How cold was it when we left after coffee this morning? So cold I couldn’t keep the camera straight. It was 42 when we left the house.
It’s 37 miles from our house to the winery. It’s mostly freeway, but the last few miles are very steep and curvy. The seal on the dash board keeps me from taking the turns too fast up the mountain. ‘Keep the seal safe’, and not moving. This is Highway 85 about 10 miles from our front door. That’s Montebello and Mount Eden in the distance.
This is what we came to do. This is a Cabernet plant that has been successfully retrained. This is one we retrained in 2008, so it’s three years in.
Stefania and I walked each row to finish up the sawing and retraining where it was needed. We do have to stop and play ball from time to time with the dogs.
The vineyard looked very good. At this point I think we are 97% done with retraining. There are still a few plants that we will have to pull new shoots on next year. It was just a matter of not having anything in a good position this season to restart a cordon. On those plants we left a new start again and will hope we have a good cane to pull down next year.
The storm clouds started to come over about 12:30. We had planned to leave at 12:45 though so that we could get home in time for the Saints game at 1:30.
We’ll be back tomorrow. There are about 30 plants in rows 1 and 2 to check still and we can do that in the rain if we need to. We also have some work to do in the winery tomorrow that will keep us busy for 5 or 6 hours.