Category: General

Yesterday was a beautiful day to be outside. It was sunny but cool and no wind to speak of. We were working with the same crew from the day before. We’re still way ahead of schedule and we thought we could probably finish this vineyard in one day, including clean up of the cuttings.

The Crimson Clover vineyard is in the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains just outside of the town of Morgan Hill. The crew always likes working in this vineyard because it’s a moderate 4-5% slope and a clean VSP system. We’ve managed this vineyard since 2007. At first it was a mess of suckers and poor training, but we got it corrected that first year, and now it’s fairly easy to maintain.

This is us wrapping up for the day. Jerry is hauling out the cuttings. This is the worst part of pruning. It’s like playing ‘Pick Up Sticks’ with 15,000 sticks, or roughly 1000 deep knee bends. I’m still sore today.

This is a picture of a finished vine. You can see the vines are still pretty young. This vineyard was put in in 2005 but since the pruning wasn’t right the first two years it’s really more like a 4 year old vineyard than a five year old.

The vineyard owners were out to see how things were going. I told them we’re very happy with this vineyard and we think it will be a star for us. Tasting the 2008 wine in barrel before Christmas I thought it was the best wine I’d made at that stage. It’s deep, dark and multi layered with tons of ripe fruit. We have it in 2/3 new oak right now, and I think this will be a great wine. I’m really excited for this vineyard in 2009. We’re going to put in even more work with it this year.

We’re hoping we can get the yield to about 3 tons, and make 150 cases or so. That will be the limit for this site though so it will always be a small production wine for us.

And the final picture is my self portrait for the day. I was actually trying to take a picture of the Crimson Clover coming up, but what the heck.

This has become our standard first picture. A comfortable late start at 8:06 AM, enough time for it to warm up to 36 degrees.

The entrance to the Arastadero Vineyard. We take care of this vineyard for Big Basin Vineyards. They use the fruit for a private client. This hill is very steep and difficult to work on.

Here’s an ‘after’. The clipping we left for Jerry to pick up later when we’re under less of a time crunch. We’re trying to complete all of our pruning before St Vincent’s day on the 22nd. That was the traditional pruning schedule, and since we’ve done that, we’ve had great luck with our vineyards.

The next stop was the little Harrison vineyard about a mile away. We installed this two summers ago with 170 Syrah plants. It took us just 30 minutes to finish here as well. The plants were pruned back to two buds this year to start their arms. Usually in year two you would have arms, but because we planted this so late the first year (after the 4th of July) it’s more like a 1 1/2 year old vineyard than two years.

Our final stop for the day was Vista Verde, our newest vineyard. This is about 1 1/4 acres of Pinot Noir on a very steep hill. We thought this might take us two days to do because of the slope. Here’s Stefania, with Kathy and ‘Jazzy’ in the background. You can see how steep this site is.

Here’s Jerry working in the same area of the hill. When we’re restoring a vineyard like this, I prefer to only use experienced pruners who know how to deal with ‘do overs’ and ‘restarts’ on plants. Our crew yesterday was Millie, Kathy, Jerry, his wife Estella, Stefania and me.

Estella, Jerry and Millie working in a little bowl of the vineyard. In the summer this bowl will actually catch the afternoon sun, but in the middle of winter it was still shady at noon.

Here’s a ‘before’ picture, and a good example of why a new vineyard can take so long. The pruning here was not terrible, it just wasn’t up to our quality. There is too much growth in the center, that encourages mildew, and some shoots are too long. That weakens other shoots and the plant spends its energy growing leafs instead of getting fruit ripe.

Here it is after fixing the problems. The center of the vine is now cleaned up and the spacing is right. This vine will now grow 10-12 shoots.

This was a hard vineyard to work. It was steep and needed a lot of expert care. One of the funny things from the day was that there are parts so steep, you need to get a running start at the vine, jump up the hill and grab it by the base. You then dig in your knees and prune. When you’re done you slide back down off the hill and do the entire thing over again.

Still we had a great crew and we finished by 3 PM. More on today’s pruning coming tomorrow.

I started canopy management yesterday. Most people call it pruning, but as I was cutting the vines, I remembered the problem areas from last year and spent extra time visualizing the growth.

There were plants with spurs too close together that I opened up and some on the upper hillside that are shaded thru much of the day that needed thinning. Proper pruning now means less time going back and cutting green growth.

