Camalie Vineyards Grower's Blog

By Mark Holler

11/2/11 Picked 2.12 tons from the upper part of C5 and C7 for Aonair.

11/1/11 Final pick scheduled for tomorrow for Grant Long. Very windy tonight. There may not be any grapes on the vines by the time we wake up.

10/31/11 Michael Shantz picked 142 lbs of grapes.  Pretty slim pickings and quite a bit of botrytis, yellow jacket, and bird damage.  The stem/berry ratio is pretty high.  He gave the must 70-80 ppm bisulfite.  SG of the juice in the must is 1.096 or 23.3 brix. 

10/25/11 Picking at Konrad Vineyards with Mr. J.. He is "dog tired" as I am writing this.

Got a juice panel back from Scott and Dan for the grapes they crushed from the lower half of block C4 which has about half old vines. Here is the data. The sugar level is 1.2 Brix higher than we measured in the field two days before. It looks like most folks are getting over a 1 Brix rise in the tank which we can really use.

Also got a call from Marketta looking for more grapes during which she revealed that her brix came in at 21.8 only two tenths ahead of my measurement on the 15th.

10/24/11 We harvested 0.311 tons from block C4 for Scott and Dan this morning. Botrytis was modest with about 10% of the fruit affected.

10/23/11 We harvested 1.365 tons from .85 acres of block C8 for R&W Vineyards. This corresponds to a yield of 1.6 tons/acre. Specs from winemaker William Wood taken at the tank were Brix 22.0, TA 5.4 mg/l, pH 3.79, YAN 75 mg/l.

Grapes leave site in all sorts of different containers and vehicles. Below are R&L Buckets. Red vine - why?

10/22/11 We harvested .891 tons from C10 for Marketta and 1.12 tons from Block C1 and the upper half of C4 for Justin Loverme.

Block C10 shown below.

We found some botrytis at Camalie but much less than in K5 at Konrad Vineyards. I tried tasting the botrytised fruit to see if I could get a sense for what flavors it might contribute to a wine and was surprised to find that the flavor is not very distinctive. The grapes were softer and the pulp very slippery but, there was no moldy flavor in my opinion. The botrytis infectedgrapes tend to be shriveled. The botrytis dehydrates the grapes. It is known as the "noble rot" and is used to concentrate sugars in producing sauterne wines in France. It occurred to me that the botrytis might actually be the solution to the other big problem we are having this year, low sugars. Why not let the botrytis run free, elevate the sugars and then make wine. It wouldn't be your typical Cabernet Sauvignon but, it might be good. I don't see a lot of other paths to something good from this season. I'm looking for inspiration to make wine this year. This might be it.

10/21/11 We harvested 1.8 tons from the lower part of Camalie Block 3 today for Sean McBride. The yield was approximately 1.8 tons/acre.

Here is the latest schedule.:

10/20/11 am

BOTRYTIS FLARES!

What a difference a day makes. I went out this morning after a very cool damp evening and was able to find bunches looking like the picture below in most blocks. The upper blocks with better air flow have less but, you can find bunches like this in all blocks if you look close. In the harder hit blocks you can find a bunch like this on every other vine. Technical Reference on Botrytis.

In this photo below you can additionally see the heavy dew that has been setting on the fruit the last couple evenings. The fog did not clear until 11:00am the last two days.

10/19/11 Marketta Formeaux visited the vineyard and tasted her fruit yesterday afternoon. .

We observed no botrytis and not advance in the green mold at Camalie. Below you can see a bunch from Konrad Vineyards with a little botrytis on two berries right in the middle of the image. It is the fuzzy grey halo on the grape in the middle. This is the first time I have seen botrytis on undamaged fruit.

At camalie two samples taken in the formal way advanced by 0.1 Brix over the 4 days. I will do another formal sampling on Saturday morning and inspect for botrytis at the same time. A very tentative conclusion which may be drawn from this is that the Brix advance is very slow, probably less than 0.2 Brix per week which could easily be just dehydration. The soft state of the fruit and its very loose attachment to the raichi at this point is further evidence that most of the ripening metabolism of the grapes has shut down. I observed some lignified bunch stems, evidence of metabolism shutting down. Based on this limited and tentative data one could estimate that even if the grapes are left to hang for another two weeks the sugar levels aren't going to advance by more than a half point. The fruit softening will advance as well the botrytis and green mold. Green flavors may drop slightly in bunches which haven't lignified but, I have no sense for how probable or significant this would be.

At the risk of overanalyzing the situation here is how I see the harvest date decision making in graphical form. With time we will get a little Brix improvement from dehydration and some metabolism. We might get some reduction in green flavors or not at the risk that botrytis/mold will bloom and compromise the fruit. The decision is different for each winemaker depending on how he/she values these three factors.

Personnally I plan to take the middle of the road. Watch closely for more botrytis, See where the Brix are on Saturday and harvest sometime next week no matter what happens. Keep in mind that Harvest will take 5-6 days so if you wait to the last minute to schedule you may have to endure another 6 days of waiting worst case. Don't forget you need to supply boxes for your harvest.

