We wrapped up a successful 2012 growing season at Shaker Ridge with a small touriga nacional harvest for our own cellar on October 15.  The vines got out of the gates slowly for the third straight year, but that’s where any similarity with the prior two vintages stopped.  A generous slug of rain in late April helped compensate, to a large extent, for what was a rather dry “wet season” in the Sierra Foothills.  The spring/summer heat came slowly at first, but what eventually emerged was a classic Foothills summer, with several stretches–including one that seemed like it might never end in the first half of August–of 100+ degree days.  While such days are not especially favorable for either grapes or humans, they provided abundant warmth and ultimately gave way to a month or more of consecutive days with highs “only” in the low 90’s.  This stretch, coupled with cool nights mostly in the low 60’s, made for superb ripening weather for local wine grapes.  Early rain also stayed away for most vineyards–with the exception of rare localized thunderstorms–and the first significant rainfall is forecast to come in 2 days (late October).  Thus, unlike last year, most fruit could be harvested ahead of rain and the various issues that that can cause in wine grapes.

At Shaker Ridge in 2012, we sold nearly 16 tons of wine grapes to 5 commercial wineries and an estimated 30 home winemakers.  We say “estimated”, because many of our home winemaker clients actually represent groups of 2-3 home winemakers that team up to buy grapes.  This was certainly the widest reach we have achieved to date.  While the high numbers of winemakers served was due in part to an otherwise tight wine grape market, we believe it also speaks to satisified clients and our willingness to serve the home winemakers who are, as we say elsewhere on our website, “serious about their craft”.  We truly cannot wait to see the results of all our clients’ efforts in the form of successful wine competition entries, healthy wine sales in the case of commercial wineries, and (last but not least) fine wine to drink and enjoy.

A noteworthy aspect of the 2012 vintage was the large influx of buyers from out-of-county that significantly pushed up prices–not so much for the more niche grapes that we sell–but for the household name varietals grown in massive quantity in the Central Valley.  The economic crisis of the previous few years, the prior reduction of planting and even net removal of wine grape acreage in the Central Valley, and the slow but steady increase in U.S. wine consumption finally brought grape supply and demand into balance.  In fact, the supply of quality grapes was actually short, and the final survey numbers for 2012 will likely show a strong increase in export of El Dorado County grapes to other locales.  For our own part, while we have always sold a portion of our grapes to out-of-county and out-of-state (Nevada) clients, this year we sold an unprecedented 70% of our grapes out-of-county.  Locally, despite the economic downturn from which we are still emerging, new wineries continue to appear at a pace that has probably outstripped the growth in local wine tourism.  This situation has made for a competitive local market for wineries and, in our view, ever-improving quality.  The net effect of all of this, in economic terms, is that out-of-county wineries effectively out-bid local wineries for the region’s grapes this year.  In short, the market has, at least for the moment, finally recognized the value proposition of El Dorado grapes.

We would like to thank all of our clients for their business and for being patient with us as we navigated the logistical challenges of another harvest season.   Though we made around 20 grape handoffs, our clients were rarely late (or too early!), a fact we really appreciate.  We were glad to have a little more time than usual to meet and speak with clients, new and old.  We are also grateful for those repeat clients who brought wine samples from prior vintages; we really value these as a special token of appreciation.

Before closing, we’re excited to report the appearance of a second commercial touriga wine made from Shaker Ridge grapes, a 2010 touriga from Bumgarner Wines.  Brian Bumgarner is an extremely talented winemaker who, along with his wife Jennifer, runs a tasting room in the Apple Hill/Camino area of El Dorado county.  The Bumgarner Winery had a special coming-out party for the touriga at their tasting room on September 28th, and the wine did not disappoint.

