My Little Chickadee.

With Vinomaker's help, I finished tying down the last of the Cabernet Sauvignon canes this morning.  That's 'Pruning Season 2013' at an end.  Whoo hoo!  So in celebration I decided to partake of a relatively leisurely lunch. 
The rain, that had been forecast for Wednesday past, decided to finally appear and put an end to my alfresco dining plans.  Just as well really, as if I'd stayed outside I would have disturbed the fur-gathering, nest-building acrobatics of this Chestnut-backed Chickadee (Poecile rufescens).  It was very entertaining to see this industrious, little bird go about the business of feathering, or rather dog-furring, his nest.  I brushed V1 three more times during the day and each time my little chickadee cleaned out the dog-brush entirely.  Recycling at its finest!                 

Tie down time.

Finished pruning the Syrah today, well, the actual cutting bit.  I still have a lot of canes to tie down in the Cabernet Sauvignon, as well as the Syrah. Nevertheless, I am relieved to be almost finished, as some of the Syrah vines already have small leaves, not just budbreak.  I will have to enlist the help of Vinomaker to tie down the canes that have leaves, as I think double teaming those particular canes is the only way to make sure that none, or at least very few, of the buds are knocked off.  No buds, no fruit, no wine.  

Still, yet another week later.

With 3.5 inches of shoot growth and two cute little flower clusters, the Orange Muscat vines are well on their happy, little, fruit-making journey.  Next weekend they will need to be sulphured, but unfortunately it is forecast to rain, beginning Wednesday, so I don't know how that's going to work. On a more positive note though, rain means no frost, which for the vines means no frost damage.  Of course, being this far along in shoot growth the vines are now producing sugar which acts as a natural anti-freeze.

And that concludes my mini series of the progress of the Orange Muscat budbreak.

Tarla.

Sorry, no time to blog.  As fast as I can prune the Syrah, the buds are bursting that little bit faster.  I'm back in work tomorrow. Help!
Anyhow, had a great birthday. Vinomaker made the whole day a lot of fun; a couple of wine tastings (in Sonoma), lunch at the Oxbow Public Market (a crab taco), a Kara's Cupcakes passion fruit cupcake (which has become a tradition) and last, but not least, dinner at yet another restaurant we haven't tried before. Tarla Mediterranean Grill, located in the trendy-ish west end of 1st Street, downtown Napa, is a rather small restaurant, but they look like they are currently expanding into the next unit.  They need to, people are packed in like sardines - and loud?  Yikes!
Wine list was a little small, but we settled on a inexpensive imported white, Boutari's Elios, an interesting blend of 50% Moscofilero, 30% Chardonnay (what?), 10% Roditis and 10% Savatiano.  Paired well with my Spanakopita appetiser, not so good with the dolma, but went great with my diver scallops and shrimp entrée (spot a theme here?  Crab? Scallops?  Shrimp?  My birthday happened to fall on a Friday in Lent). Dessert was baklava with vanilla gelato, paired with Bonny Doon's Vinferno, a blend of 51% Grenache blanc and 49% Roussanne (produced using an Amarone-like process)...yum!  All yum!
Thank you Vinomaker for my busy birthday day.  I was pooped at the end of it, but a good pooped.  Ta la!

Like I said before, hello Syrah!

I began pruning the Syrah vines today and, with Vinomaker's help, got two rows of the Cabernet Sauvignon canes tied down.  The weather was beautiful, so it was great to be outdoors all day after yesterday's rain.
One, rather short, row of Syrah is bilateral cordon trained. Training the Syrah this way was an experiment that worked, or rather didn't.  In my opinion, Syrah is too vigorous of a grape variety for bilateral training. Syrah could perhaps be quadrilateral cordon trained (site specific, of course), but head-training seems to favour this the wild child of grape varieties. However, I have to admit that old cordon-trained vines are interesting to look at, as every previous vintage's pruning wounds are more obvious than on the head-trained vines.  Band-Aid, anybody?

La Migra.

Today I had to take the day off work and drive up to Santa Rosa. Why, one might ask?  Because I had to be man-handled by a government employee whilst having my biometrics taken in order to renew my green card.  Call me old fashioned, but I think it is rather important that I respect the laws of the country in which I have chosen to reside. In my opinion, it is just bad form to arrive on some foreign shore and expect that one is owed something from one's adopted homeland.
La Migra, a name which I am sure conjures up unpleasant thoughts in the minds of quite a large percentage of Napa County residents, has never been a concern to this particular resident alien.  I follow the rules.  I pay what is requested of me ($450 this time). I periodically subject myself to being finger-printed and photographed. I don't complain.  I observe the immigration laws of the United States of America.  What is it that some people don't understand about the definition of the word illegal?
On another note, I got home early enough to finish pruning the Cabernet Sauvignon vines, though I haven't tied down the canes yet.  It is forecast to rain tonight and tomorrow, Napa's first rain for March, so that will help soften the canes up a bit which'll make tying them down a little easier.  Then...hello Syrah!

