On the Contrary

Vine: Sorry for the lateness of this, but there has been just too much to do.  I finish the first round of spraying and I do not recommend my approach.  I am spraying Sulfur DF, and Ralley® with an emulsifier to control powdery mildew.  I have never had any up here, but the conditions are ripe with the cool moist days this June so I usually do 2-rounds of spraying.  Now the reason I say I don’t recommend this approach is that I do it by hand.  See the picture on the left.  I have a 25 gallon spray rig that I pull behind my ATV.  I then walk through reach row and spray both sides of the plants by hand with a hand wand.  For my small vineyard this is a two-day process.  For a young man, he could do it in one day, but I find that if I don’t want to have leg cramps, I will break it up into two days.  Note the Tyvek suit, goggles, gloves, and mask.  I do look quite fetching don’t I?  It can get quite hot out there.  The normal way to do this, which would just take a couple of hours would be to use a tractor with a fogging spay unit.  But the financial investment is about $30 grand and so I make due with what I have.

The second task I finally got done with some help from Ron Mansfield’s crew is the pushing of all the shoots in the Syrah up through the wires, positioning them so they are not falling horizontal, and thinning some of the new growth since the last thinning.  This seems like a simple task, but it can become quite arduous and time consuming positioning the shoots and trying not to break any.  Remember that I told you that for the Syrah, you want about 5-6 spurs on each side of the cardon (either side of T shape of the plant.  The cardon is the horizontal piece of the T.  The vertical piece is the trunk).  From those 5-6 spurs you want two strong, fruit bearing shoots.  The problem is you will get many shoots from many locations that are not optimal.  So you have to go through each plant and thin it down to two well position shoots and then push them up through the wires so the stay fairly vertical and allow your grapes to be open to sunlight and not crowded out by other shoots.  In the process you will get some locations that are not ideal, but is your only choice.  In others locations you may get a shoot that is perfectly situated but does not have fruit.  So it is a balancing act where, unlike financial markets, you try to think long term.  The idea is not to maximize to production this year, but to shape a plant so that in a few years, it is perfectly pruned to produce healthy and well-positioned shoots for many years.  The two pictures I have included show the before and after of a second round of pushing the shoots up through the wires and additional thinning.

At this point, the big work in the vineyard is done.  I will still have to do another round of spraying either next weekend or the following week, but things are pretty much under control now and with most of the shoots now position in the wires (and the Mourvedre and Grenache thinned-same concept of two shoots per spur, but head trained plants (no wires)).  The only real tasks now since the plant can’t out grow my efforts are to thin as the plant grows (cover) and do some positioning on the wires as they grow more slowly.  In other words, the big push is over.  I still don’t know how the set went and will check in about another week to see what grapes were pollinated and growing (set).  I was down at Holly’s Hill which is about 500’ lower in elevation than my vineyard and the set was quite apparent.  I would say my vineyard is about two weeks behind them.

Wine: I had a delightful wine tasting experience this weekend.  All of you wine lovers enjoy wine tasting, but the real learning occurs when you are in the company of other trained palates who will give you their opinions, and especially if you can do flight tasting so you can compare wines side-by-side.  Holly’s Hill, which grows Rhone varietals and buys my Mourvedre, had their annual Holly’s Hill versus the Rhone Valley taste-off.  What they do is a blind tasting with eight wines in two 4-glass flights.  All you know is that you are going to get six southern Rhones and two Holly’s Hill Rhones (Patriache 2005 & 2006). Note Southern Rhones are blends usually of Grenache, Syrah, and Mourvedre, but they can have other Southern Rhone reds blended in smaller quantities.   But you don’t who is who.  So they pour the first four glasses from bottles that are hidden in a paper bag and you are given about twenty minutes to swirl, sniff, and taste, record your findings and discuss with your tablemates.  Then you rank them one through four.  Then the whole gathering gives their comments and we vote for the 1-4 ratings.  Just as an aside, this is not easy because French wines are very complex and tend to really change in your glass so that a first impression is usually a throwaway.  Then we repeat the process for the second flight of four and then you rank all of them, one through eight, attempting to identify which are French and which are the Holly’s Hill.  Finally you find out what each wine is, its cost, and how it was rated by professionals (Robert Parker and others) to see how your rankings matched up.  Josh and Carrie (wine makers at Holly’s Hill) also give you their impressions and their rankings.

When Ron Mansfield and I arrived (Ron is my vineyard consultant and world renowned (no, I am not kidding) grower up here (we were running late because I was late out of the vineyard), the couple we sat with last year had noted we were coming and save us seats.  Now that in it self was a good omen because they have great palates, have traveled extensively in France, and they valued our tasting judgments.  I’ll just ignore that Ron’s palate is way better than mine and I also was a valued team member.  To make a long story short, my one and two picks were the groups two and one pick and my first choice was a 2006 Clos Des Papes ($110) rated 98 by Parker.  My second was the 2006 Patriarche which I would have bet my life was French.  This one has not been rated yet but rumor is Parker did rate it and we are waiting for the results.  So all in all, it was nice to know my palate is still working and the other lesson is that you usually get what you pay for when you buy wines.

