Vintage 2025: Chardonnay Harvest and Pressing

On another beautiful day, September 28, our friends came to help us harvest the Chardonnay. Our friends, Laurie, Elizabeth, Bob and Ted came early to help us lift the nets and we were ready to harvest around 9 a.m. Since we have 8 rows of Chardonnay, our strategy was to do two rows in one pass from the south end to the north end and then return doing two rows from the north end to the south end.
Here are photos of the people who came to help us:

We had a few new people join our crew: Carol, Dori, Kathy and Charlotte. They all picked up on how we harvest our grapes and were a terrific addition to our crew. Charlotte in the brown and white polka-dotted shirt made sure that none of the grapes remained on the vine and went back and checked. Here you can see her with a fist full of grapes!
We collected the filled lugs as we went along, and here you can see Ted, making sure that each lug has been properly filled and stacked in the back of our trailer.

Once we reached the south end, the lugs were put into the rental van and it was time for a break. We did two of these 4 row passes and finished up around 12:30. We served lunch and my husband opened up the 2020 Chardonnay for the harvesters to sample. It was an enjoyable time and we hope that our crew had fun, even though we know that harvesting is difficult work.
On Monday, we took the grapes to Stonington Vineyard, where Mike, Jim and Dakota were waiting for us to arrive at 9 a.m. They have a very efficient process there. The pressing took 2-1/2 hours and we were done by noon. The juice that came out of the grapes looked really good and we took a sample to get some harvest numbers.

Variety	Weight	Volume	Brix	pH	TA
Chardonnay	1950 pounds	156 gallons	22.0	3.28	8.0 g/L

On Monday afternoon, we took the washed lugs back to our vineyard. The picture there was one of a calm end of summer day. It would be hard to imagine that a day ago, there was such frenetic harvesting activity going on!

Thank you to all our harvesters who spent their Sunday helping us bring in our Chardonnay crop!

Vintage 2025: Auxerrois Pressing and Statistics

On Monday afternoon, September 22, we took the Auxerrois to Stonington Vineyards for pressing. Mike, Jim and Dakota were there and helped us to unload 78 full lugs of Auxerrois into their press.

The pressing took approximately 2 hours. During that time, we were able to rinse out our lugs. When the pressing was done we had approximately 160 gallons of juice.

We brought the juice back to our winery located on Taugwonk Spur which is less than 5 minutes away from Stonington Vineyards. Once there, we unloaded the IBC tank and took the hydrometer reading for the 2025 Auxerrois.

We held back a smaller amount of juice to get the numbers for pH and titratable acidity. The statistics for the 2025 Auxerrois are:

Variety	Weight	Volume	Brix	pH	TA
Axerrois	1950 pounds	160 gallons	21.0	3.24	5.30 g/L

Vintage 2025: Auxerrois Harvest

Our first harvest, Auxerrois occurred on Sunday, October 21, 2025. Looking back at my spreadsheet, this is the second earliest Auxerrois harvest, the earliest being in 2020. We had a group of our motivated friends come and help us with the harvest. We began at 7:30 with raising the nets on the five rows of Auxerrois. Harvest began at 9.
We harvest two rows at a time. We try not to put the lugs on the ground because when we begin the harvest the ground can be wet with dew. To accomplish this, my husband is on his tractor in the adjacent alley with the yellow lugs. We have one person, the "swapper", Ted, helping with the swapping of the full lugs with empty lugs.

We work in pairs. One person holds the lug while the other person harvests the grapes. This way there is minimal bending or throwing the grapes into the lugs on the ground. A few of our friends were able to find the milk carton towers that enabled them to put the lug on the tower and harvest.

There is a designated "runner" who is in charge of watching if the lugs are getting full and working with the "swapper" to get empty lugs.

The "swapper's" job is to make sure that each lug is appropriately filled with grapes so that they can be stacked. Once we reached the end of the alley, my husband and Ted put the full lugs into the Penske truck that he rented for transport to Stonington Vineyard on Monday.
We were finished harvesting the 5 rows of Auxerrois at 11:15! This allowed us have lunch and enjoy the beautiful day!

We want to thank our friends who came to help us for the Auxerrois harvest! Your help was much appreciated!

Passionfruit Estate Late Harvest Chenin Blanc

Recently, we sent out some samples of our red wines and our 2023 late harvest botrytized Chenin Blanc to get tested for alcohol content.

We received the results. We were very interested in how our Chenin Blanc tested because for that wine, we asked and received results for the following tests:
alcohol level = 16.3%
residual sugar = 48 g/L
titratable acidity (TA) = 9.5 g/L.
Since we had a shareable amount left in the bottle, we had our friends over for dinner. I regret that I didn't take a picture of the skinless salmon dish that my husband made with a side salad of fresh greens and fruits. We also had a Matthiasson Chardonnay to pair with the salmon. For dessert, my husband made this fig in phyllo cup with goat cheese on the bottom. We topped it off with our choice of honey or balsamic glaze. The late harvest Chenin Blanc paired very well with the fig in phyllo cup. It reminded our friends of a Vinsanto that they shared with us long ago.

