. Added 10 tsp pectic enzyme (a bit more than the 1/2 tsp / gallon guideline)
5. Pitched 10g of D254 (1/3 of the packet) by sprinkling dry on top of 78 degree must
6. Waited 6 hrs
7. Added 2 tsp Fermaid K
8. Added Malolactic Starter (Viniflora Oenos)
Within a day, it was bubbling away; cap being pushed down at least 4x/day - we hear that's best, especially during primary fermentation (first 4-5 days).

Zin's in!

Picked up our Zinfandel must, this time from Murrill Vineyard, in the Sierra Foothills.  After being worried that it's been too cool a year to properly ripen, the numbers actually look great!  As reported by our broker:
Brix: 27.6 (wow!)
TA: 0.65
pH: 3.7
Immediately after crush, added just under 50ppm potassium metabisulfate to kill any native yeasts (used 1/4t per 5 gallons of must).  Processing to start tomorrow. 

Mini-heat snap

Finally, a mini heatwave that we hoped would bring the grapes closer to being ripe.  They're closer, but not ready to be picked anytime soon: ranged from 19 - 22 brix.  We did give the grapes a bit of water before the hottest days, 6 hrs drip on 9/27/2010.

Vague guidance

Remember the vines looking like they had burnt leaves, and the one on row 7 that's really nasty looking?  Well I took samples into the Master Gardners, who sent it off to UC Davis for testing. 

The feedback from the lab:

"Powdery mildew Not detected. Some secondary fungal sporulation seen, but no plant pathogens detected. Some insect webbing present but no insects to send to Entomology for I.D." 

-----------------

The Master Gardener's comments on the above::

Often we find that the lab tends to focus their testing on potential vectors for new invasive pathogens introduced into the state.  I suppose the good news is that whatever they found on the leaves, it was not a point of concern from their perspective. 

I'm pretty sure they tested for Pierce's disease since it's a real hot-button in our area, also to the extent they could probably want to see if there's evidence of European Grape Moth.  Sadly, I don't think we can't rule out esca, but for now I'm going to continue to correct for known deficiencies (Magnesium, Boron) and continue to be on the lookout for more tell-tale signs of other diseases.

On and look into gopher / vole control too.  They got to our tomatoes, lettuce, and even zucchini!  

17.5 Brix

We're still only at 17.5 brix, mostly green seeds.  Aarg!

Good news is that the grapes are tasting really good - great for juice, but terrible for wine.  The birds are getting in here and there; not nearly as bad as years past but enough that we need to keep an eye on the clothespins--more specifically, keeping them secured at the base.

One project to keep us busy while ripening is laying mulch under the rows.  We were planning on doing this after harvest, but we really want to remove the piles of mulch from our driveway sooner rather than later.

It's a combination of live oak & eucalyptus chipped materials, which should help to keep moisture in the soil.

Mild temperatures

Temperatures are STILL expected to be in the 70s - 80s, so even though in previous years we've abandoned our PM spray program at veraison, this year we'll continue until disease pressure decreases.  So, we sprayed a 10% milk solution; plus gave the vines 6 hrs drip.

Brix at 13.5

This morning we gave the vines a bit of water (4 hrs drip).

Before watering, while securing the nets I sampled some berries from rows 2 and 8, to measure where we are at sugar-wise. 

Not too surprising, we're just about where we should be given late veraison: 13 brix at row 2, 14 brix at row 8.  Plus or minus of course; as we sampled off of only 4 berries per row.

Cast the nets

Here we are, netting the vines.  

The process involves lots of people - 3 that cast a 17' wide net over the rows, then unrolling down each row.

Then a follow-up crew secures the nets at the base with clothepins (although we may upgrade to fishing line soon, since it would do a better job at staying sealed against aggressive birds.)

This year, many volunteers got bit by some type of small biting bug.  Yuck!  I didn't know we had anything but mosquitos around here; and they usually die out by June-ish. 

More research necessary! 

Soon, you'll be netted

 

This is always a bit sad, the grapevines are growing, all green and otherwise satisfied, but they're about to get covered with mesh netting.  I don't think they mind it (definitely don't mind birds NOT getting to the grapes), but it's sad for me.

80% veraison

Purple grapes - now THAT'S what this time of year is supposed to be looking like!

We're about 80% now, most berries are now purple instead of green.  And based on previous years, it's perfect time to be putting up the nets. 

Timing IS everything.

Pre-netting prep

Interested in erradicating any traces of PM before a preventative spray tomorrow, I gave rows 2 & 3 a 10% milk + 2T/gallon Epsom salt solution (Epsom salt is to continue correcting for Magnesium deficiency.)  Plus, there was just enough to also spray the 3 vines closest to side path on rows 4 & 5 with this mix.  More as the weekend progresses!

