Golden hour.

I arrived back in California yesterday afternoon descending into SFO through a thick, ugly, brown pall of smoke courtesy of the Camp Fire (Paradise, CA).  Sigh, California is afire again, so nothing really changed in the fortnight that I was away.  Oh, hang on a minute, Vinoland's Cabernet Sauvignon was harvested in my absence, October 27th to be exact, I was sad to miss that.  And most of the leaves have fallen from the white grape varieties: the colour of the now chlorophyll-free leaves accentuated by the perpetual golden hour-like light quality that goes hand in hand with an out of control conflagration.  As a consequence, things do look a little different out in the vineyard.
I had an interesting wine on my flight back to America (on United Airlines - Swiss Airlines, inexplicably, cancelled my flight to Zurich with extremely short notice and I was rerouted through Heathrow.  Hmmph, so much for Swiss efficiency).  The wine, a 2017 Mac Andrews, The Haven Chardonnay-Viognier,  NSW Australia, was quite lovely (for an in-flight wine).  Crisp, appley, honeysuckle loveliness, in fact.  I can't find any information on this wine online, so I can only assume that it is exclusively bottled for United.  What I, in my little geeky way, found interesting about this wine was that it came in a full 750 ml plastic bottle (with screw cap).  Of course, I am very familiar with the small plastic bottles that airline-wine routinely comes in (187 ml), but I'd never seen wine, on a flight, being poured from a plastic 750 ml (in first class, they have glass).  So, I asked the male flight attendant if I could possibly have an empty bottle to take with me.  "No," was the prompt reply, "We recycle them."  Even when I promised I'd make sure it was recycled in a responsible manner I was still denied.  Alrighty then!

Muscat's last stand.

Vinogirl is back in Vinoland.
I may have returned from my trip to Blighty, but Vinoland's grapevine leaves are currently in the process of, well, leaving.  The biological aging of the vines, senescence, is very definitely taking place.  Whilst the leaves were mostly green when I left, just over three weeks ago, they are now, for the most part, yellow.  In fact, the leaf in the photograph is one of the very last leaves on the Orange muscat vines.  Theory holds that it is decreasing day length that triggers the biological process of senescence.  I really can't blame the leaves for departing, I do not like the nights closing in myself.  But I'll survive: I'll patiently wait for the reappearance of Vinoland's grape leaves next March.