May Winery and Vineyard Update

Hello Everyone, 

 

I hope this email finds you all well. This has been a very fast-paced Spring here at the vineyard. Bud break was very uniform between the varietals. Watching the shoot growth after bud break was reminiscent of a horse taking off out of the gate - the vines look like they were taking steroids in the off-season! Certainly, all this wet weather has helped with the development, which is fine this time of year, but we hope the rain starts to go away over the next couple of weeks before bloom. 

Commercial grape vines are hermaphroditic, so they don’t rely on bees or other pollinators to fertilize the fruit. Rather, each berry will push a small cap off with 5 anthers, once that cap falls the fruit is fertilized and we have fruit set. During bloom, which should take place in a couple of weeks, we hope for calm weather with no rain in order to facilitate this process. Once we have the fruit set we will go through and start counting the clusters to get a potential yield estimate for the vineyard.

 

 So far everything looks quite healthy in the vineyard, but it is still early in the season. The only cause for concern at this stage is the number of Spotted Lantern Fly (SLF) nymphs we are seeing. The nymphs are not harmful to the vine, however, the adults will feed on the vascular system of the vine and if in great enough numbers, they could literally suck the life out of the vine - new plantings are particularly susceptible. This is one reason I held off on planting this year, hoping these little buggers will continue to migrate South. 

In the Spring of 2025, we will start planting more of what we already have and add new acreage of Albariño and Gruner Veltliner. The only other change is ripping out the infernal Muscat Ottonell. So, if you like this style of wine you’re only chance to buy our first and last iteration will be from 2023. 

We finished our first round of bottling from the 2023 vintage: Sauvignon Blanc, Roussanne, Chardonnay, and Muscat. I wish we had a lot more of the wines but the 2023 vintage did not yield large quantities, however, the quality is through the roof. 

We are seeing a lot more traffic through the tasting room and increased sales this year so I had to pull several wines from the tasting menu. Our 2022 C2, 2023 Roussanne, and 2022 Vintners Blend are now club wines and only available by the bottle. Given how busy we have been on the weekends we decided to start opening from Thursday - Monday to help spread out the flow a bit.

As always, thank you for your support and we look forward to seeing you soon.