Little is left in the 2013 season but the waiting (and watching, and testing, and coordinating, and harvesting, and…).  Fruit dropping has been completed for all of our varietals, veraison is well past, and we’ve deployed all the bird defenses on hand.  Weekly grape chemistry testing has begun, beginning with earlier ripening varieties, with additional ones to be added as they get within a relevant range.

On the primitivo side, we found that the first round of fruit dropping completed in early July, which mainly removed side clusters, was not enough to facilitate full ripening, and we “dropped” (cut off, removed) a large number of clusters in early August.  The crop now looks to be in balance, and the most vulnerable portions have been netted to protect from birds, who had already found them.  It seems like the bird pressure is worse than usual, perhaps due to the prevailing drought-like conditions.  This pressure includes wild turkeys, who appear to have enjoyed a very successful hatch this spring, as we’re seeing large families of them visiting the vineyard daily for the first time in several years.  They have done a number on clusters within their reach in our early-ripening muscat grown for home use.

On the barbera side, we recently completed fruit dropping, which included a fair number of clusters that were sun-damaged during the early July heat spike.  A reasonable crop remains which should ripen well, though likely on the low end of our target yield, and perhaps a little light.  The coming weeks will be critical as we try to protect what is left from excess sun and avian visitors.

Our Quinta fruit looks good and has enjoyed unprecedented successful protection from overhead netting.  Though we provide this every year in this trellised block, a few birds typically manage to get in and need to be chased out.  This year, we really haven’t seen this since shortly after deploying them in July.  Fruit has been dropped, and there should only be the waiting here.

Our non-Quinta block of touriga is looking good  but may need bird netting to get through the coming weeks.  We are watching with interest fruit ripening in a few experimental rows where we have employed different fruit thinning practices.  The fruit load looks to be in good balance with the vines.

There is not much fruit left for sale in 2013:  a little non-Quinta touriga and tinta cao are all that remain.  We would entertain waitlist requests for barbera or primitivo, but frankly don’t expect there to be much left once confirmed clients get their fruit.

It’s been an interesting ride weather-wise this year.  It was generally a cool spring, with a series of isolated and limited late rains, but summer has been a scorcher.  We endured about a week of 100+ daytime high temperatures leading up to and a little past the 4th of July, followed by the briefest of respites into the upper 80’s.  We’re now back to highs in the upper 90’s, with no cooler than the mid-90’s forecast in the foreseeable future.  There’s really nothing unusual about this for summer in the Foothills, though we hope we get a little more of a breather at some point.

The net result of the weather has been plenty of heat for ripening, which seems to be moving right along.  Our first tell of this was our tempranillo, perennially our earliest-ripening red varietal–and we detected veraison in that grape already on July 7.  The same milestone for our vineyard in recent years is shown below:

Year                 Date of Veraison in Tempranillo

2013                 July 7

2012                 July 16

2011                 Aug 2

2010                 July 31

Of course, 2010 and 2011 were particularly late years, but 2013 is on track to be an “early” year for harvest, given the persistent heat we’re seeing now.  Expected harvest windows have been updated accordingly in our “Current Grape Availability” postings and will continue to be fine-tuned as the observations and data come in.

Visually, our vines are holding up well.  We did see some new sunburn damage in the barbera fruit during the oppressive triple-digit temperature period.  Barbera is our most susceptible variety to this, probably due to its thin skin.  The damage (which results in affected berries completely drying up) typically affected an exposed portion of certain clusters, the rhyme or reason for ones affected not always obvious. Fortunately, we had not yet done any cluster thinning in the barbera at the start of the heat wave, which will allow us to “select” significantly affected clusters for removal when we do this.  As a result, it’s not clear that harvestable fruit load will be net reduced, though we’ll have a clearer picture of yield next month.

Fruit load is generally average this year, with the exception of the primitivo which had a pretty heavy fruit set for the second straight year.  We have accordingly already done a major round of fruit dropping in the primitivo, and expect the start of veraison within the week.

Congratulations to Gin Yang, who won Shaker Ridge’s inaugural contest for best homemade wine made from our grapes with her port-style wine made from five Portugese varietals; she will receive 400 lbs of free grapes.  Gin won a gold medal with her 2011 port-style wine in the 2013 Sacramento Home Winemakers’ June Jubilee, and this proved to be the highest competition honor achieved for an entrant in our contest.  Gin was actually one of several Sacramento Home Winemakers (SMH) to make a port-style wine from our 2011 vintage, a year in which we sold “shares” of the vineyard to many home winemakers.  Gin also made a dry style red wine from the very same Portugese grapes (including same harvest) as her gold medal winning dessert wine, and this garnered a bronze medal in the June Jubilee.   An honorable mention in our contest goes to JD Phelps, also from the SMH group, who took home a silver medal in the 2013 SHW June Jubilee with his rendition of a port-style wine made from our 2011 vintage.