The first commercial wine made out of our touriga, the 2009 from Obscurity Cellars, actually just made its re-appearance recently at the Oakstone 2.0 winery.   The latter opened a cozy new tasting room in Fair Play at the site of Obscurity Cellars’ winery, replacing the Oakstone tasting room devastated by fire in July.  The 2009 Obscurity touriga remains an outstanding wine and made a strong showing in a blinded horizontal tasting of 2009 tourigas that we recently hosted.

Thank you again for a great 2012, and we’ll see you next season….

Andy & Elizabeth

What a difference a year makes.  The 2012 grape crop got off to a late start for the third consecutive year, and late spring was on the cool side once again.  But the summer has brought plenty of seasonable sunshine and heat, with the net result of a rapid catch-up in ripening times to what will likely be “normal” harvest times, if there is such a thing.  We’ve had multiple heat waves into the low triple digits, with another on the way this week.  Mercifully, these have been punctuated by cooler spells with daytime highs in the upper 80s to low 90s.  As one long-time local recently commented to me, the 100s make the 90s feel nice, and that’s very true.

At Shaker Ridge, we completed what we expect will be all the cluster thinning that will be required already in July, a first for us.  Fruit set in the barbera, tempranillo, tinta cao, and Quinta touriga was moderate; fruit set was heavy in the primitivo and 2009 touriga, and fruit dropping was accordingly aggressive.  In the primitivo, we are additionally in the process of dropping “second” fruit, which is heavy on some vines.

We completed installation of new overhead netting in our Quinta vineyard, replacing older netting that was requiring excessive time to repair inevitable holes.  Thus, the thousands of song birds in the area are in for some disappointment when they approach Quinta Fort Knox.  We will soon deploy additional netting directly on vines in portions of our primitivo and 2009 touriga vineyards that are most subject to marauding birds.  Also at this time of year, our outside cats know to patrol the nets for avian snacks, a practice we don’t discourage.

Various quantities of each of our varietals remain for sale as of this date (see Current Grape Availability).  We look forward to providing excellent quality wine grapes from the 2012 vintage to our new and repeat clients.  We will begin posting to this Grower Update page our customary weekly measurements of grape chemistry from our sampling, beginning with the earliest ripening varieties, tempranillo and primitivo, in mid- to late-August.

Our summer had started out on the cool side yet again, but two fairly oppressive heat waves with highs in the triple digits have reminded us what Foothill summers are like.  A respite from the current heat wave begins in earnest tomorrow, but we will quickly re-heat to the mid 90’s by next weekend.  “At least it’s a dry heat” is the standard refrain, thinking of our brethren sweltering in both heat and humidity on the East Coast.

The grapes are generally thriving in the current environment, with shoot elongation past, and berry enlargement progressing rapidly.  Kicker canes were removed from our barbera by the end of June, having served their purpose of soaking up some of that varietal’s vigor.  There is no sign of verasion yet, but it can’t be more than a week or two off for most of our varietals.  Given our relatively shallow soils and the hot, dry conditions, we’ve had to irrigate generously to prevent excessive stress to the vines, and we’ve managed to keep up as confirmed by weekly soil moisture monitoring.

Preventative spraying for powdery mildew continues for one or at most two more rounds; meanwhile, we are going to use the break in the heat to begin dropping fruit on our touriga vines, followed soon thereafter by barbera and primitivo.  Fruit set was definitely adequate throughout the vineyard, with the most notable change being the marked reduction in “shatter” in the primitivo versus the last couple of years.  As usual, with the many variables in grape growing, we’re not sure if this was simply the weather this year, or changes in our viticultural practices, but the outcome is good:  full clusters.  Potentially, the fuller clusters will translate into smaller berry size, which is generally a good thing for full-bodied red wines.

Our goal is to have fruit dropping–a labor-intensive practice done specifically to limit yield and enhance quality–completed by mid-August, with only selective netting left to attend to prior to harvest.  In that regard, we are heartened to hear the frequent screams of red-tailed hawks in the area, suggesting that we will have some “air support” for our annual battle with birds to get to the ripe fruit first.

