Pruning is in the last stages!

We are done with pruning in the Don Miguel Vineyard and the crew has moved on to Sonoma Coast and the Doña Margarita Vineyard. This year it has taken longer to prune because we had a late start with the December rains. Besides, we have been able to use a new organic product to paint the pruning wounds and prevent Eutypa, the feared wood fungus that can go inside the trunk and kill the vine. But it takes a long time to paint all the cuts!

The last parcel of Pinot Noir was pruned this week. While the rest of the crew prunes in the background, Alfredo goes after them and paints the cuts to prevent Eutypa.	This young vine in the Doña Margarita Vineyard thinks it's already spring and has budded out several leaves!

We went for a walk in the Doña Margarita Vineyard, which we love because there are sooo many gophers there!! We ran up and down the rows and tried so hard to catch one -- but no way, we couldn't. Not a single one. Darn! We are indeed a bit behind in pruning, as it will take almost a month to do the 20 acres of that vineyard. Fortunately we've been lucky with the weather so hopefully we'll finish before bud break ... we don't have a choice!

We both worked really hard here as we could smell the gopher -- but although we made a humongous hole, we couldn't get him

Pruning is on the way big time!

Not much happens during the winter, while the vines are dormant, except for pruning -- but that's no small feat. Pruning will very much affect the vine's development during the growing season, its balance and the canopy. And balanced vines produce balanced wines!

This is a cane-pruned vine, where the two arms have become too distant from each other. To re-train it, we leave a sucker that next year can be trained to form a perfect cane.	And this is a cane-pruned vine that we have re-trained. Last year's sucker has become the new cane, so now the two arms are close to each other and will make for a  perfectly balanced canopy.

We found a really well pruned cordon vine! Look at the perfect positions of each cordon arm: four on the  right and four on the left.	This is the 'snaggletooth' pruning system that we have developed for Albariño. It forms a divided canopy without a double arm that would make the vine  much bigger and negatively impact quality.

We had a lot of good company yesterday! Besides our friend Molly, Tony's cute and smart dog, this little puppy was so much fun -- we  ran and ran together!	Digging for gophers is a fabulous part of our vineyard walks! We took turns at getting in the hole -- but no, we didn't catch a single gopher. Just ended up really messed up with mud!

Harvest is in full swing!

This is one fast and furious harvest! No complaints from anybody, though -- everyone is happy as can be, working as hard as they can. The vineyard crew loves to pick at night, starting at 3 am (brrrr.... we're still sleeping at that time) and as soon as dawn breaks, Mom takes us to wherever they are picking with fresh coffee and donuts; and for the health conscious, fruit and almonds! We love that -- and sometimes, after much begging (when Mom isn't looking), one of the guys gives us a piece of donut!

Coffee feels good on those misty, cool Green Valley mornings at break of dawn	We won't get a treat while Mom is looking -- but when she turns her back, begging bears fruit!

On clear mornings, picking at sunrise can  paint a beautiful picture	Last week we had some HOT days! The crew suffered the sun bravely, but WE needed shade

The clusters this year look more picture-perfect than any time in memory! The berries are good-sized  but not too big, juicy and well formed. Judge for yourself from the pictures below -- taken by our viticulturist, Zach Berkowitz, who not only knows a lot about vines but also about photographs!

Albariño	Chardonnay	Tempranillo

We have picked by now all our Pinot Noir and Albariño, which have both given us outstanding fruit and very good yields.  Some of the Chardonnay has been harvested, too; we're about mid way with that. Yields are mid-size, great fruit so far. The Tempranillo is always the last one to come in, but as you can see it looks gorgeous! We will probably pick that at the same time as the Syrah, which although not pictured, looks promising!

Pinot Noir

Images of Harvest

Harvest is in full swing! And a good one it is, too -- so far at least. We LOVE going in the vineyard at this time and munching on the grapes; they are the most delicious we can ever remember! In fact, what's wonderful is to see everyone looking so happy: the vineyard guys, Tony and his cellar team, even the office  staff -- and Mom, especially. Sooo different from last year, when all were looking so stressed out and somber.

Mom has been taking tons of pictures and asked us to post them in our blog, so here are a few that we think will give you an idea of how things are looking!

