What a sucky Summer. I shouldn't complain about the weather, but I am. It's 8:30 on Friday night, August 27th and it feels like mid Fall. The cold breeze from the fog rolling makes it too cold to be hanging out in shorts on the back patio. Feels like it's 65 degrees, or cooler right now, and I'm bundled up on the couch watching the Giants game.
The problem with the cooler than normal temps goes beyond my crankies. It's affecting the vines and the grapes. And that makes me even crankier.
The vines at home are doing "ok", but we have leaves starting to turn already...on my way home from the winery today, a young vineyard down the hill from us already has yellowing leaves in the fruit zone. It's too soon!
Three days before bottling, Paul and I were at Chaine d'Or, it was 1:01pm, 68 degrees outside, and the fog was lingering over the hills on the next ridge over from the vineyard. Argh! It's been wet, damp, cool, foggy, and bleak.
Yesterday, an old Italian neighbor dude knocked on my door asking if Paul was home. In his grocery store bag he pulled out a cluster of white grapes from his backyard that had grey rot on it. I sighed. He said he's never had his grapes look this bad in all the years he's been tending them.
The best I could tell him was to cut out the damaged sections and we'd come by this weekend to take a look (and bring our Stylet Oil though I think it's too late for another spray application).
The Church vineyard around the corner is doing pretty ok. I need to drop about 6 clusters of mildew damaged fruit, but it looks like we'll have ~200 pounds of grapes to add to the Haut Tubee blend.
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