Time For Us to Take Some Numbers

We have been taking refractometer readings of our Auxerrois and Chardonnay and found that the Brix ranged from 18-20 and it appeared that the Chardonnay might be farther along than our Auxerrois. It was time to get some real numbers for those grapes. On Saturday, my husband and I took representative samples from the Auxerrois and because we have two clones of Chardonnay, took representative samples from each of the two clones.
Back at home, we juiced the berries:

Once we got the juice, it was time to take the Brix, pH and the titratable acids (TA) for the three samples. For that, we have been using a little but handy device made by Vinmetrica. Initially, we were also doing the SO₂ test with the Vinmetrica but we have since switched to the Sentia for the SO₂ test. The Vinmetrica kit comes with a pH probe and reagents that allows us to take the titratable acid reading. The setup for us looks like this:

Here are the numbers for the Auxerrois, Chardonnay clone 76 and Chardonnay clone 96.

Variety	Brix	pH	TA
Auxerrois	19	3.04	6.7 g/L
Chardonnay clone 76	20	2.90	9.6 g.L
Chardonnay clone 96	20	2.95	11.3 g/L

What these numbers are telling us is that we need to seriously think about harvest dates and get ready! Also, it appears, (as is usually the case) that we will be harvesting the Auxerrois first and we have a little bit of time between that harvest and the Chardonnay harvest. Phew!

Vintage 2025: Labor Day Activities

For farmers, Labor Day is exactly that, a day of labor. We are busy clothes pinning our Chardonnay grapes that are ripening quickly. For that, we had stellar help from our daughter who made the trek down from Worcester on Saturday and helped with securing our Chardonnay from birds.
Today, we are working in the Chenin Blanc shoot tucking, leaf pulling and cleaning the graft union in hopes of lowering our nets on the Chenin Blanc as soon as possible.
It's the time of the year to update the annual cycle of growth chart and fill in the dates of veraison for our 6 grape varieties.

We keep track of the major events in the vintage, veraison being a very important one. I recently blogged about Vintage Notes 2025: The Auxerrois is at Veraison. The next variety to enter veraison this year was the Chardonnay, followed by the Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Chenin Blanc and finally the Barbera.
Here are the grape varieties and what they look like at veraison.

It was interesting this year to watch the red varieties, Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc and Barbera change color. The Cabernet Sauvignon was the first to enter veraison and by the time the Cabernet Franc was at veraison, the Cabernet Sauvignon grapes had all changed into a deep purple color. The warm days of late August worked their magic on the red varieities.

Connecticut has 3 American Viticultural Areas

My husband sent me a link to a PDF written by Forrest J. Bowlick and Katie Carroll Bowlick titled "Connecticut AVAs: Exploring and Understanding Wine in the Nutmeg State". I knew that we had one AVA called Southeastern New England AVA, and I blogged about it here: Pioneers of the Southeastern New England American Viticultural Area (AVA). However, I was unaware that Connecticut was home to two other AVAs called Western Connecticut Highlands and Eastern Connecticut Highlands.
Here is a map that was part of the article:

As of April 2020, there were 79 TTB licensed wineries, with 355 productive acres, bringing in between $145 to $154.2 million dollars in economic benefits from wine sales alone.
The Southeastern New England AVA

• The first formally recognized AVA in Connecticut was the Southeastern New England AVA, which also covers parts of Rhode Island and Massachusetts
• Petitioned for in 1982 and established in 1984
• Connecticut’s portion of the Southeastern New England AVA has more wineries than Rhode Island and Massachusetts
• This AVA is coastal, taking advantage of the microclimate along the coast and the moderating influence of the water, like other cool climate wine regions
• Roughly 590 square miles of this AVA are in Connecticut, which contains 12 wineries and ranges in elevation from sea level to 607 feet above sea level
• The wineries included in this AVA are: Dalice Elizabeth's Winery, Preston Ridge Vineyard, Jonathan Edwards Winery, Stonington Vineyards, B. F. Clyde's Cider Mill, Holmberg Orchards, Maugle Sierra Vineyards, Saltwater Farm Vineyard, Sunset Hill Vineyard, Glenn's Wine, Chamard Vineyards, Bishop's Orchard Winery, and Rose Vineyards.

