Bloom abounds.

Here is Vinoland's Cabernet sauvignon (clone 4) in bloom.  The Syrah vines are at about the same stage/percentage through bloom as the Cab.
All four varieties are flowering at the same time; the Orange muscat, Pinot Grigio, Syrah and Cabernet sauvignon.  I don't think that I have known that to ever happen before.  Are two varieties late?  Are two varieties early?  Only Mother Nature knows.

CS: Veraison, 2019.

Always bringing up the rear, Vinoland's Cabernet sauvignon has deemed it the right time to begin to start the process of veraison.  Clone 4, as I may have mentioned before, was not the best clonal selection to make for a Coombsville vineyard.  It is so cool here, compared to other Napa Valley AVAs, that it is a struggle to get these darned grapes ripe every year.  Takes quite a bit of extra work with canopy management etc., but we always get there, together, in the end.  Well, we'll see what sort of ripeness this year brings.

Party's over.

My family returned home to England yesterday, and today I returned to the vineyard.  I have a lot of catching up to do.
I usually like to post photographs of all four of Vinoland's grape varieties going through their particular physiological stages, but I was a bit busy this summer.  I totally missed the Cabernet sauvignon (CS) grapevines going through veraison.
Vinoland's CS vines are 100% through veraison, as they should be this time of year, yes, even my little slowcoach Clone 4.  And I missed it all. Now I have to get my head out of holiday-mode and into harvest-mode. (TWWIAGE harvested their first grapes of 2016, Sauvignon blanc, on August 25th.)  The grapes themselves will keep me on schedule: I am now on their timetable.

To bloom betimes.

I think 2016 is going to be an unusual vintage.  I say this because today, whilst I was out in the vineyard stuffing shoots, I noticed that Vinoland's Cabernet sauvignon (CS) is further along in bloom than the CS at TWWIAGE.
It is fun to live (and farm) in a relatively cool AVA e.g., Coombsville and work (and observe) in another, noticeably warmer AVA e.g., Oakville. And why do I consider this year's earlier bloom, in spite of a cooler-than-normal spring, unusual?  Because from my personal experience, CS, Clone 4, in Coombsville is normally a bit of a slowcoach in the flowering department.  This year my little mutants apparently want to get an early start.  Go little girls and boys!

While I was studying...

...the Cabernet sauvignon vines finally decided to get going for 2010, better late than never I suppose. I hadn't been down into the vineyard since the weekend, but when I got home from school today, and after I had walked the Vinodogs, I decided to take a peek. Small, pink fuzzy buds and leaves greeted me everywhere. Unfortunately, record low temperatures are forecast for tonight, the first frost in quite a while, so I'm hoping that all the vines come through the night relatively unscathed.

Veraison invasion.

The methoxypyrazine massacre is in full swing in Vinoland. Those nasty vegetal flavours of green beans and bell peppers, that you sometimes get in wine, are being chased away by Mr. Sunshine. I would estimate that our Cabernet sauvignon vines are about 40% of the way through veraison.
It is an unfortunate fact that Cabernet sauvignon grapes tend to have high levels of methoxypyrazines. However, with a couple of careful farming techniques e.g. performing a green harvest and the removal of leaves in the fruit zone, sun exposure can be optimised to aid in bringing the crop to physiological ripeness.
Of course, pulling too many leaves could possibly result in sunburned fruit, especially on west facing vine rows, so judicious leaf pulling is recommended. It's not as if you can slather Hawaiian Tropic SPF 50 on them and then blame the resulting coconut component, in the finished wine, on the American oak barrel! Well, you could...