October at Birdland Vineyards - Harvest Time!

By guest blogger John

It's harvest time - finally!!

The grapes were ripening nicely to start the month but then we had heavy rain on October 3rd. This was followed with breezy sunshine so the grapes dried out quite well and we breathed a sigh of relief. It had been a tricky year with late spring sunshine and now we needed to see the sugar levels increase.

There was another blow on October 10th with a day of rain followed by damp humid weather for a few days which is not good as these are perfect conditions for bunch rot to develop. Bunch rot causes the grapes to lose their elasticity and fall from the bunch leaving a sticky mess. It's not dangerous to us and in fact the French infect some white grapes with it when they produce sauternes as it creates a very sweet wine. It's not, however, good for Merlot!

Everything looked OK for about 10 days and then I noticed that we had bunch rot in some clusters, and we knew this spreads very fast. The guy from the winery arrived to inspect the vineyard on Friday Oct. 21st and said lets harvest as soon as possible. Our vineyard manager said he could do it the next day on Sat., so with only a few hours notice and no chance to enlist the help of friends and family (apart from Dennis who helped all morning) to pull leaves from the bins, Ruth and I spent all day yesterday bending over the bins pulling out leaves and damaged fruit, while trying not to fall off the moving tractor.

In the end, after about 8 hours of work, the pickers had finished and we took 42 half ton bins to the winery to be crushed.

 

It was a satisfying but exhausting day and we still have aches and pains today.

So that's the end of any real activity in the vineyard for some time. The leaves will turn yellow and red and then drop off but no more work until pruning next spring.

Silly Sunday - Grapes of Wrath

Here's a silly Sunday photo to bring a smile to your day - or maybe it'll scare you!  Here are the "Grapes of Wrath":

I wonder what Steinbeck would think?

Harvest approaches

We are expecting to harvest our Merlot grapes in a week's time.  It's always a little worrying in the run up, as we don't really want any rain or blazing hot sunshine..... and are heavily reliant, as ever, on  Mother Nature.

So all this grape checking etc encouraged me to revamp a bunch of grapes necklace that I made a while go, adding color anodized aluminum to show through the cut out area.

The necklace originally was a bunch of grapes just with the cut outs and I sold a couple of them - but now the greenness of the grapes shines through and I prefer it.

And yes, Merlot grapes are red grapes not green grapes so maybe I should have done red - but I do so love the color lime green!!!

New vine grafts in the vineyard

If you regularly read this blog, you may recall that we did some "bud over" in our vineyard in spring - where we grafted a white grape variety over a few of our Merlot vines.  That was at the end of the May - so I thought I'd share with you some photos of the vines now to see the progress.

There is quite a lot of variation in different vines in as much as how they have taken and grown.  You can see from this one, that maybe it  is just taking, as there is a little bit of growth on the new bud on the right:

 Next there are some with a few inches of growth from one or both of the new buds:

Then there are some vines that have grown as tall as trees!:

On these bigger ones, there are even some bunches of grapes.  This first photo shows them still as flowers - you can just see the tiny bits of flowers...and the second photo shows them as new tiny grapes:

 The majority of grafts have taken and each week we count to see how many are 4 inches or more in height.  At the moment it's 240 out of 325 - with lots more that may well be 4 inches by the time we get home.

It's been interesting to see them all start and I'd never have thought we would get so much variation.  All this growth also means we have to do lots of suckering - which is taking off any new buds and shoots that appear BELOW the graft - as they would then come up as Merlot.  So it's been quite a bit of work. 

We'll see how they fair through the fall and hopefully the numbers of grafts taken will continue to rise.

Harvest time

Harvest started this morning!


Our vineyard management crew arrived early and are busy picking the top part of the vineyard.

As you can see from the photos, the leaves are changing colour and this indicates that they have stopped making sugar and are shutting down. The grapes are therefore as sweet as they will get - and measuring their "brix" level - sugar level - they seem to be great.





The harvest is lighter than previous years but this seems to be the same throughout northern CA this year.

I've just wandered the vineyard and it's always such a happy day. You hear the chat of the vineyard workers - in spanish - but it always sounds happy. I've never been out there when they don't sound cheerful. Some singing, some joking, and plenty of talk that I can't understand! Yet they work so hard. They cut quickly, using a curved knife, put the grapes in small bins then when their bin is full, they put it in half ton bins on the tractor.

In a couple of the photos you'll see my husband next to the tractor, talking to the crew organizer. They are discussing which grapes to harvest. The sugar levels have been measured throughout the vineyard and these determine which grapes get harvested. The levels vary depending on the position, so today they are hoping to harvest 5 tons from the very top and then down the right hand side. The other grapes will continue to ripen and increase their sugar levels until they are harvested next week. As our vineyard is on a slope, the top ones always ripen first - and have the best flavours!

We have now picked 3 tons - one of the photos shows 3 half ton bins on the truck and then another three full bins on the driveway with Chris the vineyard manager driving the tractor with three more empty ones, ready to be filled.

Well- this ends today's viticulture lesson! Hope you like the photos and get a sense of the day!