The Western Connecticut Highlands AVA

• The second AVA established in Connecticut was the Western Connecticut Highlands AVA. Formed in 1988 from a petition in 1987, this AVA covers the highest elevation terrain in Connecticut as well as companion valleys and other so called ‘rough terrain’ of western Connecticut
• This AVA is bordered to the west by the Hudson Valley AVA of New York. The higher elevation and varied terrain contribute to an overall cooler climate, with varied exposures, micro-climates, and a different soil geology than the Southwestern New England AVA
• There is a wide variation in precipitation type and format throughout the area
• This AVA covers roughly 1584 square miles, containing 23 wineries, and ranges in elevation from about four feet above sea level on the Housatonic River to 2374 feet above sea level, the highest point in Connecticut
• The wineries included in this AVA are: Jerram Winery, Bee Mountain Vineyards, Connecticut Valley Winery, Haight-Brown Vineyard, Bethlehem Vineyard and Winery, Hawk Ridge Winery, Northwinds Vineyard, Black Lion Vineyards, Walker Road Vineyards, Moose Hill Cider, Jones Family Farms Winery, Diageo America's Supply Umpawaug Farm Winery, McLaughlin Vineyards, G. L. Bollard Corporation, Digrazia Vineyards, White Silo Farm and Winery, The Cidery at Averill Farm, Hopkins Vineyard, Sopring Hill Vineyards, Sunset Meadow Vineyards and Miranda Vineyard.

Eastern Connecticut Highlands AVA

• The Eastern Connecticut Highlands AVA is the newest in the state, established in 2019 after proposal in 2018.
• Eastern Connecticut Highlands are generally lower in elevation than the western side, though still higher and more varied in elevation than the Connecticut River Valley that lies between the Eastern and Western highlands
• There are 114.75 acres in production in the area with six wineries
• The AVA covers roughly 1379 square miles, containing 21 wineries, and ranges in elevation from nearly sea level on the Connecticut River to 1309 feet above sea level
• The wineries included in this AVA are: Taylor Brooke Winery, Devon Point Farm Tree House Brewing Company, Sharp Hill Vineyard, Heritage Trail Vineyards, Barretts Legacy Mead, The Vineyard at Hillyland, Arrowhead Acres, Lebanon Green Vineyards, Heartstone Farm and Winery, Dragonfire Meadery, Cassidy Hill Vineyard, Stafford Cidery, Worthington Vineyards, Deercrest Farm, Chateau Le' Gari, Priam Vineyards, Staehly Farm Winery, Crystal Ridge Winery, Arrigoni Winery and Joseph Preli Farm Winery.

This was the state of the three AVAs in Connecticut and the wineries in those AVAs when this article was published in 2020.

Interesting Sighting in the Vineyard

My husband and I are now both working in the Auxerrois, which happens to be located on the west side of the vineyard and close to the forest edge. Earlier, when I was leaf pulling in the second row of the Auxerrois, I ran into several yellow jacket nests in the ground and marked the location where they were. I worked for a few more lineposts and saw a large entry way and sure enough, the yellow jackets were coming in and out of that hole in the ground.

I informed my husband about the "discovery" and he said that he would get to it early in the morning on a cold day. Yesterday was that day and when we went to the location of the yellow jacket nest, this is what we saw:

Something had dug a hole into the yellow jacket nest and pulled out the chambers where the larvae and pupae were located. We had never seen anything like that before.
We took pictures and searched the internet and AI came back with the following information:
Several animals prey on yellow jacket nests with skunks, raccoons, and bears being the most common. These mammals dig up the nests, attracted by the larvae and pupae inside and will also consume the sweet nectar in the nest.
Our best guess is that it was a skunk who helped us get rid of the yellow jacket underground nest. I hope it had a delectable feast!
This let my husband off the hook for spraying the nests.

Vintage Notes 2025: The Auxerrois is at Veraison

We are splitting work duties in the vineyard. My husband is working in the Chenin Blanc and I am working in the Auxerrois. I can tell that the grapes are coming out of their lag phase, the time after berry set where the grapes stop growing. For white grapes, the "tell" that they are in veraison, or the beginning of ripening is when the berry becomes soft to the touch. For a few days now, I have noticed that the Auxerrois is soft when I handle it so I was curious to know what the Brix was. Yesterday, I brought the hand held refractometer to the vineyard and was surprised when taking the reading that the soft Auxerrois berries were at 15 ^oBrix! The slightly greener berries were at 13 ^oBrix.
Here is a photo of the Auxerrois. We only see this in the Auxerrois, where sometimes there are three clusters to a shoot.

It seems early to me that the Auxerrois is already this far along in sugar accumulation. I need to update my chart of the annual cycle of growth. All this means is that we need to bring the nets down in the next few days to protect the ripening grapes!

