Road Closed!

It is not often that you see roads being closed to through traffic in the Napa Valley.  Essentially, with very few arterial roads in the valley for locals and tourists alike to begin with, even one road closure can cause a major headache.  After two nights of substantial rainfall, this morning's commute to TWWIAGE was problematic.  So problematic, in fact, that only the winemaker and I made it in.  I made him a pot of coffee, myself a cup of tea and proceeded to answer some voice- and emails, etc.  It was very quiet at the winery.
Sitting in a long queue of traffic, awaiting my turn to drive through the water that was streaming over a low spot on the Silverado Trail, I was able to have a good look westward to where the Napa River had breached its banks and had submerged acres and acres of vineyards.  Submerged, as in the pruned, cordon-trained vines were fully under water.  I really can't complain about Vinoland's current soggy condition after seeing that.
The Napa River peaked at 11 pm last night: there is a lot of water everywhere in the Napa Valley.  The amount of precipitation, experienced as of late, is very reminiscent of the direful rains that fell during the winter of 2017.  I'm not a big fan of rain (I may have mentioned that before), but I am thankful that this rain event was nothing like that of Napa's record rainfall, set in 1862, of 80.62 inches.  Now that would have been something for me to complain about.

Wanted: an ark.

There has been a lot of rain lately, a lot.  And I may have mentioned it once or twice before, but I really don't like rain.  I like to be able to go out and about whenever I want to, and stay dry.  Simple as that.
It really bothers me when it rains so much that the road in front of TWWIAGE vanishes under the flooding, Napa County closes said road, and then I have to navigate through the deluge to head home.  Sigh.
I must admit, it was mildly entertaining watching some motorists hit the standing water at full speed and momentarily disappear from view.

Sunny-flower Days.

Yesterday was another beautiful, sunny day in the Napa Valley: Oakville to be exact.  For the past few weeks I, and every other commuter and tourist traveling north and south on the Silverado Trail, have had the pleasure of espying an entire vineyard (a vineyard awaiting a replant, I assume) brimming with sunflowers.  Located on the northwest corner of the Oakville Crossroad, Rudd Winery have cultivated a veritable sea of Helianthus (much more impressive in person) for everyone to enjoy.  Or perhaps the folks at Rudd planted these flowers, of sunny-disposition, to pay homage to proprietor Leslie Rudd who passed on to greener pastures this past May.  A nice tribute, I hope Mr. Rudd is enjoying them too.

Rain stopped play.

Today was the day that the new Oakville Crossroad bridge, the bridge that makes it possible to reach Highway 29 from the Silverado Trail, was supposed to be completed.  I say supposed because, (like anything to do with government it seems), the bridge is not yet finished.  Shocker! Closed due to a small 4.1 earthquake that occurred on May 21st of last year, this was the first time I had driven up close to the bridge since the day before the temblor struck.  So, for the past 8 months, if I had had the sudden urge to treat myself to a latte, or a $15.00 bar of chocolate from the Oakville Grocery, I would have had had to endure an almost 17 mile round trip instead of the usual 3 miles.
Citing rainy weather (damn you, El Niño), the Napa County Public Works Department has said it needs several consecutive dry days so that it can finish striping the lanes, etc.  The new opening day, for the $5.2 million bridge, has yet to be announced.  Sigh.
I am thinking, perhaps, that if a few English workies had been on this particular construction project that the Oakville Crossroad bridge would have been finished on time.  If the English continually had to wait for rainy weather to be absent for several days on end we'd never get anything built.  Thud recently finished building this Gothic cottage.  There was no playing around, Thud built his bothy come rain or shine.

Silver linings.

So much rain this week, I might as well be in England.  California definitely needs rain, but all at once?  Personally, I'd like a little bit of a break from being continually moist.  However, I must admit, grudgingly, that due to the inclement weather there has been some spectacular cloud-action, peculiar (in a good way) light-quality and a few, if fleeting, rainbow goings-on...silver linings.  Pity I kept forgetting my camera.  I had it yesterday though.
Here is an unusual view of Silver Oak Cellars and it's iconic water tower which is not normally this visible whilst driving along the Oakville Crossroad.  There has been a lot of bulldozing activity of late in many vineyards.  Given that harvest is well and truly over, now is the time that winegrowers begin the process of replanting a vineyard.  Not many people realise that the vines that grow in front of Silver Oak are not Silver Oak's vineyards.  No, they belong to Flora Springs.  (Silver Oak grow their Cabernet sauvignon up in Soda Canyon).  And Flora Springs has apparently decided to replant their Oakville vineyard.  And I will get to witness the whole process.  Fun.

