On the Contrary

Harvesting the Mourvedre

Vine: Well it is the end of another year.  The Syrah, Viognier, Grenache, and Counoise are gone, picked the week of 20^th September. The Mourvedre went on Sunday October 10, 2009.    The Syrah production was down about 30%.  I checked with a similar vineyard in my area and they were also down in Syrah.  But the production was up on the coast so go figure.  I don’t think it is anything I am doing here.  The Grenache was about the same as well as the Mourvedre.  On the quality side, I think all varietals had excellent quality with good flavors and ripe, mild tannins.

By the way, the picture is of the kite-birds I use to try to keep real birds out of the vineyard.  I would say they have taken about 15% of the crop especially in the Mourvedre since it is the last thing hanging and they can focus all their efforts on them.  I know that many vineyards in Napa use nets, but their land is flatter, and somehow I fear seeing myself tangled up in a net and left for days in my vineyard, which is not a far stretch since I was trapped down there last week after I fell and tore my patella tendon.

This year the major work has been to replant about 15 Grenache and 4 Viognier.  I also put in a separate irrigation system for the Viognier because they seem to need more water that the Syrah.  I did only two rounds of irrigation except for the new plants this year.  Next year I need to replace a couple of Mourvedre and about 10 more Grenache.  I have some erosion repair to do before the rains and spread some seed on the bare spots (See Blog: If you Think We Pay Too Much in Taxes).  Gophers have not been as active in the vineyard, although I did see a hawk attack one of my kites-birds, so maybe the hawks are helping.

Kite-Birds

I will put down some super phosphate (this soil is really deficient in phosphate), about one pound per plant (yep, 1500#s) before the rains start to let it get washed in over the winter.  Other than that things are about done.  After the Mourvedre harvest last Sunday, it is time to just watch the leaves turn and enjoy the last of the warm fall days with a nice Rhone in my hand, maybe a leg of lamb dinner to celebrate the end of harvest.  Good thing too, because if you read about my fall in the vineyard, I am restricted to the house and crutches for the next month or two.

Wine: The grapes are crushed and fermenting.  For the two wineries I sell my grapes to, they have different approaches to crushing and processing the grapes.  At Holly’s Hill, the process is fairly typical in that the grapes were delivered directly to the winery and mechanically de-stemmed and crushed.  Crushing is a relative term and the idea is to break the skin for free run of juice, but nothing more violent that might extract too many tannins.  Usually the crush is stabilized over night and any adjustments to acid and sulfur (to prevent contamination) are made, and then yeast is added along with some nutrients for fermentation.  Fermentation will occur in open fiberglass containers and depending on temperature will take about 1-2 weeks.  Punch down is usually done three times a day by hand.

Gimp Boy - Working in the Vineyard can be Dangerous

When fermentation is complete, the must will then be pressed to squeeze out all the juices, remove the seeds and skins, and will be racked off to usually large neutral oak barrels for aging with a minimum of racking to extract flavors from the lees. Blending will occur later (my Mourvedre usually goes in the their Classique which is a blend of four vineyards).  Mourvedre is typically aged about 11-12 months before it is bottled.

Donkey and a Goat takes a little different approach.  Their grapes are hand sorted, (I personally think those little spiders and twigs add flavor), machine de-stemmed, and then they are crushed by foot stomping (pigeage à pied).  This method is not just a throwback to un-mechanized times.  Some of the best wineries around the world still use this method because the extraction of tannins and other phenolics is perceived to be gentler and more natural.  Donkey and a Goat used only the natural yeasts that were in the vineyard to begin with and they ferment in neutral oak vats (no plastic).  For the Four-Thirteen that my Syrah, Grenache, and Counoise go into, last year the Grenache, Counoise, and the Mourvedre were co-fermented with the Syrah blended later.  The must is punched down about 3-times a day by hand and then aged about a year in neutral oak until bottling,

Both wineries produce a distinctive and lovely wine and you need to taste them so you can decide for yourself which style you prefer.  Or if you are like me, what is the appropriate occasion because both are delicious.

