Here in Southwest Humboldt County, the plums are blooming. Forecast for today is 68f and 73f for tomorrow. Bud break must be getting close somewhere.
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Visited our syrah vineyard on Atlas Peak last weekend. There was weeping but we are still a few weeks off for budbreak (thankfully).
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Chardonnay budbreak Monday on Sonoma Mountain, Gap side. Pinot still a week or more away.
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Off to the races… Please post your budbreak as you see it. Still rainy and upper 40’s here in Southern Humboldt.
Any word of frost damage?
Good news - never got as cold as they forecast for us. It was a chilly 37 degrees at the house. Up valley some fans were going, but not hearing much about damage yet,
COME ON boys and girls! How about a little update…maybe even a photo or two? Geeze!
Here’s a photo of a Serine vine from mid-April at Randall Grahm’s Popelouchum Vineyard near San Juan Bautista.
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Maybe a week or so from bloom here in Saint Helena for our young Cab Franc vines (picture below).
Older Cab Sauv block (1991) about a week after that maybe.
A little rain yesterday, hopefully that is behind us.
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Getting hot in Napa…possible record breaking triple digit temps this weekend.
CS in St Helena
CS in Deer Park/Crystal Springs
Kind of the last thing anyone needs during bloom is triple digit temps.
I’ve just returned to AZ after a week long visit to Mendo county. I did lots of driving around the inland area…I never made it to Anderson Valley. I pretty much saw what I expected. Many vineyards are abandoned, many look like their being farmed minimally, and only about a third of them looked like they were being farmed “properly”.
Yeah, sad times. There’s some amazing fruit out there being properly farmed with no buyers lined up. A lot of good small wineries closing up shop, while most are cutting back on how much fruit they can buy as they tread water hoping things turn around. Growers are just flat-out screwed.
As this tread is basically on life support I may as well post this. I spoke with a grower rep for a large winery the other day. He said some growers are seeking to extend current contracts in exchange for big price reductions. I know a grower in AV that took a 40% haircut on Pinot for sparkling just to keep the relationship. The grower rep guy said its also been a very tough year for powdery mildew, probably with folks trying to save money on treatments.
Topped for a weather/growing update. Yea, the market is bad, but…
It’s been one of the coolest summers on record in the Bay Area. Here in Sonoma County it feels like we’ve barely crested 80 in weeks. I was up at some Lake County vineyards in mid-June and it was 95 degrees (as per usual), but since then even they’ve been having a cooler time of things.
Veraison started in Carneros Pinot around the beginning of this week but it’s moving slowly.
Powdery mildew pressure is high everywhere - in part a product of the fact that some areas that should be nice and hot by now just aren’t, and the cool weather and strong marine layer incursions have kept fungal pressures high. People seem to be mostly on top of it, but I think that the fact that a significant proportion of vineyards are not being actively farmed this year is contributing to heavier PM pressures too - lots of unmanaged canopies dotted around. Crop loads are also heavy with excellent fruit set leading to lots of tight clusters. Not a good year to have a nice big heavy crop, really, given that planned production volumes are down for many programs at many wineries.
Having said all that, as long as people are on top of the fungal pressure, I’m seeing a lot of optimism about quality, given the very steady, warm but not scorching weather that we’ve had across most of the north bay for all of June and July.
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Thanks Ben, so nice to hear some blow by blow of the season. This is a rough year to be cutting back on spray programs with all the disease pressure. A big crop is far from a blessing this year. Sometimes a farmer just can’t win.
A week of hot but not scorching weather (highs in the high 80s and low 90s across much of Sonoma Pinot-land) has definitely helped move things along, but after this weekend we’re going back down into the 70s and low 80s. Oooh it’s been a lovely summer.
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^^ For the grapes/vines? For the people? Both?