Veraison in now in full swing as expected, with 100% veraison evident in both the barbera and primitivo vineyards.  We know we’ve previously cited other times of year as the most beautiful in the vineyard, so we won’t contradict ourselves now.  However, the home stretch toward harvest (prior to raisining and bird gorging) has got to be right up there, with the full bunches of dark blue berries hanging on still-green vines.  Given the early ripening, we began our bird control measures early this year, and as usual we think they were effective for at least 2 days.

We finished a complete pass through the main vineyard to drop fruit last month, the first time that we have ever completed this in July, thanks to the use of some supplementary labor.  We consider fruit-dropping–which was in the 40-50% range—to be the single most important thing we can do maximize quality, besides preventing powdery mildew, eliminating bunch rot, controlling weeds, eradicating gophers, prevention of dehydration, avoiding over-hydration, stopping marauding birds, keeping deer away, and avoiding half a dozen possible nutrient deficiencies.  Come to think of it, it’s a wonder that we harvest any grapes at all.

We are excited at the prospect of harvesting our first grapes from our 3-year-old trellised vineyard of 5 different Portugese varietal grapes typically blended in port-style wines, but interesting in their own right and as blenders for more common varietals.  The grapes will be harvested in separate lots as the individual varietals reach maturity, allowing us to vinify them separately and learn about their unique characteristics. 

We expect to begin posting grape chemistries from our main vineyard shortly so that our clients can follow the ripening process and begin to anticipate harvest dates.

It’s summer in the Sierra Foothills, and nothing is new under the sun.   A string of scorching 100+ days around the 4th of July marked the official beginning of summer, but these have mercifully passed.  Apart from that, temperatures have been quite reasonable in a Foothills sort of way, low-to-mid 90s during the day and upper 50’s to low 60’s at night.  As happens about once a summer, we did receive a brief but measurable rainfall this past week, which was not particularly welcome since it automatically triggers the need to spray for powdery mildew.  

Based on signs in the vineyard, it’s clearly going to be an early harvest year, which means that the blessed off-season is that much closer!  Our experimental plot of tempranillo grapes, which means early in Spanish, have already begun verasion in earnest, with the first signs on about July 6.  We think the same early-ripening variety of grapes began ripening about 2 weeks later last year, so this is the first clue of an early harvest.  Our main varietals, primitivo and barbera, show only slight and occasional signs of veraison as of today, but we would expect more clear evidence in about a week.

Mildew control has remained excellent, and we’re happily about one spray away from being done with that for another season.  Water  supply is holding out, and we pushed (with the help of the aforementioned scorching days) our vines to the point of water stress in the last 2 weeks.  A small fraction of our grapes suffered some sunburn damage during the hot weather, but this has actually helped our fruit-dropping efforts, as these grapes effectively drop themselves.  Manual fruit-dropping has begun and will remain the primary focus through harvest, as we try to maximize quality at the expense of quantity.