Summer is fully here in the Sierra Foothills, both according to the calendar and the thermometer.  Our last blog mentioned a cool, wet spring; this is a distant memory now! We’re currently in the midst of our third surge into triple-digit territory.  Mid-June brought the first, prolonged run into very hot temperatures, followed by a nice cool-down into the 80’s, followed by a spike into the 105 F+ range, back off to the low 90’s, then once again to around 100 F this weekend.  This is summer in the Foothills:  not really a surprise, more like a reality check after the pleasant spring.

So far, the vines seem to be handling the heat better than the humans, who besides the heat tend to sleep less in summer with the long days, which on a farm usually means long work days, particularly on either side of the hot middle-of-the-day period.  Thanks in part to abundant winter rains (we use well water), we have been able to irrigate as necessary to keep the vines happy.  We had successfully kept ahead of mildew pressure through the late spring and early summer, and now the high heat helps with that defense.  As noted in the last blog, the strange spring left us short on weed control in certain parts of the vineyard, but we did some extra mowing and spraying and got that under control.

Meanwhile, bloom has come and gone, and we have rapidly growing wine grape clusters visible.  We are happy to report, both for our confirmed clients and those on waitlists, that fruit set looks very good throughout the vineyard.  We were particularly impressed with the primitivo, which is known to produce a lot of shot berries and irregularly sized fruit in some years, and this year has set clusters that are not overly full (which we don’t like for ripening and for providing a more favorable environment for certain molds) but loose, regularly sized, and abundant.  In fact, our major decision in the primitivo will be deciding if the vines can carry all the fruit set or will need judicious fruit dropping to fully ripen.

The barbera crop also looks promising; the key there as always is being able to harvest the fruit that is set in the face of hot temperatures which we don’t think this varietal particularly favors with its thinner skin.  However, it was probably a good thing that we got the prolonged heat spike in June, as the skins should have built up a protective coating to withstand sunburn that that will serve it well for the balance of the summer.   We are quite pleased with progress to date.

We are waiting now for the first signs of veraison, which should come any time now.  Our bellwether for that is our tempranillo, which besides being our earliest varietal to start veraison (=ripening visible as color change in grapes) happens to grow adjacent to where we need to walk to access the vineyard daily, and so is effectively checked frequently.  We are already about two weeks past the start veraison last year, consistent with the significantly later harvest that we were anticipating based on later budburst.

On the wine competition front, we neglected to mention in the last blog, as we had such exciting news to report from our clients’ results, that we did pretty well ourselves at the El Dorado County Fair home winemaker competition.  Our 2013 Portugese Red, a blend of 4 varietals from our Quinta vineyard block, earned a double gold, one of only 5 wines out of over 100 entrants to earn that distinction.  This continues a pretty remarkable run of honors for wines, mostly made by our clients, made from our Portugese varietals.

We have nominally just 0.35 tons (could possibly be a full half ton) of touriga still available for sale, though as mentioned primitivo fruit set looks very good, and barbera fruit set healthy, so we could see some of those varietals become available closer to or after initial harvest.  We expect to be able to confirm availability of fruit for some of our waitlist clients ahead of harvest, once we see how the vines handle the onset of veraison.

No two springs are exactly alike at the vineyard, but somehow they all manage to be fairly hectic.  In the last week of May, we find ourselves at last feeling more in control than not, and “bloom” is officially upon us.  The blooms of the subtle grape flowers that will go on to become wine grapes emit a distinctive, musty, delicate, floral aroma that we look forward to each year.  Bloom is also time when we take annual stock of the nutritional status of the vines and make corrections if necessary.  Downstream of bloom we get an initial sense of fruit set and likely yield for the vintage, though it’s really not until well into the summer that yield comes fully into focus.  Even then, we must keep an eye on possible sources of attrition including fungal disease–which we and most growers seek to prevent rather than treat–as well as sunburn, dehydration, mites, song birds, turkeys, black bears…it’s a long list!

With the help of a crew, we have just completed shoot thinning, an extremely important operation for opening up the grape canopy to air flow and light and for limiting yield. The vines, after “pushing” (budburst) fairly late this year, sat pretty much in suspended animation for weeks as a very pleasant spring, temperature-wise, unfolded.  That is to say it was pleasant for humans, a little cool and wet for the vines.  But gradually and inevitably our wet season–which was (thankfully after 4 years of drought) very wet indeed this year–has given way, and we are now perched at Memorial Day weekend, which in many years marks the last chance for rain until the following autumn.   Not to say that we NEVER see a thunderstorm in summer, but they are rare at our 1500′ altitude, and garden variety storm fronts like much of the Mid-West and East Coast see in summer simply don’t happen here.  In any event, with the progression of spring came more sun and warmth, and the vine shoots exploded in growth and now range from about 2 to 4 feet in length, seemingly overnight.

