Tuesday, March 30, 2010

It's flower time at Cerro Prieto


The mowing is done, weedeating is underway (with a large assist from machetes), and the vineyard is once again taking form as it usually does during the early spring. Clusters of California poppies, hillsides of pink, yellow, red, and white wild radishes, massive patches of lupine, a monster 8'X8' purple bush lupine, masses of yellow fireweed, dwarf blue lupine, wild purple vetch, standard blue lupine, a purple/brown/yellow wild sweet pea...the list goes on and on...all are now in their glory, and it is a fascinating time of year here in the vineyard. The weedeating and machetes are used to avoid herbicide sprays. A secondary benefit of not spraying is that we then can appreciate all the magnificent wildflowers mentioned above, plus another several dozen not mentioned.

To see it is to truly understand nature's wonder. Anyone who has visited Cerro Prieto during the spring time will attest to the sheer, overwhelming beauty of the vineyard and its surrounding hillsides. We have prevented any erosion in this, a 30 inch rain year, and we have continued the propagation of fields of magnificent, eye-hurting color...all of which would have been absent had we sprayed herbicide, primarily pre-emergents. Yes, weedeating is an added cost, but if one lives in the country, one should enjoy it to its fullest...and we do. Come see us and enjoy the color show, plus try some nationally recognized wines.

Bottling of '07s is now done, and we have laid the bottled wine down for a 3 month nap. There were no glitches, just premium wines making it into their bottles, where they now will take a brief rest. Quality of our Paso Bordo should match or exceed our 92 point 2006, and the Merlot is not a stand alone, but rather a blend of Merlot with a tiny bit of Syrah, and 12% superb Cabernet. It is difficult to compare our internationally acclaimed Gold Medal Merlot of 2006 with our '07 blend, but I assure you, it will not disappoint.

Next on the calendar is to finish weedeating, and then to control the ongoing gopherama that we continuously have. After that it will be time to evaluate all spur positions on each vine...yes, that is 180,000 spurs to look at...but well positioned spur positions now save a lot of time and heartache later. Also we will remove those spurs that have gotten leggy, again reducing our expected yield per vine. This time consuming task goes on for several months, as one might expect, but is time well spent. It is a time to check each plant, commune with it, and figure out if there are any special needs required. As for nutrients, that is taken care of once vines have leafed out fully, and are well on the way toward full leaf maturation.

There is one threat on the horizon: the Arctic Express is currently blowing through, and we are already leafed out in 90% of our Syrah, our highest bloc. It will stay 25 degrees warmer than our bottom valley vineyard, and hopefully will be spared any late hard frosts. The valley vineyard is still sleeping, with very little in the way of bud bulging, let alone, bud break. Somehow, someway it knows that to swell or break buds too early is to succumb to late spring frosts. Right now, most vineyard owners are "saying the beads" re: no hard hitting frost. If it should happen, well, that is farming, as the saying goes. We hope for the best, yet are prepared for the worst. The big rains of winter have recharged all vines, and we are on track for a great 2010.

As for fauna, the barn owls have already produced one clutch of young, and another is underway. The immense piles of gopher bones in the scat below barn owl boxes is impressive in number of dead skeletons, as well as the assortment of skeletons found. Gophers predominate, but ground squirrels as well as field mice and relatives are in abundance. The red tailed hawks are soaring, many already matched up, and frequently seen in the tallest oak trees overlooking the vineyard, with mouthfuls of weeds, leaves, sticks, and other nest building materials. Occasionally an existing nest gets rebuilt, but most years, large nests succumb to the 60-70 knot winds that blow in winter. Red shouldered hawks continue to do their aerial acrobatics, each male vying for a mate. Perrigrine falcons are likewise entertained, but they don't put on soaring shows like red tails and red shouldered hawks do. As for the songbirds (finches, juncos, nuthatches, titmouses, robins, stellars jays, et al), it is definitely nesting time, as can be noted by the tattered front and back doormats that have been shredded by one or all of the above culprits. Oh yes, the grey squirrels love to make their nests from our doormats also. All in all, it is an immensely busy time here, and sometimes I actually think the animals are working harder than we are. Oddly, the wild turkey, both Merriam and Rio Grande are not paired up yet, probably the result of a false summer the last two weeks, now followed by an Arctic air mass. Such is life at Cerro Prieto today, and we wish you could enjoy it all with us. A phone call or email usually works. We look forward to seeing you here to enjoy nature at her finest.