10/15/11 Brix Samples taken. Sampled grapes from 1:30-4:00pm, a little later in the day than usual. The best news is that I saw negligible signs of botrytis or green mold in the vineyard. The spray and the leafing program appears to be working well.

* The Merlot is not included in the Averages above.

To interpret the Brix above you have to take into account what the weather has been doing over the last 13 days since the previous Brix Reading. The plot below shows the rain and sun we have had over this period. The Navy Blue curve is the cumulative rain and the orange curve is the intensity of the sunshine. A nice cosine shaped hump in the orange curve is a sunny day. A jagged bump is a cloundy day with intermittent sunshine. The red curve is the temperature. We have been on a roller coaster ride during this period with only 6 days of full sunshine out of the 13. We have had two days of rain and a night when 70% of the rain fell. The brix advanced by 0.75 over this period which translates to about 0.37 Brix/week. This is not bad but, not good either considering the rain and the relatively low temperatures during the first half of this period. Without the rain the Brix would have increased by about 1.0 Brix/week. The average Brix is now 21.3 with one block up at 22.4Brix.

The weather forcast calls for 10 days of sun and warm temperatures over the next 11 days which should advance the sugars at least one Brix and possibly 1.5. This would get us to 22. 3 to 22.8 +/- 1 Brix. Most of the vines are still active but there are maybe 20% of the vines showing significant sinescence. A similar proportion of the fruit is softening. Flavors have advanced significantly with some dimpled fruit with very nice jammy flavors in the upper blocks. Sun exposed fruit on the south side of the vines is probably a good 1 point ahead of the North side fruit.

Starting to see some dimpling on bunches like those below, in this case on the sunny side of vines in Camalie Block 3 the flavors are great, "jammy". This is less than a 5% phenomenon yet but, is increasing. It says to me that if we can get the fruit sufficiently ripe the wines will be excellent.

Some very ripe Muscat Alexander Fruit at Camalie.

10/12/11 Wednesday. Harvested the Merlot this morning, 0.726 tons from 166 vines which translates to 8.74 lbs/vine or 4.22 tons/acre. This block has always yielded well. Last year it yielded .643 tons when we picked it 3 days earlier than this year. Don't know the Brix yet.

Mold was negligible but could be seen infrequently around the split in a grape swollen to splitting. I saw two grapes like this in the process of picking two lugs of grapes. The first line of defense of the grapes against mold is their skin. The Merlot was not sprayed for mold or botrytis because we knew we would be harvesting it just a day after the spraying. No signs of mold or Botrytis in the cab in a casual walk down a couple rows.

We did get another 0.6" of rain on Monday but, it was clear enough to spray on Tuesday 10/11.

10/8/11 See my blog entry for Konrad Vineyards . It describes details of the spraying, leafing and weather forecast as well as a few more Brix numbers.

10/5/11 Two days of rain dropped 4.2" of rain on the vineyards as you can see from the graph below. This is not good. Within a few days we will know if mold or botrytis are going to be significant as a result of the rain. The fruit is cabernet sauvignon known for its rain tolerance and the canopies are relatively open thanks to extra leafing done to expose more fruit to sun for faster ripening. Another positive aspect of our situation is that the weather report shows 12 days of sun going forward.

Looking back at my blogs for the last couple years there is some good reference data on the effect of rain on the grapes. It turns out that in both of the last two years we also had 4" rain events before harvest was complete. In 2009 it rained 4.5" on 10/13/09 and in 2010 it rained 4.0" on 10/24.

In 2009 we had excellent ripening and had all of the fruit harvested except K2L and K6. K6 was harvested 9 days later with no significant mold or botrytis. K2L was harvested another 5 days later on 10/27 and did have some significant green mold especially on sun damaged clusters.

In 2010 the grapes were slow to ripen so we had only harvested K3U and K4U before the 10/24 4" rain. We were still harvesting on 11/6/10 when we brought in K1. The fruit was soft and falling off of the raichi but, the mold density was tolerable. Cold soaks aggravated the mold problem so most didn't do them.

Conclusion from the above look back: 4" rain events before harvest are not uncommon on Mt. Veeder especially in recent years. The impact of the rain is significant but, workable. This year looks like the worst of the last three with the rain coming earliest and the ripenss being as far behind as last year.

10/2/11 Brix measurements taken today. The Brix rose by 1.6 Brix over the last 12 days which translates to .93 Brix/week rate of ripening which is down from 1.2 Brix/week over the 16 days preceeding this period. This period did have a rain event and corresponding overcast for 2 days. The next period will be similar to more rain meaning that our best guess at harvest date if you are targeting 24 Brix is still near the end of October. Halloween harvest. I did get my first taste of those jammy flavors the vineyard is capable of in the swale of all places. Found a dimpled bunch. The Merlot is leading the way in ripeness in spite of hanging probably 5 tons/acre fruit load. Very nice flavors.

