We had a great time in Vegas. Unfortunately the frustration with our iPhones meant I didn’t feel like taking the thing out and taking many pictures. The show Saturday night was a blast. I though Locksley was the best band of the night. We meet a ton of great people.
Next year we have to make it a party and have people join us. The set up had us inside a cabana on the beach. There was plenty of room for us to have guests in the cabana and just sit back, enjoy the wine and music and take advantage of the great space.
We spent all day Sunday by the pool, swimming and watching football on the tv. We had a nice dinner at Hank’s inside the Green Valley Ranch resort.
We flew back Monday morning and then Tuesday we headed over to the Verizon store as soon as they opened. It took a little longer than I though it would but we both left with new Samsung Fascinates which so far have worked out well. It took us a little time to figure out how to get photos off the phone, but we did that today.
The best thing is I have a signal again in San Jose! For a few weeks now I’ve had nothing from AT&T. One day last week I dropped a call 11 times driving down highway 87. Voicemails were showing up 2-3 days after they had been sent. Verizon has had a good signal at both home and work. We’ll try it out in the winery tomorrow.
The camera is also nicer on the Fascinate and includes a flash which means we’ll have pictures from inside the winery this year as well as early morning harvest day pictures. Better yet there’s video! We’ll test that out tomorrow but expect us to have a few harvest related videos on the blog soon.
We also walked out of the store with an HP mini. Our hope is that this will allow us to connect in more spots during harvest and get up pictures, videos and blogs in ‘real time’. We’ve set it up with 3G service and so far it’s gotten a good signal in tough spots (like my office). We’ll try that at the winery and out in the field this weekend.
Which brings us to the ‘Back in the Game’, part of the Blog today. Tomorrow we’ll be in the winery prepping for our first picks of the season. We’ll be cleaning picking bins, and prepping the crusher, tanks and fermentation bins. We’ll stage the pump so everything is ready for Friday.
Friday morning we’ll harvest three of the Haut Tubee vineyards; Home, the Church and the Ottigurr vineyards. We’ll then head up to Chaine d’Or and harvest the Chardonnay there. We’re not expecting much Chardonnay, most was damaged by sunburn in the August heat wave, but what is in good shape we’ll bring in.
After the Chardonnay has gone through the crusher we’ll process the Haut Tubee grapes. Then we’ll clean everything up all over again and prep for Saturday. Our last task for Friday will be to drive down to Aptos and drop off picking bins for our Pinot Noir. I expect a 12-14 hour day.
Saturday morning we will be picking our Pinot Noir and getting it back to the winery for processing. We’re expecting 2 tons. I think it will be a slow pick. The clusters are small and light with few on each plant. That will slow the picking crew down. If all goes well we’ll try and take Sunday off (except for punch downs) and watch some football.
Watch the blog and see how we do with live updates.