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Yes sir our little town. Great view from IL Mare one night.

Ok this is for the hardcore geeks. One vine has been prepruned by the ladies crew the other has not had the canes removed. Hope you see the difference of how easy it is to prune when the heavy lifting is done.

There are many areas of inland Mendocino county that are edgy. Calpella and Redwood Valley have some great old vine vineyards, but right next door could be a single wide mobile home with junked cars all around. Potter Valley has some great sights but there are both legal and covert pot gardens every...

No real damage to the road up to my house, just some minor stuff I can fix with pick and shovel today. 5:00 am and pouring now. Our house sitter burned a lot of wood in our absence, which is great that he didn't just run the furnace and burn propane. I too see the 10 day predicted dry spell ahead. L...

As expected my guys sent me pics and videos of our ponds going over their spillways. After 12 days of goofing off I guess it's time to come home!

Just texted my head guy at work. All pretty smooth. Getting some pruning done, fixed a bad mower etc. Thinks all 8 ponds will be full by the weekend. Housesitter reports huge wind gusts. Well, back to my beer!

I see another big series of storms is getting ready for attack on Cali and the West coast. Y'all hang on!

As I check my weather station from sunny Mexico, I see we just broke 15 inches for the season which runs from July to June. Our rainy months are December through March. I'd say we're tracking normal at this point? Now back to my beverage!

Yes the rows are wide....12 by 8 planting which was the norm back then. If it weren't cane pruned it would be a candidate for a quad system for sure. I'm not exactly sure who planted it but what luck that's it's on St George and not AXR-1. We have two different fields of this stuff and over the year...

Pruned for a while with the crew today. They are in the 1973 Beaujolais clone of Pinot Noir. Amazing vines they are. Trunks as big as my leg. Tons of vigor (St George rootstock) and they are dry farmed as well. IMG_20190104_125432953_HDR.jpg IMG_20190104_125537549_HDR.jpg This is serious work. Hard ...

Safety meeting today. Happy to say we have 4 new crew members. Looks like we might be entering a wet spell. Maybe even 3-4 inches over 5 days? Fingers crossed. Y'all have fun while I'm sipping tequila and getting some sun! Wil try not to post any pics of dead animals or fish to offend Merrill.

How do you not admire and respect this man. He has left his mark on this earth on numerous fronts. Happy to call him my friend.

Kris Patten wrote: ↑
January 1st, 2019, 6:40 pm
Still my all time favorite thread, and still makes me laugh. This should be a sticky and link emailed to anyone who signs up for WB.

Same here LOVED this thread

As I sit here on January 1st (with NO hangover I'm proud to report) I wonder what the next vintage will bring. Will we get enough rainfall? Will the grape market soften after a big crop and slowing sales? What about labor? It won't be boring that much I know. Lynne and I head off for warmer climes i...

Pruning away with men and women. My equipment operators will start chopping brush and weed spraying while the weather dries out. I've been doing some exploration pruning in young vines deciding what the plan will be and who will prune the younger areas. Getting ready for 12 days on the beach where I...

Add another inch to the season rainfall.

Spent the week fixing domestic water issues and propane leaks in our worker houses. Ah the many hats a farmer must wear. Boosted my crew with some new young guys and what a delight that is.

The fun part of farming. Laying out and marking a replanted field. Look closely and you'll see the pegs in the ground. Likely to be replanted to Chardonnay, but still deciding.

Just a shade under 2" of rain over the weekend. We'll take it!

10 inches at the highest mark.

Pruned in the Gruner Veltliner field today solo. Got a few rows done during the warm part of the day. Man it was nice out there. Gonna have fruit in that field for '19!

Navarro has a new reserve bottling called Deep End Blend (a program they've used for Pinot Noir) that has a percentage of fruit from the property I manage. Release date is April. Love Navarro, one of the most underrated white wine producers around. The Guwerzt is really nice as well. Great QPRs. I'...

Don't hate me because in ITB. Between contract obligations and gifts from customers I probably get 6-10 cases annually. Maybe more. I usually write in my contacts with smaller producers that the grower will receive one case of finished wine per year. 17 customers do the math. Customers like KJ and o...

Adapt or perish. Here we are in the new era of farming. After harvest, pruning is the most time consuming and expensive task. Historically we've used the women's crew for every task except pruning. The ladies all carry pruning shears but usually need them for cutting live shoots while disbudding and...

