Waiting for the perfect harvest

We are just about at berry swell, which is the stage before veraison (berry ripening/color change). The vines have been shoot-thinned and suckered, tucked into the catch wires, tucked into catch wires again and again, leaf pulled, lateral shoots pulled, and clusters pulled apart to hang free. Now we are beginning to put bird netting around the grapes to protect them from wildlife along with hail damage. It has been a relatively wet season so far compared to the past two years, but our vines are looking healthy and the fruit impeccable. We planted an additional acre mixed with Petit Verdot, Merlot, and Chardonnay this season, so the young vines are benefiting from the rain.

We also have a newer acre of Cabernet Franc that is coming online and producing its first crop this season. It takes 2 to 3 years for vines to become established before we get a small crop from them. But even before that, we spent years testing and amending the site soil, growing cover crops to prepare the site for planting, ripping the rows, and removing as much rock as we could, all while deciding what varietal, clone, and rootstock to plant. The season before planting, we install the trellis, and right before planting, we pre-dig the holes to make planting day easier.

To say this has been a long time coming would be an understatement!