“Winter” pruning continues at full speed, with every hint from nature indicating that it will be another early budburst, perhaps historically early.  But it’s been anything but winter-like in this part of the Sierra Foothills, with a continuous string of sunny days since about Feb. 10 and afternoon highs routinely in the upper 60s and often in the low-to-mid 70s.  At first we were honestly a little disgusted with the weather, as we actually WANTED winter–you know:  cold, wet, maybe some clouds.  Such weather would be good for keeping grapes dormant, replenishing soil moisture, and getting adequate chilling hours for other fruit.  But as the reports continued to filter in about several feet of snow in New England and bouts of bitter cold on the East Coast, and as driving just 15 miles to the west would bring us under a dense, chilly valley fog until mid-day over this same period, we ultimately concluded that we didn’t have it so bad!  In fact, it was superb outdoor working weather for the dozens and dozens of hours required for winter pruning, which so far has been completed in our Quinta and non-Quinta blocks of Portugese varietals and our primitivo (see recent Vineyard Gallery posts).

It should be noted that we did receive a 4-day period of intermittent rain in early February that dumped an impressive 5 inches of rain at Shaker Ridge.  This was much-appreciated, as we are still in the middle of a drought, and January was reportedly the driest ever in the recorded history of California.  But it was a warm rain, which means that very little was added to the Sierra snowpack, though it should work fine for the purposes of our vineyard and well.  A relatively minor rain event is in the forecast for this coming weekend.  We hope that March brings some additional moisture.  The rain also brought heavy winds which managed to bend some steel posts supporting our Quinta bird netting, but it wasn’t a total loss, and repairs are underway.

Looking ahead, winter pruning will be followed in short order by mulching of the prunings, the laying down of some weed sprays within the rows, miscellaneous maintenance of vines that have pulled loose from their stakes, mowing between rows, and the beginning of multiple rounds of preventative sprays for powdery mildew, mostly of an organic nature.  In short, we will be running to keep in place.

While the early February rain was a big help, the water situation for the coming year remains in the balance pending spring rains, so we are not certain yet if we will commit to farming all of our barbera.  However, 3 tons that we already plan to farm remains available.  Also, though our waitlists for primitivo and touriga are growing, the quantities requested are small, and clients may come off the lists as they find other sources of confirmed supply.  Thus, if you are interested in a varietal on our waitlists, don’t hesitate to contact us, and you may be able to get your grapes in the end.  To make this process more transparent for our clients, we now publish our waitlists, in an anonymous fashion, concurrent with our grape availability updates (see recent Grape Availability post).  Clients will be assigned a letter code so that they can recognize themselves on the lists.

We are looking forward to the 2014 wine competitions, as the 2013 and 2014 cohorts in the cellar seem particularly promising, and we hope the same is true for our clients.  We will again be offering a competition for best homemade wine made from Shaker Ridge grapes, details to follow in a future post.

Happy New Year!

We began winter pruning operations yesterday, as it became increasingly difficult to argue that it was too cold, too wet, or too anything but time to get back to work.  In fact, we had a great break in vineyard chores after the early conclusion of last year’s harvest.

Though December was predictably cold and wet, January has been anything but.  The local weather broadcasters in the Bay area were using the “f” word –“flooding”–for a few days there in December after a welcome stretch of repeated rainstorms, but that now seems like ancient history.  In El Dorado, it hasn’t rained since Christmas Eve, so despite recording an impressive (for us) 14.2 inches of rainfall on the property from late September through Dec. 24, we once again find ourselves wondering about groundwater supplies for the coming vintage.  As we did last year, we we will delay posting availability of our largest water hog among the varietals, barbera, until we know we have the water to farm it (we are on a well).  We don’t know how it will play out–many potentially wet months are ahead–but we do know that if we don’t get good rainfal soon, we won’t be farming all of our barbera:  it’s clear we would run out of water.

We are pleased to post our availability and pricing at the end of January as per our custom.  Unfortunately, apart from a few tons of barbera, we can only offer waitlist options for our other main varietals, as we are completely sold out of the others out of the gates. We offer our repeat commercial clients first refusal on fruit, and we are excited to have a new client interested in making port-style wine from our Quinta fruit.  However, if you wanted primitivo or touriga, it is possible that some would become available–crop estimation is not an exact science–and we would encourage you to query us early to get on the top of our waitlists.