On the amateur wine competition front, the Amador County fair judging finally took place, and we received silvers for our 2009 barbera and 2009 estate red, a dry blend of our Portugese varietal grapes.  We think we have some promising 2010 and 2011 vintage wines in the pipeline for next season.

On a sad note, readers of this post know that we have for many years provided grapes to Oakstone Winery of Fair Play, one of the top wineries in the region, and one of the most fun tasting rooms to visit.  Oakstone was totaled in a fire last Saturday that was fortunately contained to the structure and did not result in any injuries.  While this is obviously a major setback, Oakstone has vowed to rebuild, and we have every expectation that it will turn this unwelcome development into a positive, and come back stronger than ever.  We appreciate Oakstone’s support since our inception, and we hope to contribute to their inevitable comeback.

A lot has happened in the vineyard since the last update in mid-May, but all routine. We received a final splash of rain in early June, but are now solidly in a summer weather pattern in the Foothills, and any rain should be behind us until fall. The June rain was pretty much a non-event for us, as rainfall was light on our site, and we were in the midst of regular preventative powdery mildew sprays anyway.

Bloom was first noted in our touriga nacional, tinta cao, and highest portion of our primitivo fields by May 23, and in the balance of the vineyard about a week later. We took petiole samples in the barbera and primitivo fields to check on nutritional status on June 3, with no surprises in the outcome. This is 20 days earlier than our bloom sampling last year, suggesting that we have made up a lot of time in vine development since our late budburst in mid-April, and may be on track for a relatively “normal” harvest time. Obviously, the amount of heat this summer will impact that, but it’s looking good. We are not changing our harvest time estimates at this point.

Vegetative growth was rapid and vigorous, but we completed a complete round of shoot thinning in all fields by the end of May. This was helpful to open up the vines for air and light penetration, as well as spraying. It also lowered the rate of transpiration loss heading into the start of irrigation, which we began in early June. We have seen no powdery mildew this year, including in our most susceptible varietals. Shoot growth is pretty much done now, and we saw the first signs of water stress in vine tendrils in some areas with the recent heat wave, suggesting that we had not over-watered. We are having weekly ground water measurements done, so we have an additional quantitative handle this year on irrigation needs apart from visual cues.

We did an additional round of mowing as expected, but the cover crop has largely browned out at this point, and the length of the shoots in our vertical cordon (head-trained) vines largely prevents this anyway at this point in the season. Weed control within rows is good at this point (knock on wood). It is about this time that our old friend the horseweed starts becoming a nuisance in or adjacent to the rows.

Fruit set has happened throughout the vineyard and looks plentiful, and the berries have enlarged noticeably in the last 2 weeks. We’ll take a closer look at crop load in the coming month. We anticipate removing our “kicker cane” in the barbera soon, as its work in restraining vigor is largely done, and it contributes to transpiration and therefore water loss until removed. Beyond that, we will drop fruit as soon as crop load relative to target becomes obvious.

On the judging circuit, the home winemaker portion of the California State Fair was cancelled (budgetary reasons we assume), and that for the Amador County Fair was postponed until July. On the commercial wine judging circuit, the perhaps most-oft submitted wine of all time–the 2009 Reserve Barbera from Oakstone Winery (Shaker Ridge vineyard designate)–won silvers at the 2012 El Dorado County Fair and 2012 California State Fair, and a bronze at the 2012 Amador County Fair. By our count, this would be something like 7 silver medals and 2 bronze medals total for this well-traveled wine. To our knowledge, it has never failed to medal. The wine remains for sale at Oakstone’s tasting room in Fair Play.

We had the privilege recently of presenting to the Sacramento Home Winemakers (SHW) organization on the subject of port wines and our Portugese varietal vineyard in particular, and to taste 4 different port-style wines made from Shaker Ridge grapes last year. The grapes used to make these wines, comprising 5 different Portugese varietals, were all picked on the same day for all clients (Quinta shareholders) last year, including those for the SHW members’ wines. The winemakers all took their wines in slightly different directions, with different but pleasing results. A couple managed to coax some particularly fruit-forward wines from the grapes, and a delicious dry wine was made as well. It seemed to be a good learning experience for us and them, and we look forward to seeing these wines in competitions in future years.

