So to Vineyard 89. It’s been more than a month since the last vineyard blog. The main reason being we’ve been away which, if you read the rest of this blog, will be obvious. That’s why I’ve been writing about our trip to America. This trip obviously gave us plenty of opportunity to taste American wine (and to pay a hefty price for it).
In addition to simply drinking it we had the opportunity to visit a vineyard in Colorado although more like New Mexico than Colorado. That is to say dry and mountainous rather than the more lush setting you get in much of Colorado.
The vineyard was owned by a Welsh Englishman or an English Welshman. Take your pick depending on which bit of the UK he was missing most and wanted to reminisce about. We didn’t do any wine-tasting, me because I had a long drive (all drives in Colorado are long) back to our hotel and Mrs Summerhouse because she was trying to be supportive of my abstinence.
So I can’t actually report what, other than it was expensive (about $90 a bottle), the wine tasted like, but we did bring two of his cheaper bottles home with us so I’ll report back at a later date. I can say, and maybe you can get an idea of the environment from the one photo I took (see below), that the setting did not seem advantageous to grape growing. With an eye on Schadenfreude I noticed he’d lost quite a few vines and when I asked about that I can only say he was evasive but then, as I think he’d got some form of trunk disease (which has been quite deadly in our own very different vineyard) I can understand his reluctance to share.
Anyway I think you could truthfully describe the visit as interesting and probably the most isolated vineyard I’ve ever visited. A little more willingness to listen and a little less blowing of the own trumpet would have been nice but I suppose you can’t have interesting and humble in the same setting.
And talking of dead vines and the need therefore to replace them, brings me back to our own new arrivals (as in the photo at the beginning of this blog. The photo shows them newly arrived and still soaking in their buckets, prior to planting out.
50 vines doesn’t sound a lot to plant out particularly when you’ve got your man to dig the actual holes. But you’d be wrong because there’s still distributing the vines, filling in the soil, firming it down, watering the plants, staking and tubing each plant along with some tying to the canes, all to be done.
Anyway we managed it just before jetting off to America, as above. We left our chap to cut the grass in our absence. This is fine but it still leaves the decision about spraying for weed-killing purpose to be decided on. I have been reluctant to give our man the go ahead to spray because I’m not sure he is careful enough with his spraying and that errant poison might be responsible for at least some of our deaths in the family. I may do him a great disservice but I’m cautious nevertheless.
The catch 22 is that the new ones are the ones that need greatest protection from the rampant grass so I’m going to have to make a decision one way or the other very soon. We were up at the vineyard for the first time after our trip and the half he’d mowed, looked fine. The half he hadn’t yet done resembled the beginning of an African rain forest. I exaggerate slightly but only a little.
Obviously growing conditions had been good in our absence judging by grass. Thankfully this had, at least, transferred to the vines. There are currently green shoots all over the place and more happily the beginning of little buds, soon to be flowers and then, (whisper it) soon to be grapes. But hold steady there, let’s not get ahead (4 months ahead) of ourselves. Next tasks are to make a decision about grass killing and begin to prepare for fertilising by spraying the leaves. Just a few more weeks of growth and then I or my man can spray the vines with this fertiliser provided by ‘our’ agronomist, but, as I say, that’s in the future.
Vineyard 89 summary
Never let it be said we live a boring retirement. Vineyard experiences across continents, wow.