Little gems.

Leaf pulling in the Cabernet sauvignon vines today (and most of the week) exposing the fruit in preparation for harvest, I came across several little clusters, higher up in the canopy, that looked like little jewels.  Vinodog 2 was my companion, as usual, whilst I performed this particular vineyard op...and then we were joined by the chickens.  Very bucolic.

Vendemmia: 2020.

I spent a lot of yesterday pulling leaves in the Pinot grigio (PG) block, as harvest was scheduled for today.  It was still dark at 6.30 a.m., a bit too dark to harvest (due to marine fog mixed with wildfire smoke), so I had to time to eat breakfast before the morning's viticultural-proceedings began.  The Orange muscat grapes were also picked.  I love the feeling of being up early for harvest, I find it exciting.

Fruit looks fantastic, tastes great.  Perhaps a little less than last year (according to Vinomaker), not surprising seeing as my hungry hens have been helping themselves to the ripening berries for weeks now.  Sugar came in at 26 °Brix - a little high, but one would expect a spike in sugar due to the 107/108 °F temps we had on Sunday and Monday.  

My job is done.  Now it's up to Vinomaker to work his magic.

Just a quick Cab drive away.

The Cabernet sauvignon (CS) fruit looks good this year, but it's not the best I've ever seen it.  (That distinction belongs to the 2010 crop.)  The CS fruit definitely doesn't look as good as the Pinot grigio, or the Syrah.  A quick sugar reading today showed that the CS is at 24° Brix.  The weather has cooled down considerably, and even though there is warmer than average temperatures forecast for this weekend, the fruit is as mature as it is going to get.  It's time to get the CS in.  Taxi!

The show must go on.

Wildfires be damned!  Vinoland's Cabernet Sauvignon (CS) needed to be harvested, but Mother Nature seemed to have other ideas.  Vinomaker and I had planned to harvest our CS this past Friday, the 13th, problem was most of our usual picking crew were unavailable due to voluntary or mandatory evacuations.
Grateful that Vinomaker and I had kept an eye on the neighbourhood in their abscence, many of our neighbours kindly offered to help us harvest (we couldn't have managed it by ourselves).  Our pleasant group of pickers showed up early and prepared to get the crop off the vines.  I had spent the day before pulling leaves, so the fruit was exposed and the pick went smoothly.  Although it was still very smoky nobody complained.
This evening, our cheery little band of harvesters reconvened on Vinoland's deck for a celebratory repast of pizza, beer and, of course, wine.  Happy end of harvest 2017.  Finally!

The birds and the bees.

The birds and the bees are in busying themselves with reducing Vinoland's Cabernet Sauvignon crop.  It's not that I begrudge my avian and apian friends a little fresh fruit now and again.  It's just that I can't help but feel a little pang of disappointment at the fact that some of my lovingly pruned and farmed grapes will not get the chance to fulfill their destiny by becoming wine.  I already knew that the minute the local animal population becomes this interested in the fruit, the fruit is ripening.  I really should have taken a sugar sample before today, but I've been a bit busy.
The birds and the bees were correct.  The fruit is rather ripe; the sugar is at 25 °Brix and the seeds are mostly brown.  However, Vinomaker thinks the juice tastes just a little green still.  I don't.  I think the juice tastes simply delicious, typically Cab-like.  Apparently, so do the birds.  And the bees.

All nets are off.

This humble, weathered clothes peg (and, believe me, this clothes peg has experienced some extreme atmospheric conditions over the past two weeks) has done its duty for the 2017 growing season.
Today, I unfastened the bird netting from below the Pinot grigio grapes and pulled leaves from around the clusters, as tomorrow is the first harvest day of 2017 in Vinoland.  Whoo hoo!
See you again in August of 2018, Mr. Peg.

Bringing up the rear.

I was kept busy all day today pulling leaves in the Pinot grigio vines in preparation for the installation of bird-netting.  About mid-afternoon, feeling a bit peckish, I took a break and wandered over to the bramble patch to have a quick snack of sun-warmed blackberries.  Lo and behold, I discovered that the Cabernet Sauvignon vines had started to go through veraison.  In fact, some of the clusters are far more purple and advanced than the one I photographed.  Go grapies!
And please ignore the cleistothecia in the photo, I am.  (Until next spring, that is.)

Cabernet revealed.

I spent most of today leaf pulling in the Cabernet sauvignon vines in preparation for harvest tomorrow.  I got a good look at the fruit as I stripped the leaves away and I'm estimating the crop is a little lighter than last year.  And the vines seem to be shutting down rather early.
The leaf pulling was a very dusty activity, I was filthy by the time I had finished.  The Napa Valley is expecting its first storm-series of the season tomorrow, perfectly timed to coincide with the Cabernet harvest.  It will be a rather soggy harvest event, but at least I, and the grapes, will be clean at the end of it.  Oh well, sigh.