One thing I’ve learned for certain is that the vines will grow no matter what you do to them, they persevere. A bad prune job, they grow anyway. Bad training, they grow anyway. Too close together or spaced too far apart, they grow anyway.

I like that as I’m working with each plant, it will tell me what it wants. When I pull a cane down to retrain the cordon, it will let me pull the one that is directionally meant to be used. With little or no resistance.

As I was working yesterday I kept myself amused by thinking of past day jobs and the trivial annoyances of working in an office environment. Nobody jammed the photocopier yesterday, the printer didn’t run out of toner, no worries about the fax machine paper supply, I didn’t have to drink bad coffee, and there were no extra perky in-your-face-first-thing-in-the-morning people with their sing-songy Good Mornings.

Just me, Gerry, the clippers, and the vines.

We’re heading out again this morning, with Paul, Kathy, Millie, and Truffles, and Gerry will bring Estella with him. We’ll finish Arastradero then make our way up the hill to Vista Verde to get started. With this size crew today we may even finish VV. I’ll make sure that Paul takes pics while we’re there so he can upload them tonight.

We’ll be adding a new vineyard site for 2009. Located at 1300 feet off Alpine Road near Summit Road this is a 7 year old vineyard of Pinot Noir.

We’re calling it Vista Verde, after the small development of houses it’s located in.

The vineyard is on a steep slope and is just over 1 1/4 acres. Total yield should be about 1 ton this year and 1 1/2 -2 tons long term. The trellis is a good VSP 5 wire system.

There was a landscaping crew there when we stopped by putting in some native ground cover. You can see the slope of the vineyard well in this picture.

There was frost on the ground. This will be a cool site for us. Just right to get Pinot Noir ripe. The vineyard is just about 2 miles from Chaine d’Or, although it’s on a separate ridge line so driving between the two takes about 20 minutes.

Here’s the vista in Vista Verde.

The vineyard has a good drainage system in place and is paved from top to bottom which should make working in it just a little easier for us.

There are about 15 dead plants we need to replace, and some poor pruning and training we need to correct, but over all the vineyard is in good shape. We expect a smaller yield this year as we fix the training and pruning on about 100 plants. Most will be ‘do overs’. On those we will restart the cordons from the trunk, and those plants will only have 1-2 clusters instead of 8-10. Next year though they will be ready to produce back at normal levels.

Just the other day Paul and I were in the kitchen doing chores and he startled me telling me to look outside, “quick!”. I thought the neighbors cat was getting into something again, or up to no good. The cat in reference is one we are doing battle with since a recent pooping incident on our lawn…a cat that poops like a dog, so annoying.

Grape growers never say there is such a thing as a bad year. We say “It was a great year, I hope I never have another one like it again”.

As I close out the year with a cold that’s keeping us home, there are some good things for sure. The wine we made was very good this year. Our sales went up again, almost 200% for the year. We had a lot of fun, made new friends, and had great times with old friends. The 49ers fired Mike Nolan, and America refused to hire Sarah Palin. (I called the combination of the two events a sure sign we are turning away from admiration for stupid people.)

We had visitors from Vermont, New York, France, and places in between at the winery this year. We also had some great parties. Gerard holding a possum by the tail is still a highlight everyone talks about. My day job went very well. We really turned our group around and customers noticed. We got by on one car, and one day job, and kept things afloat.

It wasn’t a bad year. It was a hard year. And it reminds me of stories my grandparents would tell. They laughed at the stories, and remembered times with friends and family fondly, but they were hard times, times they didn’t want to see again.

I think the right way to send out 2008 is the way Stefania has sent things out she hasn’t liked since age 4. If you know her, and you’ve seen her mad, you’ve seen this face. 🙂

Here she says good by to 1973, and 2008.

The trellis wires were the perfect place to hang “stained glass” cookies for a photo op.

More cookies on the wire…

These are the “Hot Tub” vines, you can kind of see the infamous tub in the background.

Originally the vines in the back were head trained, like the ones in the front, but we’re also re-doing the backyard. We had Jerry pull out more than half the vines in the back so that we could train the existing ones on a new trellis system. The posts and wires are in, but it looks goofy until we prune. When I do the Suburban Vineyard Backyard photos you’ll see before and after.