I had 24 fresh pacific oysters on ice in my truck, so Ron and I drove over to our friends the Wards, who love oysters and have treated us to them many times, shucked and ate them with French bread and a nice Holly’s Hill Roussanne.  All in all, as Mike would say, it was a good day to be alive.  Carpe Diem.

Vine: Final week of thinning, which some call suckering, that is really the removal of unwanted growth.  The vision that comes in most people’s minds is removing unwanted leafing on a tomato plant.  Hardly.  In many cases you are removing major growth and strong shoots with flower clusters and in your wake you leave a path of discarded foliage.  It takes me about an hour a row to thin, but once you have completed it on the head trained grapes (Mourvedre and Grenache) there is very little to do the rest of the summer other than manage canopy.  Managing canopy is to simply remove thick leaf growth around the grapes to allow more light into the interior of the plant.  For the Syrah, even though you have thinned, you still have to go back about 2-3 times to push the shoots up through the wires (trellis system).  The Mourvedre is complete and now I need to spray the entire vineyard which I will start on Sunday.  I have been getting up at first light and working till about 11 am (about 5 hours) trying to get all this done before the plants get too far ahead of me.  So I am taking a well deserved rest in San Francisco.  More about that in Wine.  In the picture above, if you are sharp you can detect the Grenache on the left, and the Mourvedre on the right and some Counoise in the foreground.

The other major chore completed this week with some help from my helper and his son (Aldaberto Santana) was mowing the vineyard (me) and weed eating all the weeds down in the growing area (about 3 acres).  The place is starting to look like a manicured vineyard again.  Another week of spraying, pushing syrah up through the wires, and some weed control in the vineyard and things will finally be under control.  Note that under control means that you get up in the morning and instead of being in the vineyard by 5:30 am, you have your coffee and biscotti on the patio, read the paper, and note the beauty in the vineyard.  It only takes about six weeks of work to get there.  Can’t wait to be a vineyard owner?

NPR (National Public Radio) has had a series on small family farms which I listened to while I thinned.  They followed five different families through their year.  What you found is that they scrape by, but there is no money in it.  One grandmother said it best, where else can you really live and work with your whole family.  What was interesting is that many of the kids left the farm, only to come back later.  Apparently quality of life and feeling connected to the land is more important for some that have a window office, maybe, in 30 years.  I could relate.  There is no money in what I do and I barely break even and that only pays my expenses and the hired help I sometimes use, but not my own time.  To make any money, one would need at least 30-60 acres and only then if you make and sell your own wine.  I love my plants and the wine they can produce, otherwise this would not be a labor of choice.  But I do fear for other small farmers.  Until we start paying the real cost of damage to the environment of industrial farming and the real cost of transporting food across the globe, the small local farmer may be priced out of the market.  Note that in the picture above you are looking down two rows of Syrah (trellis trained) with roses coming into full bloom.  On the far right is a row of Mourvedre (head trained)

Wine: I mentioned earlier that I was enjoying a rest in San Francisco.  We decided to explore a couple of neighborhoods we really don’t know and the first was Japan Town.  Now I am a public transit junkie and San Francisco has a wonderful transit system.  So after checking into our hotel (hotwire special:  Hilton Financial District), we hiked up to Union Square and then took a bus up Sutter Street to Japan Town and then just wandered around and shopped in the Japanese markets at the Japan Center.  I am looking for a really good tea pot to reduce my dependence on coffee.  Then we walked over to Filmore (just a block or two) and caught another bus down to Union Street in the Marina District.  Our real destination was Nettie’s Crab Shack for a very late lunch/early dinner.

We have found that is the best time to eat since the restaurants are not crowded and you can engage the staff if you so desire.  Nettie’s did not disappoint. First it is a bright and open little place with an outside seating area so you can watch the action on Union Street.  I was on an oyster quest so I had six on the half shell and then an oyster poorboy.  Everything was wonderful.  The poorboy was served with homemade potato chips and a slaw with a red wine vinegar, olive oil, lime, and whole grain mustard dressing that was wonderful.  For the oysters I tried a Grenache rose which was splendid.  Sorry, but for the poorboy it was an Amstel Light.  I cannot recommend this place more.  It is clean, airy, and the seafood is the freshest I have had.  As I noted I was on an oyster quest as I have been reading about oysters lately so I wanted to try a variety and see if I could detect the different subtle flavors.  I will just say I now know why Kumomotos are $4 a piece.  I also had Effingham (eastern oysters but grown near Vancouver Island), and Pearl Points (Pacific Oyster originally from Japan) grown in Oregon.  A great book to learn about oysters is:  The Hog Island Oyster Lover’s Cookbook: A Guide to Choosing and Savoring Oysters, with 40 Recipes.

We finished the day with a nap, and then a trip to our favorite wine bar on Front Street for some cheese and wine tasting (Embarcadero 2).  As always cheap wines are cheap and you get what you pay for.  It was just a nice evening and our waitress was studying to be a sommelier, so I tested her describing a wine experience that I was looking for and she brought over a Cab that was perfect.  That’s when I decided I should introduce her to my son.  If only he were there.  What a perfect daughter-in-law.  Ah Well.  Carpe Diem.