Veraison

Veraison is when the grapes turn color from green to yellow (white grapes) or red (red grapes). It's the last step the vines will go through in their development. From here on out it's all about ripening.

The Haut Tubee vineyard at home is always our first to change colors. Friday all three varieties had begun to change. These are Grenache grapes. They turn a vivid pink before darkening to a deeper red. The challenge with Grenache is that the clusters are so big, the berries in the inside may take a long time to change color.

These are Syrah. You can see the Syrah is already pretty dark. It's the first of the three Chatenauf du Pape grapes to turn color and get ripe.

This is Mourvedre, just starting to turn also.

What we hope for is an even relatively fast veraison. That will mean the clusters get ripe at the same time and will be even when we harvest. The weather has been perfect this past week and we're expecting things to go smoothly. It's been very hot elsewhere in California but in the Santa Clara Valley and Santa Cruz Mountains we've had fog at night which has kept day time temperatures in the 80's and 90's and kept the grapes humming along.