On the Contrary

Vine: Ah, spring is here.  I can tell because when I get up in the morning every muscle in my body hurts.  No it is not the weather, but the work of pre-pruning and pruning debris clean up.  Each year usually I wait until after pruning and then rake up the shoots, some that are 16’-18’ long and then transport them to the burn area to burn.  If I were a real farmer I would have a tractor with a flail mower so I could just rake them to the center of each row and then cut them up.  But only having my trusty ATV, unable to find a tow behind flail mower (except in Britain and China, but that is a tale for another day), and a neat freak, I spend about a month on my most dreaded task in the vineyard, pruning debris clean up.   The picture I have included shows the upper vineyard, the beautiful ground cover, and the pre-pruning (debris cleaned up).

At any rate, our approach to pruning is to wait until bud break and then prune everything back to two buds on a spur.  By waiting later, it slows down bud break so you can give yourself a couple of weeks of insurance that you won’t get a frost that damages the tender new leaves. At my elevation (3000’) that is important.  But if you wait until late March or early April, the ground cover is in full growth and it is then hard to rake up the debris.  So I do a little pre-pruning by cutting back all the trellis vines to about 8” using a heavy duty gas hedger, cut and pull the shoots off the wires, so that when we do the final pruning it is a fairly straight forward affair without the delay of removing the tangled shoots from the wires.  So for the next week or two I will be doing that, tightening wires, and other fun stuff while we await bud break and the final pruning.  Once pruning starts I will show you the technique and try to explain the process.

Wine:  Last Sunday I went to Holly’s Hill for a pairing of oysters with their Patriarche Blanc (Viognier, Roussanne, Grenache Blanc), and Grenache with grilled chicken.  It was a delight.  Josh (of Josh and Carrie Bendick, wine makers) had gone to the Hog Island Oyster Bar in the Ferry Building in San Francisco to get fresh oysters and they were wonderful.  You got your choice of either grilled oyster in the shell with a dollop of butter and garlic, or raw with a delightful rice wine vinegar sauce.  Interestingly, if you ate the oysters raw (which I do) the Patriarche was a little flat in the finish, but when they were roasted with the butter and garlic it was a delightful bursting of flavors from the wine.   The Grenache went well with either and my cohort, Ron Mansfield (vineyard manager at Holly’s Hill and my vineyard consultant) and I just got a bottle of Grenache and it went well with everything.  Going to Holly’s Hill is always a pleasure because the whole family partakes in every event and they are a delight to know and talk to.  The staff in the tasting room are a gregarious bunch that makes every visit a pleasure.

This weekend is the Rhone Rangers Grand Tasting at Fort Mason in San Francisco.  There will be over a hundred wineries so a little planning is in order.  If you start at the A’s and taste everything you are not going to make it to the K’s.  I am still considering where I want my focus to be.  Last year I did the Syrahs and limited it to a few wineries.  I haven’t got a plan yet and my love for Syrahs may trip up my evolving plan to just taste Rhone Blends this year.  Candace is going with the Rhone Blend whites, and I will deviate to taste anything anyone suggests as special.  We will be spending Sunday night in the City and I haven’t decided where to eat yet.  We are considering something simple after the tasting like clam chowder and a beer.  Will report next week.  Carpe Diem.

Vine:   Well, I lied or more accurately, I forgot.  There is work in the vineyard before pruning.  As noted in the picture taken Wednesday morning, winter is not through with us yet.  The snow was gone in the afternoon, but the rain continuous and I will have to repair some erosion damage in the lower vineyard.  This year in the steep sections I may bite the bullet and install some drainage lines.  The soil is soft now and digging in red dirt is one of my most cherished activities.  The other chore is to retie all the vines, which is not as bad as it sounds.  For the trellis vines (Syrah) the cordons (horizontal runs) have all been retied with a little device called a Max Tapener .  It looks like a giant staple gun and it wraps the tie-tape around the cordon and wire and then staples the tie-tape together.  With some practice you can get a nice tight tie and it cuts the time for performing this task to about 10% of what it would usually take.  The ones I did last year held up fairly well last year so I will continue testing this product.  I am sure some traditionalists will tell me this won’t work, but I am just one guy with only so much time.  I also need to adjust the trunk ties so that they are loosened to prevent binding as the plant grows.  Hopefully if the rain stops I will have this done prior to pruning.  Then all I have to do is clean up and burn pruning debris when that little task is complete.  See, isn’t growing grapes romantic?

By the way I watched “Bottle Shock” and it was truly a fun movie to watch.  Buried in the love story and the wine competition in France was a story about terroir and love of the plant itself.  My favorite quote in the movie was that the vineyard is fertilized by the footprints of the grower in the vineyard.  So true.  Say what you want, to grow great grapes is a labor of love, not technical ability, although it does help.  They got several things very right in this movie:  Growing grapes and making great wine requires a respect for your terroir, hard work, and great art.  A fine wine is a confluence of these three attributes.

