We’ve enjoyed a little of everything so far in May, with summer-like heat giving way to perfect, low 70’s, springtime-like weather, followed by relatively rare May rain, more hail storms, and overnight temperatures in the low 40’s.  As expected, the vines exploded out of the gates in late April, and the cover crops between rows shot right up with them, the latter needing to be mowed early so that we could even move around out there. 

As predicted, we suffered some frost damage to our early-pushing tinto cao from a pair of early April frosts; the surprise was that our barbera got hit to some extent as well.  Apparently the buds–which were on the verge of pushing but had not yet pushed when the frosts hit–were sensitive enough to be affected.  The damage was random and, as the recent vineyard gallery pictures will attest, have hardly stopped the vines.  Indeed, it is rather hard to kill a grapevine; the main impact of mild frost like we experienced is to kill off some of the fruitful buds intentionally left behind from pruning, and lead to germination of less fruitful secondary buds, which we find that barbera push in abundance in a normal year.  The net impact of the frost is to decrease yield, though the magnitude of the impact will not be clear until we set select shoots and set fruit in a few weeks.  We expect that our committed barbera is quite safe at this point, but we may need to lower the estimate of barbera still available for sale. 

In the primitivo vineyard, we are experimenting with some nutritional supplementation in alternate rows derived from our cover crop.  In addition, we will be punching extra irrigation emitters in the rockier portion of the vineyard that dries out first in the summer heat.  Adjacent to both the primitivo and Portugese varietal vineyards, we’ve removed some trees that mainly provided easy cover for marauding birds and squirrels, which we think can only help our cause.

We received some fantastic news from the first of the regional home winemaker competitions, the El Dorado County Fair (our home county).  Our three entrants–a 2009 touriga nacional varietal wine, a 2008 dry red blend of our Portugese varietal grapes, and a 2008 dessert wine we call “Dorado” made from our Portugese varietal grapes in a vintage port style, all won gold medals.  We are particularly pleased to report that the Dorado won “Best of Show” in the El Dorado County Fair home winemaker competition, our first wine with this distinction.  All of these wines were made from our estate grapes. 

We have been “pounding the table” (in Wall Street speak) on the Portugese varietals for a couple of years now, and we hope that the strong showing of the wines made from these grapes will encourage more takers for our “Quinta” grapes.  As noted elsewhere on our website, if we are unable to sell the Quinta grapes to a single producer by July 1, we will be offering 10% shares in this year’s production to give smaller producers a chance to play with them.  Separately, we have varietal touriga for sale and suspect that you will enjoy its qualities as much as we do.

It has been a busy few weeks as we prepare for budburst of the grapevines and the between-row mowing and mildew-preventative spraying that will ensue.   The string of March rains/hail storms finally relented, and beautiful spring  to early summer-like days (albeit a bit chilly some mornings) followed, starting to bring the vines to life.  We rapidly completed “winter pruning” of our primitivo and port vineyards in advance of budburst.  In total, we logged over 120 hours over several weeks pruning our ~7 acres of grapes, which represents only the first of several times that each vine will be touched throughout the season. 

Budburst was observed in our earliest pushing varieties (tinto cao in our “port” vineyard; muscat blanc which we use for eating/juice) on April 6, only to be greeted with light frost on the mornings of April 8 and 9.  The extent of damage, if any, to these varietals is not yet clear, but cooler temperatures and a little April rain/clouds have nevertheless reined in early growth.  Fortunately, our earliest pushing main varietal, barbera, had not pushed as of April 8/9 and indeed has not pushed as of this writing (April 15), though bud swell is evident, and budburst seems imminent.  A couple of pictures showing the deceptive “calm before the storm” of our dormant 9-year-old barbera vines (10th “leaf”) just before budburst are posted as part of our “vineyard gallery”.

All in all, we’re looking at a later-than-average start to the growing season, but we’re in good shape with adequate winter rains and  time to complete the necessary pre-season activities.  We look forward with optimism to the coming growing season and fair wine competitions.

“La Nina” years are supposed to be lean on rain, and the specific forecast for our wet season this year was early winter rain, followed by relatively dry weather.  And this looked brilliant for awhile there, with notably heavy rain in late December/early January yielding to several weeks on end of sunny skies and warming temperatures in January and early February.  But cool, wet rains have been very persistent since late February, with more rain forecast in the days ahead, promising yet another relatively late bud burst and compact spring season. 

The vineyard is like a tightly coiled spring right now.  While not a single bud has pushed and there are only minimal indications of bud swelling, the ground is completely saturated with water, the days are getting palpably longer, and the temperatures are slowly creeping up.  One senses that the vines–not to mention the cover crops and weeds–can’t wait to start their explosive early season growth–but consistent cool rains and limited sunshine have kept them all in check.  As usual, the extension of the “off season” is welcome to some degree since there is always more to do than time to do it, but at some point, the lateness is not welcome, as it makes for a more hectic early season and pushes other vineyard activities into a time of unbearable heat.   Right now, with our barbera vineyard completely pruned and pruning begun on the other varietals, all is orderly and serene.  But, we know too well that it is the calm before the storm.

The vineyard is completely dormant as of early March, but the cool weather is slowly losing its grip, and the buds will soon begin to swell.  Some false spring weather some weeks back fooled some of our fruit trees into flowering, but fortunately the vines did not bite on the fake, as a series of frosty days ensued.   We are busily working on off-season projects including some work to more evenly distribute our irrigation blocks and improve tractor turnaround room.  The biggest job–now more than half-complete–is the winter pruning of the vines, a very satisfying but labor-intensive endeavor.

The most important change in the off-season is that co-proprietor Andy is on the farm fulltime now and will be personally providing a much greater fraction of the farm labor.  We anticipate that this will allow the individual attention to vines required for achieving optimal vine balance.  Hired labor is expedient and necessary at times, but it’s very hard to communicate instructions that are practical enough to be implemented by a hired crew that take into account an individual vine’s needs.  

We think our experiment with the inclusion of “kicker canes” was successful last year in our barbera as a means of reigning in vigor, though they certainly add to the labor at multiple steps.  We are using kicker canes again this year in the barbera, but this time have taken pains for a more optimal placement of these to be more readily removed later.

We look forward to a great year–maybe closer to the mean in terms of timing–and hope for some strong showings for wines made from our grapes in regional competitions.  Prices and availability for the 2011 growing season are now posted.