Based on a number of inquiries, we have decided to continue to offer our Quinta grapes for sale as a single package until July 1. However, if not committed to one client by then, the touriga nacional, tempranillo, and tinta cao components will be made available separately on a conventional per pound basis. Reservations for these can be taken ahead of formal posting; contact us for pricing. Quantities of barbera and primitivo remain on sale for the 2012 season as well.

A final large slug of rain over several days in April has set us up for a beautiful start to the 2012 vintage. In the end, local rainfall was only modestly below normal. The rain’s late arrival made the annual grasses and weeds very happy, and they have proceeded to shoot up between the rows in a sprint to set seeds. They have been mowed once, but will surely need to be mowed again before the month is out. The vines really took off, and one could practically see them grow before one’s eyes in late April and early May. This growth has brought with it the need for regular sprays to prevent powdery mildew, and no issues have been encountered on that front to date. The vines look very healthy, the future fruit clusters are visible and abundant, and we would anticipate bloom to follow in the next couple of weeks. We seem to have escaped frost damage, and we suspect that most growers are breathing a sigh of relief at what looks like a normal, healthy start to the season. It was definitely a late start–with our primitivo finally pushing on about April 20–but there is reason to think we should make up some time now with the favorable growing conditions.

We got a good jump on shoot thinning–a critical operation for quality control– and we have already completed that operation in the Quinta vineyard and a separate touriga field, with work on the main varietals (barbera and primitivo) to follow this week. Irrigation has not started, but the ground is drying out quickly, and don’t expect that the need to irrigate will be more than 2-3 weeks off, either. California is truly beautiful during this mid-spring window when the hillsides are still green, the air still has a little humidity in it, and the high heat has not started, and our vineyard is no exception.

The first homemade wine competition of the season happened this past weekend at the El Dorado County Fair. We were braced for anti-climax, as our 3 golds and Best of Show showing in that competition last year are pretty much a once-in-a-lifetime sort of outcome that we knew we could not improve upon or perhaps ever see again. We chose to enter two estate wines: our 2009 primitivo and our 2009 dry blend of Portugese varietals. The primitivo won a double gold, and the estate red won a silver. This was a gratifying result, as there were only six double golds (double gold means all 3 judges on a panel thought it merited a gold) out of 210 wines total entered. The silver was a solid showing for a blend of varietals that most people, let alone wine judges, have probably never heard of. Next up are the Amador County Fair and California State Fair.

Fruit remains available for sale for the current season, but the region is seeing healthy demand from other parts of the state, as the Central Valley (which had been on a rip out mode for vineyards for several years) finds itself short of grapes with continued growth in domestic wine consumption. Thus, if you are on the fence, we recommend that you secure your grape supply — whether here or elsewhere–before it’s gone. In the absence of a sale of our Quinta fruit to a single client by June 1, we will be releasing additional touriga nacional, plus tempranillo and tinta cao, for sale by the pound.

A little whining about the paucity of rain in our diary post last month seemed to do the trick: it was followed by fairly heavy rain in March and continued periodic rain here in April. This is definitely good for the region as a whole, and though not as helpful to Northern California water supplies as rain earlier in the season that is more likely to be stored in the Sierras as snow, there are not too many in the agricultural community complaining. We remain light in overall rainfall for the season, but certainly the soil water profile has been significantly replenished by the late rains, and we should be able to follow a more normal irrigation pattern.

