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Funny how my 3001st post would be bitching about the weather! Feels even more hopeless as the dry weeks tick by. The only bright spot is temps remain on the low side.

My 2020 Pinot is a wreck. Smells and tastes great but like I said in the weather thread I blew the water add. It's now 15.5% alcohol but the sugar is still 2.1. All activity in the barrel has stopped and I'm not going to try to restart a single barrel nor heat the wine up. Will consult with some of...

Pond walk today....not very good. This one I posted a few weeks ago.

.4" overnight. I woke to some serious showers and wind. Need to get out and check some ponds.

IMG-20210218-WA0002~2.jpg My guy is out mowing lawns today and comes across this fella. Quite sure it's not a barn owl as they are generally white or cream color. W walked close to it and couldn't fly well. There is a hollow tree nearby. I'm thinking it's a young one and the brightness of the dayli...

Casey is that in part do to how so many wineries dealt with smoke taint issues last year and saw how AV was able to deliver clean fruit in 2020? Dude, I'm thinking it's about my amazing skillz as a grape grower! Seriously people are looking ahead and have a need for product. I will admit that Naked...

Casey is that in part do to how so many wineries dealt with smoke taint issues last year and saw how AV was able to deliver clean fruit in 2020? Dude, I'm thinking it's about my amazing skillz as a grape grower! Seriously people are looking ahead and have a need for product. I will admit that Naked...

It's not even March and I think all of my fruit is spoken for.

IMG_20210215_163740912.jpg Late yesterday after a day of drizzle Zip and I went for a pre-dinner walk. The cover crop is about the only thing happy with the weather. It's certainly received enough to make it pretty strong. Zip is about 14" at the shoulder. I have other fields not as robust as ...

Watched Bottle Shock last night. Just like when a doctor watches a medical show, I saw numerous things wrong: metal end posts, drip irrigation, vines trained to VSP system (all vines were California T top back then) and other silly things. But hey its a freaking MOVIE right? Fun and delightful movie.

Thanks

Oh God I just looked up at my last post. I was going to say an underwhelming .70" storm, yet I used underwhelming in the previous post. I'm seriously...... beyond seriously concerned about the coming year. Talked to my brother.....works for Roederer, and when I stated talking drought, his face ...

I've got a two week trip coming up in May that leaves SF at 7:15 am. I'm too far from the airport to drive down that morning. Looking for hotel near airport that has shuttle and car parking. Thanks.

Screenshot_20210210-054904.png Here comes another underwhelming series of storms. Thursday will be the best day over the next week with .75" predicted. That just won't cut it. I talked to two other farmers in my area this week and each said they have a third of their normal water stored or eve...

Sign of the times. One of our 8 reservoirs. This one usually spills over by new years. Bumming in Mendo.

31 and thick fog this morning. We are too far ahead on our pruning. A layoff is coming. Going to cut the crew back to my resident folks only, about a 20%. Still plenty of work, just want to have steady work for my main crew.

Yikes! 7:30 pm and it's already 39 out there!

My "neighborhood" certainly bucks the trend. Driving down my street yesterday I saw plenty of standing water in vineyards down near Constellation's 14 acres and Kenefick and Frediani. Some also along Tubbs Lane. Microclimates are a strange thing. Standing water is not a great judge of rai...

Yeah Joe, this is a pretty scary pattern. I'm starting to think about different scenarios. It's possible we will use up the majority of our water for frost season and have to dry farm the rest of the way. I almost ordered 7200 green growing vines for delivery in May, but decided against it. We might...

My worst fears realized: the 'big one' wasn't big for us. The last little front has less than an inch in store so the 5 day stretch that had 5-6 inches will give us less than 3. It's really starting to feel like two consecutive years in the late 70's when we had two years in the teens (normal in our...

I measured 2.5” total accumulation Tue-Thur in our garden in Santa Rosa. Few small mudslides in the mountains but I haven’t heard of anything terrible. I'm sure someone can post a link to a piece of HWY 1 washed out in Big Sur area....ugly. In our area the next 3 day storm has been downgraded from ...

NickRut wrote: ↑January 26th, 2021, 5:13 pm Of course it’s better than 18. People have wine to sell!

BEST.......VINTAGE........EVER.

HWY 101 closed north of Ukiah this morning. We only had 1.70 inches the last 24 hours. Hoping for much more. I too very concerned about floods and debris flows from fire areas. The hits just keep coming for those poor folks.

