Bonjour Instant Read Wine Thermometer

It is important if you want to get the full appreciation of a wine, to serve it at the proper temperature. This is especially true for white wines. So, my husband, head of procurement, purchased this Bonjour Instant Read Wine Thermometer recently. It comes in a very nice compact metal case for storage. On the inside of the metal case is a list of types of wines and the temperature that they should be at for optimal enjoyment. Just put the thermometer right up to the glass and press the button and the readout occurs seconds later. It retails for less than $20.00.

Awakenings

This past winter was a mild one. There was evidence of bud swell in mid-April, which seems early. I looked at some blogposts from last year and found a May 8th posting Waiting For Budbreak that showed that the bud phenology in the vineyard this year is approximately two weeks earlier than they were last year.
For me, it is always an anxious time because when the buds are dormant, they actually look dead and we have had experience with 90% death in our vineyard.
Our spring has been on the cool side, but the vines are waking up and now showing their pretty pink tips:

Awhile back, I read about what the pink tinge meant, so this morning, I spent some time tracking down the reference, according to Markus Keller¹:
The pink tinge that occurs in the new buds and newly unfolding leaves are attributed to anthocyanin pigments in or just below the leaf epidermis that probably protects the developing photosynthetic machinery. Our vineyard is pretty in pink and protected!
Reference:
1. Markus Keller, The Science of Grapevines Anatomy and Physiology, 2010, Academic Press, pg. 57.

1996 Louis Jadot Beaune Boucherottes

We have been working in the vineyard, putting in holes for our anticipated planting in a few weeks so it is really difficult to come home and think about cooking, but my husband prepared duck with Robert Irvine's Berry Sauce. Truth be told, these were leftovers, but it did mean heating the duck, berry sauce and wild rice, something my feeble body was not inclined to do, and I'm not the one doing the heavy work. The berry sauce is one of our go to recipes because it can also be used with pork chops.
My husband brought out this 1996 Louis Jadot Beaune Bourcherottes to have with the duck. I was in culinary heaven. The wine was inky purple, with a nose of red berries and a flavor to match. It was a well balanced wine with complexity that paired so well with the berry sauce and duck. At 20 years old, the wine was still youthful and delicious!

Trepanning with the Dingo

The time is NOW! We are expecting our vines to ship in a few weeks so we must get down to business and dig our 4,000 holes. Wonder how the earth feels with us trepanning 4,000 holes? We can definitely see that there is a different soil type as we dig 24 inch deep holes with the wondertool, the Toro Dingo.
Our friends are lending us a hand and this makes the work go so much faster, but it still takes about 40 seconds to do each hole. Multiply that by 4,000--- we have our hands full! Gotta run---got a date with our Dingo.

2001 Kistler Camp Meeting Ridge Chardonnay

We drank this 2001 Kistler Camp Meeting Ridge Chardonnay with our friend last week. The first thing we noticed was that it was very yellow. This is not a good sign for white wines because it speaks of oxidation or sherry notes and since this wine is now 15 years old, this is not unexpected. The first thing I sensed was a brioche kind of bouquet but when I tasted it, the wine was lemony with a good bit of acidity and was a very full bodied wine. All in all, it went very well with the Chilean sea bass that my husband made with olive oil, butter and capers. My friend enjoyed the Kistler because it she is a Kistler fan. Sadly, while we have a few more Kistlers from this era, it is the last one that we have from this vineyard.
While looking on the Internet, I found this article on The Pinotfile called Kistler Vineyards Pinot Noir Tasting. Since we are trying to navigate our way through marketing, I found this paragraph to be interesting and funny. I read it aloud to my husband and asked him to guess whose marketing strategy this is:
        The winery is not open to the public, there is no tasting room, the wines         are not poured for tasting at any public wine event or winemaker dinner         sponsored by the winery. The wines are only submitted to two wine critics         for review, Robert Parker and Stephen Tanzer (Parker’s scores are usually         higher!), who both visit the winery annually. The winery was one of the few         not included in John Winthrop Haeger’s compendium, North American         Pinot Noir, because the winery opted out. The winery does not belong to         its appellation winegrowers association. A winery website did not appear         until 2005 although the winery was founded over 30 years ago. The wines         are sold primarily to consumers through a mailing list based on years of         customer loyalty and volume of customer purchases. Minimum purchase         is a case of wine with each offering (there is a spring and fall offering),         which with tax and shipping can easily top $1,000. If you don’t buy, your         allocation will quickly dwindle until you are unceremoniously dropped from         the mailing list. Is this anyway to operate a winery in today’s competitive         wine business?
My husband could not guess and only shook his head. I love this strategy! But being realistic, it probably won't work for us.