I have shut down the irrigation in anticipation of the coming rain.

9/25/11 We received 0.02 inches of rain and had an overcast day. This little rain is inconsequential for the grapes, not much more than a thick fog. The day of missed sun will push out harvest by a day though.

9/23/11 I did a little yield estimation in irrigation block 4, near the middle of the swale to make sure I will be able to deliver expected tonnages. It looks like the yield here is very good, with 27 bunches per vine and an average bunch weight of 0.3 lbs.. This corresponds to 8 lbs. per vine and with 1027 vines per acre in this area, 4.02 tons/acre. Conclusion, there will be enough fruit to go around. and I may need to find a home for some additional fruit. You can see the raw data at SwaleYield092311.

The yield estimation involves counting bunches on 5 or so vines, averaging the counts and then picking the vine closest to the average. I then cut all of the fruit off of that vine and weight every bunch.

9/20/11 The sugar levels are on average 19.6 Brix with only a 0.9 Brix range across all Cab blocks. You can also see that we are about 1 Brix ahead of where the vineyard was last year. This equates to being about three quarters of a week ahead of last year. The rate of Brix rise is about 1.2 Brix per week which agrees closely with what was observed at Konrad Vineyards.

The other estimate one can get from this data is that if your goal is 25 Brix and the slope is 1.2 Brix/week and we are currently at 19.5 Brix it will be 4.5 weeks until your harvest or about October 22 which is reasonable. If the Brix rise only 1 brix per week it would be 5.5 weeks or October 29th. Still reasonable. It looks like we are going to make it. Better clean your tanks. The flavor development also seems to be on track at the Brix level in my opinion after tasting across the vineyard.

A small sampling of vines in the swale in block 8 were bunch counted revealing counts of 23, 31 and 27 which translates to an average of 27. If each bunch is a quarter pound and there are 900 vines to the acre then the yield would be a yield of 3 tons/acre. If the bunch weights are closer to a third of a pound the yield could be as high as 4 tons per acre in the swale which is the highest yielding area in the entire vineyard.

Below is the Merlot which always ripens fast and early and often yields a wopping 5 tons/acre with good flavors. If only it were Cab. You can see that this year in spite of the load you see below it is 2.3 Brix ahead of the Cab!

Temperatures over the last week are shown below.

9/8/11 Nice weather we're having. Upper 80s to 90s and very little fog. The vines are making excellent headway toward ripening now. In my informal assessment in K2U I found that 1 out of 3 bunches already had no bell pepper flavor in it at all.

9/4/11 First Brix Number from blocks C3 and part of C4 rows 58 and 59, 50 berry sample two rows middle and ends of cordons, north and south sides of rows. 16.0Brix. Based on data from Konrad vineyards we are very close to last year's numbers at this time or maybe a half Brix ahead. Samples were taken at 2:30pm which can contribute an extra 1 Brix though. I usually sample early morning. No real surprise here but, it is good to confirm where we are.

Here you can see all of the soil moisture tensions for Camalie, plotted with a new user interface I have developed. Soil moisture is under control.

8/20/11 Here is our water use thus far in 2011. This is data from the instrumented water meter we installed this year. Orange is the cumulative water use and green is the flow rate. On average we have put 13 gallons on each vine but, some blocks have gotten no water while others have received quite a bit as a result of our precision farming. The eKo data recently revealed a problem irrigating the Carmenere which was due to blocked in line filters where the submains connect to the hoses in the rows. Several other adjustments to the irrigation times were also made as a result of the soil moisture data including an increase in the C3 time, opening the C3 upper valves and starting irrigation of C4 but, not the Merlot.

8/16/11 VERAISON!

Below is a picture from Camalie Block 3 upper just below the garage. Still for sale.

Irrigation Block 3 lower. McBride Area.

Irrigation Block 3 lower about row 65. McBride area

Irrigation Block 4 East, 191 scion. McBride Area.

Irrigation Block 4 SouthEast, 191 Cultivar.

Irrigation Block 4 West, Wood block.

Irrigation Block 4 West, Wood Area. Nice clean rows, good hedging, leafing.

Merlot, Burris Fruit.

Irrigation Block 4 Swale, NorthEast. Available.

Irrigation has begun on a regular basis for all blocks except the Merlot, C1 West and C3 upper10 rows. Volume is 1 gallon per day, 3 days/week. We sprayed wettable sulfur one last time on 8/16/11.

Always set your parking brake when parking in a mountain vineyard. The Landrover popped out of park with no one in it and went about 150 ft. downhill before hitting these oak trees.

More photos that only an insurance agent can appreciate.

7/22/11 Below you can see the hedger going through the vineyard. This will push more of the metabolic energy into ripening the grapes rather than extending the shoots further. With our late start to the growing season again this year, ripening the fruit is our biggest challenge.