Green grape harvest

A morning for some grape harvesting - but green grapes, not merlot!

There are three rogue vines in our vineyard - with white grapes instead of red ones. They were mistakes when the vines were planted. I think two are Gewurztraminer and one is Chardonnay. They are no doubt ripe - as our merlot is just about ripe in some areas. The tricky part is finding them in the hundreds of other vines - and then two of them are in a really awkward position - so it's like risking life and limb just for some grapes! But I do it!! We will probably then juice them and be drinking our grape juice for a while.....

Then, later this morning, we are going to go to the coast for a picnic. My brother in law is with us at the moment and the weather is really too hot to do much outside...but it will be nice at the coast.....

Anyhow - sorry the photo is of our merlot grapes - but I'll take my camera with us now and try and get some of the green grapes....

Wine bottling

Well today our 2006 wine was bottled. Yippee! It would have been nice to say "we bottled our 2006 wine" but this year the winery where it is housed had a mobile bottling line come in - a big truck that has the bottling line inside - and so it is all over and done with in about 10 minutes! We didn't even go and see it as they were busy doing all their bottling in a week!!!

The first year we made our wine, we did everything ourselves - and filling the bottles was like milking a cow (not that I've ever milked a cow!). So I'm glad we had that experience - even if we seem to do less and less hands on each year....

We haven't finalized our wine label for this vintage yet either.... I wrote a first draft and John changed a few words and that's as far as we have got. Guess we need to get on with that now that there are bottles waiting to be labelled. At least we get to do the labelling..with the help of a machine and some friends.
Each year we change the back label - which is where I write my little story for the year - and we also change the colour of the label. So far we have had yellow, turquoise/teal, and orange. We have agreed that for 2006 we are going with green for the label. It took quite a lot of persuading John - but I think he is OK with it. It's a nice fresh green. My favourite colour is lime green so I was pushing for something like that. Let's hope it works out OK.

Then we'll have to go through the ordeal of keep tasting the wine to see how long it has bottle shock!!! Yes, when first put into the bottle, the wine goes into a state of "shock". We like to track the shock passage by drinking our new wine regularly and seeing how it changes day by day! I know - what a tough job to do!!!

And talking of bottle-shock - we are going to see the movie "Bottle Shock" tonight that was filmed in Glen Ellen and Sonoma! All about the wine competition in 1976 when French wines were up again California wines in a blind tasting - and the California wines won! There was alot of excitement during the local filming and lots of locals had small parts etc - so it should be fun to see the final result.

Naturally I have done some grape pieces of jewelry. Not recently though - these are all older pieces.....pins, necklaces.... I used to show my work at some winery events locally and so the grape pieces were quite popular there. I do less events nowadays - but do have one coming up at Ravenswood winery in Sonoma in September. If you are local - come by and see me. The details are on my website www.birdlandcreations.com

Well, think of us, working hard at tasting our wine and charting it's progress. I'll try not to whine about it!

How does your garden grow?

Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow?
With silver bells and cockle shells and pretty girls all in a row.

Was this a nursery rhyme you used to say as a child. When I found out what contrary meant - I liked it even more, as my sister is called Mary!!!!!

We have a wonderful garden at our home. Some of it was planted by the previous owners but we have done quite alot of new areas ourselves. It is quite the English garden - and by that I mean that there are a lot of plants, all thrown in together - and in no way is it formal! We also have quite a few fruits trees, a little raised bed area for our tomatoes and other vegetables..and relatively new is our arbor above one of our outdoor dining tables. We planted table (ie eating) grapes over it and last year they had some mildew, the previous year some animal (raccoon?) ate them all one night before we had any....but this year, we have a good crop and are enjoying them every day. They are seedless green grapes as opposed to our red merlot wine grapes that we grow. Quite small however..... as we joked last night. We made chicken skewers for dinner and had marinated the chicken and were alternating the chicken with our own grapes on the skewers. My husband was moaning that the grapes were so small - until I pointed out that really, there wasn't alot to complain about! How many people can use their own grapes on their skewered chicken!

Anyhow - my husband does alot of work in the garden and I do very little. The majority however is done by Hector and his crew. We inherited Hector as our gardener when we bought the house - and I'm so glad we did too! He's wonderful - and all his various family members who seem to help him.

Even though I don't spend alot of time working in the garden - I love it! It is so pretty and restful....and looks wonderful year round. We have many roses - hundreds - a big bank of lavendar...a few of our favorite English plants like aubretia...and countless others I could mention.

When I started working with silver clay, I made quite a few different silver flowers....but then I seemed to move on to other things. A few months ago however, I went back to the garden scene and made this watering can. I've often thought of putting some flowers in it - but then revert back to it just being a watering can. It is entitled "how does your garden grow?" and I think the answer to the question is really Hector! Thanks Hector for all you do!

I think it's a lovely necklace for a keen gardener - little details like the holes in the rose spout, the little "screws" on the handle. You can wear the chain either through the top handle or the one on the side. And when you are not wearing it, you can take the chain out -and it's a little decoration!

So how does your garden grow? What is your secret? Let us all know........