Bird Houses and Birds

Yesterday, we were working in the vineyard, using our automated weeder and our friend came to pick up our pipe bender.
He went to his vehicle and brought out these bird houses! We have many bluebirds that hang around the vineyard. My husband and I always talk about putting up bird houses, but in the crush of vineyard activities, it is difficult to find the time. So, when our friend brought these houses, he unknowingly made one of our dreams come true.
There are many other types of birds that we see and on our way out of the property we saw these two hawks. Of course, they saw us and flew away, but not before we were able to get some blurry photos. We think these are red tail hawks.

Lately, we have been seeing this bird that likes to perch on one of the dead branches. We can see this bird every time we make it down to the south end of the field on our tractor. My husband has taken to wearing our camera while on the tractor in hopes of catching a good shot of this little taunter. We were able to get a somewhat decent shot of it when we came back from lunch and found it perched on a post in our garden. Being in our truck fooled this bird and we learned from the Internet that it is a female American kestrel. There are all kinds of creatures that inhabit the land and we feel fortunate when we are able to see some of them, such as these beautiful birds.

Stages of Budbreak

Like anxious parents, each year, we anticipate the coming of budbreak. Our temperature between January and March was like a yoyo, a high of nearly 70 ^oF on February 1st, followed by a low of -10 ^oF during the Valentine's Day weekend and a high of nearly 80 ^oF March 10th, what's a plant mother to do?

I took photos of our buds and looked at another blogpost called Bud Phenology and looked at this photo:

I compared the stages of budbreak in the above photo with what I am currently seeing in our vineyard:

Our buds are definitely into the start of swelling. In general, our Auxerrois seems to be behind, our Chardonnay and Chenin Blanc exhibit a range of stages from winter bud to bud swelling.
Here is an excellent reference to learn more about the stages of budbreak:
L. Andreini, R. Viti, and G. Scalabrelli, ""The morphological evolution of bud break in Vitis vinifera L.", Vitis, 48 (4), 153–158 (2009).

Remembrance of Things Past

A few weeks ago, I was digging into some old (2013) photos that I took of the vineyard shortly after we planted it. This is a photo from our newly planted vineyard in June, 2013.

This is what our vineyard looks like now:

For our tall grafted vines, what we have learned since our planting in 2013, is:

• It is essential that our trellis system: lineposts, endposts and trellis wires be in place
• It is necessary to have the irrigation system in place for newly planted vines

Since we will be replanting in a few weeks, we will see how hand planting our tall vines compares to our experiences with Laser Planting our vines.

Vintage 2016: Spring

Compared to the last 2 years, our winter has been decidedly on the mild side, but that didn't prevent Mother Nature from reminding us, first on Valentine's Day Weekend and again, on April 4th, that there is still a bit of snow and cold weather coming our way.
We've been having some very warm weather in March that allowed us to prune and lay down our canes, clear the field of the cuttings and remove our perennial rock crop. We went to check on the vineyard yesterday and found that we did have a bit of snow and the buds looked to still be dormant.

1998 Les Ruchets Cornas

We had to make room in our basement for our precious (newly bottled Chenin Blanc), so my husband brought up a few bottles of this Jean-Luc Columbo Cornas, a northern Rhone Syrah. Cornas is one of the smallest appellations in the Rhône valley and produces wines made from 100% Syrah.
This 1998 Les Ruchets Cornas was very dark, inky purple in color. The nose definitely had a touch of barnyard and the flavor indicated a touch of Brett as well as a good amount of fruit. My husband said that this is not his favorite style of Syrah. We drank it with a hearty spaghetti, I thought it paired well.