Yet another one for the team.

In my mother's day, school children were expected to know the name of every last piece of fabric in the parish church, from the priest's vestments on down to each and every linen that adorned the altar and the chalice, et cetera. This wasn't the case in my school days, but I did know that the decorative 'tablecloth' on the altar was called the fair linen.

The fair linen that bedecks the altar in the St. Helena Roman Catholic Church is, as one would expect in the Napa Valley, decorated with grapes. Today, as my adorable baby nephew was baptised, I allowed myself the time to reflect upon the loving workmanship that went into embroidering this particular fair linen, and the symbolism that had been captured with every faithful and careful stitch....then it was home for lots of dead cow paired with copious amounts of Vinomaker's wine.

Life is good.

Hands across the water.

Reinforcements have arrived. Eight various family members have arrived from Old Blighty to bolster Vinogirl's position amongst her colonial cousins. The past several days have seen the family unwinding, basking and relaxing in the warm California sun.

It has long been understood that there is a very close association between England and the United States of America. However, our shared transatlantic solidarity has been tested in recent years, least of all by the bothersome ejection, from the Oval office, of a bust of my True Wine Lover 1 by the current Chardonnay-swilling resident of a certain large, white building in Washington DC. So, I personally found it somewhat encouraging to see this bottle of Side By Side Pinot grigio in a local supermarket.

Proceeds from the sales of this wine benefit a very worthy cause: Azalea Charities provide comfort and relief items for soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines that are sick, injured or wounded from service in Iraq and Afghanistan.

So, if you are reading this in California, Nevada or Arizona go to your local Fresh & Easy supermarket today and buy a bottle of Side By Side.

Remember, freedom isn't free.

Gladys.

Look at this face, isn't it adorable? Gladys, a 7 year old chihuahua, was one of the dogs available for adoption at the 2011 Napa Humane's Cause for a Paws event, held at Silverado Country Club, which Vinomaker and I attended this afternoon. I had threatened to come home with a third Vinodog, and although Gladys was cute, she was just too small for life in Vinoland...sigh!

This is one of Vinomaker's favourite, if not his favourite, wine and food event of the year and it benefits an excellent cause. I enjoyed myself immensely; great weather, good food, and lots of nice wines to sample. However, I do think the winery that was pouring the goldfish bowl water - we're all familiar with the aroma, y'know the warm, algae, fish poop thing - masquerading as a Sauvignon blanc, was taking the whole pet theme a bit too far....yikes! There is now a dead patch of rough on the thirteenth fairway.

People, please, don't buy a pedigree. Adopt a mongrel, today!

Hatched.

One mother quail and a covey of 16 baby quails, successfully hatched, last seen heading through the Cabernet sauvignon vines towards the creek. But, watch out for that racoon! Duck, there's a hawk! And, whilst you're dodging deathly hazards...leave my grapes alone.

God speed, little ones.

Hedging your bets.

Just in case anybody else had the idea of using the surname of Boyd for their new winery, the Boyd Family have applied for 'fictitious business name statements' of every boring, but possible permutation for their eponymously named winery. I'd have stuck with 'Big Old Yellow Dog Winery', if they'd asked little old me. Or, is that little ol' me?

Home Winemakers Classic 2011.

Today, Vinomaker and I attended the 29th annual Home Winemakers Classic, this year hosted at Charles Krug - a vast improvement over last years venue. This is one of my favourite wine events of the year and I really look forward to it. It was even more fun this year, as many good, wine-loving friends also showed up, including Sky King, The St. Helena Grape Growers, and the Zin Guy. (The Zin Guy has not previously been featured on Vinsanity, but is the person solely responsible for keeping Vinomaker and me stocked up with a particular Zinfandel - a must have in the cooler months for pairing with my chili con carne.)

As always, this event is a great opportunity to see what local home winemakers are up to, as well as a chance to hang out with friends, network, raise money for the Dry Creek-Lokya VFD, and just generally spend a relaxing wine-themed Saturday afternoon.

Pictured is one of my favourite wines. The group of winemakers that make the Leap of Faith wine (and a delicious port also), consistently turn out a product that I would actually drink, if it was commercially available that is - and I love their label, one of the more professional looking labels adorning the plethora of homemade wines available to taste. It is nice to meet people who are passionate about making wine, who in this case are not in the winemaking game for profit, but simply for the love of the grape.

The cork is in.

Another successful bottling event at Vinoland today. That's four down and two to go, (Vinomaker made a lot of wine in 2009). The various vineyard owners, on leaving Vinoland, were very happy farmers indeed.

The above photograph shows a partial order of corks, (at the winery where I am gainfully employed), destined to be the closure of choice for bottling a Cabernet sauvignon, also 2009. Each box contains 5,000 corks. In Vinoland we purchase our corks in bags of 1,000 at a time, and have only gone through 2,500 up to this point. Economies of scale.

The humble cork was first utilised as a stopper by the ancient Egyptians. Later, it was popularised by a certain French monk who made sparkling wine. Then in the 18th century, cork finally began to be commercially produced as a wine closure by the enterprising Portuguese - who coincidentally just so happened to grow copious amounts of cork oaks.