2000 Chateau Malescot St. Exupery Margaux

My husband opened this 2000 Chateau Malescot St. Exupery Margaux a few nights ago when he made his smoked steak. It's been a while since we had beef for dinner! This was the perfect accompaniment for his delicious meal of steak, baked potatoes and a side salad.
On the bottle, it mentioned that it was classified as a Troisièmes Crus (Third Growth) in the 1855 Bordeaux Wine Official Classification.
I'm always curious about the wines that my husband has purchased and stored so I found more information about Chateau Malescot here: Chateau Malescot St. Exupery Margaux Bordeaux Wine, Complete Guide.
The 2000 Malescot according to this site, is one of the best vintages. With 25 years of ageing, this wine was still holding on to rich black and red berry flavors with a long, smooth finish.
This site also went into some of the history of Chateau Malescot and I found that to be very interesting. Chateau Malescot St. Exupery can be traced all the way back to 1616 when the Margaux estate was owned by the Escousses family. The Escousses were best known as notaries for the King. In 1697, the chateau was sold to Simon Malescot who was the attorney-general to King Louis XIV. The property remained in the Malescot family until the French Revolution.
Over the next several years, the formerly robust Bordeaux vineyard of Chateau Malescot was split and split again. In 1813, Francois Benoit Dunogues purchased the chateau, reselling it in 1825 to Louis Pierlot. The Pierlot family resold the property to Comte Saint-Exupery, who added his name to the estate.
In 1853, the chateau was sold to Mr. Fourcade. Mr. Fourcade died in 1866 and Chateau Malescot St. Exupery was sold to a group of owners, the most notable being Mr. Boissac in 1870. During World war I, the French government confiscated the estate.
In 1955, the Zugar family bought the chateau and spent 10 years bringing the vineyard back to it's current incarnation. In 1994 Jean Luc-Zugar took over the reins of Chateau Malescot St. Eupery with Michel Rolland as consultant.
The 30-hectare vineyard of Chateau Malescot St. Exupery is planted to 50% Cabernet Sauvignon, 35% Merlot, 10% Cabernet Franc and 5% Petit Verdot. The terroir is gravel, chalk, and clay soils with iron deposits on gentle, slopes.
Vinification takes place in a combination of 22, temperature-controlled, concrete vats and stainless steel tanks. Malolactic fermentation takes place in either tank, vat, barrel, or a combination of any of those vessels. They can use concentrators or reverse osmosis machines, as well as bleeding of the vats to increase the concentration of the wine. Those decisions are left up to the vintage according to Jean Luc Zuger. The wine of Chateau Malescot St. Exupery is then aged in between 80% new and 100% new, French oak barrels for between 14 to 16 months before bottling.
Knowing the history and the vinification of this Bordeaux wine made me appreciate it even more. I asked my husband if we have anymore of this wine and he said we have 2 more!

Grape Health During a Heat Wave

We have been having an unusally hot summer, punctuated by heavy rainfall. We have been seeing some signs of berry stress in our Chenin Blanc where the berries in some clusters have been raisining. Here is a minor example of what we are seeing. I am bringing my tweezers to the vineyard so that I can clean these sunburnt grapes from the cluster.

I was telling my husband about what I was seeing and then I came across an article in Wine Industry Network, written by Mark Greenspan called "Growing High Quality White Wine Grapes".¹ It was a timely article to be reading because we are now in the lag phase of berry growth and experiencing high heat bordering on drought conditions and his article was focussed on this phase of berry growth.
White wine grape growing is more difficult than red wine grape growing. A white grape is inherently more vulnerable to degradation since it doesn’t have an arsenal of polyphenols protecting it which is the case in red grapes because they have anthocyanin compounds for protection.
However, a white grape does have some means of protection which can generate aromatic compounds if the stress event occurs during the grape lag phase.
Benefits of heat stress during grape lag phase:

• aromatic compounds are produced in abundance during periods of abiotic stress, such as a heat wave, because they help protect the plant from oxidation
• water stress imposed during lag phase upregulates the synthesis of many secondary metabolites associated with better color and mouthfeel
• other compounds associated with water stress imposed pre-veraison include thiols or mercaptans, organic compounds containing sulfur that are associated with passion fruit, guava, and grapefruit aromas and flavors
• Glutathione is an important compound in helping white grapes with stress
  
• glutathione is synthesized in many plants in response to abiotic stress such as drought, this compound breaks down into thiols, which accounts for the many desirable aromatic compounds in wine
• glutathione is integral in protecting plant tissue from oxidative stress, which is more important in white grapes given that the antioxidant anthocyanin is lacking
• biochemical pathways responsible for terpenes and 13-norisprenoids (derived from carotenoids) are upregulated by water stress between lag phase and veraison, these are the compounds associated with floral and earthy aromas

The link between phenolics and water stress is well-established. In places where irrigation is practiced, such as California, farming practices can be manipulated to increase the tannins and color by planning the appropriate time to irrigate after hot weather.
This article recommended that excessive leaf removal be avoided. Where severe heat events are on the rise, shade cloth and microsprinklers are being used to cool the fruiting zone.
My husband and I are quite conservative when it comes to leaf pulling. My husband is of the mindset that the leaves on the west side of the canopy should be left in place in order to protect the grapes from the heat of the afternoon sun. Currently, we are working in our Chenin Blanc, hedging, shoot thinning, shoot tucking, shoot positioning, and leaf pulling. This is what the canopy looks like on the left side and how the leaf pulled grapes look like on the right side of the photo.

We are trying to strike a balance between air flow, which is critical for maintaiining a clean canopy and grapes and preventing the grapes from getting too much sun so that they do not raisin before veraison.
The weather for the first few days in August shows no rain, but also thankfully, no temperature hitting 90 degrees!
References:
1. Mark Greenspan, Wine Industry Network, "Growing High Quality White Wine Grapes.

