On the Contrary

Vine: Well the weather has been all over the place with cool almost rainy days last week in the 60s and mid to high 90s this week.  Not exactly an even growing season so this years vintage is going to be very interesting.  Still a lot can happen between now and October, but the fruit is definitely behind with verasion just starting.  Verasion is the turning of the green grapes to red.  See picture.  This in my mind is about two to three weeks late and could portend disaster if we have an early rain or rains.  But that is the dice you roll when you grow up here.  Some years are good, some are spectacular, and some will be washouts.

Verasion, by the way, is nature way of starting the reproduction process.  As the grapes mature they are green and tart (high acid).  The green hides them within the foliage and the tartness (and bitterness from unripe tannins) makes them unpalatable to the birds.  When the seeds within the grape mature to the point where they are ready to be spread, the grape turns nice and deep purple, with the acid decreasing and the sugars increasing.  Then it is bird banquet.  I lose about 10% of my crop to birds.  Of course the birds eat the grapes fly away and leave little droppings here and there, which contain the seeds of a new generation.  As a grape grower, my aim is to disrupt this cycle as best I can.  I use kite birds (kites that fly over the vineyard and look like hawks) and streamers to little effect.

I have been through one cycle of irrigation, using drip lines and leaving them running for about 96 hours to ensure full saturation down to four feet (I use moisture sensors buried at one foot intervals down to four feet in three places in my vineyard).  It is amazing to me how just moving down a couple of rows, the soil characteristics change and the moisture profile is completely different.  I have my vineyard segregated into five watering blocks, but I may have to add a six or seventh block to further micromanage the water to some of my plants.  For those of you who don’t follow my Vine/Wine blog, I use an irrigation technique that allows the soil to almost reach its maximum depletion of moisture before the plant shuts down, and then saturate and repeat.  Studies have shown that the plant gets a little stressed in these cycles and it pushes more flavoids and other good stuff into the berry sensing it may be shutting down.  It decreases production, but increases quality of the grape.

The work in the vineyard, which I have been putting off, is to remove any secondary growth of berries which will not get ripe and just sap the plant of nutrients it could be pushing to the first tier crop.  I will also do some cover (leaf) management to remove some of the cover to expose the berries to the sun.  Other than that, a little hand week control, and as always, gopher patrol, that is about it until harvest.  Right now I am thinking late October, early November, but then maybe I will be surprised.

Wine: Let’s see.  Since I last wrote my brother came to visit and then we went to a wedding.  Since the wedding are more about dancing and joy than food and wine, although both necessary to the joy and dancing (Beer! Helping white boys have rhythm since the Dark Ages), I will describe a very simple but excellent meal I fixed for my brother.

Understand, of course, that he is from Colorado and he thinks they have good food out there, so he was easy to please.  I did have “fresh oysters” out there on my last trip and I almost died.  Fresh out there except for iceberg lettuce, beef (and the really good stuff comes from Nebraska), and cantaloupes, refers to the flying time from the coast.  Okay, I hyperbolize, but except for a few rare surprises, the quality of food is not the same as it is here in California and I am not a bit biased.  Had a great Colorado wine lately?

What I fixed for dinner is immensely simple, but very good.  I went to Whole Foods to find a medium sized sirloin roast that was grass feed.  Getting good flavorful beef is half the battle.  I then marinated it in some Syrah, garlic, Lea and Perrin sauce, and shallot salt.  I cranked up the barbeque and then cooked the meat at the other end of the grill away from the charcoal for about two hours at 275-300° until medium rare.  It does not require watching and that frees you to prepare the other stuff.  For potatoes, I got some small red tomatoes from the farmer’s market and boiled them until they were about half done and still a little hard.  Then you drain the water, cut them in half add a little bit of butter and a lot of olive oil, mix thoroughly with salt and pepper, put them on an aluminum foil tray, and then on the grill off the heat for about 45 minutes to finish cooking and soak up that smoky flavor.

The sauce for the meat (which is cut thin after it comes off the grill) is quite simple and is from the William-Sonoma Sauce Book.  Saute some shallots in a sauce pan in a little butter, add 4 cups meat stock, 1 and 1/2 cup good Syrah, a tablespoon of soy, and about a teaspoon of tomato paste, 1/4 teaspoon of dried Thyme, 1 tablespoon of either beef or veal demi-glaze and then reduce down to about 2 cups (45 minutes).  Thicken with cornstarch/water slurry, and mount with two tablespoons of butter.  It is wonderful.

