A lot has happened in the vineyard since the last update in mid-May, but all routine. We received a final splash of rain in early June, but are now solidly in a summer weather pattern in the Foothills, and any rain should be behind us until fall. The June rain was pretty much a non-event for us, as rainfall was light on our site, and we were in the midst of regular preventative powdery mildew sprays anyway.

Bloom was first noted in our touriga nacional, tinta cao, and highest portion of our primitivo fields by May 23, and in the balance of the vineyard about a week later. We took petiole samples in the barbera and primitivo fields to check on nutritional status on June 3, with no surprises in the outcome. This is 20 days earlier than our bloom sampling last year, suggesting that we have made up a lot of time in vine development since our late budburst in mid-April, and may be on track for a relatively “normal” harvest time. Obviously, the amount of heat this summer will impact that, but it’s looking good. We are not changing our harvest time estimates at this point.

Vegetative growth was rapid and vigorous, but we completed a complete round of shoot thinning in all fields by the end of May. This was helpful to open up the vines for air and light penetration, as well as spraying. It also lowered the rate of transpiration loss heading into the start of irrigation, which we began in early June. We have seen no powdery mildew this year, including in our most susceptible varietals. Shoot growth is pretty much done now, and we saw the first signs of water stress in vine tendrils in some areas with the recent heat wave, suggesting that we had not over-watered. We are having weekly ground water measurements done, so we have an additional quantitative handle this year on irrigation needs apart from visual cues.

We did an additional round of mowing as expected, but the cover crop has largely browned out at this point, and the length of the shoots in our vertical cordon (head-trained) vines largely prevents this anyway at this point in the season. Weed control within rows is good at this point (knock on wood). It is about this time that our old friend the horseweed starts becoming a nuisance in or adjacent to the rows.

Fruit set has happened throughout the vineyard and looks plentiful, and the berries have enlarged noticeably in the last 2 weeks. We’ll take a closer look at crop load in the coming month. We anticipate removing our “kicker cane” in the barbera soon, as its work in restraining vigor is largely done, and it contributes to transpiration and therefore water loss until removed. Beyond that, we will drop fruit as soon as crop load relative to target becomes obvious.

On the judging circuit, the home winemaker portion of the California State Fair was cancelled (budgetary reasons we assume), and that for the Amador County Fair was postponed until July. On the commercial wine judging circuit, the perhaps most-oft submitted wine of all time–the 2009 Reserve Barbera from Oakstone Winery (Shaker Ridge vineyard designate)–won silvers at the 2012 El Dorado County Fair and 2012 California State Fair, and a bronze at the 2012 Amador County Fair. By our count, this would be something like 7 silver medals and 2 bronze medals total for this well-traveled wine. To our knowledge, it has never failed to medal. The wine remains for sale at Oakstone’s tasting room in Fair Play.

We had the privilege recently of presenting to the Sacramento Home Winemakers (SHW) organization on the subject of port wines and our Portugese varietal vineyard in particular, and to taste 4 different port-style wines made from Shaker Ridge grapes last year. The grapes used to make these wines, comprising 5 different Portugese varietals, were all picked on the same day for all clients (Quinta shareholders) last year, including those for the SHW members’ wines. The winemakers all took their wines in slightly different directions, with different but pleasing results. A couple managed to coax some particularly fruit-forward wines from the grapes, and a delicious dry wine was made as well. It seemed to be a good learning experience for us and them, and we look forward to seeing these wines in competitions in future years.

Based on a number of inquiries, we have decided to continue to offer our Quinta grapes for sale as a single package until July 1. However, if not committed to one client by then, the touriga nacional, tempranillo, and tinta cao components will be made available separately on a conventional per pound basis. Reservations for these can be taken ahead of formal posting; contact us for pricing. Quantities of barbera and primitivo remain on sale for the 2012 season as well.