Wine Enthusiast: How Chenin Became the Cool Kid's Grape

My husband was delighted to read this article in the Wine Enthusiast called "How Chenin Became the Cool Kid's Grape".
Where Chenin is grown:

• The Central Loire Valley of France: For over 500 years Chenin Blanc has been cultivated in famed appellations like Vouvray, Anjou, Saumur and Savennières
• South Africa: historically known as “Steen”, the first cuttings were planted near Cape Town in 1655 by members of the Dutch East India Company, comprising 18% of South Africa’s vine plantings, it grows across the western part of the country, from Stellenbosch and Paarl to Swartland
• Western Australia: In Swan Valley, Chenin is turned into fortified wines, half the plantings are in Western Australia, but can also be found in Margaret River, Victoria and South Australia,
• California: Chenin reached peak levels during the 1970s and 80s.
• Long Island, New York: Paumanok Vineyards
• Connecticut: Passionfruit Estate

The last two entries above, Long Island has been known for their excellent Chenin Blanc and we, in Connecticut hope to make wine drinkers in our area familiar with our Chenin Blanc.
Why Chenin has seen a resurgence in popularity:

• Introduction of biodynamic farming of Chenin by Nicholas Joly in Savennières
• Promotion of "natural wine" and minimal intervention wine by Alice Fiering
• Praise by top sommeliers including Pascaline Lepeltier, Alex Alan at Hotel Delmano
• Early U.S. importers like Louis/Dressner, Jenny & François, Polaner, Camille Riviere and Avant-Garde

We also make our wines with as minimal intervention as possible, using Chenin Blanc grown at our vineyard and yeast to ferment the juice. Nothing is added but yeast during the fermentation. The wine sits on lees, to gain richness and mouthfeel. Prior to the bottling process we add less than 50 ppm sulfites (legal limit 300 ppm) and filter.
So, be the cool kid in your area and come to Passionfruit Estate to purchase our Chenin Blanc! We are open on Fridays from 3-6, Saturday and Sunday from noon-4. We are located at 40 Taugwonk Spur Rd Unit 31. When we are open, our signs can be found on the corner of North Main Street and Route 1, North Main Street and Taugwonk, Taugwonk and Taugwonk Spur. If you've come this far, you've found us! Hope to see you soon!
Reference:
1. Wine Enthusiast: How Chenin Became the Cool Kid's Grape.

2021 LAN Rioja Crianza

The 2021 LAN Rioja Crianza is one of our goto red wines in the summertime. Not only does it pair well with summertime dishes, but it is very affordable.
On this night, we paired this Rioja Crianza with deboned, chicken thighs marinated in teriyaki and grilled. The side dish was a typical Hawaiian noodle dish that was elevated by the Haleiwa Sun Noodle Company mein that our daughter sent us.
The Bodegas LAN was founded in 1974 and the name is taken from the initials of the three provinces of Lagrono, Allava, and Navarra that lie in the heart of the Rioja Alta.¹ This wine is made from 94% Tempranillo and 6% Mazuelo.
María Barua has been the head winemaker and technical director since 2002. Fermentation takes place in stainless steel tanks, 15 days maceration, with continuous pumping-over to optimize color extraction. It is then aged for 14 months in hybrid oak barrels, followed by 9 months bottle ageing.
The wine was very pleasant with bright red fruit notes of strawberries and raspberries with a soft tannin finish that paired very well with the teriyaki chicken and noodles.

References:
1. LAN Rioja.

Vintage 2025: July Weather

We have had a very wet spring, you know the old saying, "April showers bring May flowers", well this year, April showers brought May showers, June showers and now July showers! A farmer's best friend is the weather app and here is what it showed for the previous week from July 7-14 and for this week, July 14-21. Rain! Rain! Rain!

Rain brings a number of things in the vineyard such as out-of-control growth, weeds, and most of all mildew. Our friends and our granddaughter have been coming to the vineyard at 6 a.m. to help with the July duties which include shoot tucking, lateral shoot removal and hedging. Some parts of our vineyard looks like this, where a lot of work has already been done:

But some parts of the vineyard looks like this where a lot of work still needs to be done.

This is the state of the vineyard in July!

2019 Santenay Antoine Olivier Les Coteaux sous la Roche

July is hot, humid and rainy! No one in this family feels like cooking in this kind of weather, but we can still drink. A few evenings ago, we had this Antoine Olivier, 2019 Santenay Les Coteaux sous la Roche. It is a Chardonnay. We paired it with toast points with olive tenpanade and eggplant spread from Mount Vikos. We also had Saint Andre cheese. The spreads and cheese went very well with the Chardonnay which was medium body, with a slightly reductive nose which blew off upon swirling. The wine tasted like lemon drop candy with a lively acidic finish.
The Product Information Sheet for this wine that I found online mentioned the following:
The grapes come from a single vineyard ‘Coteaux Sous la Roche’, which translates as ‘under the rocks’. For the winemaking process, the grapes were gently pressed and then racked to barrel where fermentation took place using natural yeasts. The wine was kept on its fine lees and underwent bâtonnage to impart texture and complexity to the wine. Malolactic conversion took place in barrel. The wine was 100% barrel aged for 12 months, in traditional Burgundian barrels of 228 litre barrels, of which 25% were new oak. The wine was then transferred to tank where it spent a further six months, prior to being lightly fined, filtered and estate bottled.

