Vineyard Visits

Saturday Stefania and I went out to visit vineyards and check on how things are going.  We’d normally do this around the 4th of July but we were out of town unexpectedly.

First stop was the Peacock Vineyard.  This would actually be the best vineyard we visited.  Everything was very clean and there was good fruit set.

The rows were in great shape and healthy with no signs of mildew.  I’m estimating we’ll get 1500-2000 pounds of Cabernet Franc from this vineyard.

We’re excited to have the Cabernet Franc.  Stef’s wanted to make a Cab Franc since we started making wine.  We’ll also likely do a blend of Cab Franc and Cabernet Sauvignon with some of the grapes.

Next stop was at Crimson Clover.  At 9 AM we still had fog overhead.  This is a familiar picture above of the back of El Toro.

The rows looked nice but fruit set was light.  We’re expecting the same yield here as in 2008.  There was shatter in the vineyard and a low number of clusters.

We had one little surprise in the vineyard, the tiny birds nest with an egg in it on this small vine.

Our third stop was at the Red Hen vineyard which has been full of vigor.  There was about 400 pounds of Merlot here.  We’ll need to come back and do some more thinning.

And the red rooster and red hen stopped by to say hello.

Next stop was at the Copenhagen vineyard.  We had a crew of seven there thinning and tucking the vineyard.

The crew had finished about have the rows when we came by.  We’ll have to spray for mildew again here but otherwise it looked good.  Fruit set here was just ok as well.

You can see the little blue Toyota in the background here and Stef and Jerry talking in the row.  We ran to Chaine d’Or next to pick up Millie who was thinning there and then went together to a new vineyard above Los Altos we’re taking on.  I stopped taking pictures though as we were busy taking notes and coming up with a vineyard plan.

Everything looked pretty good, but yields will be very light again this year.  Down 40% from 2009 I think, which was our last ‘normal year’.