Veraison in now in full swing as expected, with 100% veraison evident in both the barbera and primitivo vineyards.  We know we’ve previously cited other times of year as the most beautiful in the vineyard, so we won’t contradict ourselves now.  However, the home stretch toward harvest (prior to raisining and bird gorging) has got to be right up there, with the full bunches of dark blue berries hanging on still-green vines.  Given the early ripening, we began our bird control measures early this year, and as usual we think they were effective for at least 2 days.

We finished a complete pass through the main vineyard to drop fruit last month, the first time that we have ever completed this in July, thanks to the use of some supplementary labor.  We consider fruit-dropping–which was in the 40-50% range—to be the single most important thing we can do maximize quality, besides preventing powdery mildew, eliminating bunch rot, controlling weeds, eradicating gophers, prevention of dehydration, avoiding over-hydration, stopping marauding birds, keeping deer away, and avoiding half a dozen possible nutrient deficiencies.  Come to think of it, it’s a wonder that we harvest any grapes at all.

We are excited at the prospect of harvesting our first grapes from our 3-year-old trellised vineyard of 5 different Portugese varietal grapes typically blended in port-style wines, but interesting in their own right and as blenders for more common varietals.  The grapes will be harvested in separate lots as the individual varietals reach maturity, allowing us to vinify them separately and learn about their unique characteristics. 

We expect to begin posting grape chemistries from our main vineyard shortly so that our clients can follow the ripening process and begin to anticipate harvest dates.

It’s summer in the Sierra Foothills, and nothing is new under the sun.   A string of scorching 100+ days around the 4th of July marked the official beginning of summer, but these have mercifully passed.  Apart from that, temperatures have been quite reasonable in a Foothills sort of way, low-to-mid 90s during the day and upper 50’s to low 60’s at night.  As happens about once a summer, we did receive a brief but measurable rainfall this past week, which was not particularly welcome since it automatically triggers the need to spray for powdery mildew.  

Based on signs in the vineyard, it’s clearly going to be an early harvest year, which means that the blessed off-season is that much closer!  Our experimental plot of tempranillo grapes, which means early in Spanish, have already begun verasion in earnest, with the first signs on about July 6.  We think the same early-ripening variety of grapes began ripening about 2 weeks later last year, so this is the first clue of an early harvest.  Our main varietals, primitivo and barbera, show only slight and occasional signs of veraison as of today, but we would expect more clear evidence in about a week.

Mildew control has remained excellent, and we’re happily about one spray away from being done with that for another season.  Water  supply is holding out, and we pushed (with the help of the aforementioned scorching days) our vines to the point of water stress in the last 2 weeks.  A small fraction of our grapes suffered some sunburn damage during the hot weather, but this has actually helped our fruit-dropping efforts, as these grapes effectively drop themselves.  Manual fruit-dropping has begun and will remain the primary focus through harvest, as we try to maximize quality at the expense of quantity.

The last month has been dry (as expected) and generally quite pleasant–just a handful of hotter days that have portended the higher heat to come.  The vineyard has never looked better this far into the season for us, a sign that we might actually be learning something.  Particularly gratifying has been the general health of block 4 barbera, which mostly sits on a shallow quartz vein and has, in the past, produced little fruit for us.  We have successfully passed the most critical time for mildew prevention, so the main focus for the balance of the season will be watering appropriately and modulating fruit loads to targets.  The fruit is set in both vineyards, with the berries in a rapid growth phase, and shoot growth slowing.  Based on casual observation, it appears that fruitload in the barbera is naturally lower than last year, which will mean less fruit for us to drop manually.  But that’s okay, because some weeds in the rows have once evaded our modest prevention efforts and will give us something to do to fill our copious spare time in 90-degree plus mid-summer days.   We will also be devoting a little more time training vines in the port vineyard to make sure that is well-positioned to produce a first commercial crop next year.

The spring rains trickled in as long as they could, but it appears that we’re now firmly in the grip of the summer weather pattern:  unrelenting sunshine.  That said, temperatures have remained seasonable and generally quite pleasant, making it a wonderful time to be out in the vineyard (okay, there really aren’t any bad times…).  The shoots have grown at their usual incredible rate, and flowering has recently occurred in the barbera and is ongoing in the primitivo.  Interestingly, we lost a large number of barbera shoots to the last rain of the season that, in the absence of wind that day, weighed on the large but still delicate shoots, breaking them off.  But most plants have recovered by sprouting additional shoots.  Suckering and shoot thinning is ongoing in the primitivo vineyard, as are regular sprayings for powdery mildew prevention.  If there’s one thing we’ve learned, it’s that when the weather is perfect for us to be in the vineyard, it’s even better for powdery mildew.  So far, there have been no signs of this bane of grape growers.  We’ve just begun irrigating and hope that the water holds out after the relatively dry winter. 

This is probably the most beautiful time of the year in the vineyard, with swaths of short green grass between rows alternating with the brown of the soil between rows, and the sight of pale green grape shoots not yet out of control.  Budburst was evident in the primitivo vineyard within days of the barbera vineyard, although the average primitivo plant remains a couple weeks behind the growth of the barbera.  As usual, far more barbera shoots blasted forth than seemed possible given the number of buds left by winter pruning, and so a round of shoot thinning has already been done to improve air flow and constrain yield.  The barbera vineyard was additionally limed by hand just in time to get partially washed in by a series of modest but welcome spring rains, with a little more rain on the way.   The port vineyard and a portion of the primitivo vineyard was graded and leveled to improve tractor access and safety.    All in all, the season is off to a great start.

And so it begins:  the 2007 season is officially under way at Shaker Ridge, with budburst evident in the barbera vineyard on March 17, St. Patrick’s Day.  This represents a fairly average timing for our vineyard.  It has been an absolutely beautiful late winter, but we sure wish we would get a little more rain before spring sets in.  We’ve continued to manually move rocks–our winter crop–out of the vineyard, and are making steady progress hanging drip hose (ie, getting it off the ground) some 5 years after planting.  Better late than never….

A cold but historically dry January has given way to seasonably cool temperatures and much-needed winter rainfall in Februrary.  These conditions should conspire to keep the grape plants dormant for a few more weeks and allow us to perform much-needed maintenance operations in the vineyard.  Today we completed the critical winter pruning operation that is a key part of controlling yield, and weed control was completed last week.  We continue the never-ending process of rock picking along with grading and erosion control.

A very late budburst coupled with an early to normal harvest time made for a compact, busy growing season in 2006.  With the harvest of 4 tons of barbera last weekend, Shaker Ridge completed its first year of commercial scale production.  We continue work on a retaining wall to level some ground and increase tractor safety, and are preparing to replant our cover crop between rows for weed and erosion control.

We thank all of our clients for their patronage this year and look forward to seeing and tasting the wines that result.