Everything has broken bud at the Estate vineyard, at last–even the late-breaking Counoise. That’s young, cane-pruned Pinot 96 in the image above, where shoots are already out about two inches. We finally managed to get a little rainfall accumulation last week, nearly an inch last Thursday. You can also see in the image above that [...]
Archive for the ‘Weather’ Category
Calling Budbreak — Finally
Sailing Into The Seas of Spring
I can’t believe it is already March. February came and went and I barely noticed it. My lack of attention was due in part to having a recurring respiratory infection (didn’t I have that same thing the first couple of months of 2005 or 2006?) and then the flu. But really, very little has actually [...]
Dead Of Winter
Yesterday marked the first day since early January that we have had any rain here in Sonoma Valley. So far, with less than an inch of accumulated precipitation, this month is the driest January at our vineyard since I started keeping records in 1998. Only 2007 even comes close. As in 2007, we also have [...]
Finishing Our 2012 Harvest
We are picking our last grapes of the season this morning: Grenache and Counoise. It is supposed to start raining this afternoon—probably about an inch, locally. For those that need to wait it out, the grapes can probably handle it. But our stuff is ready and ripe. I take a certain satisfaction in picking our [...]
End Of The “Perfect” 2012 Harvest
The next couple of days are the last time this season that the fruit at our Estate will look this good. Monday it will start raining, with another rainy front forecast for Wednesday and another for Friday (thought the latest forecast update suggests these later two storms may slide to the north of us). A [...]
2012 Harvest: Halftime
Welcome to the 2012 Harvest Halftime Show… Yes, that’s right—it’s the second week of October and I think we are about halfway through the harvest. So far I have brought in 32 tons of Pinot Noir from our Estate vineyard, and drips and dabs of a few other varieties, mostly for customers. By comparison, this [...]
Vineyard Update: Canopy Control
The crews have been working for the last week hedging and making our first pass of lateral removal and leaf thinning. Ordinarily I don’t ask for much leaf removal in the fruit zone but Jean-Marie and I think this year it might be a good idea, given the amount of crop out there. We plan [...]
Bloom, Set & Match…
Things at the vineyard are hardly as final as my title would suggest, but I’m a little anxious because the forecast is calling for a cold, rainy low pressure system to swing through on Monday—and that sort of weather is never welcome during bloom. And we are right in the middle of bloom. In the [...]
I See Grapes Blooming…
I’m calling the start of bloom at our Estate vineyard. This is what I saw uniformly throughout the block of HVS Pinot today. In fact, pretty much all the blocks of cane-pruned heritage selection Pinot looked like this. The precocious Dijon clone 943 was not far behind, and bloom was starting in the cordon-pruned Dijon [...]
2012 Growing Season – Guardedly Optimistic
It’s been a while since I posted a vineyard update; I’ve been focused on processing our current wine club shipment for the last couple weeks. Plenty has been happening at the vineyard, including our first sulfur applications, cover crop mowing, and lots of crown suckering. We’ve had a couple drizzly days, but no rain to [...]
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Westwood Winery