We find ourselves in the home stretch of another vineyard season that, all in all, has gone well.  June was quite cool and pleasant by Sierra Foothills standards but gave way to a classically hot July, including a stretch of a week or more in late July in the low triple digits.  That sun/heat certainly took out part of our barbera crop, as it is particularly sensitive to high heat, and the high heat would have done more damage had veraison been a little more advanced (the riper berries being more susceptible).  Our other vines showed water stress, but the fruit handled the heat better.  We irrigate, rotating among blocks, nearly around the clock at this time of year just to keep up, and are always jealous hearing of other vineyards with deeper soils that claim not to need to water more than once or twice per season.   It must be nice!  But for those who subscribe to the struggling vine theory of grape growing—basically that vines need to struggle a little to produce quality wine grapes—rest assured that our vines struggle in July/August!

We are seeing our usual unwelcome late season weeds like mare’s tail and star thistle.  While it doesn’t help the weed control, we have finally discovered an animal that eats these and actually seems to like them:  goats.  We agreed to take care of some goats for a friend who, let’s just say, had grown unattached to the critters and was happy to see them go.  So, while we can’t trust the goats to roam the vineyard and eat the weeds—as they’d likely prefer the grapevines—we do get some satisfaction manually pulling the weeds and giving them to the goats to eat in their pasture.

Speaking of eating, nobody eats better than our indoor-outdoor house cat at this time of year.  With the deployment of the bird netting—which was unfurled with a little less cussing and marital strain than usual this year since we hired help to expedite that process—song birds are on a more even footing with our cat as they can’t simply “fly off” if they find themselves trapped inside the net munching on grapes.  The athleticism shown by our tom is truly remarkable when he’s got a semi- confined bird in his sights.  Other birds simply get themselves tangled, but they don’t remain there for more than 24 hours thanks to numerous nocturnal carnivores that seem to find them very quickly.  And this doesn’t include our local brown bear whose annual appearance has been signaled by scrunched vineyard fencing and characteristic skat.  Flocks of wild turkey are mostly in our garden but are finding their way toward the grapes.

The primitivo is a light crop this year, and we lightened the burden further on the vines by removing seconds just prior to netting the entire field in late July.  The clusters, which as noted previously experienced high “shatter” this year, have filled out somewhat with larger berries, and we hope to have enough fruit for everybody.  By getting the bird nets on as early as we did, we should maximize what was there, and we think the light crop (combined with an early-ish year) may spell another late August harvest.  We will begin sampling the primitivo grapes and posting the chemistry this coming weekend.

We will be in touch in the coming weeks with those who have confirmed grape orders for the 2016 season.  A slight surplus cannot be ruled out for any of our varietals (though less likely for primitivo), so if anyone is interested in fruit who didn’t reserve any before we sold out, please contact us and we would be happy to put you on a waitlist.  Otherwise, we will post available grapes on this site once our commitments are met, at which point you’ll need to move fast.

Bloom (flowering) came and went in mid-May as expected, encountering fair and relatively rain-free weather.  Fruit set happened thereafter of course, and the growth of berries and filling out of clusters has been rapid since.  We appear to have gotten decent fruit set across varietals, with only the primitivo showing relatively high “shatter” (loss of berries that results in less full clusters).  In moderation, we like shatter in the primitivo, as it produces the looser clusters that we prefer for healthy fruit and full ripening.  We’ll need to assess the impact on yield in a couple weeks, but the amount of shatter appears to be within the range of normal, and as we target a modest 2 tons/acre in the primitivo, we currently expect to be able to accomodate the loss.

The last few dribbles of rain came about a week before Memorial Day, and it’s been dry since and likely to remain so until October or so.  The weather was remarkably pleasant through most of June, with a heat wave taking us in to the 90s only in the last week or so.  So overall it’s been a relatively cool growing season thus far, and that was reflected in how long we were able to hold off providing any irrigation. High heat is forecast to return soon, though as long as it stays in the 90s as opposed to the 100s, it’s nothing the fruit and vines can’t handle.  Meanwhile, the cover crops and natural grasses have browned in normal California summer fashion, ending the frantic spring season that includes repeated mowing.

