In our last Vineyard Diary, we remarked on the cool and pleasant (if dry) late spring we had enjoyed, and the pleasant scents of bloom. That picture is now a distant memory, and as we head into the homestretch for harvest 2021, we reflect back on a summer that will go down as one of the hottest in memory. Each summer, it’s rarely a question of whether if we’ll hit triple digit temperatures, but rather when, how often, and for how long. The answers are “yes, often, and 3-4 days each”. Typically there are pleasant stretches with highs in the 80s during, and a day with a high in the low 90s would be typical.

We are now staring down the barrel of our SEVENTH foray into triple digits on our site this summer. The breaks forecast in between these heatwaves have often evaporated as the time got closer, with low 90’s becoming mid-90s, then back again to the 100s. Our worst couple surges in July took us up in the 110 F range, which is baking, as the south-facing side of our tall blackberry bushes near the Quinta can attest. For the most part our vines have hung in there remarkably well, with an earlier start to irrigation necessitated by the dry spring, and we’ve never really been able to let up on regular irrigation due to the excess heat. About the only positive thing we can say about the weather is that we haven’t gone more than about 4 days at a stretch in the 100’s. We lost some Barbera in an already light crop to sunburn from those early very hot heat waves, and those clusters will simply be removed or fall on their own accord by harvest time. There is ample healthy fruit left, and nothing is likely to hurt these “survivors”. Overall, we’re in very good shape heading into harvest.

Our Primitivo had a a reasonable fruit set, and we kept to our plan of lightening the load to assure the vines were in balance, though it seemed that our focus to removing or grafting vines toward the back of our vineyard has been successful in providing a uniform, balanced, and healthy crop on the front part. The Primitivo is fully netted and just biding time till harvest, which will likely be in early September. Moreover, we have an experimental block in which we are trying different fruit dropping strategies and harvest times to determine impact on the resulting wine.

Our newly grafted Touriga vines (last year) are very vigorous and carrying a generous crop, which we are more than half-way through dropping in advance of netting. Our newly grafted Tinta Amarela vines began veraison early than expected and are also carrying a fine crop.

So far this season, there have been no local fires, though we had a couple days of smoky air over the weekend from distant fires, and were happy to see that blow away. We hope it stays away.

We still have a few tons of Barbera, half a ton of Primitivo, and about 1.5 tons of Touriga available for sale from the upcoming 2021 harvest; all other varietals are sold out with no possibility of wait list. Please see our “Grower Update” tab for up-to-date availability and pricing.

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Bloom is in the air and has been for the last 7-10 days. This is the inconspicuous beginning of fruit set from barely visible but pleasantly perfume-emitting flowers throughout the vineyard. It also marks the beginning of the end of the period of rapid shoot elongation that follows bud burst as the vines shift gears toward fruit development.

With the extremely dry April (0.2″ of rain) and May (0.3″ of rain), the top layers of soil are about as dry as they’ve ever been for this date for us, so short-cycle irrigation was begun to attempt to recharge the upper soil layers and provide regular water for our blocks on the Primitivo side with some young grafts. We got away with a single round of mowing of the grasses and clover between rows, and even that single pass left us with something like a dust bowl. We have never seen the grass and weed growth so weak, but we’re not complaining…it’s made spring maintenance a little easier, and lower weed burden means the weeds will use less of our scarce water vs. the vines as we move into the summer.

Shoot thinning was a major, labor-intensive operation as always, and it was only because of the help of a dedicated hired crew that we were able to complete this for the bulk of the vineyard in the last 3 weeks, with a little clean up work in the Quinta and last year’s grafted block to follow within the next few days. Beyond that, regular spraying for prevention of powdery mildew continues.

Apart from the dryness, it’s been an amazingly pleasant May on the farm, with cool daytime highs in the 70s to low 80s for much of May. It appears that we will not make it to June without a sudden foray into the 90’s predicted for the long Memorial Day weekend and extending into next week. However, we knew that the heat could not be restrained forever. Fortunately, much of the labor-intensive work will have been completed by then, and irrigation will begin in earnest.

We still have 1.5 tons or more of each of our main varietals Primitivo, Barbera, and Touriga available for reservation, though we do not expect that that will remain the case for long as commercial wineries begin to see the light at the end of the COVID tunnel. We are now sold out of all of our less abundant varietals, though our production estimates are usually conservative, and so we can entertain wait list requests for any of those.

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