Pretty Pictures

I don't always enjoy December in Paso Robles.  It gets old that it's dark at 5pm; I get tired of driving home dodging deer; and it's usually cold enough here in winter evenings that even taking the kids for a walk around the neighborhood

Without particularly intending to, I realized that I'd taken several vineyard photos that showed the approach of the winter season through a chilly quality of the light and a selection of wind-blown leaves and (comparatively) bare vines.  It seems a fitting conclusion to this autumn vineyard photo essay

Our Grenache section is always one of the most beautiful in the vineyard.  Grenache vines are vigorous, and provide satisfyingly thick trunks from even fairly young vines.  The leaves are a vibrant yellow-green during the spring and summer, noticeably brighter than other varietals.  They stay green later in the season,

2008 was a challenging vintage.  As I described in my 2008 vintage assessment, we saw issues with late frosts in the spring, early frosts in the fall, low yields, shatter and uneven ripening.  These all left marks on the vineyard which you can see even now.  This first photo shows

One of the things that I always love to try to capture in my photographs are the perception of distance.  It's a challenging thing to try to translate the wide open spaces of the vineyard (and that feel of having something interesting all around you) into the fixed