Navarro has a new reserve bottling called Deep End Blend (a program they've used for Pinot Noir) that has a percentage of fruit from the property I manage. Release date is April.

Sorry to be so late to the party. I've been nursing a head cold the last couple of days and haven't got too far from the couch. Thus a little more exploration of the WB site. That's the rib eye end of the backstrap from my South Dakota mule deer.

Big, big big south winds all night but no rain with it. Still blowing hard out there now. Looks to me like this storm is getting torn apart. When I went to bed last night I was expecting to wake up to moderate rain. Go figure.

Interesting enough I guess. I've been around enough blind tastings with very talented winemakers many times over the years. That tasting of the Pinots seemed pretty business as usual.

Dan Fitzgerald

I stand by this for NAPA VALLEY ULTRA-PREMIUM FRUIT. It does not need to go very far to a winery that will turn the fruit into NAPA VALLEY ULTRA-PREMIUM WINE. Stating an irrelevant point twice really doesn't make the point any better. We know your situation in NAPA VALLEY quite well. Look at the OP...

I am going to take a stab at a micro-picture of premium Napa Valley fruit. tops 45 minutes to a winery that makes premium wine from premium fruit. I stand by this for NAPA VALLEY ULTRA-PREMIUM FRUIT. It does not need to go very far to a winery that will turn the fruit into NAPA VALLEY ULTRA-PREMIUM...

Getting some serious pre-storm south winds out there now. My guess is 20-30 mph. Hoping tonight brings some measurable rainfall. Customer checks starting to roll in. Not too early to contact customers with expiring contracts to see where we stand. I may have picked up two new guys who want to prune.

Farthest- Mendocino to Arizona. We put a small amount of SO2 in each macro bin and then shipped the fruit in a refrigerator truck.

Most common within California I'd say many folks try not to ship more than two hours truck time. Both for cost and fruit freshness.

Here's a shot of the early planted. The ribbons from the seed drill are almost gone.

IMG_20181126_084347248.jpg Went for a pretty good walk yesterday. This pic is some of the last fields we drilled cover crop in and you can see it's already coming. My crew has started pruning. Lots of acres to do. I also found a few big piles of bear scat near the Gewurtz field that we left some fr...

Ok last non-farming pic for the year. Aged South Dakota backstrap from my recent trip. We'll have leftover turkey tonight, but venison rib eye tomorrow!

48 hour total up to the minute is just shy of 2" Heavenly!

.15 but promises of better and bigger things with the next storm. Happy Thanksgiving to the few loyalist who follow this thread. The farming cycle never ends. Already worrying about having enough people to prune this winter. Thankful to have a job with such opportunities to work with other crazy, pa...

Starting to feel some south winds tonight. Hoping for significant rainfall the next few days.

Working on water reporting compliance issues today. Installed staff gauges in a couple of our ponds Trying to make the water cops happy.

Heckofa whitetail there. All of our deer were super fat and in prime shape. Backstraps the Saturday after Thanksgiving!

Hey Steve. Hope your doing well. South Dakota. A long way to go but a heckofa sportsman's state. True wild pheasants and very successful even without a dog. 4 of us shot a total of 23 birds in 3 days just pushing wind breaks. Both mule deer and whitetail are there too. Didn't shoot any prairie dogs ...

Back from a kick ass hunting/road trip. Didn't seem to miss much, just cold and droughty. Oh and Cali on fire again.

I've seen their booze prices creep up quite a bit in the last year.

FWIW 2011 was.my last last year at Eaglepoint.

29 degrees at my vineyard weather station here at daybreak. To Stewart's point about crop level and wine quality. Yes, you can have your cake and eat it too......within reason. A larger crop always means longer hang time and slower ripening. That bodes well if you have a heat spike during harvest (w...

Peas and beans coming up despite no rain. Warm soil temps and some subsurface moisture doing the job.

Paul, Happy to hear you are in the barn as they say. As I say 'every harvest is different, and none of them are easy!' It will be SO interesting to see how the wines from this vintage turn out. I've heard of some very large crops this year. I'm very proud of my crews of how well they followed the pl...

Hey Ken, doing the quick math.....most of the lots at Harrington are one ton/50 cases? If so that's a heckofalot of work.

Some of the cover crop we planted early on is already started.

As my crew begins to wash up and put things away, as well as my two tractor operators finish drilling cover crop, I'll summarize 2018. I've been farming this project since 2010 and I can easily say this might be the closest thing to a perfect vintage as I've seen. Although we didn't have a great dea...

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