2019 West Coast Weather 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 in less than a week, and like my annual hunting trip it’s time to turn off the switch. Come late March until the end of October it’s an intense seven day a week job full of challenges. I always appreciate the feedback I receive both on the board and in PM’s. Good luck to all of us!!

Happy New Year from Calistoga!

We had a windstorm between 7-9:00 yesterday morning, and it was a big one. Lots of small branches down - the ones that did not go down a year ago in the Tubbs Fire. Those high winds also took every last leaf from my vines - they are now totally bare. I love the look of each stage the vines go through. This time of year they are all brown but against a backdrop of eye-shocking green throughout the vineyard and anywhere surrounding the vineyard. Rain and then sun, repeat/repeat, and this is what you get.

This morning at 7:00 it was 28 degrees on my deck at the house. By 8:00 it had dropped to 25. Now, at 12:15, that same location is reading 50. The sun is bright, the skies are clear, and with a sweater or light jacket you can sit out, overlooking the vineyard, and be quite comfortable.

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.

(Bump for bookmark.)

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 to do more than 12-15 vines/hour as there is such biomass to deal with.

The space between the rows looks pretty wide in that vineyard, Casey. Is that just the perspective of the shot, or related to the dry farming in some way?

Another couple of questions on that vineyard: do you know who planted it? Who is getting the fruit now?

Damn that is quite a bit of growth on the ground.

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 years this fruit has done just about everything. I remember sugar testing these blocks for Scharffenberger in the early and mid 80’s for sparkling. The guys at Navarro used it for both Rose’ and grape juice. Wells Guthrie bought it for a few years and was the foundation for his Tous Ensemble. Now it gets split up between a few people.

Great pictures Casey. I think the biomass picture shows how much material is cut away from the plant in cane pruning. It can be very slow going with older plants.

It is pouring out. Yesterday we had periods of moderate to heavy rain, but today this is just heavy rain. The gravel driveway has a number of puddles, but the cover crop in the vineyard appears to making good use of excess water out there. I saw an SUV come from down the street where it frequently floods from the Kenefick side of the street over to the Frediani side of the street (North to South). The water was splashing up pretty heavily, so I am assuming it is flooding over our narrow street down that way.

The 3 cats have all checked - multiple times - the 4 doors of entry to my house. I guess they keep hoping that it is only raining outside one or two of the doors. I have a large wraparound porch with plenty of comfy furniture out there, and sometimes they will take advantage of that, just to be “out.” Other than that, it’s just a good day for us all to be inside. They will sleep and I will gets some chores done.

That intense rain never let up all day and evening. I saw few cars moving around. I am sure this will make non-CA people laugh, as we treat heavy rain like they do snow.

Today it is cloudy and damp but so far no precipitation. This is the time of year for it, and as a wine grower, you have to love it. But on a personal level? Yuck.

With all the rain, is California above average so far this year in rainfall?

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!:sunglasses:
IMG_20190109_094442414_HDR.jpg

Pouring, pouring all day long. Never lets up.

A lovely ride from Calistoga to Napa, then to Angwin, then back to Calistoga showed lots of water standing in vineyards, water streaming down the bike lane along Silverado Trail (and of course, those rocks that come down from the hills into the bike lane). But it is filling up the coffers, soaking the land, greening up normally brown areas without irrigation. So I’ll settle.

My subsurface drainage (at about 42" deep) is running pretty well, and the irrigation pond is filling. I think it was March before I hit this point last year, and I’m breathing easier about water this year.

Good to read that the rain is falling on the CA coast in advance on the 2019 growing season. Hope 2019 turns out to be a great year for all grape growers and wine makers. [cheers.gif]

Today is a much needed super-sunny day. 59 degrees at 2:00 on my shaded deck at the house. I sat out, overlooking the vineyards and Diamond Mountain, with the cover crop up now about 2 to 2-1/2 feet tall! It does look to me as if more rain is on the way, as the cloud formations over Diamond Mountain appear to be changing from white to grey. Oh well, we had one day!

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

https://www.windy.com/ is a useful interactive site that shows animated weather for a 10-day stretch. You can click on the “rain and thunder” icon on the right to make that the active field, then click the red arrow at the bottom left to start the animation. You can use the cursor to grab the view and scroll it to your area. I visit this site a lot and it’s pretty accurate.

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!
IMG_20190115_081332909.jpg