One of the new vineyards I didn’t get a picture taken of last week was this small 250 plant vineyard in Morgan Hill. Coming up with a nickname for a vineyard can be a little tough sometimes. It’s also hard to describe them to Jerry so he knows where I’m sending him. So we might call something a fanciful name like’ ‘Vista Vineyard’, but Jerry will know it as, “The Vineyard with the Crazy Lady’.
This new site though was pretty easy to come up with a nickname for and the nickname will be an easy way for Jerry to remember it too. A muster, and they are called musters if it’s mixed males and females, of peafowls have made this backyard their home.
Here’s a closer view of the lead Peacock. Peacocks are completely unafraid of humans when they are feral in California like this group. I don’t know how they behave in India but here they largely ignore human’s, cats, cars, and any other distractions.
Stefania and I were out at 8:00 AM Sunday morning (It was 32 degrees when we arrived) to show the owners how to prune. They had a vineyard management company who put it in and was taking care of the vineyard for them but this year they wanted to do most of the work themselves.
That’s something we’re happy to help out with. We’ll answer emails and phone calls when they have questions and go out and show them how to do key things in the vineyard like pruning. Sunday we spent about an hour showing them how to prune these three year old vines.
The site is actually similar to our home vineyard. It’s on the eastern side of the Santa Teresa hills in deep rich black clay. The vines will have a lot of vigor and yield well with little watering. The owners aren’t actually sure if it was Zinfandel or Cab Franc that was installed. Their paperwork says Cab Franc, but the lead installer told them it was Zinfandel. Right now it’s hard to tell the difference. It looks like Cab Franc to me. As soon as the plants get leaves I’ll be able to tell the difference very quickly.
We’re hoping the yield will be high enough to process the grapes on their own. Right now it’s likely going into the Haut Tubee blend. In the future though with other vineyards we have coming on line it might be part of a Santa Clara Valley Cabernet blend.