Carpe Diem

Vine: We finished up the leaf cover thinning (now two weeks ago) and by the picture you can see how the leaf cover on the morning (cool) side of the vine exposes the grapes to sun for maturing, but in the hot of the afternoon and late evening they get protection from full leaf cover on the afternoon side.  Back to a little wine making/grape growing 101.

There are three things you look at as a grower/vintner to judge the quality of your fruit:  sugar, acid, tannins (flavoids also).  As the grapes ripen the sugar levels increase and the acid levels decrease (making the grapes tasty little morsels for birds).  Different styles of wine making look for different ratio balances, but as sugar increases sooner or later you have to harvest.  This is directly related to temperature and sunlight.  But the ripening of the tannins and flavoids is more a function of hang time.  In a perfect world, they all come together at one time and you harvest.  But if you experience too hot a weather pattern, the sugar/acid balance will be reached before there is full development of your flavoids and tannin ripening.  When it is too cold, the sugar never gets there and neither do the tannins and you have to add sugar (to get optimum alcohol levels for aging) and find away to reduce the acid.

Side note:  The vintner is looking for a certain acid level measured in PH and TA that enhances the fermentation by increasing the extraction of flavor and preventing bad things to grow in the must.  They are also looking for a grape with tons of complex flavors and tannins that are ripe and not harsh.  He/She can adjust acid and sugar (not allowed to add in California, but usually not necessary, but can reduce by adding water), but the flavors are what they are.

The whole idea of growing up here is that we get a longer growing season so it slows down the sugar rise, acid fall, and allows hang time to develop the tannins.  Now hanging fruit too long will get the fruit too sweet (high alcohol content), the acid to low, and the wine with an overly jammy flavor that overwhelms the complexity and subtleness of a good wine.  The ideal is to get them all in the proper balance through nature because there is only so much you can do in the winery.  So all of this leaf cover management and fruit dropping is a way to try to adjust to what nature delivered this year to get the best crop.  We will see in about 4 weeks if I got it right.

Wine: Oh, I have so much to report.  We were off to the Russian River Valley to enjoy great pinot with two other couples (Ron Mansfield and his wife and Mike Ward and his wife).  Ron is a Syrah lover and my vineyard advisor, but he was willing to try pinots if we promised him roast leg of lamb. Carolyn tolerates some wine and ends up our designated driver when we tasted one too many.  Mike and his lovely bride have been oenophiles and their opinions are highly informative although Fran can be a little competitive playing Mexican Train.  Actually Carolyn is more competitive than Fran as indicated by her response to the advice, these games are suppose to be fun:  “Winning is fun.  Losing sucks.”  Maybe not an exact quote.

So I will give you a quick rundown.  Friday we all met in Windsor about 4:30.  Candace and I started out early that morning and drove through Napa and up 29 to Calistoga, enjoying some of the beautiful wineries on that route.  If you are going to stop pick only 3 or 4 and just enjoy the beauty of these great wineries.  We stopped at Dean and Deluca just outside Calistoga for lunch.  Then we cut across the mountains to Santa Rosa, just below Windsor.  Friday night we went to a little restaurant in Healdsburg call Zin.  We had already broken open a bottle of Siduri Pinot we bought at Big Johns (in Healdsburg which is a semi undiscovered great grocery/deli/wine store) and it was delish.  Zin was delightful and had a very good wine list at very reasonable pricess.  There was a very reasonable Hook and Ladder Pinot that went well with everything.  You can peruse the menu for yourself.  Staff, presentation, and quality were excellent.

Saturday we had a plan.  Always have a plan.  It doesn’t mean you can’t deviate, but it gives structure to your day and you can pick some of the better pinot vintners.  Plug the addresses into your GPS and you are off.  Our first stop was Hop Kiln because Ron’s son is the wine maker there.  Chuck gave us a great tour of this beautiful and old winery, along with answering some tough questions on both vineyard philosophy and wine making techniques.  Then we went to Rochioli and tasted a delightful Pinot (estate 2007) and a Sauvignon Blanc.  The lovely lady in the tasting room was a little stand offish at first, but when I discovered her love of cooking and food (and wine to go with it), Katy bar the door.  She described a recipe for wrapping shrimp in angel hair pasta and frying it that required a napkin to wipe the drool off my face.  I was about to ask the woman to marry me when my wife dragged me out of there.

