Colour me purple.

A little further along than I thought, the Cabernet Sauvignon (CS) vines are busy going through veraison.  A little bit of hens and chicks, but otherwise the crop looks good.  I've been preoccupied with the Syrah and the Pinot Grigio and hadn't really given the CS vines a thought.  That's all about to change, tomorrow the CS will have my undivided attention.  Well, that is until I have to put the bird-netting on the Pinot Grigio.
A woman's work...

Hey presto!

Ta-da!  Just like magic, veraison has also begun in the Pinot Grigio vines.
Generally, the crop looks good this year except for a little millerandage which is no doubt due to the cool, windy weather we experienced all spring long.  And especially when the grapevines were flowering.  The under-developed berries shouldn't be a problem in the resulting Pinot Grigio wine, but they could be an issue, giving undesirable green-flavours, in the Syrah and the Cabernet Sauvignon.  It's all good: this is the stuff that goes into making one vintage very different from another.

Hens and chicks.

Hurrah!  Veraison in the Syrah.  I actually noticed the onset of veraison yesterday and it's quite irregular, but it's happening.  I also noticed that there is quite a bit of poor fruit set, or millerandage, in the Syrah (not shown in this photograph).  Sometimes referred to  as 'hens and chicks', I am used to seeing this phenomenon in the Orange muscat vines, but not usually in the Syrah.
Millerandage is a problem that affects fruit set in grapes and can be caused by a number of things; unfavourable climatic conditions, difficult fertilization, genetics, etc.  With millerandage, flowers that fail to fertilize remain on the cluster, (unlike with coulure, another form of poor fruit set, in which the flowers abscise and fall off), becoming small, seedless berries commonly known as shot berries.  Methinks the culprit was most likely wind, as I think this has been a rather windy spring/summer in the valley. Whoosh!  Bye-bye, crop.