7/20/11 Irrigation blocks 1-3 are now programmed to receive 1 gallon twice a week on Wednesday and Saturday. The new Carmenere gets 1 gallon 4 days a week.

7/19/11 The cooler weather returned for a week and now its warming up again. We have not begun our irrigation yet except for the young Malbec and Carmenere vines. If we get several days of 80+ weather we will probably begin some irrigation of the dryest blocks in the next week.

An obvious question facing us this year is how does this year compare to last year in terms of ripening potential. Toward this end I pulled up some degree data from one of my eKo View sites in Calistoga which has clearn temp data for both years shown below. This is not the best data since it comes from an un shielded temp sensor located in the fruiting zone of a vine. The canopy size is likely affecting the data although it may be relevant. The graph is hard to read so here's the scoop. The degree days to date this year are 2% less than they were last year at this same time, 1885dF vs. 1926dF. To put this in perspective the total degree days for the year last year at this site were 3563dF. We are currently at the 53% point of the growing season or in other words we still have about half of the growing season left to go.

Last year was not a good year for ripening and we are slightly behind the pace of last year according to this which means we should be taking all measures available to us to improve the ripeness. The crop load appears less than last year due to 0-20% of berries not setting in the bunches. This is actually good. Dropping fruit is one option we have to improve ripening but, we are not quite ready to do this yet. The canopies are large and still growing even without irrigation due to the cool moist Spring. The most important thing we can do at this point is hedging to remove the shoot tips which are still growing and force more of the vines' energy into ripening the fruit. Since we don't have a hedger this task will have to be done by hand. Update: Our neighbor is hedging and Ramon convinced the driver to do Camalie later in the afternoon. It was done between 5:00 and 8:00pm. It looks great and should help our ripening significantly including getting more sun on the grapes.

The weather was sufficiently cool that the Powdery Mildew index came down but, not enough to delay our sulfuring. Below is a nice shot of our spray rig working on Monday with Ezekiel behind the wheel. Our high velocity sprayer gives very good coverage which is especially important with the larger than normal canopies we have this year.

7/5/11 My how time flies. Bloom is far behind us and with 5 days of 90F + days in the last week as you can see in the graph below and photos the vines have been making up for lost growth time. what a change from 8 days back when the high temp was 57F and .61" of rain was falling.

The Powdery Mildew Index is now near its max value and we will be spraying again tomorrow, 7/7/11 for the 7th time. See the record of applications below. I repaired the sprayer nozzle servos for more precise aiming of the spray on the fruit zone. Prof. Gubler told us that there have been no signs of Powdery Mildew adapting to sulfur applications. The main reason it fails to prevent mildew is poor coverage. We have observed no signs of powdery mildew in the vineyards at all thus far.

We completed another pass of mowing and are now finishing up tucking shoots. The growth rate over the last week has been phenomenal. Who would imagine going through a week of 90F+ days without turning on the irrigation. Thanks to the half inch of rain last week, our soil moisture monitoring and good shoot tip visuals we are confident the vines are O.K. We are striving to achieve water stress to limit berry size before veraison which maximizes concentration and quality in general.

The photo below shows the view uphill from block K3L, tucked vines on the right, untucked on the left. Notice the shadows on the ground. Also notice that the vigor difference between the lower and upper parts of this block have been reduced due to our precision farming adjustments last year, both irrigation and fertigation were reduced in the lower half last year. K6 vigor also appears to have been reduced successfully.

Below is the actual soil moisture data. You can see one shot of water to the dryest block K1 that I did just to verify the irrigation system is working. Our target soil moisture to stress the vines to -13 Leaf Water Potential is 150cBar at 24"-36" depth. You can see that the soil hasn't dried to this level even at 12" yet.

Here are some more photos from the vineyard showing the state of the crop.

Here is a picture of C3 after leafing.

Here is a bunch in block K1.

This is the top of K1 before shoot tucking. Note the nice mowing job.

Below is K2U before shoot tucking. Note the Konrad Redwood grotto in the background.

Here is a view of the Malbec Block next to K2U. It's a great time to come up for a visit with 5 days of mid 80F highs forecast.

K3L or K4L fruit zone.

K5 shoot tips, still vigorously growing. No signs of water stress.

K5 Fruit set.

6/13/11 Camalie Vineyards has reached 50% bloom. Last year my comment was that fruit set was done as of 6/23/10. So far this year has been similar to last year.

We are hoping this similarity will end soon now that we have a couple of days of high 80s as you can see below. This plot shows nicely the week of low 70s before these 2 warm days and the week of days at the beginning of June that didn't make it above 60. .

Our petiole analysis came back and is shown below. We are not deficient in any nutrients that would require additional feeding. Boron and Zinc look good. I am a little surprised by the high nitrogen levels. We fertigated about 1 month before these samples were taken so it is possible that there was strong uptake just at this time however, block K2L did not get any nitrogen application and is still showing a high level of nitrogen although lower than the others. Camalie Vineyards block 3 has always been nitrogen deficient in tests before this. I'm not sure of the significance of the Nitrate N values but, these seem to be very low and would be more consistent with my expectations for nitrogen content. The fertilzer we applied was Calcium Nitrate. The low nitrate levels hopefully are an indication that the high nitrogen levels are not due to the fertigation protocol.