Vitis californica.

I once said I wouldn't "clamber through a thicket" to get a closer look at Vitis californica: I lied.  This morning I did indeed find myself fighting through some riparian habitat to get a closer look at California's wild grape.  This rather sizable vine is growing on the western bank of the Napa River, just at the point where the Oakville Crossroad passes over the watercourse.
The vines become quite visible this time of year as the leaves begin to turn yellow.  There is a wonderful specimen, teeming with grape clusters, quite close to where I live that has climbed 12 - 15 feet up through a very accommodating tree.  However, the vine is on the side of an extremely busy road and there is no possible way that I could safely get out of the car to photograph it.  So I had to be content with this Oakville vine.  But because this vine was more accessible, I was actually able to taste a wild, California grape for the first time ever.  Yummy!

A dry spell?

A really, really long spell.  As of the 17th of January California Governor Jerry Brown declared a drought emergency for the state, saying that the state is facing "perhaps the worst drought that California has ever seen since records (began) about 100 years ago."  It has indeed been very dry and warm, 75° F today in Oakville, and we haven't had any measurable rainfall since the 6th of December.  Even so, I think the Governor will find plenty of northern California water to send to the southern end of the state.  Ho hum.
Now whilst I am loving this fantastic, but unseasonable weather, I understand that California is a rather dry place - even on a normal rainfall year - and we do need some rain to fall.  In many vineyards, no doubt, soil moisture content is at an all time low, and warm temperatures could mean an earlier than normal budbreak, especially in some white grape varieties.  Yesterday an owner/management company, of a vineyard on the Oakville Crossroad, decided to take matters into their own hands and water their vineyard.  The sprinklers sprinkled all day, were still sprinkling when I left work, and were still sprinkling when I arrived at work this morning.  The ensuing winter wonderland of icicle-laden grapevines was the result of the overnight temperatures dipping below freezing.  It looked fantastic, but I bet it used up a lot of water.

Grapevine chic?

Well, sort of.  These strips of cloth, stretched along the length of the rows in the Rudd vineyard, at the corner of the Silverado Trail and the Oakville Crossroad, may just well be the viticultural equivalent of a cool pair of designer sunglasses - they are designed to keep the sun out of the eyes (humour me, please) of the ripening grapes. 

There are only a handful of vineyards in the Napa Valley (for now) who have decided to adopt this approach in reducing the damaging effects of periods of high UV light, as it is yet another time consuming (and no doubt costly) vineyard operation.  But installing shade cloth on the west facing side of a vine row (in vineyards planted north/south) is indeed a new and novel approach to protecting a grape crop from the potentially intense heat that can occur at this point in the valley's growing season.  The installation of of shade cloth - on hillside vineyards, on vines on low-yielding soils and rootstocks, on vineyards with deficit irrigation programmes, or even in wide spaced vineyards in which the vines receive no respite from harsh UV light in the form of the angled shade from a neighbouring row - can help to promote phenolic maturity (seed-browning and tannin maturation) and not just spikes in sugar accumulation (as a result of dehydration).  The uniform strip of cloth adds sun protection, but still allows for diffused UV light and air circulation around the clusters.

Leaf-pulling may now becoming passé, but in Vinoland I still perform this particular vineyard operation - but only on the east side of the vines thus ensuring that the clusters on the west side (that may otherwise be susceptible to sunburn and raisining) each have their own individual parasols.  Now, that's chic.

Now that's a cover crop!

Why plant silly (and potentially harmful) mustard as a cover crop when you could sow every other row in the vineyard with California poppies (Eschscholzia Californica)?  Whilst poppies don't have the biomass of a legume, for instance, they do have a large taproot which could help condition the vineyard soil somewhat.  Besides, they just look gorgeous.

A picture is worth a thousand words.