In other wine competition news, we are pleased to report that our own homemade wine made from 2011 estate touriga nacional (Quinta) won a double gold medal at the 2013 Orange County Fair.  Our 2010 vintage port-style wine earned a silver medal in the same competition.   The touriga outcome was particularly gratifying, as it’s not a varietal that most judges would be familiar with, and so they were likely reacting to their overall impressions of the wine.  One concluded, in the judging sheets, “My first ever [touriga], wow, it stands alone.”  Truly, this was a wine that made itself in 2011, but we’re glad that others appreciate the qualities of this varietal as a dry wine.

Some primitivo, touriga nacional, and tinta cao grapes remain available for purchase from the 2013 vintage; we are also accepting wait-list requests for barbera.

It’s been a beautiful late spring in the Sierra Foothills, with temperatures on the cool side, and even a little bit of rain past the traditional end of the region’s rainy season around Memorial Day.  Rain is not necessarily appreciated in the vineyard at this time of year since, if it’s significant, it can wash off the latest spray applied to prevent a major bane of wine grapes, powdery mildew.  This can mean additional rounds of spraying to assure good coverage, which amounts to yet more work.  Fortunately, any rain has been minor or well-timed so as not to create the need for additional spraying.  We did endure a quick, withering shot of mid-summer weather last weekend, with highs in the low to mid 100’s across the region, but daytime highs plummeted some 30 degrees by Monday and are forecast to stay moderate in the coming week.  We noticed some sunburn damage to portions of scattered barbera bunches following the heat spike, but the damage was limited and almost immaterial, as the affected berries will dry up and fall off well before harvest.

Certain lower-lying vineyards with relatively poor air drainage in high elevation areas of the Sierra Foothills actually experienced frost and significant grape losses in the latter part of May. This was fortunately a complete non-event at Shaker Ridge, with temperatures not nearly cold enough for frost.

It is too early to estimate yields, but fruit set seems reasonable at this point. It is also too early to predict harvest dates, but so far we remain on track for a normal to slightly early harvest time vs. historical norms.

We will be completing our shoot thinning in the primitivo tomorrow, which will end the frenetic spring period in the vineyard created by rapid shoot growth of the vines and weed/cover crop growth.  The young grape berries are rapidly increasing in size, with the barbera grapes in the lead, and are already well on their way to filling out full bunches.  Shoot growth has slowed significantly, and we’re beginning to irrigate more frequently. Bloom elemental analysis looked pretty good in our vineyards, though we failed to see much difference among our different rootstock/clone combinations in the barbera.  Apparently, the more limited sampling that we have been conducting in past years is adequate to understand what is going on nutritionally in the barbera.

With a couple past vintages of wine made from our grapes lost in a fire at Oakstone Winery last year, it’s been a lean year in terms of the number of commercial wine competitions entries made with our grapes.   However, the little news we have is very good:  DK Cellars’ 2010 barbera, which was made with Shaker Ridge grapes, recently took a DOUBLE GOLD medal at the 2013 Amador County Fair.  This was one of 3 barbera wines to earn this honor, alongside perennial excellent examples from Cooper Vineyards and Jeff Runquist Wines, very good company indeed.  For those not familiar with wine judging, the “double gold” signifies that all the judges in the tasting panel–typically 3 in number–thought that the wine merited a gold medal.  Such consensus on something as subjective as wine quality is actually relatively rare, with many more “gold” (vs. double gold) medals awarded in any given competition, the plain gold medal usually signifying that most but not all of the judges rated the wine to be a gold.  DK Cellars’ effort, which is an outstanding, varietally correct wine made in more of an Old World style, represents the highest honors achieved for a barbera made from our grapes to date.  The wine is currently released and available for sale at DK Cellars’ tasting room in Fair Play, CA.

Our own contest for best homemade wine made from Shaker Ridge grapes is drawing to a close with Amador County Fair judging coming this Saturday.  We will report the outcome in next month’s diary entry.

Both of our main varietals, barbera and primitivo, are now sold out for 2013, but we are accepting wait list requests for extra grapes.  Yield is conservatively estimated, so we often have some additional grapes to sell once commitments are met.