Vintage 2017: Recap

Way back in January, 2017 I blogged about Vintage 2017: Winter. Having lived in this area for 33 years, I blogged that in January, there appears to be a cold dip, followed by a warming "thaw". It looks as if our cold dip is coming a little earlier this year, with temperatures below freezing for the rest of this week.

In Vintage Notes: Spring 2017, written on April 11, 2017, I blogged about how warm this winter has been. Towards the end of April, we were seeing budbreak in the vineyard, which I blogged about in Got Buds! I never take budbreak for granted since the spring of 2014 when our newly planted vineyard failed to thrive and provided us with a lesson I documented in 90% at the School of Hard Knocks. The winter of 2017 in general was a good winter for vine survival. The young plants that were planted in 2016 fared very well.
In May, during an especially rainy week, our friends came out to help us plant the last bolus of vines to repopulate the originally planted vineyard, documented in: Vintage 2017: Planting Time.

In Vintage Notes: Summer Heat Wave, I blogged about the July heat wave. The wet, rainy spring and the hot weeks in the summer lead to bunch closure of our grapes in the last week of July. Leaf pulling commenced at this time to expose the grape clusters to the sun. Veraison came in mid to late August.
Late summer, as we approached harvest was especially challenging due to the cool nights that lead to condensation on our leaves that never got a chance to evaporate until mid morning. This lead to the appearance of downy mildew on some of our vines.

We tried to limit the application of our fungicides and most of our vines fared well. But, another danger was lurking around the corner. This was the first year that we saw huge numbers of yellow jackets in the vineyard and they were out there in September, as harvest loomed. I documented the yellow jacket devastation Problem in the Vineyard, with some of our attempts to lure the yellow jackets away from our grapes.
In late September, we harvested our small crop of Auxerrois, followed by our Chardonnay and then our Chenin Blanc. Winemaking took up most of October and some of November, but now we are in recuperation mode.
Happy Holidays to all!