Vintage 2025: It's July!

Time marches on. It's July! We have fruiset in the vineyard. Somehow between the extreme heat and the rains the vines managed to set their fruit. We were working between the Cabernet Franc and the Barbera and this is what fruitset there looks like:

After a hot and humid day in the vineyard, it is raining again tonight!

Vintage 2025: Flowering

It is June. We are in the throes of shoot positiong and shoot removal, and despite all the rain that we have been having, and now a heat wave, all of our varieties are at some stage of flowering.

However, not all of the varieties are at the same stage of flowering. The Chardonnay and the Barbera are at the early stages of fruitset. The next variety to be further in bloom is the Cabernet Franc followed by the Chenin Blanc, Auxerrois and finally the Cabernet Sauvignon.
It's time to update the Annual Cycle of Growth chart.

Years of keeping the annual cycle of growth gives us some idea of when flowering and fruitset will be. The heat wave is probably accelerating flowering and fruitset, which is a good thing.
Right after fruitset, the tiny grapes are not securely attached by their pedicel so any manipulation of the shoots is not a good thing so we adjust where we work based on what stage of flowering or fruitset our varieties are at.
The heat wave is forcing us to be at the vineyard at 6 am and today we stopped working at 8 am since the feel-like temperature was 90 degrees!

International Chenin Blanc Day

International Chenin Blanc Day was on June 14th and of course we must celebrate! Our son and his wife gave us two bottles of Chenin, one from Mexico and one from France. We added our own Chenin and did a side by side tasting. The three wines were:

• 2023 Carrodilla Chenin Blanc
• 2018 Silex Noir Vouvray
• 2019 Passionfruit Estate Chenin Blanc

Our son scored the Carrodilla wine when he and his wife went to dinner at Shipwright's Daughter in Mystic. They kindly left some for us to taste. He also got the Silex Noir for us. We opened one of our 2019 Chenin Blanc to complete the tasting.

We paired the wines with a lemon, parmesan pasta with hazelnuts on top.

The 2023 Carrodilla Chenin Blanc is unusual in that it comes from Mexico, made in the Valle de Guadalupe! My husband did some research on this wine. The vineyard is at 900 feet elevation. The grapes are farmed organically and can be harvested in August. This wine is 100% Chenin Blanc. We liked the wine and thought it paired well with the pasta. I thought that the backend had a little grip, but my husband thought that the backend dropped off.
The next wine we tried was the 2018 Silex Noir Vouvray. We know that this wine will be sweet because it comes from the Loire village of Vouvray. It was a little difficult pairing this with the lemony pasta. The wine is barrel aged. I didn't taste the oak on it, it was seamlessly integrated into the wine, but another food pairing would have been better.
We then tried our 2019 Passionfruit Estate Chenin Blanc. Not going to lie, we liked our own wine and the pairing with the pasta. A thought came to us, we need to try this side by side tasting with our son and his wife. They had left for home by the time we did this tasting but it is something that we should do the next time they are here. It was an interesting tasting of various Chenin Blancs on International Chenin Blanc Day.

2023 Matthiasson Napa Valley Chardonnay

A few days ago, we had our friends Mary and Barry over for dinner. Mary is a Chardonnay aficionado, but very particular in her style of Chardonnay. For dinner, we prepared a Greek meal with spanakopita (spinach pie) as the appetizer. We paired this 2023 Matthiasson Napa Valley Linda Vista Chardonnay with the spanakopita. It was a beautiful pairing and all of us enjoyed the Matthiasson Chardonnay.
We have been watching many episodes of Steve Matthiasson and his wife, Jill, on SOMM TV. My husband has been especially interested in Steve Matthiasson because his philosophy of winemaking is like ours. In fact, when we went to Napa in February, we tried to visit them, but Steve was unavailable. On their website, they describe the Linda Vista vineyard:
"The Linda Vista Vineyard is just across the creek behind our house. The West Oak Knoll area where we live is one of the classic Chardonnay spots in Napa—Chardonnay from just behind us won the famous Paris tasting in 1976. The cool winds off the San Pablo Bay bring acidity and freshness, while the Napa sun gives flesh and ripeness. The 25-year old vines were originally planted by Beringer, and we’re proud to take our turn caring for them as the vineyard develops maturity. Certified Organic."
We loved the Matthiasson Chardonnay so much that my husband is thinking of purchasing more!

