Vintage 2020: Auxerrois at Véraison

It's like clockwork, so we should have been prepared for our Auxerrois coming into véraison. Last year I blogged about Auxerrois at Véraison on August 20, 2019. Here is what our Auxerrois looks like now:

We were busy in another part of our vineyard when my husband noticed that the birds had begun to "taste" our Auxerrois. We knew that it was the Orioles and much as we love the Orioles and know that they need to fuel up for their migration back to warmer climate for the winter, bird pecked grapes can lead to worse problems. The open wound in the grape recruits fruitflies which can lead to fermentation by Acetobactor leading to the smell of acetic acid or vinegar. It can also lead to the recruitment of yellow jackets who are also looking for a sugar boost. So, in order to prevent that, we pluck out the damaged grapes.

After cleaning the grapes, the nets needed to go up to prevent any more damage. However, we had a problem. We were waiting on wider nets to come from our supplier. We did let down our nets that were 31" and then we heard from the shipping company on Thursday and we received our 40" nets!
The next few days were filled with taking in the 31" nets and putting up the 40" nets. Once we had the 40" nets, the task was to clean the grapes. Yes, it is a tweezer that we use:

The baggie on the left shows the haul of grapes from one row of Auxerrois. I checked the Brix on the juice and it was at 17^o Brix! The Auxerrois are getting their stone fruit flavors and still hanging on to the acidity. Last year we picked the fruit when it was at 19^o Brix, so we don't have too long to go before harvest is upon us. Today, we are happy to say that we finished putting up the 40" netting on our Auxerrois! Phew!