Vino In My Dino

Follow the Vineyard: January

January 27, 2021 07:49

My monthly catch up with Mitch Blakeley, 4^th generation family and Vineyard Assistant (as well as our Sustainability Certification Manager).

We started off with rain as the subject-or lack thereof so far this month (as of 1/22/21 and we only have receive 6 inches of rain for the last three months). I had been reading the headlines and seeing more concern about a drought year ahead. The weather watchers had already declared this a La Nina year (meaning we shouldn’t expect a huge amount of rain). The headlines were declaring higher than normal temperatures at the beginning of the week-it was 80 degrees here over Monday and Tuesday. And I almost always say we need to wait before we say the sky is falling and have two more months of winter. So I was curious about what Mitch would say about all of this.

I’ll note here that one thing left out of the headlines last year was there was very little rainfall (about 20 inches which is 60% of normal rainfall) and during the pandemic we didn’t have time to pay close attention to what is now considered a drought year. The good news is the previous two years over-delivered and left plenty of water underground. Our harvest was not affected by low water. Like Mitch said, “You can get by with reserves from the previous year’s bounty.”

Moving on to the work being done in the vineyard he reported they are making some changes in pruning times in hopes that by pruning earlier we have an earlier budbreak which will lead to an earlier harvest. It has become obvious we have to think about fires in years to come and mitigate any possible smoke damage. Pruning earlier isn’t driven by the drought. He said earlier budbreak is a gamble when you have to consider the possibility of an early spring frost. The Home Ranch is more protected from frost damage when compared to East Side and Wisdom vineyards. The most we have lost is 15% of the crop down on the valley floor. In mitigating the loss you can choose to train suckers and make up for some of the loss. When you weigh the consequences between earlier harvest (frost threat) or later harvest (possible smoke damage) you can see we need to weigh the odds. You try to base your judgement on a whole year of weather and other circumstances.

Mitch continued: Right now we are in a situation where the weather is great and gives opportunity to get ahead of the game. Only thing that changed with hot and dry spell; 6 inches will germinate the grasses; no false budbreak; not too much has been affected. Still deep in winter. We’ll see the effects of lack of water in June/July. Perhaps we’ll have a larger spring rain; then the water table is re-established; irrigate more or less based on the amount of rainfall.

One thing we are seeing is saving us time: having to heal up as many wounds-no water transfer and the vines aren’t full of water-Eutypa spores-cuts are dry and they don’t have to come back and paint them over (think surgical glue); so the vineyard crew doesn’t have to go back over an entire vineyard vine by vine. The good weather has also allowed the crew to clean up brush as we go and chopping.

Update: This conversation took place on January 22-and a week later we are blessed with 2 inches of rain overnight with more promised as the current weather systems takes California by storm-literally from one end of the state to the other!

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Vino In My Dino

Follow the Vineyard: January

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