Wine:    Last Saturday (remember that Saturday is my day to try to make a great meal at home) I broke out my new All-Clad slow cooker and decided to make Pappardelle Bolognese.  I have a slow cook cookbook and this looked really good.  Veal is a little hard to find, but I finally found some and followed the recipe (Williams-Sonoma Slow Cooking).  It slow cooked for about 8 hours and I added mushrooms which may have been a mistake.  When we finally served it with multi-grain bread, salad, and Dunamis (Narrow Gate Vineyard (Rhone Blend)) I was somewhat disappointed in that it was rather bland.  I think I should have cooked down the mushrooms and removed the excess moisture before I added them to the Bolognese.  But with some extra salt, pepper, and parmesan cheese (and a little hot sauce), it picked up nicely.  I highly recommend the Dunamis as it is a very distinctive blend of Grenache, Mourvedre, and Syrah and you can try it at Narrow Gate Vineyard. Narrow gate (Frank Hildebrand) utilizes a very eco-friendly growing style and does mostly whole berry fermentation, gently extracting the tanins and other flavors out of the grape.  It is a delicious wine and I highly recommend it.  Should I add that the wines produce in this area by winemakers such as Frank are of exceptional quality and price.  Wine Spectator hasn’t figured that out yet with their fixation on the costal areas of California.  Carpe Diem.

Vine: Winter continues in the foothills and the snow has been washed away by rain.  We have had a long soaking rain for the last several days that is very welcome.  Up here in the low Sierras we have been notified that the first stage of drought watch is to be instituted by raising the rates on our water.  Since I only irrigate about 3 times a year during the growing season this will have little impact on me.  The soil up here is high iron clay and it retains water and combining that with timely drip irrigation, the plants require little water.  That would have changed had we not gotten the soaking rains we are seeing right now, but the water table is being recharge and I won’t water the grapes until early July.  The lawn is a whole another issue.  Grass really has shallow roots.  Oh well.

The picture shows the vineyard after the winter snow was washed away.  You can clearly see that we have not pruned, which is a month away, and the rows have been sprayed out.  There is nothing to do before pruning but wait for the buds to swell and start to break.  Then we prune.  You can see how the cover crop of grass and clover is starting to green up nicely and holds the soils in during the rains.  It will be mowed once probably in late April before it is allowed to go to seed in late May and then a final mowing after it dies out when we start our dry season.

Wine: Last Friday for my birthday I went to San Francisco for a day of just pure enjoyment.  When we go to San Francisco we try to schedule one new adventure each trip.  On arriving in the city around noon we went to the de Young Museum to see the new building and of course the art.  By the way if you live east of San Francisco, come in over the Golden Gate Bridge, take US 1 right after you get off the bridge, follow the signs to the Golden Gate Park (Balboa Street off US 1 I think, you kind of have to loop around because there is no left turn), then take 10th street into Golden Gate Park.  It will take you directly into the parking garage for both the de Young and the Academy of Science (also a wonderful visit). Funny but the most striking thing to me was to see a beautiful silver beer tankard crafted by Paul Revere. Really gave me a thirst for a cold beer.  Actually that is not totally true and it was a great afternoon.  There is, however, some modern art I don’t think I will ever understand.

Then it was down to the Ferry Building for a couple of glasses of wine at The Ferry Building Wine Merchant after checking out the shopping.  The Ferry Building usually ends up being the center of our visit because on Saturday morning we are going to buy fresh vegetables and meat at the farmers market for dinner at home that night.  The Wine Merchant has a very good selection of wine, and I always ask for an interesting Syrah and they never let me down.

Then it was off to SPQR (SFStation) in Pacific Heights for dinner.  SPQR is a smallish restaurant opened by the people that were involved with A16.  It doesn’t take reservations so we got there about 5:45 and found a nice table for two and shortly thereafter the restaurant was full with many people waiting for tables.   The menu is fun and all Italian with some fried specials.  We ordered hors d’oeuvres of fried chicken livers and a salad of wild arugula, roasted carrots and ricotta salata that was amazing.  Candace had the Lasagna and I went for Cannelloni of pork sausage, ricotta, spinach and pecorino.  I had an Italian wine and I can’t remember the name.  I was having so much fun I forgot to write it down.  I would highly recommend SPQR.  It is very casual, small, and very good.  By the way the cab ride both to and from was a very pleasant surprise.  Both cab drivers were old time San Francisco residents who were really truly interesting and, surprise upon surprise, the ride was not a constant cycle of acceleration and braking while you swerve through traffic, but just a nice smooth ride.  What is happening to the world as we know it?

After dinner and before returning to our hotel, we had a couple of glasses of wine at a wine bar near our hotel and people watched.  All in all, it was a perfect day.  The next morning we walked over to the Ferry Building to peruse the Saturday market and pick up dinner to cook at home.  When we got home we had purchased fresh bread, olive oil, filets, cheese, and mixed greens, arugula, fruits, at the market and had a delightful dinner.  I know, it is tough duty, but somebody has to do it.  Carpe  Diem.