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!

There's a fungus among us.

Harvest 2011...hmmph! Even the large, commercial wineries in the Napa Valley are having a bit of a struggle with mould this vintage. Cabernet sauvignon is quite susceptible to quite a few fungi most notably Botrytis cinerea however, the fruit in the above photograph is showing a rather vigorous crop of penicillium. Scary, they're large enough to cast their own shadows.

Fungi lack chlorophyll and need to live on other organisms to obtain nourishment, they are parasitic. Fungal diseases are known as 'secondary invaders' because they thrive on grapes that have been damaged by birds and bees, or grapes that have already had their overall health compromised by diseases such as powdery mildew (Uncinula necator). Wet weather, in the run up to harvest, often causes the worst cases of infection on already injured grapes, so because of the early fall rains 2011 may be a bumper year for fungi.

Of course yeast is a type of fungus, but it's also very important for fermentation. Wine made from spoiled berries is often tainted with smells and tastes like, well, mould. Lovely. But, it is problematic vintages like 2011 that seperate the winemaking men from the boys. Ferment on...

Photograph courtesy of the Marketing Queen.

Rain, rain, go away!

My poor grapes!
It rained all day yesterday. Let me qualify that...we just experienced, in the San Francisco Bay Area, the worst October storm since the 1960s. Vinoland looks like a battlefield. Mother Nature has deposited her detritus everywhere, the autumnal colours of which are pretty, but the acorns make walking around extremely difficult. Our creek is full, there are puddles everywhere, the firewood is wet, and the Vinodogs are bored.
Last Sunday I did a quick sugar reading of our Cabernet grapes. They were only up to a rather disappointing 22.8 degrees Brix, nowhere near ready to harvest...and now wet, grey weather.
My poor grapes!