Pregnant pause.

It's been a while: I've been busy.  My absence, whilst not as lengthy as a real pregnancy, has seen a good deal of fruitfulness - out in the vineyard.  My babies are looking good.  Pictured here is a cluster of Cabernet sauvignon grapettes.  Fruit set looks great, weather conditions have been favourable and there doesn't seem to be much evidence of shatter.  I always feel a sense of achievement at fruit set, but especially when the set looks as good as it does this season.  I am aware that a lot of crazy stuff can still happen between now and harvest, but I've been doing this for a while now and I feel confident saying that 2019 looks like it's going to be a really good vintage.

Surging Syrah.

Erm, wow!  Apparently, I have been spending too much of my vineyard-time in amongst the Cabernet sauvignon (CS) vines.  For most of the past two weeks I have been stuffing CS shoots like a mad woman.  This time of year the CS gets to the stage where it can get a little unruly.  If not for a little good-natured encouragement, and gentle coaxing of the shoots into the trellising wires, the vines would soon resemble Cousin Itt.  I hadn't noticed that the Syrah vines were about 95% finished with flowering and there are BB-sized grapettes.  Oops.
The 2018 growing season, thus far, has seen bloom in the white and the black grapes much closer together timing-wise than it would be in a typical year: the flowering window has been effectively shortened.  It's all good as it is these kind of differences that make a vintage.

Green, green grapes of home.

The weather has turned hot, finally!  We have had three days of mid 90s temps.  I'm loving it, but the grapes probably aren't as enthusiastic about it as I am.  So, to make the little grapettes feel better, they have been treated to their first watering of the season.
Watering the vines is not as easy as just turning on a tap, of course, nothing is that straight forward.  The vineyard drip irrigation lines have to be flushed of any deposits that may have collected in the lines over the previous growing season - deposits that could clog the emitters.  In Vinoland, the main culprit is the iron bacteria that is in our well water. The intense orange colouration of the water that blasts out of the end of the lines, (always my end of the line, Vinomaker is always upstream), is fantastic.  Stay hydrated, little grapies!

It's never too early.

A mere five days later, and just look at that colour.  My Pinot grigio grapettes are rushing with reckless abandon through veraison.  Within the next week or so, I'm thinking, the bird netting will have to be installed. As of now, it seems that the harvest of these grapes will be earlier than last year.  Not as early as harvest at Mumm Napa Valley though, where harvest began yesterday.  Yikes!
It seems that some 12 tons of Pinot noir grapes decided that they were done with idly hanging around in the vineyard and decided it was harvest time: the earliest harvest ever, by one day, for Mumm (but not a valley record, apparently).  Like I always say, we are all on Mother Nature's schedule.

Young wine?

A very young 2015 vintage, tee hee.  All the grapevines in Vinoland got off to a very good start this spring and for the most part flowering is now at an end.  Fruit set in the Pinot grigio looks fabulous and I'm very happy with how things are progressing.  I still have lots of shoot-stuffing to do in the Cabernet sauvignon vines, but after that things in the vineyard will slow down quite considerably and I'll have a bit of time to myself.  Until it's time to start the next vineyard operation, or two.

Vernal bloom.

Finally, the vines are blooming. It's amazing, seeing as there has been no spring here in Napa! The Pinot grigio vines are well on their way, each flower cluster displaying a different stage of bloom. In the photograph you can see that some of the calyptra are brown and are ready to be pushed off by the growing embryo beneath.
The Orange muscat vines are not too far behind, the Syrah is showing about 15% bloom, and even our developmentally challenged Clone 4 Cabernet sauvignon has a flower here and there. Better late than never.
It's going to an interesting vintage, probably a lot like that of 1998.

What a difference...

...ten days makes. Look at my Orange muscat, isn't it fab? The mid to high 70 degree temps, we have been having, have really helped the vines flourish. You can see two little flower clusters at the apical end of the growth...they will be the two bunches of grapes this cane will produce. I love grapevines.