Last weekend I received from Chile my largest delivery yet, almost 300 pounds of grapes, evenly split between Chardonnay and Syrah. As expected, this led to a flurry of activity that has kept me busy on a daily basis for the last week and a half. Both new productions have now been crushed and pressed, and have found a resting place in the basement where they are in the ending stages of fermentation. All in I’ve got 19 gallons of new wine coming to life, which should yield 5 to 6 drinkable cases by next summer. Meanwhile my vines have come to life for the 2012 season as well. They’ve now been sprayed with fungicide three times and are starting to show early signs of fruit. Most of them, that is. I still have one or two vines that are lagging the rest, and have only just started to break their buds. At this point I’m not sure what the cause for the variance is. In a vineyard of 30 acres, the occasional sick vine is of no consequence, but when you only have seven vines, losing two for the season would be significant. I’m still holding out hope that the entire row will ultimately bear fruit, but if not, I could be looking at another season with less than a gallon of "estate" wine to show for my troubles.
No comments:
Post a Comment