Month: June 2010

The most famous gopher hunter of all time:

That’s not exactly the approach I took on Saturday, but it’s close. We arrived at Chaine d’Or about 9AM. Kathy, Millie and Amber were there to help Stefania with thinning of the Chardonnay vines. My task for the morning was to ‘hunt’ gophers. Chaine d’Or is the only vineyard we have not had owls move in to so I still have to kill the little critters myself.

I’ve got nothing against the little guys personally. It’s what they do to a vine that sucks. The picture below is a mature Cabernet Sauvignon vine. This vine had its roots deep enough that it survived the gopher attack. A younger vine would have died.

This is what I’m looking for. This is a fresh dig. That means the little devil is active right in this area. The main tunnel will actually be right between the two fresh piles of dirt. I use a long pole to poke through and fine the tunnel.

The activity was down a lot from two weeks ago. I almost have them out of the vineyard for now. One more run through in another two weeks should do it.

I finished up about 11:30 and spent the next 90 minutes topping the remaining 2008’s and all the 2009’s in the winery. Stefania and crew finished up about 12:30 for the day. Temps were going to get into the high 80’s by 2 PM so we didn’t want to work much past 1 PM.

The vineyard looked very good, and the 2009’s are coming along well.

Pic is of the Syrah vines in the Haut Tubee vineyard. This is where Paul and I like to hang out with friends, have BBQ’s, soak in the hot tub, lounge in the adirondacks and generally kick back and enjoy just about every evening. I did put the canopy up on Easter so I could rotisserie a leg of lamb, I was not going to be thwarted by a little rain storm (ok, it poured on me, but I was out there!!!)



The palm tree is on the neighbors side of fence and is perfect for our back yard vineyard because it’s not dense enough to provide a lot of shade. The vines in front of the hot tub have filled in perfectly and are all done flowering. We have great fruit set and have had good luck keeping powdery mildew at bay using Stylet Oil.

The front vineyard is still a work in progress. I was just thinking how pretty it could be if we put sod between the rows and made it look a lot more urban-ey, but that would defeat my number one priority and that’s saving water. The row closest to the camera is still flowering so I didn’t pull those shoots down yet to make canes – even though I won’t keep the fruit this year, I don’t want to risk breaking them. After flowering the shoots harden off and are more pliable, making it easier to pull them down to the cordon wire and get them wrapped around.

A couple of weeks ago we brought in a ton of river rock to put up under the eaves in the front. Originally there were tropical shade plants that Paul wanted to keep and I talked him out of them. Tropical foliage with a vineyard? That’s even too eclectic for my tastes. So it’s been raw dirt for over a year and I didn’t want to invest in decking for a space we rarely use though we talked about that too. Eventually the cats using the dirt as a litter box put me over the edge and I said, “that’s it, we’re getting rocks!”.

Paul had a great idea, why not use the leftovers to line the vineyard under the rows, that’ll help keep the soil in place and look better than bare dirt in the winter. He figured we’d have a lot of leftover rock from the ton order. Nope. I’m going to need a second ton to fill in the rest.

Soon as flowering is done, we’ll clean up the rest of the “weeds” (the dead and dried up wildflower cover crop) and I’ll pull down that last row of shoots and get those trained on the wire. The two rows under the magnolia tree are behind, but I should be able to pull down at least one half of the cordon.

One thing I noticed for sure with the Crimson Clover, it definitely helped the other plants I have up front. The rosemary is the brightest green I’ve seen, the sage flowered and the lavender bloomed for the first time. Could have something to do with the wet winter we had too, but clover is supposed to put nitrogen back into the soil and I definitely noticed a difference in foliage color.

Remember how iNlove I was with my new iPhone? What do I say? I’ve never been a phone person so that part of the gadget is virtually worthless to me, however…

I’m a text junky. I admit. Paul and I will text each other while sitting side by side on the couch…lame huh? You should have seen our first cell bill after we discovered that function. Good times.

Next came the apps. I’m very selective about the toys I’ll put on my phone, mostly because I’m overwhelmed by the choices. I’m to the point of needing an adviser to help me decide what tools I really want or need. The most useful one for the winery is Swipe. It lets us process credit cards remotely for wine sold at events.

I seldom use the camera feature, but find myself taking notes more often that I would have thought. I downloaded a decibel reader, to see how loud Kathy and Millie’s “little mutt” really is when she snores, and I play the occasional game of Frogger.

The greatest use so far has been checking email, using google for crossword term searches, and other internet stuff.

I’ve set the stage. I’m ready for an iPad. From everything I’ve read, it’s exactly what I want and need. I can move Swipe over to it and it becomes a business expense.

As for an update on the iPhone, let me tell you a quick story. Paul had the original one, I waited for 3G. Last month he dropped his, again, on the concrete crushpad and it shattered the glass. I gave him mine, we switched out our sim cards and I bought some press on cover protectors…for now it will have to do.

It’s June 1st and there is plenty to be done in the vineyards. We didn’t get an intern this year, mainly because we don’t need one. I’m full time with the winery now and caught up on the major projects.

This week I’ll head up to Chaine d’Or and finish thinning. Doesn’t look like the Cabernet will need as much as the Chardonnay. We’ve been steadily pruning the spurs on the Chard so that they aren’t so high into the wires. It means selecting the best looking shoot from the cordon and letting it grow so we can turn it into a new spur.

I’ll need to check on the Sesson vineyard in Morgan Hill. It’s a year behind schedule, but the site is vigorous enough that I think we’ll see huge improvements this summer. We might even get some cordons trained, that’d be fantastic.

The Crimson Clover vineyard is likely still in flower right now so I’ll leave it alone for another week or two. I’ll go check it, but I anticipate that I’ve got some time before I can thin and I hate to make a special trip just to sucker – I can do that while I’m there cleaning up the shoots.

Harrison’s Vineyard looks great, we checked in with Mark last weekend and Arastradero is caught up too. The ‘estate’ vines are still flowering, but I’m getting ready to start pulling cordons down in the Mourvedre. I’ll dose them up with water pretty good this summer and then let them take off on their own after that – a few are lagging behind, but I’m not surprised given the shaded spots up by the magnolia tree.

For my sis-in-law about Cropping:

Each mature vine will have up to 10 spurs (5 on each side of the main trunk). Each spur will have 2 shoots and each shoot will carry 2 clusters of grapes. So for example, the Mourvedre vineyard I have at the house, which is 25 plants, will produce 1,000 clusters of grapes.

{25 plants x [2 clusters x (2 shoots x 10 spurs)]} = 1,000

When we say how we’ll crop the vineyard, we are talking about the method of pruning or training we’ll use to control that final number.

Some winemakers and winegrowers may choose to have only one shoot per spur and only one cluster per shoot. In the example above, the yield would be 500 clusters.

I keep joking with Paul that I want to crop the heck out of the Mourvedre, 2,000 clusters!