Silver linings.

So much rain this week, I might as well be in England.  California definitely needs rain, but all at once?  Personally, I'd like a little bit of a break from being continually moist.  However, I must admit, grudgingly, that due to the inclement weather there has been some spectacular cloud-action, peculiar (in a good way) light-quality and a few, if fleeting, rainbow goings-on...silver linings.  Pity I kept forgetting my camera.  I had it yesterday though.
Here is an unusual view of Silver Oak Cellars and it's iconic water tower which is not normally this visible whilst driving along the Oakville Crossroad.  There has been a lot of bulldozing activity of late in many vineyards.  Given that harvest is well and truly over, now is the time that winegrowers begin the process of replanting a vineyard.  Not many people realise that the vines that grow in front of Silver Oak are not Silver Oak's vineyards.  No, they belong to Flora Springs.  (Silver Oak grow their Cabernet sauvignon up in Soda Canyon).  And Flora Springs has apparently decided to replant their Oakville vineyard.  And I will get to witness the whole process.  Fun.

Debitum naturae.

In a quiet corner of Vinoland, forlornly leaning against a California live oak, several dead (or dying) Cabernet sauvignon vines await their final fate - the wood chipper, sigh.  I always find it sad when grapevines have to be removed, but for a number of reasons nature just runs it's course; viruses, the health of the initial plant material, gopher blight etc.  There are many things that can cause a grapevine to decline and eventually die.  Nothing lives forever.
So instead of gadding about the Napa Valley like a tourist (although I enjoyed myself immensely yesterday), I spent today in the vineyard.  I performed small jobs, training up some young vines and stuffing shoots, whilst Vinomaker dug out the vines that were to be replaced.  It was a hard job removing them, as the vines had taken a firm hold in Vinoland (even though the rootstock is the relatively shallow 101-14).  I, of course, helped in a supervisory capacity.

Vinished!

Vinished, that's Vinoland lingo meaning I have finished tying down every last cane in the vineyard. Yay!
It was a pretty easy process as the Cabernet sauvignon vines are still slumbering.  The cooler weather this week has slowed things down a bit, so I'm predicting that budbreak won't happen for another 4 or 5 days yet.
Also, got a couple of dead vines removed (thank you, Vinomaker) and filled the holes (that Vinomaker dug) with new, baby vines.  The photograph shows, but not very well (I should have used a different background), one of the extracted vines which has a deep, 11" split along the lower half of it's trunk.  Did this split cause the death of this vine?  No, I'm sure this vine had just run it's natural course and the split occurred postmortem.  Hate when that happens.  But I love it when I have finished pruning.

Agriculture happens.

Today was apparently an agricultural burn day in the Napa Valley. As I drove away from work this morning I spotted a few vineyards practicing open burning, including this one on the Oakville Crossroad.  Each pyre, of twisted vines and vineyard stakes, was burning so hot that very little smoke was being produced, the centres glowing a vivid red even in the bright, morning sunshine. I could feel the intensity of the heat from the bonfires on my face some 75 yards away, and across the passenger seat of my car, as I sat taking this photograph.
Agricultural burning is the practice of using fire to reduce or dispose of vegetative debris from an agricultural activity, in this instance the disposal of dead grapevines ripped out last November.  Prescribed fire has long been an efficient management tool for the grapegrowers of the Napa Valley to aid in clearing old vineyards to make way for new vines.  However, it is a tool that is infrequently used.  Vineyards only account for about 9% of the entire acreage of the county.  And, these vineyards are only, perhaps, replanted on an average of every 25-30 years, and even then not all at the same time.  The Valley's grapegrowers aren't a marauding horde of pyromaniacs advocating slash-and-burn agricultural practices: they are generally responsible custodians of the land on which their livelihoods depend.
Fortunately, to ensure that the Valley's farmers refrain from becoming environmental hooligans (and also save them from committing agricultural operations that have been deemed criminal), the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD) was founded in 1955 by the California legislature - just one more bureaucratic agency which then had to be funded and staffed - to aid in the squandering of tax payer's dollars. Now, I understand that steps should be taken to protect air quality in the Napa Valley and, thankfully, there are already in place Federally mandated air emission thresholds set by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA); which in turn are then implemented by California's Agricultural Commissioner, and finally enforced at a local level by the County of Napa.
Presently, grapegrowers must apply to the County of Napa for a permit, at least five days in advance of a scheduled agricultural burn.  However, the county then must submit the permit for approval  to BAAQMD which ultimately confers burn day-status upon the farmer who has been patiently waiting to replant his land.
Leave it to the San Francisco Bay Area to have it's very own busybody, authoritarian agency to make sure that the citizens of all nine Bay area counties behave as they ordain. This is the same agency that called for Spare The Air (STA) days on Thanksgiving and Christmas 2010 - cozy, family time when loved ones usually gather together to roast chestnuts on an open fire - only to admit later that those two particular days were not in fact STA days: They had manipulatively fabricated the existence of poor air quality conditions, making folks refrain from having log fires, just to get the public's attention.  Up to this same point in the winter season last winter BAAQMD had issued 4 STA notices.  But, this winter, mostly due to the lack of rain since Thanksgiving, the Bay Area has already had 14 STA days.
The EPA, on behalf of the entire United States, seems to be already dealing with the ever increasing challenges we are told our planet is facing.  Meanwhile, back in San Francisco, BAAQMD's mission statement proclaims:  "To protect and improve...the global climate" - lofty aspirations indeed!
Piddling local government at its finest.  Or, worst? 

Out with the old.

Do not worry, nobody was harmed in the making of this photograph - especially me! However, these poor, old vines definitely took a beating.

I spotted these vines being pulled out last night on the way home from work. This morning, camera in hand, I was fortunate enough to actually get a photograph of the bulldozer operator pushing the old vines into huge piles. By the time I left work this afternoon all the vines were piled high into 6 or 7 gigantic, tangled mountains of vegetation and steel vineyard trellising stakes - which will ultimately become funeral pyres.

With harvest 2011 well and truly over (and believe me, there has been a resounding, collective sigh of relief heard throughout the entire valley), it is now time to plan for future harvests and replanting old vineyards is often on the agenda.

In with the new.

Though the land be good...

...you cannot have an abundant crop without cultivation. Plato.
Harvest may be over, but the work of farming the vineyards of the Napa Valley is never at an end. Valleywide, growers and vineyard managers are performing many necessary vineyard operations; sowing cover crops, spreading composted waste solids between the vines, making soil amendments (such as additions of K2SO4), and in some cases ripping out old, tired vines that are no longer viable.
This vineyard on the Oakville Crossroad was bulldozed about a week ago. I'm fairly positive it belongs to Franciscan Winery (but it could be Flora Springs Winery). Yes, it is sad to see the dead vines neatly piled high with the last of their summer foliage turning brown, but in their place new, vigorous vines will be cultivated. Nothing lives forever, but the 2010 wine that was made from these vines, before they were pulled from the earth, will be around for decades to come.

Who stole all the vines?

It has been extremely foggy the past two mornings. Not the marine fog that haunts the San Francisco Bay Area all summer long, but true radiation fog, (or Tule fog as they call it here after the winter fogs that form in the expansive, low-lying San Joaquin and Sacramento Valleys). I love it.
This up valley vineyard looks a little forlorn in the misty gloom of a late January morning. I am fairly certain that this vineyard, belonging to Swanson Vineyards, was formerly planted to Merlot. But whether or not the vines were diseased, no longer economically viable, or simply just old, they are history. Only the blossoming mustard and an incomplete trellising system remain as silent witnesses to the crime.