Here comes the first rain of the season. The radar loop shows a slow eastward progression; most of the motion is southwest to northeast. Forecast total rain accumulations have increased from yesterday’s projections. Dislike.
Archive for the ‘Weather’ Category
2011 Vintage – Quick Harvest Update
Sunday afternoon; outside the overcast is increasing and westerly wind rising as the first of a series of cold fronts approaches the area. Rain on tap for tomorrow and then for Tuesday night into Wednesday morning. Forecast has advanced the timing and decreased the amount of rain expected from the system. We really don’t have [...]
2011 Vintage & The Rain
Sampled the vineyard yesterday, confirming that Syrah (approaching 23° Brix) is two full weeks ahead of Pinot (not quite 21° Brix) this year. Awesomely weird; feels like down is suddenly up. Jennifer Thomson tweeted this morning that “Diageo reports they are bringing Chard & Pinot in around the clock for next 72 hrs. Anything 23.5° [...]
No Harvest Yet :-(
It is the day before the autumnal equinox and I haven’t picked grape one. A week ago I was sweating bullets over this, in spite of it being cold outside–in fact because it was cold outside. I have been mostly tweeting it up from the vineyard this year, but it is time to make a [...]
2011 Vintage–Interesting
There is an old Chinese curse which goes “May you live in interesting times.” It seems we are under this curse for this vintage in Sonoma, as much or more as we were in 2010. This is the Estate vineyard yesterday, viewed from the NW corner looking SE. It rained on Monday; about 0.90 inches. [...]
Harvest 2010 — Initial Debrief
I’ve gone on and on here about how this was such a tough vintage. I saw some really awful vineyard problems (luckily, few in our vineyard), heard some unprecedented horror stories from growers and winemakers, and tasted some pretty sketchy wines (thankfully, none of them in our winery). When the 2010 Grape Crush Report comes [...]
Harvest 2010: Not Done Yet
It is November 3rd and I still have Mourvedre, Grenache and Counoise on the vine at our Annadel Estate Vineyard. This is now officially the latest harvest I have done in 24 years. The Mourvedre is as ready as it is going to get — the seeds are ripe enough and flavors are good with [...]
Harvest 2010: Calamitous
Calamitous. There’s just no better word to describe this growing season. A cold spring and summer gave us budbreak, flowering and veraison later than I can ever recall. Some growers struggled with nearly the worst mildew pressure they have had to deal with — fortunately we were spared this at our Annadel Estate. We have [...]
Harvest 2010: A Quick Update
Just time for a quick update before I run off to the winery to clean up the press and crush the fruit we picked yesterday. This is a radar snapshot of the storm that is on top of us. We have had over 3″ of rain in the last 24 hours and more is expected. [...]
2010 Harvest: Pinot In The Barn
As I stepped out of the shower yesterday morning I heard rain on the skylight. Pretty heavy rain — nearly the last thing a winemaker wants to hear on the first day of harvest. Fortunately it was brief. By the time I got to the vineyard to see how the crews were doing on picking [...]
