Annual Cycle of Growth

It's time to update the annual cycle of growth chart. This season has been a rather unusual one for us due to the hard frost that we had in February that did not look very promising for us when we did a bud count. Nevertheless, we did the spring pruning and when early May came around, we had just finished laying down this vintage's fruiting canes and were seeing budbreak when....May 18, an unusually cold weather event hit our vineyard and took out most of the growing shoots in the south end of the vineyard. The further along the shoots were in the growing cycle, the more they were affected by this unusual frost event.

We were busy taking out the damaged shoots which occupied us for the rest of May and into early June, when we noticed that the Chardonnay was in bloom. Typically, we take care to document bloom in all of our varieties but due to the circumstances that we were in, we neglected our duties! However, it still is a good idea to fill in the Annual Cycle of Growth chart with additional information, so here is our Vintage 2023 information so far.

We are still waiting for veraison in our varieties and looking at the information in the Annual Cycle of Growth, veraison in the Auxerrois and Chardonnay might be on the late side. Time to bring our hand held refractometer to the vineyard to check the sugar content of our grapes!

Vintage 2023: August Update

It is already the middle of August and I have only posted one blog! We have been busy trying to get the vineyard in shape and we have had great help throughout July and August when our granddaughter came to give us a hand. She helped us with every aspect of what we were doing in July, shoot tucking, bringing the netting away from the tendrils and picking up hedging cuttings that went into the vineyard alley. Her favorite task in the vineyard was mowing!

With all of the work to do in the other parts of the vineyard, we were thankful that we had her help to mow the neglected vineyard alleys. My husband got out his weeder for the second time this year and beat down the weeds among the grape vines. Here is a picture showing before weeding on top and then after weeding on the bottom:

But now here we are, still shoot tucking so that we can set the netting at the proper level for deployment. Mother Nature is sending a lot of rain our way which keeps us out of the vineyard!

2022 Martinelli Rosé

Recently, we had our Greek friend and his daughter over for dinner. Since our granddaughter has been visiting us and helping us in the vineyard, we thought that it would be a good chance for our friend's daughter and our granddaughter to see each other again. We think that the last time they saw each other was some 7 years ago! It was a little tricky to get our friends over since they had a trip to Greece on their schedule for Friday late evening but they were able to find a little time on Thursday evening. We know that their daughter loves Asian cuisine, they call her the Caucasian who loves Asian food so that is what we made. Our friend brought over this 2022 Martinelli Rosé of Pinot Noir and it went very well with the food we served.
The Martinelli Rosé is made from grapes grown on their estate vineyards. The family has been in the wine making business since the 1860's and they are currently the 6th generation grape growers and winemakers! That is longevity!
My husband made karaage chicken, which is chicken marinated in teriyaki sauce, coated with cornstarch and fried. It comes out crispy, light and delicious! We also had a soba noodle salad, white rice and sushi. Most of all, we had a good time catching up before they went to Greece. A little later in the evening, our friend's wife who drove down from Massachusetts with her son also came over and livened up the evening.
Here is a photo of our meal:

For dessert we had chocolate covered fresh bing cherries and chocolate covered strawberries. Sorry no photos, we were too anxious to try the dessert.
It was a perfect evening---Friends! Food! Good Wine!