Yesterday we went to our Sonoma Coast vineyard and ran up and down just about every row (not in vain our barrel selection of this vineyard is named "Chico's Run"!) so we could see how wonderful the berries look. In fact, we have to thin out a lot of clusters. It is hard for the crew to do that because they know that then at picking time, it will take them longer to gather the same tonnage; but we explained to them that quality is what we are after, much more than quantity -- and rather reluctantly but understanding, they went back to the 1st row to start again and take off much more fruit.
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Zach weighed a big cluster with his sophisticated gadget -- a scale that you hang the cluster from!
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Then he showed the crew how much fruit to thin out -- look at all the clusters on the ground, how sad :-(
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Véraison is now in full swing at the Doña Margarita Vineyard and the vines look just magnificent. Using his high-end scale, Zach weighed a big cluster at 150 grams or 5.3 ounces -- that's about 5 times the weight of a couple of years ago! We are delighted to see that the vines are in much better balance now and should give us some extraordinary wines. It's very exciting -- but hard to have the patience needed to wait for the results!
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Bonita was VERY tempted to eat the seemingly juicy berries, from their great looks . . .
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. . . but after falling into the temptation, pretty soon she realized that was not such a good idea!
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With the grapes looking so gorgeous, we were very tempted to eat them -- but soon enough we realized they are far from ripe. You should have seen Boni's face after she swallowed some!
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