Gewurztraminer

We are enjoying some very good weather for October in the Willamette Valley.  It has been fairly warm and dry.  It is perfect weather to finish up some tasks on the vineyard.

We spent some time last weekend planting a couple hundred Gewurztraminer vines.  Normally I let Chris handle the manual labor, but I got my hands dirty and helped out with the planting.  We were lucky enough to recruit Johnny and Sammy again.  Johnny was a great help...Sammy was still a dog.

We had purchased these vines a while ago and they were stored away until we could plant them.  Unfortunately, some of the vines did not do so well.  We had about a 30% loss rate.  The good vines were planted in the north west corner of the property.  It is hard to see them in this picture, but trust me, they are there.

Here is an updated shot of the vines we planted a couple of weeks ago.  They are not doing much right now, but come spring, they should be more active.

If you have been reading the blog for a while, you know that one major challenge is the access.  We currently access the property via an easement through our neighbor's property.  The area we have to cross is used as a horse pasture; the gates on each side and the horses in the road make this a less than ideal path.

A while ago, we found that there is an old county road that we could finish that would make our access much easier.  We have finally started on this work!  I will post some pictures when I get them.

Fall planting

It is fall in the Willamette Valley.  The trees are changing colors, the temperatures are lowering and the rain will be here soon.   We were lucky last weekend to have a crystal clear day.

We were not out there just for fun...it was time for us to plan some more vines!  We spent last weekend planting about 300 sauvignon blanc vines.  Fortunately, our new friends Jesse, Johnny, and Sammy (their adorable puppy) came out to help.  Fall is a good time to plant the vines because they will benefit from the wet winter.  The picture below is about half of the SB vines we had to plant this fall.

Johnny worked ahead with the auger to prep the holes for the vines.

Jesse and Chris (with little help from Sammy) planted each vine by hand.  It might look like Chris was just 'supervising', but he really did plant some, too.

Sammy enjoyed running around the vineyard searching for little critters.

The existing plants are doing well. The Pinot Noir is still in grow tubes.  They will likely stay on for another growing season.  Chris has done a great job getting the weeds under control and the cover crop has started to grow.  You can see in these pictures that the rows have just dirt with the vines and the alleys have green cover crop growing.

The existing sauvignon blanc vines are doing very well!  It is a bit hard to tell in this picture, but all of the plants have grown a lot since they were planted.  We might even get a small crop of SB to play with next year!

In addition to the SB, we have about 80 more Pinot Noir plants in 1 gallon pots waiting to go in the ground.  These will probably not be planted until next spring.