Crystals

I noticed these small white crystal-like deposits on the top of some leaves in the vineyard.  They don't look like anything I've seen before; and because I've only recently tried spraying milk I wonder if it's residue from that?  More investigation needed, stay tuned!

Spray

Done spraying; was able to spread it out over several days thanks to foggy mornings.  The math ended up being 6.5 cups nonfat milk in the 4 gallon sprayer for a 10% solution.

Time for milk

Right around veraison is when many stop their powdery mildew (PM) spray schedule, mostly due to the fact that the grapes are relatively resistant to PM after veraison (leaf tissue and grapes are most susceptible during leaf growth / berry development per this article by Dr. Wilcox.) 

However, disease pressure here is so high (given the fact that temps have been within the ideal PM range, 65-85 F), that I'm going to give the vines at least one more spray of the lightest weight stuff I know that works as an erradicant: whey.  Many backyard vineyards use a 10% solution of nonfat milk exclusively - a practice backed up by Peter Crisp, out of the University of Adelaide down in Australia.  

Given that I just ran out of Stylet Oil and would rather not store a nearly-full container all summer, decided to give milk a try.

15% Veraison

At last, it looks like the grapes are starting to turn purple!  Looks like we're 2 or so weeks behind last year, makes sense in that we're having an unseasonably cool summer.

Brown tomato bug?

Was out pinching & training the vines, and noticed this huge bug.  Looked like a really big hornworm, but brown instead of green.  Well, after close inspection, I'm pretty sure he was just a hornworm, a.k.a. tomato bug.  Removed him just in case - let him live in nearby ivy instead.

After pinching & training, gave all but rows 5-6 a good 6 hrs of drip.

A good use for table grapes

Frog!  Made of green apple, green grapes, fruit roll-up, marshmallows and chocolate chips.  

Stealing the cheese of strawberry, almond, licorice, and mini-chocolate chip mouse.

Maintenance & Water Thoughts

This year's been exceptionally cool; temps usually only in the mid-70s to low 80s.  As such, the PM pressure is relatively high, especially on the exposed / warmer /sunnier parts of the vine (versus in the canopy, which is usually where disease pressure is higher).  So, gave the vines a good healthy spray of Stylet Oil this week.  No signs of verasion - yet.

Also, given the berries are forming & growing, am erring on giving the vines too much, vs too little water, so this week they got 6 hrs drip.  These professionals, however are saying post-veraison may be a more important time to keep irrigation up.  Hmm.

Water + Potassium Bicarbonate for a change

The hill has definitely dried out, and given the fact that the vines are moving into berry-growth mode decided it's time for a good soak - so gave all rows 6 hrs of drip over the weekend.

Now, in my every-other-week spray program routine, I started from bottom of the vineyard to top, this time spraying with a 1.5% solution of Kaligreen (baking soda like substance). I figure that *if* we're fighting potassium deficiency may as well use this foliar PM erradicant. I don't know that potassium as a nutrient is picked up through the leaves, but at least there'll be a bit added to the soil as the residual drips onto the soil.

In any case I started from the bottom and finished bottom of row 4.  Will keep going up the hill as the week progresses.

Gold!

A couple months ago I entered one of our wines in the Orange County Fair.  We don't live anywhere near Orange County, but the Orange County Wine Society hosts a statewide amateur winemaking contest in conjunction with their county fair.  We heard that as a result you get 4 judges to taste and evaluate your wine, so we went for it and entered one of our 2007 Cabernet Sauvignons (Leach Vineyards).

To our surprise, we got a gold ribbon in the mail the other day.  Yeay!  Given that this is from grapes we didn't grow, kudos really go to Don, the grower we bought these grapes from who lives just a few miles down the road.

Some specifics from the judges:

- We got positive reviews on the basics: clarity/appearance, color, acidity, balance

- One judge sensed that we got a little green/vegetal smell and taste, but indicated it's 'not too bad'

- Another judge thought that the body was slightly thin, and that the finish tapers a bit too quickly

- The most laugh-inducing comment: "Skillfully made"

Specific words the judges used to describe the wine:
Plum, black cherry, nice spicy characteristic, balanced fruit & oak

Yuck!

I've noticed that portions of the vineyard sometimes develop odd-looking leaves, and often I chalk it up to lack of water, or nutrients.

BUT, there's one part of the vineyard (mid-downhill side of row 7) that for TWO years in a row now have looked like they got severely burned leaves early in the season.  Weird part is that later in the season, the new growth looks nice & green & healthy.  But year-over-year trends make me nervous.