5/10/11 All right, I know its a little late to be starting my blog for this year. I've been busy selling and installing wireless vineyard monitoring systems. We had budbreak around April 5, a little late but, not bad. We are heading toward bloom quickly now with the flowers looking good so far. Our light nitrogen only fertigation was done at the end of April. We are just beginning our powdery mildew protection protocol. About half the grapes are still available if you are interested or know of other folks interested. The Old Vines are available.

We replanted the Carmenere hopefully virus free this time.

It's beautiful this time of year. Do come up for a visit. We are doing a barrel tasting on 5/21 with my wine coop buddies if you have an opportunity.

photo 5/10/11 Camalie Irrigation Block 3 mid block.

2010 Season Below.

11/7/10 It is great to have the job done and to have worked with such a great group of buyers. We got it done and not a moment too soon as this morning the rains started at 2:40am and continue to accelerate with a third of an inch in the first 3 hours and rain falling at a third of an inch and hour now at 5:40am. Eventually a full 1" of rain fell. We crushed the last ton of Camalie fruit by 1:00pm after a 6:00am power failure that lasted 4 hrs., just long enough for us to get our generator out but, not have to use it. Average Brix 21.5. The crawler electrical system has major problems now maybe from the rain. The lights can't be turned off and the engine can only be shut down by taking your foot off of the brake pedal. That's a new one. I had to pull the main fuse to shut off the lights.

11/6/10 We harvested all the remaining fruit, 1.43 tons from Camalie blocks C1+C4 based on 287 gallons of must produced. It was a glorious day with the most beautiful view of Napa Valley at sunrise I have ever seen. I took a picture from the top of K1 but, it doesn't do the scene justice. The half ton of K1 fruit that came to Camalie to produce wine samples for grape marketing next year came in at 25 Brix. It was the ripest fruit we harvested this year.

11/5/10 We harvested 3.61 tons from Blocks C5,C6 and C11 for Sean McBride. The total area of this block is 1.61 acres. Yield was 3.61/1.61= 2.2 tons/acre. Sean reported that the initial brix in the tank for the lot was 22 Brix with a pH of 3.55. There was a problem with contamination from the feet of upper bins to the fruit of lower bins which we need to address.

11/4/10 We harvested 2.717 tons from Blocks C8, C10 and the old vines in C4. The old vines yielded approximately 3/4 ton of fruit. There are about 150 old vines which means that they yielded approximately 10 lbs/vine which they have done in the past. There are about 150 vines on 7.5x6.7ft. spacing in an area of .17 acres. .75/.17= 4.4 tons/acre. The old vines produce higher tannin wine that ages significantly longer than the French clones. The remaining acreage that was harvested was .45+.13=.58 acres yielding 2.717 tons - .75 tons = 1.42 tons; which is a yield of 2.44 tons/acre

11/3/10 Harvest schedule updated, see below. All dates firm. Box pickups all scheduled. The fruit is softening up a lot now and more green mold is evident. Ramon and 3 guys did a pass of dropping moldy fruit today. I took Brix measurements again mostly out of curiosity and found that the brix have actually moved backwards slightly in the last week. See Brix table below. It is clear we aren't going to get any more benefit from waiting even with sunshine.

11/2/10 O.K. The Giants won the world series, its time to pick the grapes. Here is how the harvest schedule is shaping up.

11/1/10 Mon. The Giants are going to win the world series before we have all our fruit picked this year.  The latest forecast is for another 11 days  of sunshine after a very nice sunny day yesterday. These grapes are going to be something else.

Call me when you are ready to schedule your harvest.  650-799-6571.   I plan to measure Brix again on Wednesday or maybe Thursday if the forecast of sun holds up. 

I cancelled harvesting my own fruit this last Saturday in spite of having all my winemaking friends on site.  Instead we pressed some syrah. 

10/29/10 We had no rain on the 28th although rain was forecast and we received .25" of rain today on the 29th between 11:00pm last night and 9:00am this morning. Very limited sun both days but at least a breif period of full sun today. My home winemaking party scheduled for tomorrow likely won't involve harvesting any grapes. I have a little syrah to press.

10/27/10 Harvested 1.358 tons from block C8W this morning. Estimating that the area harvested was approximately half of C8, .45 acres the yield was 3.0 tons/acre. After crush and one day in the> fermenter, Brix (Refractometer) 23.2, Brix (Hydrometer) 23.8, pH 4.07, TA 4.4 g/l.ammonia 26.6 mg/l, primary amino 74.1 mg/l for a total YAN (yeast available nitrogen) of 101 mg/l.  I will be adding nitrogen (as DAP and Fermaid K) to 300 mg/l during the fermentation. The brix was .8 Brix higher than my last field sample. It looks like there is some sugar coming out of the grapes in the tank.