Saturday, March 13, 2010

Getting in gear at Cerro Prieto Vineyard & Cellars/ Going towards Green...again.


Well, no question we are underway for a new year because we are now officially pruned. To many, that is readily understandable; but to others just getting into wine (and vineyard) appreciation, here's something to chew on: on 20 acres of vines, we have 10 spur positions(one every 6 inches) on each 5 foot cordon (the horizontal portion of the vine). Figure 870 vines/acre (on a 5' X 10' vine spacing) and we have roughly 18,000 vines, which means with 10 spurs/vine there are 180,000 spur positions to prune each and every year. Wow! Prior to growing grapes I had never ever contemplated something as large as 180,000 anythings. Yet, on our small boutique vineyard, that's what we prune every cotton picking year...180,000 individual cuts with the pruning shears. Obviously, I don't do that myself, and in the last several years, have done virtually none due to back surgeries. But still, just thinking about opening and closing a pair of pruning shears 180,000 times... well, it is still an amazing number to try and get your head around.

Just imagine what vineyards of 200 acres are like...or like the Scheid Vineyard, some 50 miles north of us where there are miles and miles of vineyard, neatly butting up to both sides of the highway and extending west to the mountains and east to the foothills. They have dozens of square miles of vineyard, and literally hundreds of thousands of vines. Pruning for those folks must surely be akin to a really bad colonoscopy.

In any event, one must always start somewhere, and with pruned canes on the ground, there is a certain satisfaction once all is done. As of now we are using a flail mower to cut the winter growth of our anti-erosion clovers, broemes, vetch, fescue, rye, filaree, and 26 varieties of wildflowers. Additionally, adhering to a biodynamic philosophy of "going towards green" we are also chopping up 180,000 pruned canes that lay in amongst our grasses, clover, vetch, and flowers. A brief 10 years ago we used a hay rake behind our tractor to remove all cut canes, which we then moved, stacked, and burned. Extremely non-organic. Extremely wasteful and time consuming. By merely buying a good mulching flail mower, we eliminated fouling the air with smoke from 180,000 burning canes, and simultaneously eliminated several costly steps(hay raking and moving the massive amount of pruned vines to burn piles). The additional benefit comes with mulching the canes into biodegradeable size, which ultimately returns nitrogen to the soil, and also helps rebuild any topsoil lost during torrential rains. Going organic doesn't necessarily have to be expensive. Many times, "going towards green" can actually save both time and money, but the biggest winner, hands down, is the environment. Seeing that mass of grasses, flowers, vetch and unruly canes reduced to a fine mulch(we double cut to get the smallest particle size we can)...well, it is a very satisfying feeling to know we are not only saving our environment, but improving it as well.

