Working in the vineyard

It's good to get out of the cellar once in awhile. I've got a week where things are pretty quiet in the cellar so I'm helping out in the vineyard.

We've got Chardonnay and Vidal on a kind of modified Geneva curtain. For those of you not familiar, there's an opportunity just after bloom to pull down all the long growth from the top to the outside of the row. This exposes the fruiting zone at the crown. To achieve this you have to have some kind of tucking wire, as in many other trellising systems. We're installing a mobile wire. Instead of labouriously tucking each plant, the wire is pulled from the centre to an outside position and secured.
Along the way, it gathers and pulls down all the vertical shoot growth. We're innovating a portion of the system where the distance between fixed wire and the movable wire is maintained by a series of rigid plastic pipe sections about 16 inches long, one between every post set. The prototype row worked well so onwards we go.

Weather has been more seasonal with mixed sun and showers over the past 10 days and few temperature variables. Warm weather is returning by the weekend.

Weather and Projects

After some very warm spring weather over the past couple months, May is turning out to be cool and wet. Which helps with project number one - reseeding a section of the lawn. For the most part I'm anti-lawn. But with a kid and a dog, it's good to have a good utility surface for play.

Not all that

We just finished a long weekend here in Canada known as Victoria Day. Just about everyone takes the time to not think about Queen Victoria for whom it is named. Out here in the West, it generally rains on campers despite the previous weekends and weeks being terrific weather. We did not camp, preferring to do some house projects and such to make the real good weather weekends coming soon more enjoyable. We also volunteered at an aid station at the half way point of the Peach City Marathon - water, e-load, hammer gel, bananas, sponges.
It was great having three days off and no where to go.

Recent efforts

Just finished blending the Stag's Hollow 2002 Merlot Estate. It's a good vintage and should be well received. There's plenty of varietal expression and I think a fairly good representation of the barrel work. About 60% American oak (year old or newer).
I'll probably continue along these lines for the 2004 harvest. I think the 2002 was picked a tad late; some of the fruit tastes a little tired or cooked. There's a bit of raisin to this and slightly more so in the Renaissance version.