At Shaker Ridge, winter pruning was finished on time in early March, and we managed to thread in our weed control treatments within the rows between rains. We’re calling the arrival of budburst in many of our earlier-pushing varietals—barbera, touriga nacional, tinta cao, and tinta amarela– as Easter, April 8. Tempranillo, primitivo, and souzao are still mostly dormant. We had seemed primed for an earlier start, but cloud cover from the March rains and generally cool temperatures kept the vines at bay. In fact, we experienced our typical once-annual snow fall on March 18, with just a dusting that had melted by noon. The later budburst was fortuitous actually, since we got temperatures close to freezing last week, and had the vines already pushed, there likely would have been pockets of frost damage.

The timing of budburst is noteworthy, because we called budburst in most of the aforementioned early varietals as April 6 in 2011–an historically late season. This would suggest the possibility of yet another late harvest season, though weather patterns downstream of budburst (including those affecting the length of time until flowering) are relevant in the final outcome. Significantly, our barbera did not push until about 2 weeks later last year, which we later realized was due to frost damage suffered by many of the primary buds just prior to overt full opening. Thus, we’re glad to see the barbera safely out of the gates at an earlier date than last year. The key now will be avoiding frost going forward, which of course is almost 100% out of our control!

We still have availability of all of our grape varietals, but preseason orders have been steady, and we would encourage those wishing to secure grape supply for 2012 to act early. We are looking forward to the coming wine judging season and the 2012 vintage.

Preseason activities are well underway in our vineyard for a vintage that is likely to be different in character than the last two. As anyone who lives in northern California can attest, it has been a lean winter for rain and snow. In the normally wet months of December and January, we saw essentially no precipitation in our part of the Sierra Foothills until a storm system arriving on January 20th provided about 5 inches of rain spread over several days. Since then, there have been several storms good for an inch or two of rain each, but nothing summing to the 20+ inches that we expect during our wet season. Thus, barring a big turnaround in March and April, one characteristic of the new season will be soil dryness. As with any weather phenomenon, there are winners and losers, pluses and minuses, to any pattern. A dry soil profile will work against early season weeds, restraining their grow, as their roots are generally not as deep as those of grapevines. However, with time, the grapes will also run out of water and require earlier irrigation, and all that surface water from the irrigation will be relished by later-emerging weeds. On the positive side, the grower has no control over a naturally saturated soil profile, but with irrigation being limiting, the grower can choose to restrain vegetative growth of the vines. At Shaker Ridge, we applied some irrigation as early as mid-January, a time of year in which we expect to be drinking wine rather than worrying about grapevines!

Temperature-wise, it was seasonably cold in the deep winter months, with temperatures on or about the freezing level on many nights. More recently, we’re seeing nighttime temperatures rising, and patches of days with highs in the 70s F. The sap is beginning to run in the vines (water will drip out of cuts when the vines are pruned), and we’re seeing unrelated fruits and vegetables that we grow flower or start to push. We think these signs suggest that we are headed for a more normally timed March budburst in the vineyard, as opposed to the late ones that have characterized the last two seasons. This, in turn, may set us up for a more normal harvest schedule. In the vineyard, we are assiduously pruning last year’s growth ahead of budburst and taking on a few off-season improvement projects such as selective grading. However, the “off-season” is waning fast.

On the wine competition circuit, which is quiet at this time of year except for the annual San Francisco Chronicle commercial wine competition, we are pleased to report that Obscurity Cellars’ 2009 touriga won a gold medal. This is the first time a vineyard-designated wine made with from our grapes earned a gold in this prestigious event. The wine had previously taken a gold at the California State Fair. Also in the SF Chronicle event, Oakstone Winery’s 2009 barbera made from Shaker Ridge grapes earned a silver medal. Remarkably enough in the subjective world of wine judging, this was the fifth silver medal awarded to this specific wine! When five independent commercial wine judging panels (typically made up of 3-4 tasters) award a wine a silver, it’s pretty safe to assume that it’s a silver. Both the Obscurity touriga and the Oakstone barbera are still available for sale from the respective wineries in Fair Play, CA.

