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Vineyard

A collection of 405 posts

Not an Easy Life...

When I was out the other day taking the photos of the strange smoky weather, I hiked up to the new block of vines to the extreme western edge of the property. We planted about 6 new acres here earlier this month, divided fairly equally between Grenache Blanc, Vermentino, and

An excellent beginning to the growing season, strange smoky weather notwithstanding

With two big fires burning to the north of us in Monterey County over the last few weeks, including the Indians Fire that has burned nearly 60,000 acres in three weeks and the Gallery Fire (just south of Big Sur) that has burned over 13,000 acres since Saturday,

A bullet dodged: only minor vineyard damage from a serious California-wide frost event

California was badly zapped last week by a deep trough of cold air that spread south from Canada and brought freezing nights from Mendocino to Santa Barbara. The perils presented by this frost were made more severe by the fact that it followed a week of unusually warm weather, where

Earth Day thoughts on sustainability in the world of wine

Today is the 39th annual Earth Day celebration, and a great time to assess wine's progress on its quest for sustainability. Wine, like any other agricultural product, has environmental impacts from its vineyard and winery practices, and additional impacts from its packaging and marketing (Tyler Coleman had an

Vineyard Photos of New Growth

I love going out into the vineyard at this time of year to take pictures. The yellowy-green color of the new growth is beautiful, and the cover crop is in full flower. Plus, the hills are gorgeous. Note that you can get full-screen images of all the photos on this

Planting new vineyard: getting ready for more Mourvedre, Grenache Blanc and Vermentino

We realized a few years ago that our demand was growing, and (as we took a break in planting after 2000 to get our marketing in order) that if we didn't start planting soon, we'd start running dangerously short on wine. It takes three years in

Frost Damage

As I'd feared when I posted about the early budbreak a week or so ago, we got a frost Sunday night. And not a little one, either. It got down to 27 degrees at the weather station in the center of the vineyard, which means that the coldest

Budbreak is terrifying (but hopeful)

With the recent warm weather, we're starting to see budbreak in our earlier-sprouting varietals, particularly Viognier and Grenache. A Grenache vine pushes, below: As usual, we're seeing earlier budbread at the tops of the hills, which are less often frosted because the cold air slumps down

A sweet sweet-pea photo

The weather here has been beautiful over the past two weeks: warm and sunny, with days in the 70s and even (in the past couple of days) into the 80s. On one level, this is scary; we're already seeing the first signs of bud break in some of

Limestone in Paso Robles

Yesterday, I was over for a Paso Robles Rhone Rangers meeting at Halter Ranch. Halter is a beautiful property just across Adelaida Road from Tablas Creek, and both were parts of the old Macgillivray Ranch through most of the 20th century. After our meeting, Ranch Manager Mitch Wyss took me