Next up was Hook and Ladder to try their wines.  I love a winery that gives discounts to firemen, not to mention making good pinots.  The retired fireman who owns Hook and Ladder is the guy who established and developed De Loach before he sold it to a French company (Cecil De Loach).   The tasting room was fun and their staff was extremely helpful.  Then we stopped for lunch, somewhere, I am not sure where, and I had a beer and a salad to refresh my palate.  Then it was on to Martinnelli and had a delightful tasting with a pourer who knew terroir.  So you could actually taste the difference in the different soil types.  I bought a 2007 Zio Tony Ranch Pinot.

Finally it was off to Papapierto Perry as a last stop.  This is one of my wife’s favorites and of course her palate never fails.  When we entered the tasting room it was packed so I was waiting patiently for a taste when one of the folks there recognized Ron and waved us in the back, as he said, “away from the bar scene for some real tasting”.  He was true to his word and we had just a wonderful experience there.  By the by, there were some young things there that were being given a private tasting by some of the staff and they were quite exuberant.  Somebody was going to get lucky that night.  Those girls will never know that the real pleasure was some of wines they got to taste.  Oh well, youth is wasted on the young.

Then it was back to the condo in Windsor to grill a leg of lamb (my job), fresh tomatoes, mashed garlic potatoes and I will be damned if they didn’t drink my other bottle of Siduri (would have visited the winery, but there isn’t one, only a processing area and by appointment only).  Desert was something that I don’t remember.  Sunday on the return trip we traveled HW12 out of Santa Rosa, stopping in Sonoma for lunch.  It was a great trip and as Mike Ward always toasts:  It is a great day to be alive.

Carpe Diem

Vine: There has been a massacre in the vineyard.  See photo of dropped fruit.  Los Hombres were up here to thin the fruit and the leaf cover for the final push to harvest which is about 6-weeks out. I have explained dropping fruit as focusing the attention of the plant to a reasonable number of grapes to intensify the flavors.  Think about it this way.  The grape’s “brain” is wired by evolution to produce as many children as possible.  There is a certain segment of our own population that does that, but I am not going there.

Now it does no good to deposit all your children (seeds) in one place so the plant is working hard to make as many grapes as possible that appeal to birds.  Birds are wired by evolution with not so great palates, so sweet is sweet to them.  Birds eat the grapes when they are sweet and because of their poor toilet training habits, deposit them all over the place.

Now enter we humans who do have discerning palates, and we want the grapes with the maximum intensity and flavor for our wine and we don’t give a damn about their other siblings.   So we sacrifice the many for the few in a true aristocratic manner leaving the lucky to become the potential for the perfect wine, and the rest wasted on the ground to become raisins for whoever will forage for them.  Yes I get some volunteer grape plants, but then we need to discuss that whole thing of clones versus natural reproduction, and of course rootstock and the casual reader probably has read more than he wants to already.

Leaf cover management is similar.  You want to expose the grape clusters to the sun for ripening and you want to balance the leaf cover so that the plant isn’t spending too much energy maintaining its leaves.  Think of it as the woman who has great attributes but hides them under an unnecessarily gaudy wardrobe.  Remove a few pieces here and there and you have improved the whole picture.

So you want just the leaf cover that is sufficient to support the grape crop.  It is always a big game of balancing.  Balancing irrigation against water demand, balancing number of grapes against quality fruit, balancing leaf cover to fruit load, balancing hot and cool days (you have no control here).  If you get it just right, you have perfect fruit.  Generally you don’t get it right, you just luck into it depending on what Mother Nature provides and then claim credit for it.

This is the last big chore until harvest.  Now we wait and see what this season will bring besides those gluttonous birds to eat the good stuff and not even appreciate it when there are perfectly good raisins for their pleasure on the ground.