So far, so good.  We do not see evidence of frost damage and that risk is now past.  We have also managed to stay ahead of the cover crop growth between rows with mowing. Unfortunately, our treatment for weeds within rows seemed too little, too late for some parts of the vineyard, so we will need to get creative with weed control in some areas to avoid excessive competition with our vines for irrigation water. Irrigation has not been required yet given the abundant rain in the wet season, but the extensive shoot and soon fruit growth, coupled with warmer temperatures, will likely necessitate that we start irrigating in June.

On the home wine competition front, we don’t know how to summarize what has happened recently without sounding like we’re bragging, which doesn’t come off well to those on the receiving end, so we’ll try to keep it as factual as possible.  The Sacramento Home Winemakers (SHW), a Sacramento-based non-profit organization that promotes education about winemaking and boasts a large membership, holds an annual Jubilee wine competition within its ranks.  The judging is done by a collection of outside experts and is conducted in typical blind and systematic fashion by panels of judges (we assisted at a judging several years ago as former members).

This May at the 2017 Jubilee, a dry red wine made from a blend of Portugese varietals from our Quinta block (2014 vintage) took Best of Red Wine and Best of Show honors.  To be named Best of Show, it needed to beat out the other 155 entrants, including, in the final round of judging, the other “Best of” wines, namely Best of White, Best of Rose, Best of Dessert, and Best of Fruit (ie, other than grapes) wines. Remarkably, the Best of Dessert wine happened to be a port-style wine made from our same Quinta block, same blend of grapes, same vintage, but in a fortified dessert style rather than dry, by Thad and Heather Rodgers.  For those with elephant-like memories of this blog, you may remember that Thad impressively won Best of Red at last year’s Jubilee competition with a primitivo made with our grapes, losing out for Best of Show honors to a port-style wine made with grapes from our Quinta.  In other words, in 2 consecutive years, wines made by our clients with grapes grown at Shaker Ridge have won Best of Red, Best of Dessert, and Best of Show at SHW’s Jubilee competition in a field of wines made from grapes from all over northern CA.  Pinch us, we must be dreaming…

THANK YOU to the Sacramento Home Winemakers for doing such great work with our grapes and, importantly, for sharing your success:  it keeps us going…!

For the 2017 season, we still have 0.85 ton of touriga–the same varietal that makes up the plurality of our Quinta block but from an adjacent, untrellised field–available for sale as of this writing.  We don’t think it will last for long, particularly if a commercial buyer finds it.  It is the quintessential port grape, but as shown above, can also contribute to a terrific dry wine and we think it is the single best varietal that we do here.  Though we are sold out of our popular primitivo, we are still taking wait list requests for that varietal and think there is a realistic possibility of availability if we can come close to matching last year’s yield.  We will start posting the waitlist in conjunction with our “Current Grape Availability” updates so that those on it and those interested can have good visibility into the availability situation in close to real time.

The 2017 vintage is underway, though barely.  We enjoyed heavy rainfall in the Sierra Foothills this winter and spring, with record snowpacks in the High Sierra.  It was frankly just what the doctor ordered.  It’s hard to believe after several years of drought (though we think that was a bit of an exaggeration for our area last year) that the current concerns and headlines would be more about flooding, overburdened spillways, and reservoirs filled to the brim and being forced to dump water.  Feast or famine.

The frequent rains and still persistent cool but beautiful weather have led to a late budburst, or at least later than the last 2 very early years.  This year looks like it may have been average to slightly on the late side for budburst, which will likely be reflected in harvest timing.  We also pruned very late this year, with some early varietals just starting to “push”, and that probably added to the later appearance of buds in our vineyard.  In any event, though it looked like we would never get our in-row weed control spray down in time, we managed to do that, and now we wait for warming and more sun before rapid shoot growth and the imminent start of routine preventative spraying for powdery mildew.

We weighed a number of options for our barbera in the off season, a variety which is a bit of a “water hog” and also prone to raisining in our hot late summers.  One section of our barbera vineyard is on a rock outcropping with particularly shallow soils, and that section is the first to raisin, which is a perennial discouragement as harvest approaches.  We were prepared to graft this section to another varietal or take other extreme measure, but in the end we decided to remove vines selectively to allow those remaining to access more water.  Visually this will be barely noticeable to the casual observer, and yield-wise, we hope it will actually be a wash:  while we lose production from the vines removed, we hope that production will be higher from the remaining adjacent vines, with less raisining.

We’ve received word of additional outstanding results for home winemakers making wine with our Quinta Portugese varietal grapes including a pair of double golds (one for a dry wine, one for a port style) which we plan to update on our website soon.  On the commercial front, we are pleased to report that Due Vigne di Famiglia’s 2015 barbera and primitivo wines made with Shaker Ridge Vineyard grapes each took silver medals in the 2017 San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition.  Congratulations to Due Vigne’s winemaker Ken Musso!  We look forward to reporting on the many upcoming commercial and home winemaker competitions.

Pre-season sales were brisk, and our only remaining 2017 grape inventory–at least until we get further in the season and are able to better assess yield– is  less than 1 ton of touriga, a fabulous red wine grape suitable for both dry and dessert wines.  If you’re interested in making wine this year, we recommend you commit to grapes early…