We received more exciting news on the home winemaker competition front, this time from the Sacramento Home Winemaker Jubilee competition.  Thad Rogers won Best of Red honors with a 2014 primitivo wine made with our fruit, which is quite an honor considering that dry reds are the most crowded category in just about any California winemaking competition, and puts primitivo up against “noble” reds like cabernet sauivgnon that judges often favor.  The primitivo unfortunately missed Best of Show honors, but only because it lost to a 2014 port-style wine made with Portugese varietals also grown at Shaker Ridge and produced by Linda Skinner. For those not familiar with the Sacramento Home Winemakers, they are a large group of people serious about making great wine, they are well-connected, and they are not shy about sourcing fruit from all over Northern California, including Napa and coastal areas.  Thus, we are quite gratified to have not just one but two wines made with fruit from our small Sierra Foothills vineyard go into wines that showed so well among wines produced from some of the finest vineyards in the state. Congratulations to the winemakers!

By the next update, we should be in a position to see if yield is such that it would be worthwhile to start a waitlist for our sold out varietals.  Currently, the only fruit we have available for sale is a home winemaker sort of quantity of tinta cao, a very good blender used in port-style (or dry) Portugese blends.

It has been a typical, busy spring thanks to warming temperatures, rapid growth of both vines and cover crops, and intermittent rain.  May usually brings the last throes of rain– not in great volume but with just enough frequency to be annoying from the standpoint of applying sprays for mildew control.  We are well past full budburst at this point, with rapidly growing shoots and the future fruit clusters ready to flower very soon.  Overall, nature is telling us that the season is about a week “early” vs. our long-term average, so we should be harvesting everything in the very late August to early October time frame. The weather looks fair in the near-term, which should provide good conditions for a successful fruit set.  With solid average rainfall, we are hopeful that irrigation will be a non-issue for us this year.  We think we have avoided any frost damage to date and should be in the clear now.

We have recently completed shoot thinning for the entire vineyard, so the vineyard looks as neat as it is going to until the leaves have fallen in fall.  Shoot thinning is a critical operation to focus the energy of the vines on their fruitful shoots and to open up the canopy for better air circulation, resulting in more effective mildew control and penetration of sunlight for eventual ripening.  We expect additional mowing and many more passes for mildew prevention until we’ll be on cruise control for harvest.

On the competition circuit, we were pleased to hear that the Best-of-Show “other” (other than Red or White) wine at the California State Fair Home Winemaker competition was taken by a Portugese-style port wine made by a client with grapes from our Quinta field grown in 2011.  This adds to a growing resume for our Quinta field of Portugese varietals that includes a Best of Show (El Dorado County Fair), Double Gold (Orange County Fair) in home winemaker competitions and Gold (San Francisco Chronicle) and Best of Class of Region (California State Fair) among commercial winery competitions.  We believe there are several more excellent wines in the pipeline both from home winemakers and commercial winemakers.

As we foreshadowed last time, demand was brisk this year, and we quickly sold out of most of our “paper stocks” of grapes for 2016.  Once we see fruit set we’ll be better able to assess if there is the potential for additional availability, in which case we will take waitlist requests.  We do not anticipate large (eg, ton quantities) of any of our varietals to become available, but a few hundred pounds up to a half ton is plausible.  We do still have the full complement, which should only be 400-500 lbs, of tinta cao currently available for sale from the Quinta block mentioned above.  Tinta cao easily makes the most beautiful-looking grapes we grow. The vines produce small, loose bunches of firm grapes with little or now raisining and have been used successfully by some as a single varietal in dry wines, but are generally blended with other Portugese varietals, often in dessert wines.