Wine: Not much to report this week.  Jared Brandt from Donkey and Goat, and his Dad were up to inspect the grapes.  I asked him what he thought and he said they looked great but that is kind of like when your wife asks if she looks fat in this dress.  The only right answer is that you never look fat honey.  He is starting his harvest on some Chardonnay in the valley, but we both think it will be another month before mine are ready.  Jared foot stomps all his grapes in the French tradition.  The theory is that crushing the grapes that way still leaves plenty of whole grapes and a soft tannin extraction for the fermentation.  I can’t argue with the result.

There is another winery up here called Narrow Gate and they do whole grape fermentation and they also produce a wonderful wine.  The point is that each style of wine making produces distinctive flavors and the fun is learning to enjoy each different style

If you are reading this on Friday, then I am off to Healdsburg and the Russian River Valley for the “great Pinot hunt” for the weekend.  I will report my findings next weekend.

Carpe Diem

Vine: Veraison is about complete now in the vineyard with most of the grapes looking purple.  I checked out the Tablas Creek web site and they indicated that there is about 6-weeks from veraison to when they harvest.  It is probably more like 8-weeks up here so that would put me around the first of October.  It was also good to note that they thought the harvest was about 2-weeks behind the last two years, but the production is up.  That is what I am finding up here.  Many of my vines are second generation cuttings of Tablas Creek cuttings (Mourvedre, Viognier, Counoise) and most of their cuttings came from Chateau Beaucastel.

Work in the vineyard is really very little.  I am trying to get a crew up here to help me thin the fruit and remove secondary growth.  I just started a second round of irrigation and this will take about 3 weeks.  I drip for about 96 hours in each block to ensure that the saturation zone is down to 4’.  One problem I have is that I always think I need to water more than one block at a time, but my water pressure won’t support that.  This is probably a good thing because I end up holding back more water than I would normally and the plants appear to do fine.  I expect to see A Donkey and Goat (Jared Brandt) up here around the first of September to check on the grapes (Grenache, Syrah, Counoise, Viognier) and get a feel for quantity, quality, and timing for harvest.  Holly’s Hill (who buys my Mourvedre) will probably not be up here until late September because the Mourvedre is always late.  As always, once the brix gets above about 22° I start sending them weekly updates (I’ll explain about brix in a later blog).

I have included some of my pictures of roses at the end of the rows.  I planted them a couple of years ago and they are a beautiful addition to the vineyard.  I put them on a separate watering system, but the vine right next to them is piggy backing on the more frequent watering and so the growth is prodigious.  Not a route to quality grapes, but one plant at the end of each row is a nice tradeoff for the beauty the roses provide.

Wine: There is always the debate about screw tops versus corks and as I have stated before, I think I have a bias toward corks simply because of the tradition.  Screw tops have the ability to truly prevent any oxygen entering the wine which for some, will keep the fruits very fresh.  On the other hand many reds require this slow micro oxygenation to mellow the tannins.  I was reading from the Tablas Creek web site where they did some taste tests.  Jason Haas of Tablas creek commented:

“Overall, the results tended to validate the choices that we’d made, as the whites and rosé tasted brighter and fresher under screwcap (and were generally preferred by the group) while the reds tended to taste softer and lusher under cork (and were generally, though not universally, preferred by the group).  I made sure I wasn’t involved in pouring the wines so I could approach the tasting truly blind.”

“Looking back through the notes, I see a few threads that are consistent.  The cork, on the positive side, seems to add darker tones to the wine, give a sense of sweetness, and lengthen the finish.  On the negative side, the whites and Rosé under cork all betrayed a hint of oxidation.  Granted, none of these were meant to aged long-term, but there was a heaviness in the cork version that there was not in the screwcap.  The screwcap, on the positive side, maintained a brightness and freshness in everything.  On the negative, it tended to shorten the finish and make (keep?) a wine less complex, and a few of the wines under screwcap betrayed a plastic character that I didn’t find appealing.”