We've had classic Green Valley weather most days: foggy and cool until mid-morning, then sunny through the day. Perfect for picking!	Can you believe how fantastic these grapes look? Best in Sonoma County, for sure, if not in California -- which means the entire USA!

The grapes looked yummy here, but Mom made us pose instead of letting us eat them :-(	Can't tell you how tasty these were -- we ate soooo many of them, we got upset tummies!

Once on the trays, the grapes are off-limits for us. But you can see from my look that I, Bonita,  very much wanted to eat the whole thing	Agustín and Filiberto are our friends! They let us jump on the bins so we can check the quality of the grapes -- which they are rightly proud of

This little green friend on Filiberto's hand is a good bug! He was merrily walking on the fruit.
	Can you see the blimp in the sky behind  Mom? We took this picture, hah! We  know this is a sign of good luck so the  harvest will be the best ever!!

Our Doña Margarita Vineyard in Sonoma Coast is always behind

Today we went to our Doña Margarita Vineyard, which is always behind the Don Miguel Vyd because it is so much closer to the ocean -- only six miles from it. But is was only me, Bonita, since Chico was very sick yesterday and had to rest. You'd never guess from what: he ate something that, in the words of the vet, was "dead, rotten and fermenting"! She had to pump out his stomach and took out, in her words, "a liter of a very smelly liquid"... :-( Tony said that it probably was a dead raccoon -- Yachhhh!  

I had a taste of a few grapes, but they're  not near ripe yet. Good flavors, though!	Tony was checking the grapes but Molly,  his dog, was not interested -- unlike me!

This vineyard looked at least two weeks from harvest. But the flavors are wonderful; and we know from experience that if there is a heat wave, the sugars will jump up and we'll have to rush to pick! So we are following the grape maturities very closely and the vineyard crew is here every day checking things. 

You can see how beautiful the grapes look -- this year we have perfectly formed bunches! They are not too big and not too small, same as the berries. Just Goldilock's size!!	Can you believe this? We found a few Chardonnay vines in the new Pinot Noir block. Obviously they were mixed up with the Pinot budwood, so we'll t-bud them next spring.

Getting closer to harvest!

The weather has been beautiful and it looks like harvest could be just a week away! That means we get to eat the grapes during our vineyard walks -- yumm! Actually, they're not as sweet as we like them but we can't help ourselves to munch on them already. We've soooo much been looking forward to it!

Gearing for harvest means a lot of activity in the vineyard and also in the cellar -- getting new equipment like tanks, tractors, lights for night harvesting, an additional forklift, and also healthy drinks & lunches for our team! 

In our 'Stony Block' the grapes are almost ready -- Chico devoured quite a few! Bonita is more picky & thought they were not ripe enough	We loved driving our new UTV, this fancy John Deere Gator! Tony taught us how to drive it so we can help him at harvest ...

On the sad side, we have been having quite a problem with gophers this season. Being organic, we cannot use poison (and we wouldn't use poison anyhow, as we feel it's not the right thing to do for the land) but only traps, which take a lot longer to place and collect the pesky animals that devour our vines -- and the workload has been so high that the vineyard team couldn't take the time to put the traps in the Doña Margarita Vineyard -- and we lost 12 vines in a week!

Here's one of the dead vines from the gophers. It's so sad! We saw the vineyard team feel really terrible to see their work destroyed like that	You can see here, right, that the gophers ate the roots clean -- wish we could have gotten to those mean animals and killed them ourselves!

Véraison is here!

Some Pinot Noir vines of the Swan clone  are almost totally colored!

Finally, the long awaited véraison has arrived; that's when the red grapes turn dark and the white grapes become soft and translucent. The season is definitely behind, although not as much as last year. And the weather is beautiful right now, sunny and warm but not beyond the mid-90s.  We are anxiously awaiting the grapes to ripen, so we can munch on them while walking in the vineyard with Mom! On this vineyard walk we tried a few of the red grapes, but no way -- they are far from being ripe. With the arrival of véraison, the powdery mildew risk disappears -- which makes us very happy. Now it is botrytis we have to fear, but as long as the weather stays nice and warm we should not have any problems. This could indeed be a great vintage!

I was not at all interested in the Chardonnay grapes -- they are just starting to soften up and turn translucent, which is the beginning of véraison for the whites.	And I was totally uninterested in the Albariño grapes -- I wouldn't even look at them! Those haven't yet begun véraison and are still hard as rocks.