Arlene

On the way down to see Arlene I had a check up at my doctors and passed.

Catarino will be here at a little after 7 tomorrow and we will plan the rest of the day. He will start in the last section of the 4th block which is mostly Zin and then he will move to some new sections which are more inconsistent...........Old Vines are in balance but young vines have to be thinned because they are like young people.........they want to produce...........

So I made an easy choice for me..........pick the ripe old vines and set the bins aside. Then go to a section which was planted a few years back.....and.... may be a little low at 24+ sugar and then we can move into a real young section, 3rd leaf.........We are getting real different readings on these new vines. The south section is very high, as much as 27 sugar and the north section right across a pathway......these same vines are at 23+ so we will mix the three sections, 2 south and one North and it will blend just fine into our old vine south section of Block 4. These wines can go into several of our all Estate Wines.

My biggest problem in the last two days you won't believe..........My ice maker is not working..........You can search my last problem with an ice maker in a GE frig. You can search on Google at the opening page. I have a whirlpool now and it has been great until now........I have no ice. Look, I'm too old to move the frig out to see if there was a problem in the back......seriously it is pushed back in a small cavity so I will have to ask for some help tomorrow. Catarino will arrange anything for me even after picking all these grapes tomorrow. He says I am his angel........Tomorrow is another day


Wednesday September 10, 2014

8:30 Pm: My Mother, Vivien is 92 years old and my sister Lynda is 70 years old. Lynda and I had problems even when she was there as a child. She got married to Richard when she was 19 years old. She had three daughters and some, most of the time we do not get along. She thinks she is always right. I talked to her today because my Mother needs someone to see her since I am in Harvest and 80 miles away. Lynda is closer and sees her more but she wants to dominate my Mother.............long story

We got up to 102 today and it may get hotter tomorrow and on Saturday and on Sunday. The sugar samples today were in line and we thought about taking a few days off, but we may need to work through Sunday..........................................

Thursday September 11, 2014

9:00 Am: Catarino and the crew are out picking Petite Sirah right now. We are hoping to finish all the Petite Sirah today and start on Block 4 tomorrow. We will finish Block 4 on Saturday. We need a break on Sunday and then we will pick Lagrein on Monday. If the temperatures stay over 100 in the next few days we could have almost everything ready next week. That includes Grenache, Carignan, Cabernet and Cabernet Franc. It will be fun........

Friday September 12, 2014

8:00 Pm: We had another day of harvesting. 3 Tons of Block 4. Harvest is tough, but fun, my body aches and I have only been walking around (Of course I am not used to moving around every few minutes..........I do move the forklift often............But I do agree, I took a few short naps after we had our Friday lunch with everyone and I had a beer. I'll be back, Giants baseball.........I may grab a beer.

9:30 Pm:  As you know I have other problems in my life, like I had a printer that did not work, recently, I had a faucet in my bathroom start getting loose. Yes I have problems, like all of us, but have you had as many ice maker problems. so of course Ice is the most important thing when we have had 102 on Wednesday, 103 yesterday and and 102 today. I need ice..........So I spent some time trying to figure my ice problem. I moved the frig out to see the back...........it was not easy and we had to yank it many times in a cramped place between my kitchen LCD........so be careful.......There was no problem I could see in the back but I did notice tubes going up to a place away from the ice maker. It went to a filter........which I do not need because being a winery we are on heavily already filtered water. I assume there was a setting which gave information to shut off the flow of water going to the ice maker...........SSOOOOO I removed the filter and expected to have problems......right into a delivery I heard from Catarino.....Dave......Go out and weight the grapes, I said to my self.... Two hours later I had ice!! I guess I did not need the filter to be in place.........Life, Harvest is fun...........Heaven would be boring.......

Saturday September 13, 2014

1:30 Pm: Catalina here. Dave is off crushing so he wanted me to give the results for sugar tests today. Cabernet 341 clone, 26.3.....Cabernet 337 clone, 25.8...Carignan new vines, 21.6...Merlot, 25.5.....Mourvedre, 23.2.....Zinfandel, Knoll, 25.6....Lagrein, Knoll, 27.2 and our Grenache came in at a whopping 29.4! Dave will be back later to tell us what to pick next week.

7:40 Pm: Thanks Catalina for doing a great job posting our surprising samples. Sugar samples are always a surprise even though this is my 36th year here at this vineyard. Catarino, not Catalina, brought in all these samples today and he Takes care of the vineyard...Catalina is a great hostess in our tasting room...she is always nice to everyone. I call them Cat one and Cat 2. Catarino has been here over 10 years and Catalina has been here three years or so.....I digress

So by my best guess........remember every year has been different......is that we will be harvest everything by two weeks. We have to wait on the cab. The Rhone varieties have to be harvested because the Grenache could be blended with the Carignan and maybe the Mourvedre to lower the sugar. We have more Grenache than the other two so that is good. On Monday we will harvest the rest of the Lagrein and Petite Sirah. They will both be high sugar. This is another adventure and things change sometimes every hour............tomorrow is another day