Passionfruit Estate: The Genesis of Our Label

My husband and I had many iterations of label designs before we finally agreed on one that we both liked. It was a Google Earth view that showed our vineyard at the head of the Mystic River. My husband took that view and stylized it and that has become our label.
The Google Earth view shown below on the left hand side has our vineyard circled in red. It also shows the Mystic Seaport and Mystic Aquarium landmarks as references. The right hand side shows what my husband did with the view. It's more of a tilted view which not only shows Mason's Island, but Fisher's Island as well as Long Island and the Connecticut coastline in our area.

Through time we have had Michelle in California and Kimberly here in Stonington help us refine the label with the appropriate font styles and sizes to achieve the right balance. Sometimes we forget to tell the people who come to purchase our wines what the label is about. We hope they can figure out that it is a view from our vineyard.

Vintage 2025: June Update

It's already four days into June! The rain has made our spring pruning duties very difficult. In fact, the last cuttings from pruning the vineyard was removed yesterday with the help of our friends Mary and Barry.

Yes, full disclosure. We were working until Monday to prune our vineyard. You can see that the cuttings in the sled have green growth on them. Everything looked so promising at the end of March, but April and May were two months full of rain. We don't prune on days that rain so when we could we were pruning. Pruning and laying down the canes became, pruning, laying down the canes and disbudding! We had to be very careful when doing those activities so as not to knock off a bud or later, a young shoot. But now we are finally done! Thank you Mary, Barry and Rich for helping us with the cutting removal.
While Mary and Barry and my husband were busy with cutting removal, I worked on shoot tucking the Barbera. I call the Barbera our wild child because the developing shoots are not stiff like other varieties and have a tendency to lean any which way that they want to.
Here is what the Barbera looks like now:

They have reached the second catch wire. Looking at the buds, the growth seems a little slower than normal. From here on out, it is a race to ensure that the shoots are thinned!

2015 Passionfruit Estate Chenin Blanc

A few days ago, my husband looked into our stash of wine and found this bottle of 2015 Chenin Blanc, the first wine that we made. The wine is now 10 years old!
The color indicated that it was still in good condition! The flavors were of lemon and pineapple with an acidic finish. It went well with the Asian food we were eating that evening, teriyaki mariated pork sandwiches with Hawaiian style macaroni salad.
In 2015, we might had about 150 Chenin Blanc vines that survived the disasterous polar vortex of the winter of 2014 and these vines gave us 360 clusters of grapes. Our friends who helped us harvest the grapes came to our home to foot stomp the grapes in an Igloo cooler! The nice thing about the cooler was that it had a spigot where the juice could be drained into a 5 gallon jug.
Prior to the foot stomping, my husband converted our old refrigerator into a temperature controlled environment with which to conduct a slow and low temperature fermentation.
From that initial fermentation we learned to be patient and let the yeast do it's thing. We also learned that the flavor of newly fermented Chenin Blanc can be searingly acidic! My husband refers to this flavor as "jet fuel". Now we know if we taste "jet fuel" our Chenin Blanc is on the right trajectory on it's journey to being the Chenin Blanc that our terroir produces.
Since we only use 100% grapes grown on our vineyard, yeast to ferment the juice and less than 50 parts per million (ppm) sulfites to preserve the wine, we like to say that our wine is the pure expression of the grape varietal.

2025 Annual Cycle of Growth

Every year, I try to keep track of the major events in the grapevine cycle. This is captured in a table called the Annual Cycle of Growth. Here is what we saw last year. I am also filling out the approximate date of budbreak for 2025.

The annual cycle of growth for 2024 is rather incomplete because we had an unusual ripening or should I say "unripening" year in 2024. In last July, our vines were hit with a terrible case of downy mildew in the Chardonnay. The problem was not that severe in the Auxerrois and the Chenin Blanc but for the first time, we needed to drop grapes in the Chenin Blanc in order to get the Brix to be at 20-21 degrees.
With all of the rain that we are having this year, the new shoots are growing like we have never seen before!
Photos to come.

We Love Chenin Blanc!

We have planted almost half of our vineyard in Chenin Blanc. It's one of the white wines that really appeals to our palates. Our first harvest of Chenin Blanc occurred in 2015. We took a very minimalist approach to making the wine. We let the juice that came from foot stomping the grapes with our friends and let it cold settle in the refrigerator that my husband converted into a place that we could conduct a long and slow cool fermentation.
After cold settling, we racked the juice and little of the fine grape pulp to use as food for our yeast of choice, QA23, to conduct the fermentation. At that time just shortly after fermentation was over, we sampled the wine and my husband thought that the wine tasted like "jet fuel". Over the years of making Chenin, we have come to understand that this is what Chenin tastes like just shortly after fermentation and if we achieve this, then we know that our Chenin is on it's evolution to tasting delicious!
There are many Chenin styles that include:

• Sec
• Dry
• Sec-tendre
• Off-dry
• Demi-Sec
• Semi-sweet
• Moelleux
• Sweet

We make our Chenin always in the "sec" style because we ferment the wine to dryness. We tried our hand at making "sec-tendre" where we have fermentated our wine to dryness and then added a sussreserve, in the style of some German Rieslings. We also made a pétillant naturel, which is a sparkling wine made in the ancestral method without disorgement of the dead yeast and lees. We do make a sweet wine, in our case it is botrytized Chenin that is infected with noble rot and harvested in December.
What we really enjoy about Chenin Blanc is that it is food friendly, especially with oysters and seafood that is found in our area.