Syrah strip.

I spent most of today pulling leaves in the Syrah vines in preparation for harvesting tomorrow.  Stripping the leaves from the fruit zone makes the picking of the clusters much quicker, and easier.  The yield looks average, but the quality of the crop looks great.  I ate some grapes as I worked and they tasted lovely, so I am predicting that 2016 is going to be a nice vintage.
Vinodog 2 accompanied me whilst I worked my way along the rows.  Well, actually, she was busy harassing four deer in our neighbour's property who were staring her down.  Then, tired with all that patrol-activity, she passed out on a comfy bed of leaves I had just removed from a vine.  It's a dog's life.

Out, damned methoxypyrazines...

...out, I say!  The past two afternoons have found me leaf-pulling (east side only) in the Cabernet Sauvignon (CS) vines.  CS tends to have high levels of methoxypyrazines; a class of chemical compounds responsible for the characteristic green, herbaceous, or vegetative aromas found in CS (and Sauvignon blanc).  So in an attempt to banish a little more of those undesirable flavours I have been removing leaves in the fruit zone to maximise UV penetration.  That was until today when almost an inch of rain fell in just 3 hours.  At least here, unlike in England, the rain falls straight down, so one can get out of its way.  So that's exactly what the Vinodogs and I did, stayed out of the rain.
Roll on tomorrow.

Grapevine chic?

Well, sort of.  These strips of cloth, stretched along the length of the rows in the Rudd vineyard, at the corner of the Silverado Trail and the Oakville Crossroad, may just well be the viticultural equivalent of a cool pair of designer sunglasses - they are designed to keep the sun out of the eyes (humour me, please) of the ripening grapes. 

There are only a handful of vineyards in the Napa Valley (for now) who have decided to adopt this approach in reducing the damaging effects of periods of high UV light, as it is yet another time consuming (and no doubt costly) vineyard operation.  But installing shade cloth on the west facing side of a vine row (in vineyards planted north/south) is indeed a new and novel approach to protecting a grape crop from the potentially intense heat that can occur at this point in the valley's growing season.  The installation of of shade cloth - on hillside vineyards, on vines on low-yielding soils and rootstocks, on vineyards with deficit irrigation programmes, or even in wide spaced vineyards in which the vines receive no respite from harsh UV light in the form of the angled shade from a neighbouring row - can help to promote phenolic maturity (seed-browning and tannin maturation) and not just spikes in sugar accumulation (as a result of dehydration).  The uniform strip of cloth adds sun protection, but still allows for diffused UV light and air circulation around the clusters.

Leaf-pulling may now becoming passé, but in Vinoland I still perform this particular vineyard operation - but only on the east side of the vines thus ensuring that the clusters on the west side (that may otherwise be susceptible to sunburn and raisining) each have their own individual parasols.  Now, that's chic.

Stripped off.

The folks at Far Niente were busy diligently leaf pulling today in preparation for their Chardonnay harvest (or at least in this vineyard).  It's a tiny bit earlier than last year, but then 2012 overall has been a more even growing season compared to that of 2011.
The beginning of this week saw temperatures in the high 90s here in Vinoland.  Today it was just 75°F, partly overcast and rather breezy - what a difference.  The cooler weather will slow the sugars down a tad in our Cabernet Sauvignon and Syrah vines, but I won't have any specific data until I do a sugar sampling on Sunday.

Blue velvet.

Cabernet Sauvignon grapes are amongst the most photogenic grapes around, their velvety blue hue is like no other varietal. Sure, Syrah, Merlot etc., are all black grape varietals but tend to look more purple on the vine whilst Cabernet Sauvignon diplays the richest royal blue.  Here is my Clone 4 enjoying one last day idling in the California sun for tomorrow is harvest day!

Idling.

Yesterday a crew of Far Niente workers passed through their Chardonnay vineyard, located near Vinoland, clearing the basal leaves from the vertical fruit-bearing shoots. This particular vineyard operation exposes the fruit so that it is easier to remove from the vine.
More and more wineries are experimenting with night harvesting these days, the fruit is still cool when it arrives at the winery for processing and the vineyard workers don't get so fatigued in the heat of the day. I half expect that when I take the Vinodogs for a stroll tomorrow the vines will be naked.
I have no idea what clone this Chardonnay is, I am only familiar with clones 4 and 76, but I would hazard a guess at this being clone 76 because of the smallness of the clusters...but I can stand to be corrected. Whatever clone it is I am positive that the folks at Far Niente are very pleased with the crop this year as it looks superb and plentiful compared with the frost troubled crop of 2008. Hats off to their vineyard manager.