The answer here like all things in life, is there is no simple answer.  For some wines screwtops are the right choice and most probably for the deep complex reds I love, it is a mistake.  So much for arcane thinking about wine.

Carpe Diem

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: Well, finally things are fairly well in hand.  The thinning is done, along with all of the pushing of the shoots up through the wires, and the spraying is complete so now it is just observe the set (pollination of the flowers) and see if I have robust clusters this year.  Right now things look very promising, but I will know more in another week when I see how the Mourvedre did.  The vines are very green and lush this year and as I sit on my front porch writing this, I see a turkey hen with chicks wandering down one of the rows.  The turkeys have never done any damage in my vineyard so until they do, it is live and let live.

This is the time of year that is really fun in the vineyard.  In the late afternoon or early evening when things start to really cool off, it is a great time to walk some of the rows and just do some minor tending.  You can even do it with a wine glass in you hand.  The other thing I am quite proud of this year are my roses.  They are all in beautiful bloom and it is just a beautiful site.  I have yet to add any water yet (except for the roses which are on a separate watering system).  It looks like my first irrigation will not be until about the second week in July.  For those of you who do not follow my blog on the vineyard, I practice deficit irrigation.

The idea is to let the vines almost reach a point of being distressed before saturating down to the four foot level and then repeating.  This usually adds up to three irrigations a year.  I manage soil moisture by using sensors that are strategically placed throughout my vineyard and they measure soil moisture at one foot intervals down to four feet.  When things start to get really dry at four feet, it is time for an irrigation cycle.  I use drip irrigation, 1-gallon emitters and I usually run them for about 96 hours to get saturation at the four foot level.  The idea behind this, back up by some research by U.C. Davis, is that water stressed vines tend to force more nutrients to the grapes (the kids), so that while the production is down, the quality is way up.  Each year I push them a little harder to see what the limits are and I am still learning.

Wine:  Not much to report on the cooking or wine scene since I was on one of those consulting trips where you work 16 hours a day and then collapse in your hotel room with a sandwich from Subway.  Actually there is a great market in Burlingame call Lunardi’s and I usually get some cooked meat (chicken, ribs, or some other dish), a salad, and a 24 ounce beer, and then collapse while watching Rachel Maddow summarize the day’s events.  But I did pick up a good pinot while I was in San Francisco.  I had visited David Bruce’s winery in the Santa Cruz Mountains a few years ago, happening upon it by accident, and was impressed with his very reasonable Pinots.  This particular one is a 2006 Santa Cruz Mountains and it has a complexity that just lasts and lasts for one of the best finishes in a Pinot I have ever had.  It runs about $32/bottle and for a pinot, this is one great bargain.  I also got a Siduri, which is also one of my favorites, but have not tried it yet.

While I was in San Francisco, we did go to a restaurant called Crustaceans which one of my fellow workers raved about.  It is up on Polk street near the Civic Center.  I found it just okay.  I ordered some tiger shrimp and they made the ultimate mistake of overcooking the shrimp.  I would not go back.  I did find a reasonably priced 2006 Tori Mor Oregon pinot on the menu that was quite nice and soothed my poor palate.  That is about it from Lightner Vineyards.  The temperature on the front porch has dropped to a comfortable 78°, the vineyard looks beautiful in the beginning sunset.  I am a very lucky man.  Carpe Diem.

Note:  The Damn system still won’t let me post photos.  Just once I would like to have an electronic thing that actually worked reliably.

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.

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.

Vine: Spring work in the vineyard is in full swing.  I finished a herbicide spray, going after weeds and unwanted growth along the rows using a backpack sprayer to spot spray the evil demons.  When it is wet (a couple of weeks ago now), the big weeds can be pulled out by hand, but now that we are starting to experience typical Northern California weather (dry till October), Roundup® is essential.  One of my friends wants me to go all-natural and hoe these weeds out, but for one guy on three acres it would be an all consuming job.  What I find is that if I spot spray and stay ahead of it, it minimizes the use of the herbicide, and keeps the really repugnant weeds out of the vineyard.