We have recently posted grape availability and pricing for 2012. We are mostly holding prices the same as in 2011. In the case of the Portugese varietals, if we do not sell the entire production of the Quinta to a single client by June 1, we will make several of the component varietals available for sale on a conventional per pound basis. Prior to June 1, we will accept wait list requests on a first-come, first-served basis for three of the Quinta varietals, though quantities are limited. See “Pricing and Services” for more details.

The 2011 growing season at Shaker Ridge is finally over.  The season began with some winter
pruning of tempranillo vines on January 20, and ended with a small harvest of touriga nacional on October 30–over 9 months!  Weather-wise, it was very similar to 2010–wet spring, late budburst, cool summer, and late harvest– but with a little frost damage thrown in at the front end.  In total this year, we served 4 commercial wineries and over 20 home winemakers, we hope providing quality fruit to the lay foundation for some excellent wines. We were glad to see many new faces this year and benefited from our 1500′ elevation which allows us to ripen grapes even in cool, late years like this one.

Quinta touriga nacional on the day before harvest:  October 14, 2011

The feature event of the season had to be the harvest and distribution of our half-acre vineyard of Portugese varietals (the Quinta) to 10% shareholders–all home winemakers– on October 15.  The total production of the Quinta was 3131 pounds, resulting in shareholders receiving 315 lbs each of a blend of touriga nacional (60%), tempranillo (20%), souzao (10%), tinto cao (6%), and tinta amarella (4%) grapes.  This yield was slightly above target, thus
providing an extra dividend to shareholders and resulting in a net cost of only $0.635/lb for a collection of varietals hard to find in one place, cultivated with great care, and suitable for a single quinta vintage port-style wine or for a complex dry red.

We thank all of our clients for their patronage, patience, and cooperation this year.  With so many handoffs required, we count on the reliability and timeliness of our clients at harvest time to make things go smoothly, and we were not disappointed.

We expect that we will be back next year, and will post pricing and availability in January.  We are contemplating some changes in our price structure, likely rewarding those who commit early, since this helps us do our best work in the vineyard.

An unbroken string of 90+ degree days extending for several weeks back into August finally came to an end yesterday, though we received no measurable rain out of thunderstorms which appeared to rage just to our east.  We managed to avoid a single triple-digit day this summer, which is remarkable for our area.  The break in the weather came just in time, as heat and dessicating winds we’re just starting to make the barbera vines look thirsty, and now we should be able to keep the vines adequately irrigated with our normal irrigation rotation.

The first primitivo chemistry samples were taken on Friday, and suggest about 2 weeks to harvest.  We’ve noted some areas heavy with “seconds”–bunches that often form off of side branches of the main shoots–so we are removing those to focus the vines’ last couple weeks of sugar accumulation on the main clusters.  Otherwise, it will be all about keeping the birds off the fruit, which is tasting good now (both to us and them) and monitoring the ripening.

The “new touriga” field proved to be heavy on fruit once veraison kicked into gear, but catching this mid-veraison allowed us to selectively remove the less advanced clusters, and we dropped about 1/3 of the crop in all.  This vineyard will be mostly or completely covered with bird netting given its proximity to trees and the need for adequate hang time.  We now think that a mid-October harvest is likely for this field.

The barbera is coming along very nicely, and is at a point now where the green “seconds”–which don’t get harvested–stand out clearly from the main clusters.  Unless a vine is particularly light on main crop and thus in need of a sink for some of its sugar production, we plan remove these easily recognized smaller clusters, which can be heavy on barbera with our vertical cordon “trellising”.  Our first chemistry sample for the barbera will be taken this Thursday, and we suspect that it will already show sugars in the mid-20’s brix, and the only question will be how high the TA (and how low the pH) is.  Particularly with the break in the heat that is forecast, we’re optimistic that we’ll get plenty of hang time for the barbera, and still expect harvest in mid-October.  If there is risk to this prediction, we would expect it to be earlier and not later.