2020 Robert Foley Charbono

Our friends came back from their winter sojourn to Florida so we had them over for dinner. My husband made his stuffed pork chops. We had a side of wild rice and a simple green salad. The wine that we chose to pair with dinner was a 2020 Robert Foley Charbono. Our friends were curious about the wine since they had never heard of Charbono before so we told them the story of visiting Robert Foley and tasting his Charbono. We all liked the wine very much! The alcohol level was 13.2% which is the sweet spot for a red wine. The Charbono paired perfectly with the stuffed pork chops. I tasted ripe purple grapes with blackberries in the Charbono. It had very soft tannins, but a good backbone of acidity. This is the wine that inspired Robert Foley to become a wine maker.
In Robert Foley's own words:¹
Charbono is one of the lost grape varieties – almost. Recent reports indicate there are only about 80 acres of this variety in California. The original cuttings were imported to Calistoga in the Napa Valley from the Savoie region in the French Alps in about 1880. Its original name was Doux Noir, or “soft black,” later called Charbonneau (carbon water). Subsequently, Charbono was wiped out in Europe by the Phylloxera root louse infestation.
Some believed it to be the Italian grape variety Dolcetto but this was proven not to be the case through genetic testing. After repeal of Prohibition in the U.S., Charbono was used by Inglenook for blending with their new Cask Cabernet wines and small amounts were bottled as varietal wine. I tasted the 1968 Inglenook Charbono from cask in 1969 and was inspired to become a winemaker with that taste.

The stuff pork chops that my husband makes is always a wonderful meal. Take a pork chop that is between 3/4 to 1 inch thick and cut to make a pocket. In the picture above, my husband used wilted spinach, grated gruyere, dried cranberries and garlic flavored croutons for the stuffing. He seared the pork chops in a pan and then put it into a 300 degree oven, to bring the internal temperature of the pork to 140-150 degrees. During the time the pork chop is in the oven, my husband takes the pan drippings and makes a sauce. You can stuff the pork chop with a stuffing of your choice.
Charbono and stuffed pork chops! Bon appétit!
References:
1. Robert Foley Vineyards.

Vintage 2025: May Day!

It is already May! The April showers really put us behind in our pruning duties and we are working as fast as we can to lay our canes down on the fruiting wire. With the exception of the Cabernet Sauvignon, all of our varieties are at some stage of budbreak:

Budbreak appears to be a little on the early side this year. It could be because of the way we approached our pruning this year, taking off all of the unnecessary growth from last year, leaving behind only the canes that we were considering as this year's fruiting cane. So, all of the energy was concentrated in the few remaining canes.
At this time of the year, we always keep our fingers crossed hoping that we don't have another year like 2023 when we had a frost on May 18th. As of today, we have finished laying down our canes for half of our vineyard!

We hope the weather gods grant us some nice weather for the upcoming week although by the looks of it, we might have to work under rainy conditions!

Sometimes Wine Makes Magic

Recently, my husband and I were watching SOMM TV which featured the Martinellis and a vertical tasting that they did. Martinelli Winery is located in Sonoma. Watching this episode reminded me of one of our most favorite memories of having wine with a meal. This memory comes from the time we had our Greek friends over for dinner. One of his favorite mantras was "planning is overrated" so I'm sure this dinner was an impromptu, spontaneous kind of get together. I wondered what year the Martinelli Jackass Hill Zinfandel that we had was and what year we drank the wine with our friends. My husband suggested that we probably have that bottle of wine on our Wall of Fame. I gave the idea of looking through our more than 150 bottles of wine on our Wall of Fame serious consideration and then I had an epiphany. In 2021, I did a blogpost on the wines on our Wall of Fame and there it was, the 1997 Jackass Hill Zinfandel.
On that evening when we had the 1997 Jackass Hill Zinfandel, we ordered pizza to take out. When we opened the wine, the aroma that emanated from the bottle was indescribably amazing. The four of us all sensed that remarkable event simultaneously. We drank the wine and had the pizza and that event is now indeliably etched in our memories.
Every now and then we recreate that evening, by bringing out a bottle of Jackass Hill Vineyards Zinfandel and ordering take out pizza, but there is really only one magical moment. I still need to figure out what year it was that this dinner occurred. So far I've narrowed it down to sometime between 2000-2006.
Epilogue: Our friends recently went to Martinelli winery and visited Jackass Hill vineyards. There they learned why the vineyard is called Jackass Hill. It was planted in the 1880's by the original founder, Giuseppe Martinelli. The location where he planted this vineyard has a 60-65 degree slope and is NOT terraced. The saying in the family is "you'd have to be a jackass to farm a hill that steep!" So in Giuseppe's honor, the vineyard was named Jackass Hill Vineyard.