10/26/10 Brix Sampling done. As might be expected the 4" of rain set back the Brix, more for the blocks that were further ahead and less for those that were behind. The Carmenere was the oddball with an advance of .8 Brix. William Wood is scheduled to harvest block C8West tomorrow. Sean McBride has been pulling leaves from the southside of vines in his block, C5.

10/25/10 Sun came out all day. Fruit is 95% dry at 3:00pm. The soil is very wet where it is loose - avenues and dirt roads. Compacted soil in the vine rows is still fairly stable. Quick sample from fruit in C5B one of the riper areas shows 23.7Brix on the South side (most sun exposed) of the vines and 21.7Brix on the North side of the vines. Average is 22.7 wheras the sample from both sides last week was 23.5 which suggests that this block went backwards 0.8 Brix through the rain. The North/South differential is similar to what we observed last year for this block.

Two buyers are pondering picking on Wednesday and one has decided to pick from C8 West. Currently Pulido vineyard management has 6.6 tons scheduled for harvest on Wednesday which is near our capacity for one day.

10/24/10 It rained until 3:20pm and then abruptly stopped after dropping a total of 4.0" of rain. Sounds a lot like last year but a couple weeks later. So much for the 2" forecast. Some of the higher volume is probably due to the usual differential between the valley floor and Mt. Veeder. We get 40" of rain a year while the valley is significantly less. It is still rather warm at about 57F now.

10/23/10 8:00am. It is still drizzling but the total accumulation for the latest storm over the last two days is just .17" now. At 8:00pm we now have over an inch of rain.

10/22/10 We harvested 400 Lbs. for one buyer, 587 Lbs. for another and 1213 lbs. for a third client from C7 and one half row of C8. C7 is .216 acres and 5 rows with the one extra row the area picked yesterday was .3 acres. The yield for this block was thus (400+587+1213)/.3= 3.6 tons/acre. This clone 191 hasn't yielded this high before but seems to like the water shed adjacent to it and the extra water it tends to get in the swale where it is located. One wouldn't expect vines with such a large crop to ripen as well as it has.

The 1213 lbs. from Block C7 went to Dan Guilermo who shared the following on 11/1. "Brix came out in lab at around 22.3 while pH was 3.81; acidity was .54g/L; I added 1.5 gram tartaric to the must and am fermenting about a third of the way through. Cold soaked for about 6 days at 50 degrees prior to start of fermentation ...hope you get some sunshine this week..."

Here are the specs on the 400lb. lot picked for Michael Shantz which he was kind enough to share with us. Brix 24 (23.5 to 24.5,  SG 1.098 to 1.1), pH 3.5, TA .57 (after 15 minutes for solids to settle out  .97 with all solids).

The sunny side of this fruit was dimpled with good flavors which is why we picked this block. On the north side the berries were full and heavy with the wetness of the rain.The fact that all the buyers are homewinemakers and can add sugar also helped. The ripest fruit is actually in C5 Lower at the moment.

10/21/10 Three parties have decided to harvest tomorrow, from block C7. The rain has just started in earnest, 5:20pm. My digital refractomerter just arrived. I still have yesterday's samples and will retest. I retested 4 samples with the new Atago refractometer and the results were 0-0.2 Brix below my recalibrated refractometer values. This tells me that my data is within .2 Brix of being correct now. I will be using the digital refractometer from now on with a distilled water calibration before the start of use.

10/20/10 The latest Grape Data is in the table below. We made some advance this week, on average 0.5 Brix but, less than the 1.2 Brix I had hoped for. The rain set us back. The Brix numbers this week are lower partly because I recalibrated my refractometer which was reading 0.3 Brix high.

* Refractometer recalibrated using 20Brix sugar solution reference and distilled water. Refractometer found to have been reading high by 0.3 Brix. I have ordered a new digital Brix meter from Atago which should arrive any day.

All irrigation has been shut down.

10/17/10 The temperature dropped 15 degrees in the last day and we just had 0.16" of rain around noon and only another .01 inches overnight. Ramon's 30 years of experience on Mt. Veeder is that it takes more than an inch of rain to get the botrytis going. I believe we are still O.K. You can access this data and other data at any time by going to http://66.82.73.51/web/index.html and typing username: admin and password: relloh

We harvested some Syrah from our neighbor's vineyard yesterday that came in at 25.2 Brix from a South facing block and 23.5 Brix from an East facing block.

10/13/10 We had a great week with the Brix rising by 1.2 on average bringing us to 22 Brix on average. I predicted 1.0-1.2 Brix rise this week which is pretty close. C8 appears to have ripened less than other blocks but this is likely because I sampled a little differently taking more fruit from the Eastern part of Irrigation Block 4 since I need some data from this area which is now actively being sold. Late news, the last 2 Tons of Camalie fruit was sold late today to a party in Sonoma.

