After three years of work and ups and downs, there are finally clusters hanging on my vines. It’s been an imperfect year, with a wet winter and spring conditions that resulted in uneven fruit set. Two Aglianico vines are struggling … Continue reading
As I said in the previous post, this has been a challenging year – both in my home life and in the vineyard. The season started off promising enough, but then came cool, cloudy, rainy days that delayed fruit set … Continue reading
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I finished sulfuring last night and took a look around me. The vines are HUGE. I felt like I was in a forest…
Several of my Aglianico vines (now in their third leaf) keep putting out suckers from the rootstock (1103 – Paulsen). There are several factors that could contribute to this: Planting the vines too deeply (which we did) More than usual … Continue reading
I’ve had an exhausting day. I’ve been up since 4:30 am. Mowed the vineyard, sprayed the vines with kaolin, added ice to the fermenters (cold stabilizing my Montepulciano) and washed my jumpsuit and winery towels. Then, my son and I … Continue reading
I’ve been a busy vigneron this past week. About a month ago, my father and I drove up to Bakersfield and bought 90 T-posts. The plan was to replace the existing wood stakes with metal T-posts and to put in … Continue reading
This is what Aglianico flowers look like – about a month after bud break. This site shows some great close-ups of individual flowers at various stages.
A month after budbreak started and a month after the covercrop was first cut, I went out the vineyard to start prepping the site for T-posts. The covercrop had grown back to two to three feet. On a cool Saturday … Continue reading
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There have been a lot of changes at my vineyard. I have pruned and the vines have begun bud break. The Aglianico is about two to four weeks ahead of the Montepulciano. Below are some recent snapshots:
As if I had not been posting infrequently enough, I wanted to take a moment to say that until the end of August I will be pretty preoccupied with things at home and work. If possible, I will try to … Continue reading