Next on the agenda is to catch up on gophering, the prize winner for crummy, boring vineyard tasks. On the other hand, I have trapped muskrats, raccoons, rats, possums...to mention but a few...since I was a kid. So while gophering may not be intellectually challenging, there is a warm glow in my gut every time we pull up a trap with gopher in it. Additionally we have been simultaneously dropping our movable catch wires(4 per vine), which we will raise gradually as the shoots start to emerge from each spur position. "Basal plus two" is our pruning motto on established vines, but "basal plus one" is used for young one and two year old vines. Essentially that means that we will have 2 shoots coming from every spur position, with an extra basal bud hidden between the cordon and the base of the spur. This basal bud comes into play if we get hit with a late spring frost and we lose one, or occasionally two shoots to frost. The basal bud is, in effect, our insurance bud. The final job for early spring is to spray, weed eat, hoe, and machete our hillside anti-erosion ground cover, which includes mustard galore, vetch, wild radish in white, pink, yellow and red hues, California poppies, lupine, and not to be forgotten, bull thistle. We do not use pre-emergent sprays which would keep all the above from germinating, but simultaneously, that poison stays in the ground(and hence ground water) for several years. Ecologically, pre-emergents are terrible. Economically, they are a huge benefit. We come down on the side of the environment, and forego the pre-emergents, instead using systemic spray (Roundup, Glyfos), which is taken up by the plant and not the soil. We could have used the systemic spray early on when plants were just germinating, but chose instead to wait til all had gotten a good root base which holds the steeply inclined soil in place. This requires a lot of extra work as wild radish, bull thistle, and vetch are huge and tough to get rid of. But merely by delaying the spray we again are being environmentally conscientious, choosing to prevent erosion rather than to spray tiny plants which later hold soil in place. Needless to say, this spray is on hillsides that surround different blocs thruout our vineyard, and the systemic sprays on hillsides don't affect the vineyard within.

Every vine...really...each and every vine is then inspected by me to be certain there are no apparent diseases, there has been no vine loss due to gophers, and finally to insure all newly trained vines are not carrying too many spur positions, nor crowding adjacent spurs. Any spur that impinges on another is perfunctorily removed, which then decreases the crop produced by that vine by 10%. That in and of itself is one of the hardest things to do...prune a well positioned spur that is too close to another. But in the long run, if left alone, that spur would produce two shoots, each with a grape cluster, and each would be crowding the cluster from an adjacent shoot. This is one of those situations where it is way better to fix a bad spur position earlier rather than later.

Lastly, once all mowing is done, all hillside vegetation is cut or chopped, we move on to the next "must do" job, and that is to cut and mulch all grassland that is surrounding our vineyard, but not technically "adjacent to" the vineyard. We have a number of valleys and draws, steep slopes and rocky outcroppings that are on the remaining part of our 73 acres. We have over 5000 Live Oak trees (plus some Box Elderberry & Valley oaks), but there is also some 15 acres of steep hillside and low valley weeds. Our most prominent is Fireweed, appropriately named because of its oily content...which burns like a match if a fire were to befall us. Without cutting all these weeds we would be a perfect setup for a late summer or early fall fire. Access to our mountainsides, deep valleys, and hillsides is basically not possible for any type of firefighting equipment that rolls on wheels. Any fire here would roar up our steep draws and would be a nightmare to put out. Hence, each and every year we dutifully mow everything we can and weedeat the rest. Any idea of cost to weedeat anything not mowed on Cerro Prieto? Well, last year was two guys for 22 days, at a cost of $5200. Not truly a vineyard expense, but nonetheless an expense we have to swallow, or lead the life of a guy praying for the lottery winner...except in this case we would be praying we didn't have a fire. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure...except in this case it is a $5200 cure.

That's it for this rather lengthy blog, but it pretty well gives one an idea of what is going on in the vineyard at season's onset.

Just a note on the upcoming Zinfandel fest, March 19-21. We had hoped to be in our new tasting room at the Meritage Lounge on the south side of Paso's downtown park. We are still in process at the moment, so any wine club members who wish to pick up their orders... as well as other wine fans who wish to visit and try our 92 point Paso Bordo(Cab/Syrah), come see us at the vineyard this coming weekend, and wine/cheese/food pair with us, while enjoying African art(watercolors), hides, mounts, carvings, rugs...to mention but a few. We hope to see you here.

