Category Archives: Wine Growing

He’s Back! Red Tails in Love!

Red Tails

The last two winters we have had a Red Tail Hawk come visit Turtle Vines. It sits on our vine row endpoints, jumps to the ground and hunts gophers and observes me from the trees weeding and pruning! Unfortunately the last two years I have only seen one…no mate.

This year, I saw my Hawk again in the vineyard about a week ago…again alone. But not for long…if you can see from the picture above we now have two Hawks!!! I’m hoping they are mating and we will have little ones flying around in the spring. Stay tuned for more Red Tail love stories!!!

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2016 Drought Update at Turtle Vines, Russian River Valley

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Special-Weather-Statement (1)

I’m sure all the news east of California has massive rainfall with flooding in California…and the drought it over. But that is not the case here in Northern California.

GOOD NEWS – We are getting moderate amounts of rainfall here in Russian River Valley spread over a long period of time which is soaking the soil without flooding. The rainfall/storm window continues to remain open with the prospect of more rain for the foreseeable future. We have not had any big storms and El Nino storms historically have come in February. In addition, the snowpack is growing in the mountains and in much better shape than last year (see picture above)

BAD NEWS – We are below last years rainfall total and below our long term average. Sebastopol is currently at 19″ for the rain year and we need to get 45″ just to get to our average. Hate to say it but we need about 5″ of rain for the next 6 weeks! Just hope it is constant and not all at once.

As much as would like to be outside pruning and getting ready for the year…let it rain!!!

Big Red needs a little help !

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After returning from Minneapolis for Christmas 2 weeks ago, I was going to get some work done around the vineyard between rain storms. However, my 2000 F250 decided it wanted a little pampering and maintenance. After several ideas on what was wrong on my part, I had AAA tow it to a local service center. Ends up the fuel pump failed. I have read that they should last at least 10 years or 100,000 miles. Since Big Red is 16 years old but only has a little over 80K miles, seems about right. Just the $750 bill was not the way I wanted to start out the new year.

Now…you have to ask, when is it time for a replacement truck. Given the truck is for the vineyard/winery only, has 4WD, running boards, a $3K lift gate on the back, tows 5 tons and is only driven 2,000 miles/yr…and a new one just like it is $36K without the lift…we should have it a long time (at least we hope)!

2016 Goals

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Happy New Year…And a special shout out to Anna and Brian for this wonderful picture of our 2014 Turtle Vines Pinot Noir at Lake Tahoe!!!

Wow, if you read my “2015 Recap” you realize 2015 was a fantastic year. How to improve upon that? Here are my goals for 2016

Grow great grapes that turn into great wine!!!

Vineyard

Keep Hanzell Vineyards as a grape purchaser
Drip Epson Salt through the irrigation system between set and harvest to lower the potassium level in the grapes that will lower the pH of the wine
Institue an improved spray program for powdery mildew
Replant 85 weak or missing vines
Graft over 80 Merlot/Chardonnay/Original no-clone vines
Prune trees that shade the vineyard
Outsource more of the vineyard work

Winery

Add another restaurant that sells Turtle Vines to go with Millennium and Muir’s Tea Room
Reviews for the 2013 (Pinot Report), 2014 (Prince of Pinot)
Make a small batch of Pinot that can age based on 2015 information

2015 Recap

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2015 was a remarkable year at Turtle Vines!

– We started the year getting a wonderful review of our 2013 Pinot Noir from The Prince of Pinot.
– Our 2014 Sauvignon Blanc was a hit at Eight Restaurant and sold out!
– We are now selling grapes to Hanzell Vineyards, one of the oldest and most respected Pinot Noir wineries in the United States.
– Mother nature reduced our 2015 grape harvest by 60%, but should produce an amazing vintage!
– We finished the year by having 2 restaurants carry Turtle Vines Pinot Noir on their wine list. Muir’s Tea Room here in Sebastopol and Millennium Restaurant in Oakland (the #1 rated Vegetarian restaurant in the World)
– Lastly, we continue to get the love and support from our many friends, family, colleagues and supporters of our vineyard and winery!!!

We hope your 2015 was just as eventful and we wish you a wonderful 2016.