There are 3 things I've noticed:
(a) the burning leaf look
(b) black tar-like gunk on the shoots (markedly different than PM indicators)
(c) hard to see here, but some leaves off of this shoot are very small & crinkley - maybe 10% of 'em.

Given these symptoms, my worst fear is that this is Eutypa Dieback, but symptoms look different, and in pruning I didn't notice any of the traditional wedge-shaped discoloration in wood.

A trusty guide of messed-up leaves points to possibly Potassium deficiency, here's an image from Virginia that looks kinda similar and indicates the burning appears on mid-shoot leaves.  Overall vineyard checked out as having enough potassium, but could be this chunk is low?  Hmm.

Pierce's Disease would be bad.   Leaves aren't dropping at the petiole, however - in fact the attachment is pretty strong.

A new one I've not heard of - Esca, or grape measels?!? So far this is the winner in terms of fit. In terms of treatment yuck.

Stylet Oil, water to top & bottom rows

Back in the vines this week, spending lots of training the vines such that they're in their trellis system (versus trailing down to the ground).  Also removing parts: individual leaves that are in the way of grape clusters, laterals, and even entire shoots that aren't doing anything productive for the vine's health.

Good news is that the grapes are starting to look like grapes!

I'm at the long end of spray interval (just over 2 weeks, yikes), so I sprayed all rows with my standard 1.5% stylet oil solution, and gave the top and bottom rows overnight drip.

Spray

Finally got around to spraying stylet oil: did rows 2,3,4,7,8,9, plus the bottom side of row 5.  The rest of row 5 & all of 6 were just too overgrown and really needed some training & lateral removal, so I'll do that off & on today and plan on spraying them tomorrow.

Petiole Analysis, 2008 vs 2010

Exactly 2 years ago I took some petioles in (at bloom) to be analyzed by the local plant lab for mineral content.  And right now we're at about 80% bloom. So early this week I sampled from the random patches in the vineyard I did not do a foliar Zinc / Iron addition to find out how our soil amendment plan is doing.  Looks great!

Still need to do those fall Boron supplements (probably more aggressively), and Magnesium came up a bit low, otherwise looking quite good! Note that the units on this chart are in a random assortment of units, a true numbers jock worth her salt would have plotted as % of ideal to normalize the variety of units, ranging from ppm to % of weight. Maybe when she's done with client work she'll make the updates.

Why did I GIVE you water?!?

Countless times I've gotten the advice to provide just enough nutrients and water such that the shoots get to the top of your highest wire.

Well, once again, I've got ones that want to grow much more than that.  So, again afternoons have been spent pinching, trimming, and training all that growth and removing all the laterals.  Soon I'll give another good spray, as it's been almost 2 weeks and perfect PM growing temps.

I did give more water to the struggling rows - 1-2 & 7-9; although I believe their problem is more about lack of *sun* than lack of *water*.

More Stylet Oil + Foliar Iron & Zinc

No, really, that's it - did a quick spray before friends arrived for a weeklong visit.  Decided to give them 4 hrs of drip just to ensure continued growth.

Lateral Removal

Returned from a weeklong trip to the Pacific Northwest to a quasi-jungle! 

The vines are vigorously growing, so to manage that, and enable the next spray to get into the canopy, we spent hours pinching off laterals.  Then I reached out to friends that might be able to help, offering them dinner in exchange for an hour pinching off laterals.  Bryce & Lei were able to pitch in at the last minute and we got most rows under control. 

Then we dined on meat, home-grown bok choy, and ISO 9000 rice.  Yum!

Wines of the Columbia Gorge AVA

Tonight we're at the WineMaker conference in Stevenson, Washington (on the Columbia River Gorge).  We had a chance to taste a variety of wines from home winemakers and local vintners.  Winners (to me):
1st place: Cathedral Ridge Winery.  I especially liked the Zinfandel, Bruce was a fan of the Cab Sauvignon.  Best name goes to Bordheauxd Red (they are based on Hood River, OR after all)
2nd place: Strawberry wine, from Jason at Ancient Fire Wines in New Hampshire
3rd place: Rhubarb Wine, from a home winemaker in the Pacific Northwest.  I need to find the winemaker to thank him, then plant some rhubarb and try a batch.  Second time I've been impressed by rhubarb in a wine.

We learned lots today, which I'll hopefully summarize within the next few days.

2nd spray, 1st water of the year

 

The vines are looking good and healthy after their slow start this year.  Whew!  Just gave them their 2nd spray of the year: 1.5% stylet oil solution, plus 1 oz/gallon of iron & zinc supplement.  I managed to remember to omit the iron/zinc supplement from the segments I'll take petioles from, such that I get an accurate measurement when they get picked at fruit set.  Also gave the vines a token amount of water - just in case as we head out of town for about a week.