Cork is renewable - the trees are harvested approximately every 9 years. Cork is recyclable - flooring, place mats, sandals, you name it. Cork is romantic - a sommelier cracking open a screw cap during ones candlelit, $200 per head dinner just doesn't cut it.

Cork: renewable, recyclable...and romantic: thank you Mother Nature. Go ahead, pop a cork today.

Infanticide.

This is not a bowl of peas, it is some of the first crop of Pinot gris grapes from Vinoland's most recent expansion. Lovely looking berries - nice fruit set, good yield, no powdery mildew - all torn from the caring embrace of their mother vine's canopy and tossed onto the harsh, dry vineyard floor. (I can get a bit dramatic sometimes, forgive me.) It does seem a shame to discard such healthy young grapes, but it a necessary step in the development of new vines where the focus needs to be on encouraging leaf and root growth. Actually, I should have performed this vineyard operation a lot earlier, when the clusters were flowers not fledgling grapes, but as usual I'm a bit behind with stuff. Better late than never!

A baker's dozen, plus three.

With what is fast becoming an annual tradition on Vinsanity (here and here), I present the 2011 Vinoland Callipepla californica nest spotting.

I only learned of the location of Mama quail's nest when I accidentally flushed her out of it whilst watering the shrubbery by my front door. Papa quail has been busy out and about around Vinoland, but getting up quite close to him today I noticed he had been got at! The back of his neck is as bald as a coot; his pretty, sleek grey-blue feathers gone...poor thing. And soon he will be responsible for 16 little ones. Perhaps I should offer him a glass of wine.

Happy Independence Day.

Dear Motherland,

Do not fret, I haven't forsaken you. However, I do like a good party. So, on this 4th of July, the anniversary of the United States of America's declaration of independence from merry old England, please forgive me for breaking bread and sharing wine with our colonial cousins.

Rule, Britannia!

Lots of love,

Vinogirl.

P.S. Oh...and God save the Queen!

The superior vena vino.

One down, one to go.

The first day, of two successive days, of bottling in Vinoland was a success. The St. Helena crew reported for duty and were immediately charged with the task of getting their 2009 wine into the bottles that Vinomaker had sourced.

The St. Helena, clone 7 Cabernet sauvignon had been blended with a small percentage of Cabernet franc and Merlot, a blend which Vinomaker and I had decided on prior to today's activities. Blending is a fun, even if at times a little exasperating, exercise and one finds that most wines benefit from a little something different thrown in.

Everything went smoothly and after a quick mid-day repast (with wine), some very happy winegrowers left for home with their trucks heavily loaded up with the fermented version of the fruits of their labour.

Nero d'Avola strikes again.

The weather is back on track. Thank goodness! It got up to a very pleasant 82 degrees today.

Vinomaker and I just finished a nice dinner of fettuccine alla bolognese, paired with a delightfully spicy, gingery 2009 Tami' Nero d'Avola. At only 13% alcohol, I treated myself to two glasses...hic!

Junuary!

It has rained all day. New grapevine shoots, that were yesterday reaching up towards the sun, are today bent over and water-laden. Local towns have recorded their lowest temperatures, for a June 28th, since records were first kept in 1868. The Vinodogs are bored.

Junuary weather at its finest!

Riesling hunting.

Another great Finger Lakes wine - a 2008 Red Tail Ridge Dry Riesling. Very tasty; lovely citrus notes (mainly lime), a very appealing minerality, and a zesty acidity that reminded me of the Lamoreaux Landing I had recently, but even nicer. Better still, it's available in my local wine shop: no hunting online necessary.

April (and May) showers bring June grapes.

They are flower clusters no more: there are now actual grape clusters amongst the canopy.

Fruit set looks great, especially in the Syrah vines. The Orange muscat fruit set though is an altogether different matter. It appears that there is a significant amount of shatter in the Orange muscat, which unfortunately means fewer berries at harvest time.

And the earth brought forth grass...

...boy, has it ever this year! Vinoland is covered in more different varieties of grasses than I ever could have imagined. Even the Vinodogs are covered in grass in the form of fox-tails and other ingeniously shaped grass seeds. A combination of rain, sun, rain, and more sun will do that.
Vinomaker has already mowed the vineyard four times - that is double the usual number of times the vineyard has needed to be mowed in previous years. All of the clippings (and this includes the vineyard's leguminous cover crop) are left in place to become green manure. Although technically green manure is ploughed into the soil, Vinoland happens to be a no-till zone. The thick layer of mower clippings is simply left to break down, adding nutrients to soil and acting also like a layer of mulch that should suppress weed growth - I say should.
I used to take the humble blade of grass, or any plant for that matter, for granted. But, having taken a vineyard soils class, I now better understand the chemistry behind the conversion, by sunlight, of carbon dioxide into organic compounds. That which we call a weed by any other name, would still be photosynthesis - C6H12O6 rocks life in Vinoland.
The same sun, bright and high in the blue California sky, that feels so good on my winter-weary skin, combined with unseen soil nutrients (both micro and macro) and water, brings forth a multitude of grasses, weeds, trees, flowers, and grapevines. Apparently, the sun must also feel good to the Vinodogs as they can seemingly bask away an entire day in it's nap-inducing, warming rays.
Of the many different types of grasses growing in Vinoland right now; rye grass, common velvetgrass, rabbitfoot polypogon - to identify just a few in the above photograph - I think I like the big quakinggrass (Briza maxima) the best as it reminds me of little Chinese lanterns. Of course, Chinese lanterns don't aggravate my hay fever. Ho hum!