The Quinta (Portugese varietal vineyard) appears to be in great shape as we head down the homestrech, with the souzao now well into veraison.  The tempranillo would be pickable now if harvested on its own, but we are (as per plan) waiting for full ripening of the touriga nacional–the backbone of the Quinta’s five varietals–to drive the timing of harvest for the balance.  We did just a little fruit dropping and hedging of shoots to fine-tune crop load and sun exposure, respectively, and time is on our side with the grapes fully protected form birds by overhead netting.  We’ll take our first chemistry on the touriga this Thursday, though we anticipate it will probably take at least a  second reading next week before we’ll be able to confidently pick a harvest date and announce this for our Quinta shareholders.  Of note–if this were Portugal–our weather pattern this year would have all the classic features of a vintage port year, and as we aspire to have wines made from the Quinta rivaling the quality of a single quinta vintage port, this is good!

The last several weeks have continued the previously mentioned pattern of hot days and cool nights, but without any triple-digit temperature readings.  The lack of super-hot days is highly unusual for a Foothills summer, though a welcome development for both the vines and the humans that tend them.  But make no mistake about it:  it’s still been plenty hot and dry in the afternoons!   We still think we’re on track for a ripening schedule similar to last year, with primitivo in late September, touriga in early October, and barbera in mid-October.  But, like always, we’ll let the grape chemistry and grape flavors guide us as we get closer. 

The primitivo fruit is particularly heterogenous in its ripening this year, both within a cluster and between vines.  The former is typical of a zinfandel family grape, but seems particularly pronounced this year, both in terms of berry size and berry color.  Presumably this has to do with an extended bloom period.  So we will wait at least until we get uniform color in the fruit before we bother taking chemistries, and we’ll need to be particularly attentive to sampling practices to get a representative read.  Fruit load is generally light to average, with the more vigorous plants carrying more fruit than the less vigorous ones, the primitivo seeming to self-adjust well.  We have already netted about 1/4 of this vineyard in the section closest to trees and most likely to be attacked by birds.  Indeed, we were too late for a few row-end plants that were already cleaned out.

The barbera vines, as noted in the vineyard gallery, have never looked better at this point in the season in our experience.  Veraison is in progress but behind that of the primitivo, as usual.  The vines are dark green and healthy, so seem well-positioned to ripen the fruit in this late season.  Crop load would have been uniformly light, but we’ve achieved what we think will be close-to-target yields by retaining part of most of our kicker canes, adding back some fruit load.  We’ll be watching the vines, and the grape clusters should tell us by their color if a given vine is overburdened, in which case fruit can be dropped from that vine.  However, this is likely to be a rare occurence this season.

The “new” (2009) touriga nacional has an average fruit load and has just started veraison.  We had seen some water stress earlier in this field, so it’s been getting extra irrigation for a few weeks, and appears okay now.    This field has trees adjacent to two sides and so is the next candidate for bird netting, though we have a little time before this needs to be deployed.  Again, we’ll be watching veraison to see if any individual vines seem to have too much fruit, but we think shoot thinning removed most of the excess.

The “quinta” vineyard of Portugese varietals is looking very good at this point and is completely enclosed in bird netting.  As usual, the rolling out of the overhead netting was an iterative process wherein we let the birds tell us if there were holes, and there were.  So we kept fixing holes and gaps, and we haven’t seen any unwanted avian visitors inside the net for 4 days now.  This is important, because the tempranillo is fully turned color now and would be decimated in short order if the birds could find a way in.   The touriga nacional and the other Portugese varietals except the souzao have started veraison at this point.  This vineyard appears to be on cruise control, and we’ll started monitoring the touriga nacional chemistry in early to mid September to hone in on a harvest date.  We look forward to a visit from some of our quinta “shareholders” on September 3rd. 

Just a final note that two 10% shares of the Quinta, a ton plus of primitivo, and 3 tons plus of barbera remain available for sale.