Pulido Vineyard Management Blog 2015

Covering Camalie, Konrad, Crouse and August Vineyards

By Mark Holler

10/15/15 Doing some invoicing. Harvest is down to the last couple blocks at Rubissow and Crouse.

10/14/15 Back from Wisconsin helping out my folks. Ramon did a superb job covering for me based on everything I've heard. Just shows that my contribution at harvest is non-essential. Not so Ramon. He's the Energizer bunny. I couldn't even begin to cover for him.

9/19/15 Picked K3L and discovered that K3M and K4M didn't get picked with K3U and K4U as they were supposed to have been. There was only about 0.3 tons missed but it's significant because the upper blocks only yielded .5 ton. The error wasn't discovered until they finished picking K3 and noticed that there was fruit left in K4. They then picked the K4M fruit and included it with the K3L. Tom Rees was quite happy about this but, Jeff Fontanella was not. I'm trying to find some other equivalent fruit for Jeff as compensation for our error. I've come to appreciate the cost of night harvesting on the brain function of the crew and thereby the harvest process.

9/16/15 1:00pm RAIN 0.65" on Mount Veeder. This should not be enough to cause problems with Botrytis but, it depends on what the temperature is today. It would be better if it stayed cool while there are water droplets on the grapes. This is enough rain to make vehicle movement on even slightly sloped dirt roads very dangerous. Ramon and Rosio walked back from Konrad's rather than drive after starting to slide toward the DC reservoir. By tomorrow the roads should be firm enough again for trucking. No harvesting scheduled for the 17th or 18th. Expect the Brix numbers to roll back significantly after rain after the heat wave. I'll do brix sampling again tomorrow or Friday.

9/16/15 6:00am CAMALIE MERLOT HARVEST. It took an hour and 15 minutes to pick the 0.4625 tons of Camalie Merlot. Ramon then trucked it to Berkeley in the pickup truck. Jonathan Hajdu's comment on receipt of the fruit, "Merlot looks great!. This block has always yielded well and is likely to have the best yield again this year however its yield relative to last year is off by 40%. 2.7 tons/acre this year vs. 4.5 tons/acre last year.

9/15/15 KUGLER JUICE DATA from the tank, Below is the juice panel for the Crouse Block 5 Merlot.

Below the third item down is the Konrad Malbec and the last line item the Crouse Block 5 Cab.Sauv. The top two lines are data from Beckstoffer's Missouri Hopper Block. The Crouse Block 5 C.S. that I measured at 29.7 brix with a late afternoon sample ended up at 27.0 Brix in the tank after being picked pre dawn.

9/14/15 LOW YIELD AT KONRAD. Ramon's team picked Crouse Block 5 Merlot and Konrad's K2U and K4L last night. Crouse Block 5 was about what we expected in terms of yield, maybe 25% off of last year but the Konrad blocks came in with much lower yield 1.1 and .63 tons/acre respectively. These yields are the lowest since before we started farming the vineyard in 2009. 9/15/15 we picked K3& and K4U and got only 0.5 ton total from 1.65 acres which is a new all time low for us, 0.3 tons/acre. The fruit quality was above average.

9/13/15 HEAT BREAKS and RAIN. Odd weather in the last 24 hours. Cool yesterday until a wind came up and blew hot air in around 4:00pm. Then last night around 5:00am we had a little rain, only .03 inches but enough to wet the ground. Not enough to make the Mt. Veeder clay slippery which would make our harvest activity very difficult and dangerous.

9/13/15 SUGAR SPIKE. The heat wave produced some phenomenal Brix Levels with the highest being a measurement I made at Konrad Vineyards Block K3U Cabernet Sauvignon yesterday afternoon, I got 30.7 Brix. This is the highest Brix reading I have ever seen and especially so for Cabernet Sauvignon. The grapes sampled were dimpled but, not close to raisons. At Crouse Vineyards I got a 29.7 Brix reading from her Block 5 Cabernet Sauvignon again late afternoon which is not representative of what the value would be in the tank. This Block was picked on Saturday morning early. I expect these numbers to come down substatially now that the heat has backed off and we got a small amount of rain last night. Note: I continue to add Brix data to the table in this blog a few pages down.

9/12/15 HEAT WAVE BREAKS after a week thankfully. From the curves below you can see that in addition to the high temperatures, both day and night, the humidity was very low, a double whammy for dehydration. You can see the humidity trippled last night after the second day of temps above 100F. Half the years we get no days over 100F on Mt. Veeder.