For now, enjoy pictures of the holiday cookies Kathy and I made hanging on the wires.

This was taken in 2006 when Paul added Mourvedre to the front (over by the blue tarp).

Later that Spring, Paul is watering the young vines in the walkway.

Another view of the “before” vineyard from the street.

And then in 2008 I decided I was tired of watering the lawn and we had Jerry start the tear-down.

The plants and concrete all came out from the front yard to prepare for a mini-demonstration vineyard.

And I mean, all of the concrete…

Jerry removed all traces of lawn and set new wood and metal posts. Here he is below starting to string the wires.

And so it will sit like this thru the winter until March when the baby vines come. Paul has ordered 25 Mourvedre (5 rows with 5 plants each) and Thompsons Seedless for the plot under the magnolia tree in the parking strip. A neighbor down the street requested at least one table grape plant so we’re putting in 4. Originally we wanted to put a seedless muscat but none were available.

The plan is to put up one of those “take one” boxes like they do for property sale information, but ours will include flyers on the project, it’s costs, and how much water usage we anticipate in the coming months/years. The rest of the landscaping will be drought resistant and require minimal watering. As for the backyard, that’s another blog with more pictures coming soon!

I’ll update the front vineyard progress after the new plants go in, for now, it’s an ugly posted dirt patch with good intentions.

Last Friday we headed back up to Chaine d’Or to finish racking our 2007 Cabernets. I wanted to leave the wine in tank just a little longer this time to let it settle a bit more. Last time we racked the wine only settled for a couple hours and this was a bit of a ‘make up’.

We rack for three reasons. First by transferring the wine to tank it lets us clean out the gunk, or lees in the bottom of the barrels. It also lets the wine settle in tank, getting more of the solid bits out. Second it allows us to expose the wine to some oxygen and that helps soften the tannins of the wine. Kind of like a giant decanter. Finally it lets us add sulfur to the wine in one even shot, which I think is better that barrel by barrel.

Sulfur is very important to keep out the little bugs that can ruin wine. Maybe later I’ll do a blog on the myths about sulfites, but for right now I’ll just leave it at :If it doesn’t say “Contains Sulfites, it should say Contains Bacteria.”

Off again at 36 degrees and 8:30 AM

Jerry getting all the barrels ready to fill. We’re getting to be a really good team at this. Jerry, Stefania and I each have tasks that we need to do, and we work very efficiently at each one. Jerry does the set up, cleans barrels and tanks, breaks down equipment and helps fill. Stef does sulfur and additions, lab readings, cleans barrels and helps empty the tank. I move barrels, do set up and break down, top off barrels and decide on sulfur amounts and wine movement.

We pump very gently at about a level of 5.8 amps, it’s actually a little slower than using gravity.

Stef measuring sulfur. We added 50ppm on this addition. She has a new sulfur lab that will give us exact amounts of free and bound sulfur, plus total sulfur so that we can fine tune our additions even more.

Yes, I did in fact call Facebook “Lamebook”. Here’s how it went down. My brother has a teenage daugther and she signed up. To keep an eye on her and what-not, he signed up, and then pitched it to me as a great way to stay in touch. Hah.

I played along, created a profile, uploaded a couple of photos and even added a real friend or two. Then, after people started to find me, a person whom I would not really consider a friend, asked me to add them on. See, this person was a former colleague from a job many years ago, one that I was glad to move on from. Out of curiosity, I went to this persons profile page and found them to have well above 600 “friends”. And that was the turning point for me when I decided to delete my account and move back to real life and real interactions with people I really know.

There’s an ad on tv for HP products and they pitch the computer as being “personal again”. And I do agree that the internet and computers are great tools for maintaining relationships, however…

For Paul to maintain an account is fantastic, it gives our friends and customers a chance to chat and keep up with us on a more personal level. I enjoy looking over his shoulder as he updates his own profile or scrolls thru other peoples messages, it’s a fun diversion for a few moments, but I don’t feel compelled to spend a lot of time browsing.

Next blog coming up, as promised, photos of the latest vineyard project and maybe even an update from Paul on another Santa Cruz Mountains Pinot vineyard we’re negotiating with.

To our Chicago friends: We are so bummed to not be coming in for New Years, have a great time at the game if you go and we’ll see you later in the year.