The roller coaster temperature is up again with three ideal growing days of full sun peaking at 91F to 93F and warm nights dropping only to 70F. This along with no rain in the 7 day forecast means we're going to make it. I predict we will get another 1.0-1.2 Brix in the next week.

ETS data sampled 2 bunches from C5 rows 42,43 and two bunches from rows 57,58. . One bunch from each side of row. ETSJuiceReport101310

10/10/10 Harvested the Merlot, 1286 lbs. and delivered to Kurt. He was very happy with the fruit. Haven't heard what the final juice numbers were yet. The year before we harvested

10/7/10 Turned off all irrigation to Irrigation blocks 3 and 4 which includes the entire lower half of the vineyard. With the brix well behind and moderate weather forecast this seems like an appropriate thing to do. Sean McBride was at the vineyard sampling fruit and participated in the decision.

The Merlot was sold yesterday to a Garagiste named Kurt Burris in Sacramento. It will be harvested on this Saturday 10/9/10.

10/6/10 Fourth grape sampling this morning between 8:00am and 11:00am. See the table below. The most recent week was much cooler than the week before and as a result the Brix advance was 4X slower than the week before, down from 2.36 Brix/week change to only .59 Brix/week. Some of this slowdown is probably due to replacement of water lost during the hot spell. The normal Brix increase at this time of year is 1.5 Brix per week which is close to the average of the two weeks which is 1.32 Brix/week. My prediction for the coming week is that we will see 1.0 to 1.2 Brix increase with weather predicted in the high 70s to low 80s, near perfect for this time of year. Flavors are very good with little IBMP evident.

9/30/10 Measured T.A. and pH data on the samples taken yesterday and added to the table below.

9/29/10 Third grape sampling this morning between 8:00am and 10:40am. See the table below. The temp trend graph below tells the story of the gradually rising heat wave that bailed us out this week with 2.0 to 3.2 Brix rises in sugar levels. Monday and Tuesday were 100F days but, after the gradual rise the vines took the heat in stride. No sunburn at all. Also note our Mt. Veeder temperature inversions that kept the night time temps in the 70s. The flavors have changed dramatically with IBMP dropping to undetectable in most places.

The Merlot which has had no water at all saw some dehydration which contributed to its having a 3.2 Brix rise this week. Still dimpling is minimal and flavors are excellent. This fruit could be harvested as is.

9/22/10 Second Grape sampling taken this morning between 8:00am and 10:00am. Identical sampling technique used, and same sites except as noted. All sampling/measurements again by M. Holler.

The average Brix for the vineyard is now18.6 Brix. Vines look healthy, no senescence, no dehydration. We had two days of mostly overcast during this period which may have slowed ripening by maybe 30% which means we might expect to see 30% more Brix change this week. The average Brix change last week was .8 Brix. Adding 30% to this we get 1.0 Brix. If our target is 26 Brix and we are now at 18.6 we have 7.4 Brix to go or 7.4 weeks which would put harvest in the second week of November. Don't panic yet. This is a very large extrapolation, 7.4 weeks from one week's worth of data, but it is what it is. I wouldn't schedule your crush on this data but, I don't think you should expect harvest before late October unless you are buying the Merlot.

9/15/10 9/15/10 I sampled grapes today using the same techniques and methodology as last year, generally 30-50 grape samples from as many vines in the middle of each block. All grapes sampled from the middle of bunches, half from one side of the row and half from the other, half from middle of the cordon and half from the ends.

Merlot 21.8 Brix

C-5A rows 40-43 17.2 Brix

C5b rows 57-60 17.3 Brix

C8 Block 4 Wood's block 19.0 Brix

C4 Old vines, block 2 --17.6 Brix

C1+2 top of the vineyard 15.5 Brix

Carmenere 16.6 Brix

We are about 2 weeks behind last years ripening schedule. This means it will be about the third week of October before we harvest. .

Camalie Vineyard Blocks

Veraison Pass Policies for Konrad Vineyards 8/23/20. Camalie policy is the same in general.  

In Blocks K2L and  K3L 
Drop the following fruit from typical vines:  
   Fruit that is greener and clearly behind in ripeness relative to other bunches on the vine. 
   Wings( half of a double bunch),   Shoulder's, ( more than 5 berries, or greener than main bunch)
   Fruit on weaker shoots, go from two bunches to one for shoot length 18-24" or one bunch to zero for shoot length under 18".  Target 3 bunches/spur
   Sunburned fruit,
   Fruit in the center of congested areas, 
   Second crop - bunches greater than 10 berries. 
   Scale for more or less vigorous vines

In Blocks K1, K2U, K3U, K4U, K5,K6
Do the same except do not drop additional good fruit to target 3 bunches/spur. . 

A typical vine has 10-12 spurs. Typical bunch counts are 22 to 30 bunches/vine. and there are 900 vines/acre. If bunches are between 1/4 and 1/3 lb as they were last year the yield will be 3.2 tons/acre nominal. After dropping fruit the bunch count will be closer to 18-25 bunches/vine and the yield closer to 2.9 tons/acre which is right where we want to be.