9/12/15 We picked the Konrad Malbec ~0.4T and the Crouse Block5 cabernet sauvignon ~2T last night from 10:00pm until 5:30am. I was part of the team. The Crouse pick in the California Sprawl canopy on 2-4 ft. terraces was especially difficult. Try picking grapes above your head or leaning on the vine and reaching out as far as you can, 10 ft. above the next terrace to pick fruit on the downhill side of the vines.

The night before, Friday morning, Ramon's crew picked ~5.5 tons from August Vineyards and delivered it to Sinegal Estate.

Kurt Niznik, just called and scheduled his pick of K2U and K4L for Rob Petree for Monday morning early.

9/11/15 ---> 29.7 BRIX in Crouse Block 5 Cabernet Sauvignon after three days of 100F heat at 4:00pm in the afternoon. Substantial dehydration but, the flavor is ready. We are scrambling but will get it picked tonight. Below is a picture of some of this fruit.

Below you can see the top 5-6 vines in Konrad vineyard struggling with the heat and limited water. Further downhill though the vines are doing O.K. Pan your browser to the right to see.

How much different can grapes from the same vineyard be? Here's an example from today.

9/10/15 HEAT WAVE! Typical for September, sometimes referred to as Indian Summer. We hit 98F yesterday and 102F today. We had balmy lows of 72 and 70 overnight due to the temperature inversions we get here on Mt. Veeder. The valley saw many temperatures over 107F at St. Helena yesterday. This is when the cooler climate of Mt. Veeder makes for better grapes. We are struggling with drought limited water supplies though. Two wells have run dry, both Crouse and Konrad Reservoirs are down to their last 10% and our goodwill from Domaine Chandon has run out. I'm not having fun but, I believe we are going to make it. The water stress the vines are feeling is likely to make for some great wine. The low yield will also likely contribute if you subscribe to that religion.

9/9/15 SECOND Harvest Scheduled, Konrad Malbec. at 26.2 Brix scheduled for Saturday morning early.

9/5/15 FIRST HARVEST SCHEDULED. Sinegal Estate has a harvest date of 9/11/15 for the ~6 tons of Malbec at August Vineyards

9/4/15 BRIX update with numbers from most blocks. No big surprises. Crouse Block 5 cab is high due to excess dehydration which we are addressing with some additional irrigation. It will likely be the first block that gets harvested as it usually is but, not much will be ready to harvest for another couple weeks and a good portion of the fruit you can expect will get harvested in October. I had thought that harvest was going to be early but based on this data and comparison to last years's data it looks like harvest dates will be similar or later than last year if anything.

* Kurt Steiner Measured in the morning sometime.

Below is some data from Chris Pratt at Adamvs which includes pH numbers.

The table below is the Brix data for 2014. The conclusion from the comparison to this year thus far is that we are a little behind last year in ripening if anything. Our earlier belief that the light crop would result in earlier ripening is wrong. However, note that 2014 was a relatively early ripening year.

9/2/15 HARVEST LOGISTICS getting underway. Added lights to the narrower John Deere tractor and moved it to August Vineyards. The Malbec there will be one of the first lots to be picked.

Bob Kugler's juice data from 8/29/15, two blocks of fruit at Crouse Vineyards and the Konrad Malbec as well as some Beckstoffer blocks.

Konrad K1 8/27/15 Time unknown, 21.2 Brix, 3.51 pH, 5.8 g/l T.A. Measured by Winemaker

August Vineyards Malbec 8/31/15 11:30 am 23.1 Brix Ramon Measured.

Konrad Malbec 8/25/15 11:00am 23.1 Brix

8/24/15 FIRST BRIX NUMBERS and some subsequent data, a few from the blocks that normally are first to ripen. The Merlot is always the first to push sugar followed by Cr5 and K1. Flavors are generally "Good" but, not mature. Table grape sort or maturity. Very little if any green flavors.

Camalie Merlot 8/24/15, 9:15am 23.9 Brix

Crouse Block 5 Cab. Sauv. 8/21/15, 5:00pm 21.5 Brix

Konrad Block K1 8/22/15, 10:00am 21.5 Brix

Note: The Camalie half ton of Merlot is not spoken for in case anyone is interested at $3400/ton. SOLD.

8/15/15 SMOKE, something's burning somewhere in Napa Valley or the North wind is bringing smoke down from the Berryessa fire. There is a light smell of smoke in the air and quite a bit of haze.

8/14/15 August Vineyards. Met with Ryan from Seneval and he seemed happy with the state of the Malbec there. Below is a picture of Ramon at August Vineyards. We're estimating 5-6 tons vs. the 7 ton yield the vineyard has reportedly had the last three years. This is an eyeball estimate only. Effects of the cold fruit set are not really noticeable here now. The within cluster uniformity looks good.