The next chore is some initial thinning of the new shoots.  While it is too early to thin to two shoots per spur, the plant is putting out new buds and shoots in all sorts of unwanted places including at the base of the trunk.  The good news is that most of this new growth can be easily rubbed or broken off.  One needs to be a little careful and not get over exuberant in thinning because between now and when the canes start to harden and get pushed up through the wires, some will break off due to wind or other acts of violence.  So I don’t want to limit my choices too early.  You also want to see which shoots are producing grapes and are growing hardily.  But there are obvious choices for removing like on the trunk, base of the trunk, or out of old wood that would not produce grapes anyway.  The only exception to that is that sometimes the growth out of last years new wood (spur) is weak and you may want a new spur especially if it is better positioned.  Then you would leave that shoot even though it will not produce grapes this year, but will next year.  Remember the rule, grape producing shoots usually only grow out of last year’s new wood.  Note on the picture on the right, there are two well positioned new shoots growing out of the spur.  If you look closely you can see a grape pod on the shoot on the left.  You can also see some unwanted buds on the cardon (horizontal trunk of the syrah) that will need to be removed.

Walking through the vineyard removing unwanted shoots gives you a chance to really look at each plant and see how it is growing.  Right now the shoots are growing at about an inch to two inches a day, and with the forecast 90° weather next week, I could be up through the first wires by the end of next week which means lots of work for me.  The vineyard is full of ladybugs right now and they are eating all sorts of bad critters.  The cover crop is slowing starting to turn brown and die out. No it is not from lack of water because the soil is holding plenty of moisture.  It is just their cycle. I have to wait another two or three weeks until the seed heads have fully developed before mowing the whole vineyard so I get a good dispersion of seeds for next year.  It won’t be long before I will have to do one of my other dreaded chores, which is spray for powdery mildew (sulfur).  More about spraying and irrigation next time.  See, isn’t owning a vineyard glamorous?  Its hard work if you love the plants.

Wine: Well for wine this week I have a recipe selection for you which goes well with a high acid white.  We have a local fisherman who fishes in the bay and ocean and then sells fresh fish on Saturdays at our local outdoor market.  During the winter, he will tell you (via internet) what is available this week and you can order.  This week we ordered fresh shrimp and monk fish.  Candace was craving shrimp so here is a very simple and excellent recipe for a quick and simple fresh green bean and shrimp dinner.   The green beans can be fixed several ways and this time I added mushrooms.  Basically you trim off the stems of the green beans, and then boil them for no more than five minutes and then immediately remove them from the heat and soak them in ice water to stop them from cooking.  Dice a couple of shallots and several cloves of garlic.  Just before you are going to serve the shrimp, brown the shallots in a large sauté pan for about 2-3 minutes.  In a separate pan cook the mushrooms in some olive oil and butter (the mushrooms will produce juice which you don’t want in the sauté pan).  Throw in a pinch or two of the garlic and a touch of white wine and cook until the mushrooms are just turning soft.  In the meantime, add the rest of the garlic to the sauté pan and cook for only about a minute over medium heat to release their flavors.  Then turn the heat to high and add the green beans and mushroom and cook about 2-3 minutes, tossing frequently, until the beans are hot and the flavors have been absorbed.  The alternative to the mushrooms is to grate about a teaspoon of lemon zest and add it with the green beans instead of the mushrooms and it gives the whole dish a fresh crisp flavor.

For the shrimp, it is really easy.  Heat the oven to about 400°.  Put the shrimp (shell removed and deveined), on a cookie sheet lined with aluminum foil and coat in olive oil and salt and pepper to taste.  Then simply roast them about 6-8 minutes and they are ready.  Serve with a high acid white wine like a Sauvignon Blanc or a blend of Viognier and Roussanne.  I would recommend the Tamarindo from a Donkey and Goat, a 2007 Roussanne from El Dorado.  Yes I know, in the picture there is a red.  I am incorrigable.  Carpe Diem

Note:  If you click on the pictures (they are all high resolution) you can zoom in to see any details that might interest you.  Clicking multiple times will zoom your view.