Spent Grain Recipes

Truth be told, I make both wine and beer.  It's the same equipment, and seems a shame for this equipment to go to waste.

Another thing I don't like wasting is the grain after making a batch of beer: usually there's at least 2 quarts of spent grain, that's high in protein, fiber, and b-vitamins.  I usually find recipes, but never archive what I've found.

Here are a few: 
An assortment: granola, chocolate chip cookies, yeast bread, et al.
Banana Peanut Butter Spent Grain Muffins, from another Lisa that didn't want another yeast bread recipe
Not a recipe, but a description from probably THE best veggie burger I've had at the Deschutes Brewpub in Bend, Oregon. Excerpt: Made with Black Beans, Vegetables, Spent Grain from our Brewery and Fresh Spices with Avocado-Tomatillo Salsa.

The vines, post-first spray.  Keep growing guys!

Shoots Emerging

Despite a late start, the vines have decided to catch up and are growing quickly!  Am now going through row-by-row to remove excess shoots, remove some of the kicker canes I'd kept on, and doing general clean-up of cover crop.  Tomorrow I'll spray the shoots that are long enough (over 8" or so) with a mix of Stylet Oil and Iron/Zinc supplement.  On a few randomly selected vines I'll exclude iron/zinc, since I'd like to do a petiole analysis this year (and the spray will interfere with iron and zinc measurements.)

Measuring the vineyard

How do you measure a vineyard?  We're looking to get in on a group buy of Bare Hand bird netting, and needed a linear measurement of the vines.
It was surprisingly challenging at first; we chose to measure a certain number of strings, but the string kept getting tangled up.  We got a total number but decided to double-checked our work with two tape measures and a notepad.  Here are the numbers:
row 9 = 98 feet; 19 vines
row 8 = 97 feet; 19 vines
row 7 = 92 feet; 18 vines
row 6 = 86 feet; 17 vines
row 5 = 82 feet; 16 vines
row 4 = 76 feet; 15 vines
row 3 = 66 feet; 13 vines
row 2 = 52 feet; 10 vines
row 1 = 42 feet; 8 vines (well, 7 vines and 1 citrus)

Two things we learned: our vines were planted with 5' vine spacing (5 feet between each vines, that is), and we actually have 135 vines including the scraggly non-producing ones.

Ironing the Vines

With all the rains, our cover crop of vetch has done quite well, to the extent that it's growing OVER some of the new growth. So this weekend I'm aiming to finish pulling cover crop from under the vines. While doing that, it makes sense to prep the soil (Iron and micro-nutrients) and also inspect and test irrigation.

Here's what one vine looks like after a winter of lots of water.

From there, I hand-pull only the area under each row. Then I'm left with a steep hillside.

I then level out the hillside directly under the drip line for each vine, add iron (this year am using Ironite, which includes many of the micronutrients the vines need), mix in some compost, and give them a good soaking.

80% budbreak

Got a good dose of sunshine the past day or two, and sure enough those shoots are starting to emerge (into abundant leaves on the base rows). About 80% of the vines have emerged to show us they are still alive.

A wave of new growth

Now we're seeing some buds, this as high as row 6. With the days getting longer, and LOTS of water from our above-normal rainfall, I'm pretty sure we'll see some very fast growth soon.

A shoot!

I stand corrected: I found this lone shoot on row 2.

Still (mostly) dormant

We just returned from our tour of the southwest, enjoying springtime in Southern California and Arizona.

Here in Northern California, however, the vines still look dormant. Only signs of bud swell on the lower rows. Odd, but not completely unusual given the amount of rain / lack of sunshine and relatively cold temperatures.

Cover crop is doing well - the vetch is now growing all the way down to the base of the vineyard, which should provide a great long-term boost to the soil.

Pruning started

With what looks like a long string of storms heading our way, decided to get pruning started now. Would have been more ideal to prune after the most recent rain (before our 3-4 day sunny spell), ah hindsight is 20-20.

Finished rows 5-9, so I'm at least 2/3 done.

Whew!

Second Racking

There's nothing going on in the vineyard, aside from cover crop getting going (currently clover is flowering, vetch is just starting to grow). We're going to wait until March to do any pruning, wouldn't want to encourage growth too early.

We did however decide to rack: we started with one of our 08s that had a little too much cloudiness on top. Then after a quick Web search we realized that now would also be a good time to rack the 09s. So out with the syphon and clean carboy to start transferring carboy to carboy. Also added Medium-Toast American Oak beans - roughly 0.75 oz per gallon (we think this worked out to about 10 beans per gallon).