Below is some Merlot in Block 5 at Crouse Vineyards. A few green berries are still evident but, it looks better than expected.

Pierce's disease it showing itself much more than usual this year. Here's a shot from August Vineyards. 15 or 20 vines out of 3000 are showing these symptoms and probably most of the 200 vines we replaced this Spring were dead due to Pierce.

We believe the symptom below is also Pierce's disease at Camalie at bloom, 6/1/15 but, it looks much different from the typical appearance shown above which is from August 15. The vines with this early symptom at Camalie below are not showing symptoms like the above at this time so it may be something else.

8/4/15 Chardonnay Harvest at Domaine Chandon. Earliest I can remember them harvesting.

8/3/15 YIELD ESTIMATE #2 at Camalie Vineyards. I went to mid block 3 and counted clusters on 5 vines in one row getting 38,33,27,34, and 48 clusters. The average being 36. I then cut all the clusters off of the vine with 38 clusters and weighed them all. I actually ended up with 43 clusters when I picked them. The total grape weight for the vine was 4.5lbs. Average cluster weight 1.68oz. Compare that to .98oz/cluster at Crouse 2 weeks ago. Camalie has 954 vines/acre which if they all yield 4.5 lbs. would generate 2.14 tons/acre. That's what the yield would be if we picked Camalie today! Not bad. We still have 8-10 weeks of growing season left and if you buy into the lag phase method of predicting you would forecast 2x the weight now at harvest which would be 4.2 tons/acre. This is not likely as the max we have achieved is 4 tons per acre in the best 2 out of 12 years we have been growing. Below you can see what the clusters in this sample actually look like. Qualitatively the berry sizes seem to be larger than usual now which may explain the higher cluster weights than at Crouse. I would not be surprised if the vines compensated for the low set by producing larger grapes with the energy they are capturing now. The canopies are as healthy as in any year. As a result I am increasing my yield estimate based on this sample to 2.2 tons/acre at least for Camalie Vineyards. Note the berry sizes are fairly uniform in this sample.

However, not all bunches are this uniform. 15 rows uphill, in the first row below Camalie House you can observe bizarre clusters like this one.

Here's a picture of Dr. Konrad's pond as of 8/3/15. The bullfrogs seem to be happy but, there is not much water left. Our good neighbors at Domaine Chandon have saved our butts. Note the pond level sensor that was supposed to have detected excessive water loss like a valve being left open. I'ts working now but, the horse is already out of the barn. My bad.

Below is a graph of the soil moisture tension in Konrad Block K1. Here you can see we have been able to keep the soil moisture under the 150 centibar target with the help of water from DC.

Below is a panorama of K1 today August 3, 2015. You can see there is no excess of water on this block.

7/14/15 YIELD ESTIMATE = 1/2 PRIOR TWO YEARS. Ms. Crouse is in the final stages of working out a contract with her winemaker and asked me to do a more precise yield estimate than the qualitative visual assessment we have been doing thus far. Since the yield this year appears to be very far from the norm this is a worthwhile action for the purpose of winery capacity planning. Using last year's numbers or the estimates in the grape contracts will likely result in some half empty tanks at crush.

Here's what I did: I sampled grapes from three locations at Crouse Vineyards, blocks 3,4 and 6. I counted clusters and shoots and found that the vines have the same number as usual about 40-45 clusters per vine, ~500vines/acre. This is not surprising since the shoot and cluster count is primarily a function of how the vines are pruned. We made no changes to our pruning this year. I took two bunches from a Block 3 vine and counted set berries vs. flowers/unset berries. On one bunch which looked representative of most clusters on this vine I found 22 berries set out of 163 possible, 13% set. On another cluster representative of a few of the largest clusters on this vine I found 56 berries set out of 96 set or 58%. This is an extremely small sample and I don't have numbers to compare it to from other years so don't get too excited about these numbers. They are just intended to get your attention as they did mine.

I went to Block 4 and estimated the berry set there at 40% of possible berries. I also counted berries per cluster there and got the following numbers; 45,20,85,45. In Block 6 I got berry counts of 37,70,59,46,80,75. The average grape count for all three blocks was 53 grapes/cluster. Having a rough idea of what grapes weigh at harvest one can make a yield estimate from these grape counts. I found a paper by Mathews et al at UC Davis with some representative final grape weights for Cabernet Sauvignon. The berry weights ranged from .5 to 1.5 gram with the mid range being about 1.0 gram/grape. Multiply this times 53 grapes and you get 53grams = 1.9oz. = .12 lb/cluster +/- 50%. Typical cluster weights for cab in our vineyards I have found in previous years are .25 to .33 lb. This analysis says that the yield will be half or less than a typical year.

