Another Week in the Vineyard

Dropping Clusters on Short Shoots.

It is September 20 and I still have green grapes out there. What a year! Late rains (which is mostly good), cold, late budbreak, slow growth, late bloom, shatter, powdery mildew, hundreds of thousands of procreating voles, late, uneven veraison, intense heat and sunburn, oh, and yesterday it rained. Yup - cold, foggy, and drizzle. Perfect ripening weather. Seriously, when will the grapes ripen? It is mid (almost late) September and my sugars are barely creeping up. I don't anticipate picking anything until the first of October. For all those potential wine buyers out there, 2010 will be great - don't worry. Everything I mentioned above just adds character.
 The Cabernet Sauvignon looks good. It is all red and we have been dropping clusters on short shoots that won't ripen up as well as clusters on nice, strong, tall shoots. We've been through the Merlot, Malbec and Cabernet Franc dropping green and pink clusters. The Petit Verdot? Well, we will keep dropping green fruit until it is all red. We've already been through it once but there is still a lot of green fruit. And, it's September 20. That's just not ok. This will be my twelfth harvest at this vineyard and I'm pretty sure this is the hardest growing season yet. We'll see how harvest goes. I am hoping for warm, sunny weather - and how can we make the days get longer instead of shorter?

Dropped Fruit.
Dropping the very green clusters should help the ones that are further along ripen up.