Wow, How Can Harvest be Right Around the Corner?

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We have veraison!!! (grapes turn from green to red)

What does that mean:
– I have to finish any final preparations to the vineyard before the nets go up in 3 weeks…drop week canes, final sprays, leafing, etc.
– With the light crop I have this year, looks like harvest will be the end of Aug.
– I need to bottle my 2014 Pinot Noir to free up space for the 2015!!!

BTW, my new harvest estimate is:
– 3 tons Pinot Noir
– 250 lbs Merlot
– 180 lbs Sauvignon Blanc

Where did the year go? I know I’m getting older but it seems like I just finished making wine from 2014.

2015 Harvest Predictions based on Bud Break

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Last year my harvest prediction was only off by 3%, so it is time to go out on a limb and see what we will get this year.

First…when will we harvest? This year our Bud Break was 2/25/15 and Bloom was 4/21/15, both of those were 2 weeks ahead of last year…and the vines are growing like crazy. However, it has been much cooler than the last 2 years for much of the last 6 weeks which should have slowed growth down…but it doesn’t look like it. The real prediction will come at veraison, but that is not for a months…so as of now I’m predicting Sep 2nd, 2015 for the Pinot at 24 brix.

Now…how much. Last year was 3.8 tons and this year the clusters look healthy and large. The Pommard clone at 100% and the 667 clone is around 80%. So…3000 vines at 3.5 pounds/vine at 90% = 4.73 tons.

In addition we should have 240 pounds of Merlot and 300 pounds of Sauvignon Blanc which we will harvest the end of September.

Stay tuned to see how my predictions work out!

Sprayer Troubles!

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I used this “Homemade” ATV sprayers for my vineyard the last 3 years, and last month the fan axel broke. What did this mean? For 3 weeks I had to back-pack spray to prevent powdery mildew. For those of you not familiar with this…You fill a spray pack with 4 gallons of water with organic spray material, like Stylet Oil, and then pump it to pressurize it continually and walk with 40 pounds on your back for about 5 miles. Not a lot of fun…but it should prevent disease later in the year. The good news for me is it has not been to warm, so the disease pressure is low!

Finally after waiting for 2 weeks for the replacement fan, I got it up and running last week and it seems as good as new.

What’s going on the last Month at Turtle Vines?

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Well…we have been busy here here at Turtle Vines the last few month. I will just catch you up on the highlights!

For my Birthday this last January Joanne gave me a Vinmetrics 300 so I can now do pH/TA and Sulfur tests on our wine and grapes during harvest season. We tried them out and compared them to our local lab and found it to be quite accurate and pretty easy to use, although I had to channel my high school chemistry lab (thanks Mr Fletcher).

We bottled and labelled our 2014 Merlot…sorry not for sale as we only had 4 cases, but if you are lucky enough to be in town, I’ll open up a bottle. It is the perfect pizza wine. Last week I labelled our 2013 Pinot and spun capsules on the tops. I REALLY like this wine, as does the “Prince of Pinot”, so if you want some order it fast when I release it in the next few weeks. We also bottled, labelled and capsuled our 2014 Sauvignon Blanc (8 cases). This year it is much more like a traditional Sauvignon Blanc since we had more Clone 1 than last year. And I researching an easy way to make Champagne on a small scale!

Lastly, as you can see from the picture above, the vines have grown like crazy this year. Not only did Bud Break and Bloom happen 2 weeks ahead of last year, but the last 6 weeks were perfect for plant growth…warm with a few instances of rain. We have finished shoot thinning and moving wires…but we now have to shoot straighten to prevent powdery mildew, hedge the top at 6.5′ for the perfect amount of foliage, leaf and weed whack around the base. Hoping to finish these by the first week of June, and then the vineyard will be in great shape for the rest of the year.

Flowering 2015 – So early!!!

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We are almost 2 weeks ahead of last year for Bud Break and now Flowering…looks like an early harvest unless we have a cool summer. This is the first one I have seen this year and as you can see from the picture below, it is on one of the healthiest canes…already to the third wire.

My guess right now is we will harvest around the 23rd of August this year…normally time for Champagne Pinot.