I did a little more research and found a paper by some folks at Ohio state describing three techniques for estimating yield. The second techique which they call "Lag Phase Method" weighs grapes in the Lag Phase which is right at Veraison and then estimates final yield as double that weight based on historical data of the final weights to lag phase weights. Apparently this is a technique the Pinot Noir growers in Oregon use regularly. I thought I would try it out as an alternative to check the conclusion above. Toward this end I picked clusters from 13 vines in a row of vines outside the Camalie Cave and got the following cluster weights in ounces; 1.25,.6,.95,1.3,1.4,.8,.7,1.05,1.2,1.15,.9,.65,.85 which average to .98oz/cluster. If the lag phase technique works for Cab we would expect cluster weights of 2oz. = .125 lb. at harvest. This agrees exactly with the estimate above based on the assumption that grapes weight around 1g each at harvest.

To check this 1g/berry assumption based on the Davis paper I counted berries on 4 of the Camalie clusters with 29 to 35 berries and divided each cluster weight by the berry count to get the weight per berry. I got the following 4 average berry weights/cluster; .54g, .67g,.67g,.68g. averaging to .64g/berry. If we assume the Lag Phase Model which says the weight will double by harvest we get a prediction that these berries will weigh 1.28g/berry, 28% higher than the 1.0 gram assumption but, still well within the 1.0-1.5 range of the Davis Paper. I wish I had some final berry weights and berry counts for the vineyards we are farming. Have to take some this year.

Conclusion: At this point in time (7/19/15) My best estimate of the yield to expect this year is 1/2 of the yield of the last two years which were both very good years. PLEASE PLAN ACCORDINGLY. If there is a tonnage estimate in your contract please be aware that it is likely you will receive only half that tonnage. I will do additional estimates as we get closer to harvest but, this is the best estimate I can come up with at this point. To first order I believe this estimate applies to Konrad and August Vineyards as well. If you have any doubts about this estimate, which you should, I encourage you to come up and make your own estimates.

7/14/15 VERAISON - COLOR. Below are a couple pictures from Crouse Block 6 but, this 20-50% color change is common accross all of the vineyards we are farming. Notice that the color change is not very dependent on the berry size. I would have expected the larger berries which one would think set earlier than the smaller berries would be further ahead in maturity and thus, would change color first. This does not appear to be the case. With a little luck late season ripening may likewise not be very dependent on grape size/fruit set date. Wishful thinking.....? We could use a break.

7/9/15 RAIN in July?? Barely enought to wet the ground. The rain gauge says we got only .06". The temperature has also been low with a high of only 60F during the rain. It felt like winter. This is good news in a drought though. Both the moisture and low temps reduce vine evapotranspiration significantly and will reduce the amount of irrigation we need to do.

The picture below shows a very bimodal grape size distribution in this bunch at Camalie. This is not typical but is rather very unusual. I have never seen anything like this in 15 years of grape growing. It looks as though half of the flowers pollinated one day and the rest pollinated a couple weeks later.

7/6/15 HEDGING. Below is Camalie Block 4 in need of some hedging. No irrigation or fertigation to this block. I believe the light crop load has resulted in more canopy growth. This is one of the more vigorous blocks most years. With the lighter crop load the vines don't need this much canopy. Hedging removes the shoot tips where most of the vines' energy is being spent. We want more of it to go to the grapes although with the light crop load we are not too worried about getting all the fruit to ripen. We would like to get more sun on the fruit though, another reason for hedging.

The fruit looks good in this block. Less shatter and decent yield which is generally on the higher end in this block most years.

Here is Louis hedging by hand. This is premium viticulture. Camalie Block 3.

Camalie Block 2 hedging decimation. We would rather cut back on fertilizer and water than do a lot of hedging but, there is no way to predict the fruit set before bloom when we normally do our fertigations.

6/29/15 More Pictures of grapes, these are from Camalie Block 3. Hens and chicks or something else? Very nice weather we are having. The vines are very happy. It seems the lighter crop load agrees with them.

The wetness on the grapes below is due to a spray for powdery mildew done 1 hour before. This bunch shows the worst berry size variance I have seen. Most is like the pictures above.

6/25/15 KONRAD IRRIGATION. Our very excellent neighbors, Domaine Chandon gave us the go ahead to pump some of the lost water to irrigate Konrad Vineyards. Irrigation was initiated last evening and about 6 gallons/vine was applied to the dryest block, K1 over night. Soil Moisture data indicates the water penetrated to 36" this morning. The following day we were able to irrigate blocks K2U, K3U, K4U and the Malbec, all the blocks that really needed irrigation at this time.