8/21/10 Block K4 is ahead of K3 significantly with the greenest fruit still around 20% red is in the South Western Corner of K3L.   Their fruit is all below the lower berm.   We discussed what cultural policies to use in the Veraison pass that will start this Monday.  

My goal this year is to keep all of our buyers very happy this and anxious to buy our fruit again next year.   This means prioritizing quality above yield and even trading some yield to improve quality.   Fortunately, especially in the lower blocks we have good yield to work with.   Another benefit to trading some yield for quality is that it will shorten the time to ripeness.  With the cool season this year we could have trouble achieving full ripeness if the cool weather persists.   Again fortunately where ripening is furthest behind we have the highest yields. 

Bunch counts per vine are in the 22 to 30 range this year with spur counts of 10-12.   No rabbit ears (double spurs at a position) this year which has brought down the bunch counts from 28 to 35.  This change in pruning policy has made a significant improvement in our ripening progress already as is most readily evidenced by K6 matching the upper blocks in its ripeness and Konrad Vineyards' ripening in general being ahead of Domaine Chandon's ripening.  It is evident that K2L and K3L could have been cropped even lighter.   To pull in and tighten up the ripeness distribution in these two blocks we plan to drop fruit fairly aggressively.  

8/15/10 Irrigation applications have now begun for most blocks. Here is the current schedule:

Camalie Vineyards C1, C2, C3, 1 x 4hrs. 2 gal/wk. C4, 1x 2hrs./wk. 1 gal/wk.

All irrigations are done early evening or predawn under computer timer control. Irrigations are verified both by monitoring the manifold pressure and soil moistures.

8/11/10 The grapes are now into veraison. Here are my very qualitative estimates of how many grapes have color now in the various blocks.

K1 25-40%, K2U 20-30%, K2L 0-10%, K3U 20-30%, K3L 0-10%, K4U 20-30%, K4L 0-10%, K5 20-30%, K6 30-50%

Surprisingly K6 is furthest along or at least tied with K1.  Our reduction of the bud count at pruning is the likely cause.    There is significant water stress evident in the upper blocks, K5 and K6 and berry sizes are  relatively small as was our goal.

The weather has been quite cool over the last month with only one day over 90F and only 2 days of the last 10 over 80F.    I am a little worried about our ability to ripen the fruit but, because we have cropped lighter this year for quality and can still drop more fruit at veraison I think we will be all right.   

Ramon’s aggressive leaf pulling has put quite a bit of sun on the fruit without causing significant sunburn with the cool weather and morning fog.
Below you can see the solar radiation for the last two weeks.   When I zoom in on the graph I can see that the fog is burning off between 9:30am and noon.  Some days it never burns off completely.    
  

With the cool weather and our goal of small berry size by doing deficit Irrigation we have given no water at all to the lower blocks of Konrad’s and only 2 gal/week going to the upper blocks.  K1 is a little dry and needs an increase, to 4 gal/week.   Camalie has had only 2 gallons/week irrigation. 

7/18/10 The grapes are past pea size now and we have started to irrigate the dryest 20% of the vineyard, the upper blocks. Ramon has been leafing, shoot thinning and hedging with a crew of 5 guys and is now 80% done with the vineyard. This will get more sunlight on the grapes and reduce mildew pressure. Fruit set is solid and should produce yields similar to last year. We can be agressive in removing fruit to tighten up the ripeness distribution and ensure that all the fruit ripens. 7/18/10 Photos

The vineyard guys were sitting around having a couple of beers on Friday after work and I had the pleasure of strumming a few chords with them. Their hands were swollen with the work of pulling leaves making it hard for them to play the guitar but, they still did better than I did. The hedging was done with a Stihl hand held hedge trimmer. Holding this 30 lb. trimmer up to your shoulders for even a hour is a challenge. I think they did a great job of opening up the canopy and exposing the fruit on the East side to morning sun to reduce the IBMP and improve ripe flavors. So far no sunburn. K4 and K5 remain to be done. See photos

The soil temperature made an abrupt upward rise in the last week from 74 to 78F, later relative to last year.

The powdery Mildew Index has been running high since early June and we are seeing some minor outbreaks. We are increasing our sulfur application frequency and considering use of a fungicide.

6/23/10 Bloom is now complete and it looks like we have a good fruit set that should provide typical yields. Soils are beginning to dry but we will hold off on irrigation until we get to -13 Bar stress or 150cBar soil moisture tension at 24" depth to keep berry sizes down and concentration up.

6/17/10 The vineyard was "flown" again to get higher resolution images and NDVI images. The increase in vigor between the 12th and 29th is stunning. This is the period when the temperature finally warmed up.

Camalie NDVI image pdf

The vineyard was photographed again on June 17th and the photo below produced.

Below is a color image from June 12, 2010.

Yield History

Viticulture Data

Photos by Mark Holler Copyright 2011

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