A final large slug of rain over several days in April has set us up for a beautiful start to the 2012 vintage. In the end, local rainfall was only modestly below normal. The rain’s late arrival made the annual grasses and weeds very happy, and they have proceeded to shoot up between the rows in a sprint to set seeds. They have been mowed once, but will surely need to be mowed again before the month is out. The vines really took off, and one could practically see them grow before one’s eyes in late April and early May. This growth has brought with it the need for regular sprays to prevent powdery mildew, and no issues have been encountered on that front to date. The vines look very healthy, the future fruit clusters are visible and abundant, and we would anticipate bloom to follow in the next couple of weeks. We seem to have escaped frost damage, and we suspect that most growers are breathing a sigh of relief at what looks like a normal, healthy start to the season. It was definitely a late start–with our primitivo finally pushing on about April 20–but there is reason to think we should make up some time now with the favorable growing conditions.

We got a good jump on shoot thinning–a critical operation for quality control– and we have already completed that operation in the Quinta vineyard and a separate touriga field, with work on the main varietals (barbera and primitivo) to follow this week. Irrigation has not started, but the ground is drying out quickly, and don’t expect that the need to irrigate will be more than 2-3 weeks off, either. California is truly beautiful during this mid-spring window when the hillsides are still green, the air still has a little humidity in it, and the high heat has not started, and our vineyard is no exception.

The first homemade wine competition of the season happened this past weekend at the El Dorado County Fair. We were braced for anti-climax, as our 3 golds and Best of Show showing in that competition last year are pretty much a once-in-a-lifetime sort of outcome that we knew we could not improve upon or perhaps ever see again. We chose to enter two estate wines: our 2009 primitivo and our 2009 dry blend of Portugese varietals. The primitivo won a double gold, and the estate red won a silver. This was a gratifying result, as there were only six double golds (double gold means all 3 judges on a panel thought it merited a gold) out of 210 wines total entered. The silver was a solid showing for a blend of varietals that most people, let alone wine judges, have probably never heard of. Next up are the Amador County Fair and California State Fair.

Fruit remains available for sale for the current season, but the region is seeing healthy demand from other parts of the state, as the Central Valley (which had been on a rip out mode for vineyards for several years) finds itself short of grapes with continued growth in domestic wine consumption. Thus, if you are on the fence, we recommend that you secure your grape supply — whether here or elsewhere–before it’s gone. In the absence of a sale of our Quinta fruit to a single client by June 1, we will be releasing additional touriga nacional, plus tempranillo and tinta cao, for sale by the pound.

A little whining about the paucity of rain in our diary post last month seemed to do the trick: it was followed by fairly heavy rain in March and continued periodic rain here in April. This is definitely good for the region as a whole, and though not as helpful to Northern California water supplies as rain earlier in the season that is more likely to be stored in the Sierras as snow, there are not too many in the agricultural community complaining. We remain light in overall rainfall for the season, but certainly the soil water profile has been significantly replenished by the late rains, and we should be able to follow a more normal irrigation pattern.

At Shaker Ridge, winter pruning was finished on time in early March, and we managed to thread in our weed control treatments within the rows between rains. We’re calling the arrival of budburst in many of our earlier-pushing varietals—barbera, touriga nacional, tinta cao, and tinta amarela– as Easter, April 8. Tempranillo, primitivo, and souzao are still mostly dormant. We had seemed primed for an earlier start, but cloud cover from the March rains and generally cool temperatures kept the vines at bay. In fact, we experienced our typical once-annual snow fall on March 18, with just a dusting that had melted by noon. The later budburst was fortuitous actually, since we got temperatures close to freezing last week, and had the vines already pushed, there likely would have been pockets of frost damage.

The timing of budburst is noteworthy, because we called budburst in most of the aforementioned early varietals as April 6 in 2011–an historically late season. This would suggest the possibility of yet another late harvest season, though weather patterns downstream of budburst (including those affecting the length of time until flowering) are relevant in the final outcome. Significantly, our barbera did not push until about 2 weeks later last year, which we later realized was due to frost damage suffered by many of the primary buds just prior to overt full opening. Thus, we’re glad to see the barbera safely out of the gates at an earlier date than last year. The key now will be avoiding frost going forward, which of course is almost 100% out of our control!

We still have availability of all of our grape varietals, but preseason orders have been steady, and we would encourage those wishing to secure grape supply for 2012 to act early. We are looking forward to the coming wine judging season and the 2012 vintage.