I Love California.

Yes, I do love California. And I love wine, the Vinodogs, chocolate, England, Ben & Jerry's Pistachio Pistachio ice cream and, amongst other things, Tesco. So, you can imagine how excited I was when a local Fresh & Easy, Tesco's foray into the North American grocery business, recently opened a store in Napa. However, Fresh & Easy poses a bit of a conundrum for me. I'm not exactly disappointed in the store, but I am ever so slightly confused by it.
For starters, they don't carry many English food stuffs, not that I really expected them to. But, that's OK because I can get my Cadbury Flakes, McVitie's Hobnobs, and Bassetts Jelly Babies elsewhere. Fresh & Easy is described as a "neighbourhood market" - a one-stop convenience store that offers wholesome, freshly prepared meals for the perpetually time-strapped Californian consumer. It is in the very convenient offering of pre-marinated meat items and pre-chopped veggies where I think the problem lies for me. I cook 99.99% of my meals from scratch and when confronted with prepared food items I simply don't know what quite to make of them, literally. Bizarre, I know, but I tend to go about anything I do the long way! I'm not giving up on Fresh & Easy though, I have visited the store a few times now and I am determined to master their vision of grocery shopping. The prices are very reasonable, and that includes the above bottle of I Love California Pinot grigio, (specifically bottled for Fresh & Easy), which is priced at $3.99.
I am always amazed at how cheaply wine can be produced and bottled, (think Two Buck Chuck), especially when compared to say a premium winery like the one at which I am gainfully employed. With a bottling event coming up soon in Vinoland, Vinomaker has been busy sourcing bottles and corks. The most cost effective bottles he has found so far, Rhone style bottles for a Sonoma Syrah, cost $6.04 a case and come in plain white cardboard. The cheapest corks to be had, composite corks with a solid cork disc on either end, are priced at $74.00 per 1,000, but they are not the greatest quality - one probably really shouldn't use them on a wine intended for aging for an extended period. Then there's the cost of capsules, printed cases, labels, the initial cost of the grapes and barrels - and labour for approximately two years. The mind boggles that anyone could make a profit from a $3.99 wine sale. Is it simply a question of volume? I don't know.
But, how was the wine one might ask? It was actually OK, a little flabby maybe (my palate tends to favour wines with higher acidity), but it had plenty of fruit with quite obvious Pinto grigio characteristics. Surprisingly, it tasted better the next day. I think I just found my mum's summer wine.

Cephus Le Blanc.

When I first looked at this bottle of wine I did indeed think that it was called Cephus Le Blanc - a bottle of Appalachian moonshine perhaps? But no, it was a delightful 60/40 blend of Colombard and Ugni blanc from the Armagnac region of France. Crisp, refreshing and under $11...I think I just found my summer wine.

The perfect flower.

At last, in the Orange muscat block, the calyptra (covering the stamens and carpels) are brown and are beginning to be pushed off by the embryonic grape below. As is also the case in the Pinot gris block, the Cabernet sauvignon, and the Syrah.

In botany, the grape flower is indeed the perfect flower as it is hermaphroditic - containing both female and male reproductive parts. Let the flowering begin...whoo hoo!

Chin up!

With increasing regularity, most communication nowadays is of the electronic variety, so it is a rare treat to find something of fun in ones actual post box that arrived there the old fashioned way - by snail mail.

It was in this manner that I received what for me was a prize of sorts: a much coveted Wartime Housewife badge (move over Blue Peter). This winning little badge, with it's patriotic colour scheme (British of course) and inspirational slogan, brought to mind the US tradition of producing presidential campaign buttons (that's badges in English). With the 2012 Presidential shenanigans already afoot over here, it got me to thinking what platform I would run on if I ever were to contemplate a life of public service. Politicians as public servants? Humour me, please.

My campaign would begin with promising that every man, woman, and child would have a 100 point wine in every glass, and a barrel of said wine in every garage (move over Herbert Hoover)...before slowly working my way up to world domination.

Wartime Housewife has her cute frying-pan-wielding-pinny-clad wartime housewife and her stiff-upper-lip-inducing slogan. If I'm going to run for office, or even empress of the universe, I'm going to have to come up with my own logo, a catchy campaign slogan...and a badge. Suggestions welcome.

My name is Vinogirl, and this message was brought to you by me. I'd vote for me, wouldn't you?