A vine wedgie.

Ouch!  This looks painful doesn't it?  Luckily, I did not need this particular shoot for a spur, or cane.  Which is just as well because it really didn't look very viable after I'd finished cutting it from around the fruiting wire.
Pruning is going well and I estimate that I may finish the Cabernet Sauvignon tomorrow.  Of course, I still have to tie the canes down. Carry on!

Possum, opossum.

This Virginia Opossum (Didelphis virginiana) is going to be extremely tired tonight.  For about 4 hours, in broad daylight, V2 had it pinned up a tree.  Alerted to this little dilemma, whilst I was trying to have a peaceful afternoon pruning, I wandered over (with my trusty camera, of course) to assess the situation.  V2 was patiently waiting for the opossum to come down from it's perch: the opossum was patiently waiting for V2 to vaporise - fat chance of that!  My little V2 is one determined poochie, she is like, er, a dog with a bone.  Or a dog with an opossum up a tree.

TMI!

When does a customised cork carry too much information?  When there is so much ink one can't even be bothered reading it all! Besides, much of the same information is printed on the back label of the wine bottle.  This cork has the most inked information on it of any cork I have ever seen.  It's a veritable thesis.
As for the wine it was pleasant, but nothing to write home about (except I am indeed writing about it).  The Ravines, 2010, Finger Lakes Dry Riesling, was a gift from a friend (the same friend who also gave me and Vinomaker the bottle of Lamoreaux Landing we had both enjoyed so much).  This Riesling was not bad; it had some petroleum notes, the acid was so-so...it just wasn't the zippy glass of wine I wanted after a warm afternoon of pruning Cabernet Sauvignon vines.  (I started to prune the red grapes yesterday). So I switched to a Sauvignon blanc instead.  Much better.

The twain shall meet, sometimes.

It is rather gratifying, at least to this vine geek it is, when the pruned 8 bud canes, on neighbouring vines, meet perfectly in the middle of the fruiting wire.  Sometimes they do.  Sometimes they don't.  I just like it when they do.
When cane pruning, an angled cut, through the node following the last selected bud on a fruiting cane, effectively terminates apical growth on that cane.  The flared shape this cut produces aids in the tying down of the cane to the fruiting wire and ensures that a simple twist-tie can hold it in place.  In this photograph the 9th bud, on either of these new canes, sports the ever so convenient vestige of an old tendril which helps to exaggerate the flared shape and guarantees that the cane will stay put - until it's time to prune again next year.
I finished pruning both of Vinoland's white grape varieties today. Reds next.

Spur of the moment.

Displaying almost perfect form, this Orange Muscat vine was the first vine to be pruned in Vinoland for 2013.  Phew!  I'm always relieved to be finally started with this particular vineyard operation: pruning is the single, most important thing that you can do to a vine.
The pruned piece of wood in the foreground was last year's cane. This year's cane is on the right and grew last year from the uppermost bud of a two bud spur.  This year's two bud spur is on the left and it is the pruning unit that will grow this season and produce next year's cane and two bud spur.  And so on, and so forth.  Get it?  It's easier to grasp in person, I promise.
I'm not totally chuffed with the position of the lower bud, on the new spur, as it's facing too much toward the head of the vine.  But the upper bud, which will be next year's cane, is faultlessly facing along the fruiting wire.  I love pruning.

Happy St. Trifon's Day: 2013.

Today, I did a bit of spring cleaning, well, sort of.  It's almost time to start pruning Vinoland, but first I had to perform some maintenance on my pruning shears. A sharpening stone, some wire wool, oil and plenty of elbow grease quickly brought my trusty secateurs back to their former glory.  With some tender loving care, my Swiss-made Felcos should last me for the rest of my life.
I love pruning and I think I do an fairly decent job, but my skills are relatively limited.  I am no where near the skill level of someone who prunes for a living.  So it goes without saying that I won't be entering the 12th Annual Napa Valley Pruning Contest, which is being held next week.  But, may St. Trifon cast his beneficence over the secateur-wielding contestants who do enter.