Vineyard Nursery

On July 17, while working in the Chardonnay, my husband came across this well camouflaged bird's nest and took photos of it. I thought that it was a beautiful nest, so tightly constructed but it had nothing in it.

We forgot about the bird's nest until we found ourselves working in the Chardonnay again and came across the nest. This time when we took photos, this is what we saw:

In the photo above, the one on the left was taken on August 18 and the one on the right was taken on August 19. When we initially saw the birds on August 18th, we were unsure weather the birds were newly hatched or if the heat wave that we have been having was affecting them. We were relieved on the following day, when we saw an opened beak waiting to be fed! Phew!
At that time, we didn't know what kind of baby birds they were but we had a hunch that they were goldfinch because we had what appeared to be a goldfinch nest in the vineyard last year.
We soon found out:

Those photos were taken on August 26, so within a span on 8 days, the newly hatched birds could indeed be identified as goldfinch! We absolutely love that these birds have made our vineyard their nursery.

Red Varieties are Now at Veraison

We went to the vineyard this weekend and the red varieties were at véraison! Here are some photos I took on Sunday, Augut 21 and then on Tuesday, August 23, 2022.

It has taken me three days to get this blog post written and in that time, our Barbera has entered véraison!

On Monday, we had the first rain since August 17. It was a good soaker that gave the vineyard around 1 inch of rain. And then, we had a bonus rain event on Tuesday evening, August 23 that brought another 1/2 inch of rain. The vineyard definitely could use the rain but the vines are hanging in there.
The Connecticut Drought map for our regions shows that we are currently in an extreme drought situation.

Meanwhile, we are working as quickly as we can to deploy our nets to protect the ripening grapes from every from of predator!

Annual Cycle of Growth - Véraison

On Saturday, August 13, we took the Brix of the Auxerrois and it was 11 degrees. Yesterday, we sampled a few more berries and in the span of 5 days it went from 11 to between 13 and 15 degrees Brix! The Auxerrois are definitely on their tragectory to ripening. All the nets are secured around the ripening grapes so it was time to turn our attention to the Chardonnay. The Chardonnay was also softening and when we tested the Brix it was at 10 Brix!
We have been keeping a chart of the annual cycle of growth for our varieties so it is time again to begin to fill the chart to indicate véraison for 2022.

Keeping a chart of this sort allows us to see if our varieties are on track with previous years and helps us to plan for harvest. If this chart is any indication, the next varieties to enter véraison would be the Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc. The red varieties are easy to check for véraison because the skins will turn from green to red.
Looks like the grapes are following their internal clocks!

Vintage 2022: Véraison in the Auxerrois

On Friday, August 12, my husband informed me that the Auxerrois grapes were softening, one of the indications that véraison is approaching. I took the hand held refractometer to the vineyard on Saturday and sampled one of the softest of the berries that I could find and the Brix (or sugar content) was at 11 degrees. Then I tasted it and it was still very acidic.
Nevertheless, we began to net the grapes so that they will not be such an attraction for the Baltimore Orioles who really want to have a sugar load before they migrate south for the winter. We began netting the Auxerrois on August 12 and finished the fifth row on August 15.

We use clothespins as a netting closure because we find that it is an easy and effective means of closing the nets. It is also relatively simple to remove the clothes pins for taking samples for monitoring the Brix, pH and titratable acids and when it comes time to harvest, we simply raise the netting and use the clothes pins to secure it to the trellis wire.
We know that the next grapes to reach véraison is the Chardonnay so we will be lowering the nets in that variety in the days to come.

2015 La Hermana Liquid Farm Chardonnay and 2005 Selleck Calera Pinot Noir

I blogged about How to Open and Taste an Old Wine in July. Recently, we had an opportunity to drink two rather old, (not ancient) wines, a 2015 La Hermana Liquid Farm Chardonnay and 2005 Selleck Calera Pinot Noir. The Chardonnay is now 7 years old and the Pinot Noir is 17 years old.

We drank the Chardonnay with some appetizers of cheese, Marcona almonds and soppresata. The Liquid Farm Chardonnay was fresh with well integrated oak and went very well with the appetizers. We had the Pinot Noir with baked salmon and wild rice. The Calera was drinking very well, with nice red berry flavors, a hint of tobacco and a smooth finish.
We enjoyed these old wines, they are aging very well!

2017 Domaine Dirler-Cade Riesling Spiegel

The hot weather has been continuing---we are into day 8 of the second heat wave this year. One of the meals that we have in the evening is melon with prosciutto. My husband chose a perfectly ripe honeydew melon and prosciutto was the perfect match with a little bit of balsamic glaze. It's easy to make and is a very cool dinner. Doesn't this look good!

On the evening that we had this meal, we paired it with a 2017 Domaine Dirler-Cade Riesling Spiegel, a Grand Cru from the Alsace. We were tasting a few Alsatian wines that were a little heavy on the residual sugar and was a bit sweet for our palate, so it was nice to have a drier style Riesling, which this Domaine Dirler-Cade was. It was the perfect foil for the melon with the balsamic and fatty prosciutto.

On the back of the bottle, the label indicated that this wine was made from biodynamically grown grapes on Buntsandstein soil (please see my blog on The Geology of the Alsace if you are interested in what the Buntsandstein soil is). I like the fact that they hand harvest their grapes. I did taste the minerality of the Riesling!

Vintage 2022: August Update

It's already the 5th of August and this is my first blogpost for the month! Our attention during the first few days of this month was to shoot tuck our Chenin Blanc so that the last of the shoots that are in the alleys and beginning to entwine around each other have been lifted into the canopy or removed.

Once we did that, we moved on to the Chardonnay, raising the netting to the proper slot on the linepost so that it can be unfurled hopefully before véraison attracts the birds and the yellow jackets intent on getting their sugar fix. We were able to raise 8 rows of netting in 2 hours. After getting that done, we remarked that we really need to do this for the entire vineyard.
We are currently working in the Cabernet Sauvignon (our neglected children), shoot tucking, leaf pulling and making sure that the netting is free of tendrils.

In the above photo, you can see all of the shoots that have grown outside of the netting. This netting needs to be freed of those shoots and tucket into the trellis wires. The Cabernet Sauvignon is very interesting because it likes to flower late in the season and have some tiny bunches of fruit. We are seeing this on many of the secondary shoots (summer laterals) that the Cabernet Sauvignon is sending out now.

Yesterday, we were able to free up half a row of Cabernet Sauvignon so that it looks like this:

Today we hope to continue on the Cabernet Sauvignon freeing up more of the netting and leaf pulling on the east side so that the grapes can get the cooler morning sun.

August has brought another round of heat wave and yesterday, in some areas of Connecticut the feel like temperatures soared above 100 degrees. You can be sure that yesterday was what we call a "one shifter" since we did not go back to the vineyard for our afternoon shift. Today will be another one shifter!