Yikes.  I don't know where to start.
No, I haven't been to Chris's Club again, although one might be forgiven for thinking that if taking a quick glance at the lingerie enrobed mannequin in the above photograph.  Yes, a mannequin wearing lingerie on a trapeze, no less.  Y'know, the type of lingerie-clad mannequin on a trapeze that one would expect to find in the tank room of a Napa Valley winery.  And she is not the only one.
Once a year, the owners of TWWIAGE treat the staff to a day of wine tasting (with lunch in between, Bardessono, very nice).  An event we refer to as our Recon Day, it is an opportunity to do a little team-building, visit with neighbouring wineries and, perhaps, possibly pick up a few fresh ideas along the way.
First stop was Raymond Vineyards.  And this, dear readers, is where I will let the above photograph do the talking for me...except I want to give an honorable mention to The Red Room which is what I imagine a French brothel looks like.  Actually, one more thing; I don't believe that proprietor Jean-Charles Boisset just wanted to expand the family's wine empire to the United States: I truly believe he was asked to vacate Burgundy - tout de suite!
In stark contrast, the wine tasting experience at Gargiulo Vineyards was reverent, elegant, polished and...all about wine. Our little group tasted beautiful reds with wonderful fruit expression (focused berry-loveliness); superbly structured tannins (composed and silky); artfully balanced acidity (fill up my glass, please) and a subtle minerality (a delicate whiff of hot pebbles).  We were also treated to a sneak preview of Gargiulo's 2012 Pinot grigio which is fabulous, so I bought 4 bottles. Gargiulo is a little gem of a property on the Oakville Crossroad, but they also have acreage, just a stone's throw from there, on Money Road.  I don't need a thousand words to describe the visit to Gargiulo, one will do - classy!        

White out.

It is white with frost this morning.  The temperature is down to a rather chilly 27° F and everywhere looks so pretty.  I love it.  However, the past two mornings the Napa Valley experienced very heavy fog.  Not the marine fog (advection fog) that the nearby Pacific Ocean bestows upon the Napa Valley in the summer months, thus ensuring that Vitis vinifera thrives here, but radiation fog; damp, dense and with rather poor visibility.  Or 'proper' fog as I call it when speaking with my family about the vagaries of Bay Area weather to better differentiate it from the marine layer. I love foggy mornings too.  Morning weather like today's evokes childhood memories of walking to school cloaked in a thick fog - alone, but surrounded in the gloom by other neighbourhood kids heading in the same direction as me.  I really looked forward to those rare mornings.  Yes, rare.  Contrary to most American's beliefs, the English do not live in a constant pea soup.  Now, instead of school children appearing from out of the murk, it is the apparitions of leafless trees, skeletal vines and the yellow hint of the burgeoning mustard crop that loom in the near, but hidden, distance.  And I'm not walking to St. Augustines anymore, I am driving to TWWIAGE.

Happy July 4th!

This Old Glory proudly waves, suspended between an avenue of trees just off the Oakville Crossroad,  all year round.  I rather enjoy it's constant, cheery presence.  However, it is the Star Spangled Banner's constancy here that poses a bit of a problem (not for this particular English person though).  The United States Flag Code details very specific etiquette for flying the national flag of the US of A - including requiring that if the Stars and Stripes is flown at night it must be illuminated, and this one isn't.  Oops!

Oh well.  Happy 236th birthday America!

Oh...and God save the Queen!

Hanging on for dear life.

Grapevines are amazing plants.  If I wasn't already convinced of this fact seeing this lone Pinot grigio vine, determined to survive even after the entire vineyard was bulldozed out last February, simply serves to reinforce what I believed prior to today.  I just wish I could dig this little survivor out and bring it back to Vinoland to live with it's cousins.  

Note to self:  put a shovel in the car...

Autumn leaves.

This is the last in my mini-series of posts about autumn colours.

There aren't too many deciduous trees in these neck of the woods, evergreens are much more abundant. However, the dozens of American Sycamore (Platanus occidentalis) that line the north side of the Oakville Crossroad are a reminder to me, as I drive to TWWIAGE on a cool, grey autumnal day, that even in California the seasons do indeed change.

Roll on winter!