Gris et blanc: Harvest 2013.

Harvest began today, and it was a long day.  Both of Vinoland's white grape varieties are in and are currently having their little bums chilled in preparation for inoculation.  The Pinot grigio crop (I know, I use gris and grigio interchangeably, so sue me) looked fabulous - healthy, tight, juicy clusters.  But hang on a second, have a gander at this cluster, it has both grey (Pinot grigio?) and white (Pinot blanc?) grapes.
This year, a handful of the Pinot grigio vines entirely sported green (white) grapes.  One particular vine had all grey grapes except for the apical shoot position (on just one of it's two fruiting canes) which had two green clusters.  And then there was the cluster above which had about 50% each of both grey and green. 
All grapevines have unique characteristics called transposons, also known as jumping genes, which can express themselves in different growing seasons.  Pinot noir - most likely the parent/origin of Pinots blanc, gris and Meunier - has a really strong proclivity toward spontaneous mutation in the vineyard.  And that's all well and good, I just wasn't prepared for so many instances of the Pinot family's genetic instability in my vineyard.  The grapevines are apparently confused, and so am I.  Oh well, what's new?  Happy harvest!