Friday, March 5, 2010

Cerro Prieto: Out goes 2009, in comes 2010/ Ecologic Redux


Yeah, yeah, I know the year changed over some seven plus weeks ago, and we finally put 2009 to bed well before year's end. This spectacular sunset over the vineyard attests to that, but 2010 really never starts for us until a)bottling is done, and b) until pruning starts. Heck, looking around, it looks like we have been asleep at the switch, or lazy even, in that we have weeds everywhere except at the base of vines, which we sprayed with a systemic contactant, Roundup. No pre-emergent herbicide, which stays in the soil and undoubtedly ends up in our water supply, is used here. Result? Well, it looks as if the vineyard is a bit unkempt, a bit shaggy, as it were. Yet in spite of the weeds we know for certain that we still have our topsoil, which would be in the Salinas River at present, were it not for foregoing early pre-emergent herbicides in late December.

So, before the year started we knew we would once again tolerate more weeds, but would also not contribute to polluting our ground water with pre-emergents. We could have sprayed Roundup, (which is absorbed by the weeds, and then kills them systemically), but had we done that early on, el Nino rains would have ruined a substantial amount of our severely steep hillside rows, washing out stretches of 50 to 100 feet or more, per row. I already know the cost of rebuilding a 50 ft. section of eroded row, and at $1000/ 50 feet of destroyed row space, one can burn $10,000 in quick order. Hence the last thing we did before shutting down in 2009 and truly calling it a year, was to seed and place hay over the obvious erosion prone rows, and pray for light, gentle, farmer's rain. For flatlanders, that means steeply inclined hillsides/mountainsides will wash away seeds, even with overlying hay, if we get early gullywashers instead of nice, gentle farmer rains. The farmer rains prevailed, so our susceptible steep sidehills were safe. Interesting, isn't it, how the last thing of one year, and the first thing of the next, both involve ecologic issues: conserving soil and not polluting our groundwater. Those of you who follow my vineyard/wine blog will recognize parts of previous blogs on Cerro Prieto and "going green", or rather, doing our best to see to it that our land, our water, is in better shape when we leave it, than when we first arrived. Also as noted above, there are serious cost concerns, and no one will doubt that failing to protect for erosion can eat up any and all profits a vineyard might generate.

Ecologic considerations aside, we are late bottling(should have been in January), and most other vineyards have already been pruned. The bottling was unavoidable due to yet another two back surgeries(this one will work), and as for pruning, we always are the last to prune, due to the susceptibility of our valley vineyard to freeze late into the spring. Late May the valley vineyard and our Pinot and Sauvignon Blanc can get hit with a late frost, so we have found by experimentation that delayed pruning pushes back our bud break date, and sometimes, a week, maybe even a few days delay can make the difference between frozen buds and living ones. As for bottling, it is scheduled for March 23rd, and I cannot wait.

The 2007 Paso Bordo has a tremendous bouquet, a touch more oak than 2006(altho both were on 1/3 new French oak 27 months), and flavors that bend the mind...not to mention treat the palate. 2007 Cerro Prieto Merlot is different from our 2006 which won two International Gold Medals, but that is because of blending in just a dash of Cab(12%) and a hint of Syrah(6%). I cannot compare the two years of Merlot, because they are of different makeups. What I can say is, that the Merlot which quickly sold out early last year is even better this year. Standing alone the Merlot was superb. With a small addition of our Cab and Syrah, it is amazing how many more wonderful flavors are detected by the palate. Bottling in late March means that we won't be able to sell either wine until June, so our fans are just going to have to settle for our 92 point Paso Bordo, which hopefully will last until June. As we get closer to June, we will probably have to limit the number of '06 bottles we can sell to our fans and wine club members, but that is a problem for another day. Barrel tasting our '07s has really made me wish we had gotten our bottling done, but as the Gaelic saying goes, "Wyrd bio ful aeread"...you can't change fate.
As of this morning we are officially starting to prune, but this is really just the vines that got shellacked last year in the May 21st heatspike which hit 117 degrees...and set roughly an acre of grafts and new vines back about 6 months. Unfortunately, those vines are scattered thruout our valley vineyard, altho I have no idea...zippo...as to why we had skip areas of vine "cookage", when the whole dang "cold" valley was 117. Ah, well, such are the vagaries of farming...grape farming.