37 and rain with wind. We've had .75" so far. Drove over 253 from Ukiah today around 2:00 and it was 34 and snowing. Expectations are dropping for me as I'm not happy with forecasting info. Hope I'm wrong.

I exaggerate, of course. Any, as in "any given". I wasn't being literal. But growers I work with and know personally in both Lodi and CC sell and have sold fruit to Napa wineries. Lodi Cabernet's are maybe $1000-1500/ton and Napa ones can hit $20K/ton or even more. It's inevitable. Or may...

Well, well, well the promise of the famed 'atmospheric river' or 'pineapple express' (whichever you like to call it) is setting up. Apparently the first part of it will be quite cold on Tuesday with snow predicted on the mountains around the Bay Area. Having only received 8" so far for the seas...

I’m new here to the WB message board and farthest thing from a vineyard manager/grower/wine maker (I can drink the hell out of the stuff though), but I wanted to tell you all that I love this thread (minus some of the bad rain news of course). I find it fascinating to hear the people that make the ...

As promised I pic of Zip the super dog standing in the cover crop.

Trying not to be a bummer with every post. Walked super dog today and went down some of the cover crop rows. It's really looking nice for this time of year. Peas are putting out trendrils and maybe 8" tall. You can see the beans down there but my guess is warmer soil temps will spur them on. We...

Would like to know the vineyard source

Starting to feel pretty screwed. No rain. None coming in the next 10 days.

OP needs to get his nomenclature right.
It's Screagle! Get yer shit together.

Coming from my simple background. Thinking about people buzzing about $2600/bottle of wine makes me I'll.

We got some good news today. Many of our field workers are going to get the Covid vaccine in the next few days. Certainly these folks aren't picking food crops but I think the concern is that they are some of the most at risk people in our community.

Merrill Lindquist wrote: ↑January 13th, 2021, 2:54 pm It is 69 degrees right now at my place. January?

NOT GOOD!

Almost crying tonight while the Pacific northwest gets pounded by more rain and even flood watches in some places. Meanwhile poor old Cali is begging for some of those problems.

My irrigation pond is empty. It's never been this dry in 20 years with this vineyard. I don't think the soil is moist past a few inches deep, so I'm a long way from being ready to start the growing season and a long way from having any runoff to collect. I've been saved by late rain before, but, ri...

Let me know if you've heard this before:

Good- we got .91" the last 48 hours.
Bad- 10 day dry spell on its way.

Lots of rain in Oregon. Over 6.5" in December and over 3.5" so far this month. Cold and soggy days pruning the vineyard. Welcome to the party Grant. Would love to have a steady stream of info from Oregon. Yep, you guys getting all the rain as this f_cking high pressure dome pushes these s...

Very steady rain now. Bummer is they say this storm might only produce .25".

I invite wine geeks to go back and read some of the past vintage threads. I cruised the 2013 thread and it was fun. Funny how few pics we posted back then. Also pulled at my heart strings to see some pics of my girl Peewee. God bless her. Good idea . Several months back I read 2011. Not fun for the...

Well we've crossed .80" with this storm. We've had some robust showers since morning. Sun is out now but sure wouldn't get far from cover quite yet. Hopefully more on the way.

LMR also has an estate vineyard in Anderson Valley.

IMG_20210103_094205083.jpg Super dog and I went for our three mile power walk today. Had my 80's cranking on the Pandora and a beautiful morning. IMG_20210103_094756262.jpg IMG_20210103_094945607_HDR.jpg Cover crop is slow but steady. The peas doing really well as are the grasses. The bell beans ar...

I invite wine geeks to go back and read some of the past vintage threads. I cruised the 2013 thread and it was fun. Funny how few pics we posted back then. Also pulled at my heart strings to see some pics of my girl Peewee. God bless her.

.16" the last 24 hours. Big f_cking woop. Guess we've got a couple of storms lining up out in the Pacific for the next few days.

Currently our property has about 30% capacity in our ponds. Really bad news.

I'm glad this came back. Missed it before. What a list of heavyweight guests!

I would just like to add, that I'm so blessed to have tried to create a wine brand. Had I not I would have always kicked myself for not at least trying. It has also made me a much better grape grower, as I understand both sides of the biz so much more. So often you hear of growers bitching about how...

I will close out the year with just a few rambling thoughts. I started this career as a 19 year old knucklehead kid who grew up in the country caring for animals and range land. Luckily I met John Scharffenberger and he changed my life. I learned about land management and how to keep a balance with ...

Happy new year Steve, hope you and your family are well! Cheers

Could we possibly get a new year's gift after a dry December?

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