Excuse me?

What do you think you're doing, Mother Nature? Stop being a nuisance.
I had planned to be out in the Pinot grigio vines early this morning; testing sugar and finalising a plan for harvest.  But no, I woke up to the pitter-patter of not so tiny raindrops.  Today's forecast, for the Bay Area on the news last night, was for a small amount of cloud cover first thing in the morning, with the possibility of sprinkles at the coast.  (Which begs the question: Why don't meteorologists ever get fired?)  Hmmph!
Vinodog 2 and I went for our morning constitutional and got a bit soggy. My ever-happy poochie didn't actually seem to care about the rain, but I did.  The grapes will be fine.  They look very healthy this year, so I don't envision any problems with secondary invaders, e.g., Aspergillus niger or Penicillium spp.  The heatwave last weekend did not seem to have a negative effect on the clusters.  Still, rain, this early in the season, is such a bunch of rot!
On another note, yesterday was Vinsanity's 9th anniversary.  Forgot all about it, I'll celebrate tonight. Whoo hoo!

Dirty rotten scoundrels.

This time last week there were some rotten little scoundrels hanging around, up to no good, in the Pinot grigio block.
The above photograph of a cluster of grapes infected with Botrytis cinerea isn't that great (I could have fetched a better lens from the house, but I didn't).  However, the proficiency of the dessicating ability of this dastardly, necrotrophic organism is evident in the way in which it has sucked the living daylights out of the lower half of this cluster (the top half of the cluster looked perfectly normal).
Most of the infected clusters were discarded, but it's possible that some made it into the mix.  No biggie.

Mummies.

Do not be afraid, Vinoland has not been overrun by marauding, undead creatures with names like Kharis, Imhotep and suchlike. Having said that, there are indeed mummies ominously lurking amongst the vines.
My New Year's Day walk through the vineyard was delayed due to rain. Today was sunny, an almost balmy 57 degrees, and was the perfect day to get out in my wellies with the Vinodogs and have a look-see in the vineyard in order to evaluate the pruning to be done. Everything looked good, but now that all the grape leaves are on the vineyard floor the mummies hanging about, in the tangle of last year's wood, could be clearly seen. Oh no...the curse of the bunch rot!
The primary pathogen causing bunch rot is the fungus Botrytis cinerea. Botrytis overwinters in the vineyard in a structure called a sclerotium which is associated with mummified clusters of grapes left over from the previous harvest, and thus can be an important source of inoculum in the spring. In a well-managed vineyard (mine), these mummies are completely removed from the vines at pruning time. The mummies fall to the vineyard floor where soil microorganisms attack the sclerotia and kill them. Yikes, that actually does sound a little scary!
I saw perhaps a dozen such clusters in the Cabernet sauvignon...no big deal. The best control of Botrytis is achieved through good vineyard sanitation and the disposal of grape mummy clusters in the winter dormant period...which is now.
Mummies! Spooky!