International Chardonnay Day

Last week Thursday, May 25th was International Chardonnay Day. Apparently, it occurs on the Thursday before Memorial Day. My husband found this out and learned that there are International Wine Days for all kinds of wines at The Traveling Corkscrew.
We planned to celebrate the day and invited our friends over for grilled chicken with a medley of roasted mushrooms, chickpeas and tomatoes. They were unavailable that evening, but we celebrated the following evening. We anted up the 2012 Clos Pepe and they brought over a 2009 Kistler Hudson Vineyard and a wine that they scored on their trip to New Zealand, a 2015 Marsden.
We started the evening with the Clos Pepe and the Marsden along with two cheeses, a Brillat-Savarin, a soft triple cream Brie made from cow's milk and a La Tur, a soft-ripened cheese made from a blend of sheep's, cow's and goat's milk. Both cheeses went very nicely with the Chardonnays.

My friend said that she purchased the Marsden while in New Zealand because it reminded her of a Kistler style Chardonnay. I liked the fresh zesty taste of lemon with a well integrated note of a little bit of oak on the wine. I would say that in terms of oak on the palate, Kistler > Marsden > Clos Pepe. We had the 2009 Kistler Hudson Vineyard with the grilled chicken. Our friend generously shared that bottle of wine which they received as a wedding gift. It was a perfect compliment to the grilled chickedn and roasted veggies. All of the wines were delicious in their own way and all were very well made.

Vineyard Wifery Duties

I'd like to propose a new term in viticulture. I want to call this task "vineyard wifery" a companion term to "animal husbandry". The importance of vineyard wifery for the new plants is to:

• Allow for air flow in the canopy to ameliorate fungal diseases
• Keep the best positioned shoots to be next year's canes
• Keep the shoots in one plane
• Allow the optimum amount of sunlight access to developing inflorescence primordia to encourage fruitfulness next year
• Allow for the strongest growth to be closest to the graft union

Lately, since my husband has been busy with the countless other chores involved in post-planting, I have taken on the task of cleaning out the area around the graft union and training our two year old vines that have been producing huge amounts of foliage. I keep in mind what will be next year's canes as well as the cane for the following (2 years hence) growth. I also recognize that each plant is an individual so that there are no hard and fast rules to follow. Here is an illustration of what I mean:

My husband might say that the cleaning could still be a lot better. I enjoy this communing with the young vines. (Up close and personal). Yesterday, when I was sitting on the wheelable garden stool, what I thought was a bumblebee flew close to me. My initial reaction was to shoo it away, but when it came back, I noticed that the body shape was longer than a bumble bee and it flew like a hummingbird. It continued to hover around me so that I could get a good look at it, maybe twenty seconds or so. Later when I looked it up on the Internet, I learned that it was a hummingbird clearwing moth.

Grape Leaf Pearl Glands

I read about these things called "pearl glands" in Ronald Jackson's book on Wine Science on page 60:
The outer tissues of the young stem consist of a layer of epidermis and several layers of cortical cells. The epidermis is initially photosynthetic and bears stomata, hair cells and pearl glands, especially along the veins. Most cortical cells also contain chloroplasts and are photosynthetic.
Yesterday, when I was up close and personal with one of our grapevines, I saw what Ronald Jackson was talking about:

The hairs as well as the exudate from the pearl glands were clearly visible. This morning, I was talking with my husband about these pearls that I saw and he mentioned that he also saw these spherical pearls on the bottom of the leaves that he was looking at. Yes, young leaves also possess leaf hairs and pearl glands.
References:
1. Ronald Jackson, Wine Science Third Edition, Elsevier, 2008, pg. 60 and 62.

2013 La Bettola Barbera d'Alba Erbaluna

We recently drank this 2013 La Bettola Barbera d'Alba Erbaluna. This is a wine made from organic grapes grown in the vineyard named Erbaluna. I learned that this Barbera, which is already 4 years old was aged in stainless steel tanks.
We planted our first Barbera vines a few weeks ago and have been interested in Barbera wines and vinification. This wine was ruby red in color, had good fruit flavors and a punch of acidity, which we have come to associate with Barbera. The nice thing about the 2013 La Bettola is that it is under $20.00.