2015 West Coast Weather & Vintage Thread

Yes, I know it is New Year’s Eve on the West Coast, but it is 2015 somewhere. Someone had to start the talk of 2015 being, quite possibly, the vintage of the century.

So far, I like the way the water situation looks. As long as we don’t have a huge frost season, it might be a year off from fretting about water. Fingers crossed!

It’s nearly noon in Chukotka, but they need a little more climate change before planting vineyards.

I gather you get your water mainly from your own reservoirs?

-Al

20 degrees yesterday morning and 22 today. Chilly!

Yes. Our water for vines comes from 2 ponds. Mostly for frost depending on the year.

Winery operation water comes from stored spring water in a bank of tanks.

Cold here too, but not quite as cold as AV.

And a good new year to all the growers out there!

It was 25 degrees here at my small ranch this morning - 25! The warm up was slow, and it was back to cold a bit ago.

Folks send me good wishes in this weather - they are worried about the grapes! Grapes! They are crushed, pressed, and snugly in barrel for another 18 months. The vines are dormant, so they are not feeling the cold at all - in fact, they kind of like it.

The natural cover crop I allowed to come in is 6-10 inches high, with so many varieties of green growth that it amazes me. The mustard resows, so that sprinkling of yellow will be arriving shortly.

The jack rabbits are indeed enjoying crouching down and hiding/sleeping in the cover. The yard and vineyard are alive with birds- particularly robins. Must have been 30 of them out there enjoying themselves today. I put a large saucer of water out on the deck, as it is now dry here, and I could see they were looking in the planter saucers for a drink or a bath…they got quite accustomed to that in December.

Andrew, are your ponds off steam or on? Are they legal/permitted?

Of our 8 ponds 5 are legal and we’re working with state water resources to get the last three done, but its been a multi year process.

22 degrees here at the ranch at 8:00 this morning, with a very heavy coating of frost turning the bright green cover all sparkling white. The saucer of water I put out for the robins is frozen solid, of course.

One is sheet flow only, so no permit required. The second one is at the top of a tiny category 3 stream and the paperwork for that is in process. Yes, kind of a PIA, but regulators are starting to catch on that storage is the way to go and not put as many roadblocks to doing it legally.

Bumping the thread.

Ok, let’s see. It is still cold - freezing and below each night. I drove to Napa and back yesterday (the length of Napa Valley, essentially) and saw some standing water, still, bordering the Silverado Trail. There is not much pruning going on yet - at least not that is visible from the street. Many of our farmworkers spend a month or so in Mexico over Christmas. I am sure that as the month progresses, the pruning will commence big-time.

86 and partly cloudy today with a slight breeze. Going to have to take in lots of liquids today. Hope the pruning crew isn’t screwing anything up this week, because the boss is on vacation!

Headed home tomorrow after goofing off. Just wondering if drought is still the topic in the farming circles?

Not up here, but I have started filling tanks for winery operation in case we already got most of the rain we are going to get for the year.

Some rain on for late this week. Not sure how much or how widespread.

We have had a few very warm days - around 70 degrees pretty steadily in the afternoons, from Napa to Calistoga. Tuesday and today are days we can actually burn wood in our fireplaces - we had a string of 11 straight days of “illegal to burn” days.
Thursday is back to no burn. The issue is the particles from burning matter that get hung up in the air, due to the type of air that comes in from the ocean and just hangs around.

There is some pruning going on, but not full-scale. Some vineyards are just doing the first cut; some are going right down to the spurs now.

I decided to get some air and have been working in my herb garden. Italian parsley, oregano, thyme, and sage are all fully productive. Chives are hanging on. I’m cutting away dead stuff so that when the tarragon decides it is time to show itself, it will have room.

This lack of rain is stressing me out!

Took the dog out to tinkle this morning and a nice smell of rain in the air!

We have had a light rain here since 6 or 7:00 this morning. It certainly is not a downpour, but we will take anything we can get. It qualifies as a rainy day.

We got .28" overnight thru now. Looks like we may get another tenth or 2 on Sunday. Still need lots more to get to where we would like to be. Does not look like January will come in average. Though I don’t even know what that is any more, 8 of the last 9 Januarys have been Juneuary. I went to Sonoma county on Wednesday and it felt like a so cal winter the high was over 70*

Okay, starting to get annoyed that we haven’t had much rain in the past month. We’re going to do a roofing job on one of our guys houses this week to try to dare mother nature.

No rain in Paso in January.
Sucks.