Spurred on for 2013.

The fair weather continues, so this afternoon I was able to take my traditional New Year's Day walk through Vinoland's vines.  My little promenade, with the Vinodogs in tow, allowed me to make a quick assessment of what I need to do, coming up here shortly, pruning-wise.  This time last year I was hoping that 2012 would be a better growing season than 2011, and it was.  In fact, it couldn't have been any better if it'd tried, so I'm hoping for more of the same in 2013.  Greedy? Absolutely.
As Vinoland's Cabernet Sauvignon vines mature my job becomes simpler.  Of course, it has taken me several years of pruning to convince the young vines' canes and spurs to go exactly where I'd like them to go. And now, for the most part, each vine is beginning to exhibit the ideal model, or at least how the ideal vine exists in this pruners mind.  Thanks little buddies.
A happy, healthy and fruit of the vine filled New Year to everyone.

Roll on vintage 2012.

From a grape-growing perspective, I am glad to see the back of 2011.  Rain, rain and more rain.  Cooler than average temperatures.  Persistent marine fog.  Powdery mildew running amok through Vinoland.  Just one of these trying climatic conditions would have been perhaps a tolerable nuisance, but all of them in a single, abbreviated growing season?  One would have been forgiven for expecting a plague of locusts of biblical proportions next.  Besides all that, it was quite a good year.  But 2012 will be better.

A happy, healthy and fermented-grape juice filled New Year to everyone.

A New Year Haiku.

I don't particularly enjoy reading all the pontificating on some wine blogs about the 10 best this and that of 2010. I think I am blessed with enough good sense to realise that nobody is, in the tiniest bit, interested in the things last year that were note worthy to me (although Happy Balls would feature rather high on any list I might compile.)
Instead, I'm going off on a tangent here and submitting a viticultural Haiku for your delectation. Why not? This unassuming Cabernet sauvignon bud, formed in the spring of 2010, contains all the promise of this year's coming vintage and deserves to be lauded in verse.

Hush bud, be still.
Until springtime's will
Awakens you.

A happy, healthy and wine-filled New Year to everyone.

Take a seat.

Sit down, relax. It's time to take the weight off your feet and enjoy New Year's Day. There aren't many days throughout the year when you get quite as much time to do, well, nothing.
I had intended to get out in the vineyard today and have a quick look at the vines and figure out when I should start pruning, but as soon as I came back from walking the Vinodogs it began to rain...so I watched the Rose Bowl instead.
A happy, healthy, mellow and bubble filled 2010 to you all.

The year in preview.

When most people are still thinking up New Year resolutions that they may or may not keep, I decided to take a more practical approach to the year ahead.
Accompanied by the Vinodogs, I took a stroll through the vineyard to assess the amount of pruning work to be done in the near future. Due to the fact that white wine grape varieties bud out earlier than red wine grapes, I paid particular attention to our Pinot grigio and Orange muscat vines. The Syrah usually displays bud break a whole 2 weeks before the Cabernet Sauvignon, (which is clone 4), so I most likely have at least 4-5 weeks before I have to start to prune either red varietal. Even then I will prune the vines higher up on our hill than those down by the creek to lessen the chance of damage by late frosts.
I really like pruning the vines. It is said that it is the one most important thing that you do to the vine as you are determining the crop and vegetation for the year ahead.
The vines are very forgiving, if I get a little over zealous with my shears, which has happened in the past, they grow back next year, tah rah!!!