Nature has not played her hand yet in terms of bud burst timing, but after a couple of early seasons and in the face of a winter that seems to have come and gone already in December, we’d be betting on three in a row at this point.  We’d love to yet use the sledding course that we designed on the front slope of our property (outside vineyard) after an historic 9-inch snowfall several years ago, but there hasn’t been a repeat since, and we’re now not betting on it for this “winter”, either.

The 2014 vineyard year at Shaker Ridge is coming to a rapid close, with a final small harvest of touriga on Sept. 24 to be the finale.  Nothing about the weather was able to change the course of an “early” year beginning with early budburst in March, as it proved to be a relentlessly hot Foothills summer.  We did get some relief in August at least from the triple-digit runs, as it stayed predominantly in the low to mid-90’s (daytime highs) and about 30 degrees cooler at night.  We only recently revisited the 100’s again in a string of days in mid-September, fortunately after the vast majority of our fruit was harvested.  It is extremely dry here at this time of year, as there is little in the way of natural moisture to provide humidity and of course no rain, and this together with even a little breeze can dehydrate grapes, particularly a thin-skinned variety like barbera.  So, though the home stretch was not the endless string of perfect low-90 degree days that we saw in the widely acclaimed 2012 vintage, it did appear to us to be another very good vintage with no difficulty fully ripening fruit.

In 2014, we were pleased to provide wine grapes to 5 commercial wineries and about 30 home winemakers.  Continuing the trend of recent years, fully 95% of our fruit went outside of El Dorado County, mainly to other counties in Northern California and a little to clients in Nevada.  The economics of this trend is straightforward:  the premium wine grapes of El Dorado are a good value proposition for wineries and serious winemakers outside the area, and they are willing and able to pay more to access them than in-county interests.

As always, we were happy to keep a healthy number of home winemakers in the mix, and we always enjoy their enthusiasm and reliability.  Particularly noteworthy in this regard, the harvest of our “Quinta” field of Portugese varietals historically early on September 13 was a big success and we believe provided top-quality wine grapes (see recent vineyard gallery posting for some pictures) to 12 home winemaker “shareholders”, including ourselves.  The shareholders joined us for a walk of the Quinta and discussion a few weeks before harvest, and we expect to see most of their “shares” turned into some outstanding port-style wines.  We’re pretty sure there was a not-so-stealth but non-paying 13th shareholder:  a black bear that visits us regularly in August and September at night, scrunching down the vineyard fence in a few places and stripping grape clusters.  However, we find the bear to be less wasteful of grapes (usually stripping whole clusters) than birds, and we couldn’t knock his/her fine taste, exclusively going for our personal favorite of the Quinta grapes, touriga nacional.

Our domestic well threw us many hints that it was at its limits in the late summer period, though we were, in the end, able to carry our whole vineyard.  However, beyond a doubt, if we do not get solid rainfall this winter, we will choose not to cultivate part of our vineyard next year to conserve water for irrigation of the balance.  We hope, as just about everyone does, that the drought will loosen its grip in California beginning in a few weeks.  The harvest–including pre-harvest activities like regular grape chemistry sampling and an ever-increasing deployment of bird netting–came so early this year that there was no opportunity for a pre-harvest escape to a cool coastal climate.  As such, we are particularly looking forward to the return of some clouds and moisture.  At the moment, the only clouds in sight are smoke-induced clouds from the massive and growing “King Fire” to our northeast.

We thank all of our clients for their support this year and truly hope to see some superb wines from the 2014 grapes.  We expect to post pricing and availability of 2015 vintage grapes by the end of January, though earlier commitments will be considered on a case-by-case basis.  We know our winemakers’ work has just begun, but we are looking forward to our off-season, rain, and the pause that refreshes…

“Every man at first sets forth the good wine, and when they have drunk freely, then that which is poorer.  But thou hast kept the good wine until now.” -John 2: 10