For a vegetable (fruit, I know), my tomatoes are just getting ripe so there was a plate of fresh sliced tomatoes with a hint of olive oil, salt and pepper.  The salad was a mix of fresh greens including a little arugula, tossed in olive oil and balsamic vinegar, with sliced fresh peaches, bleu cheese, and toasted walnuts.  For wine, and there were several, I went with a Rhone blend from Holly’s Hill (2005 Patriarche).  There were others, but that went best with this dinner.  Carpe Diem

Vine:   Another week of thinning, now mostly in the Grenache.  I finished these rows which is a relief because the Grenache is a very thick and hearty plant and you really have to dig your way in to see each spur and remove the unwanted shoots.  I am now in the final block of thinning, the Mourvedre, which is considerably easier because the plant is not as thick and it is easier to see what needs to be removed.  The picture above shows the lower vineyard before mowing and final thinning.  Once in a while you break off a keeper and it breaks your heart, but that is life.  I have also been back in the Syrah because it is growing so fast trying to push new growth up through the wires so you don’t end up with a jumbled mess or horizontal growth.  The lower vineyard is more challenging than the upper vineyard because you are always standing on a 45° slope and it just wears you out.  Some of my work was slowed down last week as I really started to feel punk.  I thought it was just old age and too much sun, which is always a possibility, but it turned out to be a tick bite or spider bite which my wife discovered (on my back) which was a little infected.  Once it was cleaned and treated with an antibiotic I started feeling much better. It just goes with the territory of working with nature.  At any rate, I will only have one more week of getting up at 5 am so I can be out by 9am and then it will be manageable.

The other major chore is to mow down the grass/clover in the vineyard and then do a massive weed-eating job to tidy up the vineyard.  The picture on the left shows the upper vineyard after I mowed it.  Most of the grasses and clovers have gown to seed and dried out so it is a good time to cut them down before I am dragging my spraying gear through the vineyard.  It is always a chore to drag out my tow behind deck mower and then get it running since I only use it once a year.  After much cussing and pouring gasoline directing into the air intake of the carburetor, I got it running although in fits and starts, and got the upper vineyard mowed.  This weekend I will tackle the lower vineyard in the evenings when it is not so hot.  Mowing the lower vineyard is a somewhat daunting task as the terraced lower vineyard is very steep so there is a distinct pattern to stay safe.  With 500 #s of mower behind you, you never turn downhill or you may see the mower go by you as you swing around and start down the hill backwards.  More than once, before I learned how to manage the turns and hills, I ended up tittering on the brink of disaster having to gingerly climb off the machine in a precarious position and then use the winch on my ATV to pull into a safe position.  This week, like every week, I think just one more week and then I will be able to relax.  The reality is about June 30 everything is really done and then you just coast to harvest, with some minor thinning and other maintenance.  The picture below shows my trusty ATV with tow behind mower.

Wine:   Last week was our Rock and Rhones event in which four of our wineries in Pleasant Valley (south of HW 50) that grow Rhone Varietals have a pairing of food and wine.  I have written about it in my last several Vine/Wines so I won’t bore you here except to say that the wines were excellent and I now have a good supply for the summer.  Believe it or not, one of my favorite pairings was an El Dorado honey, fennel, ginger & viognier marinated salmon cooked in parchment with a Roussanne/Viognier blend at Narrow Gate, and some goat cheese with a lemon olive oil paired with a Viognier at Miraflores.  I know, I know, whites.  What was I thinking?  There was also a Forest King Boletes Mushroom Tart with spring onions at Sierra Vista with their Mourvedre which was excellent (see a red).  If any of the wineries had live music I would have stayed all day.  The Grenache with a La Clarine Roussette cheese pizza at Holly’s Hill was also excellent.

Tomorrow night, my vineyard advisor and good friend Ron Mansfield is coming over to dinner and I am grilling a leg of lamb.  That will force him to bring over a good Rhone from his cellar and we shall sit on the patio and indulge in slow cooked leg of lamb, roasted potatoes, a nice garden salad with some fresh arugula out of my garden, some artisan bread and olive oil, and a nice southern Rhone, watch the stars come out, and talk vineyard stuff.  Could life be any better.  Carpe Diem.