Harvest

On Monday morning October 8th, we harvested our Cabernet Sauvignon and Petit Verdot, just beating the first heavy rain of the year – we got about 3” - the very next day. The grapes looked very good, as with the mild weather they matured with balanced sugars, tannins and acid, while the seeds were brown and nutty, and yielded about three and a half tons per acre, slightly below last year. This translates into just under 8 pounds per vine for the Cabernet and 5 pounds per vine for the Petit Verdot. We decided not to harvest any grapes from the Merlot planted in 2004, as the amount of grapes on the vine was only one quarter ton per acre.

After harvest, we applied biodynamic compost in the vineyard at 2 tons per acre and then seeded our cover crop. This year we converted the Petit Verdot and Merlot to an alternating permanent cover crop of a mixture of perennial grasses, and clovers, and our usual organic soil building mixture of peas, bean, vetch, oats and barley for plowing in as green compost in the spring.

We added to our growing insectory areas by planting more flowering plum tress along the northern edge of the new Cabernet Sauvignon blocks, and then planting a mixture of Ceanothus and Coffee Berry Bushes between the Flowering Plum trees along the western and northern fence line.

Harvest this year had several themes, which started with a significantly low rainfall in the winter and spring. In fact, for the first time since the pond expansion in 2000, our irrigation pond never did completely fill up, and remained about 3 to 4 feet below the spill way. This lack of moisture in the soil caused bud break to be almost two weeks earlier than last year and necessitated starting irrigation a full month early this year commencing on July 3rd. The second theme this year was a smooth and even growing season. Verasion this year started in early August followed by a month of almost perfect weather with temperatures in the mid 80’s to mid 90’s. Early September had a short heat spike but then settled back to a very even range of 70 to 80 degree days.

Early indications from the wine maker are that this vintage will be our best ever.