50% Veraison

Veraison is the fancy word for when the grapes start to soften and in our case turn purple. We started to see this around the 20th, now about 50% of the grapes are there. Apparently that means we're somewhere between 30 - 45 days from harvest, assuming an 'average' year. Average. Hmm.

Pretty leaf, but . . .

I noticed this in the vineyard today - a very beautiful leaf, but according to a few books I have this resembles Magnesium deficiency. It's supposedly VERY rare. Given that harvest isn't too far off, we'll probably wait until post-harvest to look at soil ammendments or other nutrient-balancing activities.

Berry Development thus far

They're getting big! We sprayed with Stylet Oil and remaining iron/zinc on the periphery vines, and will follow up in 1 week with a good dose of water (probably 6 hrs or so).

Water Log

Watered the vines overnight; 4 hrs drip-irrigation. Supposed to be a hot week, we'll keep an eye on 'em.

Hummingbirds come on out!

It's long before harvest, which is when you have to worry about birds eating all your ripening grapes, but I've read in several places (including this Clos LaChance press release) that attracting hummingbirds to a garden will keep other birds away, given their territorial nature. True?

So, knowing that once you start you can't abandon the poor hummers, we decided to go for it and attract some the vineyard by putting out hummingbird feeders - and, in the longer-term, hope some of our hummingbird-attracting California native plants take off.

It took a few weeks, but today it looks like they're downing 8 oz/week from the feeder. I'm guessing when push comes to shove, the tasty scent of mature grapes will overpower the hummingbirds' territory, but it's a fun experiment.

Today I also sprayed the vines - 1.5% Stylet Oil solution pretty thoroughly given that there's a good amount of space opened up in the canopy AND temps have been in the ideal PM range (80s).

Water Log

The vines are growing like crazy, but some of the grape clusters look like they're drying up too much, so I watered for about 4 hrs today. Here's what we're looking like:

Leaf Pulling

We noticed that fruit on the vines is starting to set, so realized it's time to pull leaves from around the clusters. So, we had our first annual leaf-pulling party. Friends not afraid of a bit of farmwork with sturdy boots head out and pulled all the lateral shoots under the fruit zone, AND the leaves around the clusters such that they'll be able to grow trouble-free and with 'dappled sunlight'.

Here's a video from Wine Spectator that provides an example of leaf pulling - this is WAY more aggressive than what we did, given the latest research and our location, but provides a cute overview.

It ended up being very hot out, so we pulled late (7-8p), and enjoyed snacks before and dinner afterwards. All with local wine we selected the weeks before at the Santa Cruz Mountains Vintner's Festival.