We’re in the home stretch now, and it will be a race to ripen the grapes before cool and wet weather ensues.  We had a little more heat than expected last week, followed by another nice blast of autumn, and only moderate heat is forecast in the coming week.  We would be surprised if it suddenly got warm now; the pattern of an overall cool year seems likely to continue.  Fortunately, our location above the fog but at the lower end of the altitude range (~1500′) for our viticultural area should put us in an enviable position for ripening our fruit in what has been reported to be a challenging year for grape growing in coastal areas of the state.

Grape chemistry readings, which we started last week for our earliest ripening varieties, give us a pretty good idea of where we stand on harvest. We were a bit surprised by the acid levels last week in the primitivo, but they’ve come down nicely this week, brix are rising, and pH confirms the ripening trend.  We think that we’re still 2-3 weeks out for the primitivo, depending on where specific clients like their fruit.  Our nets on about 40% of this crop have birds concentrating their grazing in the un-netted rows, which not coincidentally is where we have been sending our golden retriever for entertainment.

For barbera, we focused our sampling on our earliest ripening and lowest yielding block to get a fix on where the barbera stands.  Brix in the barbera are farthest along of any of our varietals, the pH is above 3 (we’ll take it–often our first reading of the year for barbera is not!), and TA is still characteristically high.  On the basis of brix alone this block will be in a range that some like within 2 weeks, but the TA will likely require another 3 weeks to get in a reasonable range. Other blocks would be slightly behind and are looking like mid-October harvests.

The tempranillo made somewhat disappointing progress on brix this week, but showed evidence of ripening in the drop in TA and rise in pH.  This is  a characteristically low acid grape, and in port-style blends brings tannin rather than acid to the table.  It looks like we’ve still got a couple weeks to go on the tempranillo, and as we’ve been very successful keeping the birds off it, may be able to hang it for three weeks if needed for the brix.

The touriga nacional, whose juice already has particularly nice flavors, is looking like its normal well-balanced self at this point, with probably 3-4 weeks to go.  We’ve cropped this mainstay grape of the “Quinta” at low levels, and we’re very optimistic on the quality of this fruit.

It’s been a wild ride this week, with temperatures in the vineyard reaching north of 105 F for a couple days mid-week, to absolutely autumn-like conditions with highs only in the 70’s this weekend.  Beyond these aberrations, we’re expected to settle back into the same pattern we’ve enjoyed most of the summer, which has been highs near 90 during the day and upper 50s to 60 at night.  These conditions should continue to provide outstanding conditions for grape ripening; we’re quite optimistic about the vintage despite its overall lateness.

Harvest finally begins to come in to focus, with veraison now complete in the tempranillo and primitivo, and almost there in the touriga and barbera.  We’ve updated our projections of harvest in our “grape availability” chart and are expecting the tempranillo harvest in about 2 weeks, the primitivo harvest in about 3 weeks, and the touriga and barbera in October. We expect to begin posting chemistries for our early-ripening varieties next weekend.

Our vines are beginning to show a little late season wear-and-tear, but are generally holding up well and certainly better than last year.  We watered aggressively before and during the recent heat spike, and we seem to be at a nice steady-state now with water demands of the vines, increasingly shorter days, and moderate temperatures expected ahead. 

In terms of vineyard operations, our bird defenses are fully deployed and fairly effective to date.  We noted with glee that a couple birds who managed to get into our full overhead netting in the port vineyard attracted the attention of a hawk–only the second time we’ve gotten aerial support–who made several swoops toward what became a mini-aviary, but couldn’t get on the other side of the netting to nab his prey.  Fortunately, mop up action was completed by our middle-aged golden retriever, picked up at the pound this winter, who–true to his breed–turns out to be an outstanding and enthusiastic bird chaser.  Otherwise, we’ve deployed netting directly to about 40% of the primitivo, and have two “bird boxes” loudly broadcasting distress calls from dawn till dusk.  The latter make us feel like we’re doing something, even if the birds ignore them.

It’s last call for the “Quinta”, from which we will be harvesting the tempranillo–earliest of our Portugese/Iberian varietals–in mid-September.  We have benefited from a couple of years of practice with these varietals, and can say without hesitation that this should be our best year ever with these:  we’ve stayed on top of shoot thinning, and the crop load has been severely limited (typically one bunch per cane) and should be close to our production targets.  The proprietors look forward to making some outstanding estate wine if we have no takers…

Finally, we are pleased to note that a reserve barbera made from our 2008 vintage is now on sale at Oakstone Winery in Fair Play, the 2007 vintage having recently sold out.