Saturday we were at Chaine d'Or topping wine and testing the 07's. Sunday we got out and visited the Crimson and Sesson vineyards. Here's a quick update:
First up was Chaine d'Or. We got a note from Anne Anderson last night, she said the vineyard looks the best it ever has.
This is the Chardonnay section. The plants are healthy, mildew free, and have the right amount of fruit.
We won't need to do any leaf pulling here. There thinning we've already done and the pruning in January has left perfect exposure on the fruit clusters.
Sunday we visited four vineyards. First up was the Crimson-Clover Vineyard in Morgan Hill. This will replace the Uvas Creek Vineyard for us this year, bringing our Santa Clara Valley Cabernet Sauvignon, under our farming control. The vineyard looked great.
Just a little more clean up to do before netting goes on. In about 2 weeks we'll lift the top wire to the final height and trim off any excess growth.
You can see this vineyard also will not need leaf pulling, the fruit is getting the dappled sunlight that makes high quality wine.
Next we headed to the Sesson Vineyard in Coyote Valley. This Spring we installed about 1 1/4 acre of what will eventually be a 10 acre project. The site is planted with three clones of Cabernet Sauvignon and set up for 100% organic farming.
This site is very exciting, and it's great to see the little baby plants start to take off.
Next we headed towards home and stopped at the Catholic church just a few blocks from our house. Last year they installed 20 Cabernet Sauvignon vines, but no one was taking care of them. I called the priest this past Winter and offered to take care of the little plants and see if I couldn't recover the little vineyard.
We pruned, retrained all the plants, cleared the weeds, put in some proper wires, and have been tending the 20 plants.
Finally we arrived home to the Haut Tubee vineyard. The grapes have started to turn red. That means the other vineyards will start in 2-3 weeks.
I took the last picture just to remind everyone that when we say we planted our first 50 plants around our home, it wasn't a huge house out in the country. It's just a small home in the suburbs, and the vines are planted right in the lawn and along the parkway!
2 comments:
Came over from the Food & Wine Blog...love your pictures, your story, your passion. Am trying to get the same thing going in my life. Good luck to you and I look forward to seeing your progress.
Nice "lawn", it's all rocks...add a photo with the vines in the lawn :-)
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