Because the flow rate to the Konrad pond is so low and only invites additional evaporation we are irrigating directly to the blocks rather than going via the pond and siphon. It takes only 160psi to pump to the top block K1 and the flow rate is increased to 10 gpm which is just right to irrigate the whole of K1 at once. This morning the flow was switched over to K2+K3 upper which are lower and require only 140psi to irrigate. The flow rate rose to 14 gpm which is just right for these two blocks together. In every cloud there is a silver lining. The lower blocks at Konrad are still growing and don't need any water at this time. K4U will need some irrigation though.

6/18/15 KONRAD PUMP online. After a major installation and plumbing of a . new 1500 ft. 2" line uphill we have a pump in the DC pond and plumbing capable of moving water up to any block at Konrad Vineyards or the pond. To get to the pond takes 185psi at the pump and the flow rate is only 4 gpm but this will work. Thanks to D.Bess Pump and Well for the pump and float structure. See photo to left below.

6/14/15 SHATTER. As the berry sizes grow it is becoming more apparent that we have a very significant shatter problem this year again mostly due to the cold weather at fruit set. Talking with Doug Hill at Oakville Farming he said that he has seen the same in the mountain vineyards he manages. Up valley and on the valley floor where it is warmer they have not seen the same problem with shatter. Below is an example I believe from a block at Konrad vineyards. We expect yields will be lower by 20% to 40%, down from roughly 3 tons/acre to 1.5-2 tons/acre. Please plan accordingly. The silver lining here is that powdery Mildew risk is reduced when you have shatter due to the more open bunches.

6/10/15 RAIN?!? We received 0.19" of rain on Wednesday. No obvious impact aside from reducing the drought conditions and evapotransporation, all good.

We noticed some vines with stunted growth at Camalie that look like maybe eutypa. We may send some for DNA analysis.

Got the wireless pond pump control working at Crouse Vineyards after a couple of wasp stings. Below is the wireless pump control. The radio and arduino microcontroller are in the upper left of the box. This saves me dozens of trips to that reservoir to pump to a tank for gravity feed of irrigation. After a while I will get too lazy to go to the web page to do the pumping and write some code to pump automatically to keep the tank full.

Got a pump to pump water back to the Konrad pond. Plan to install that on Friday.

6/6/15 HEAT and IRRIGATION START. The cold during bloom was not good for us. The fruit set is "irregular" meaning there are some clusters far ahead of others which is likely to create more variance in the ripeness when we get down to harvest. Green drop will be especially critical this year as it will be the best opportunity to tighten up the distribution. Yields are likely to be reduced depending on how aggressively we drop fruit to tighten up the distribution of maturity. Here are some photos to show you what I am talking about. This issue has affected all of the vineyards we are farming.

Above and below are from Konrad K1. Note that Ramon's crew has finished leafing in the fruit zone at all of the vineyards now. We remove leaves from only one side of the vines, either the North side if the rows run East West or from the East(morning sun side) if the rows run North South as they do in K1. These photos were taken in the early evening around 7:00pm.

Below if a panorama from the top of K4. In general the vigor is right where we want it. The vines are slowing their growth due to having used up most of the water that was stored in the soil. They are feeling some water stress which is desirable to keep berry sizes small and the vigor limited. No sense in growing a lot of long canes just to hedge them off.

Crouse Block 5 Below.

Crouse Block 5 fruit.

I started irrigating Konrad and Crouse Vineyards today. I had to restart the siphon at Konrad which still works fine but there isn't much water left in the reservoir. I did get a pump and customer float set up from Dave Bess on Friday to move some water from the DC pond back to Dr. Konrad's pond. Some significant lumbing and wiring left to do to make it happen. Here's a picture of the pump in the back of my F.J.. It should be able to pump 10 gpm at 200psi to get water to Dr. Konrad's pond. To the right is a crack in the soil at the top of K1. indicative of the need for irrigation there in the most esposed block. To the right of that is my daughter Natalie in her graduation garb after graduating from Palo Alto High School last week. She's bound for the University of Puget Sound in the fall.

Below you can see some yellow basal leaves and no tendrill outreach both indicative of dry vines. The soil mosture at 24" was 140 cbar further evidence. I gave them 2 gallons this evening. The urgency to get the pump into the DC reservoir and pumping is increasing. We plan to have it online this week.

If you read this far you deserve an extra bit of information. Dr. Konrad's vineyard is in escrow. No, I don't know who the potential buyer is or anything else. I only found out when I sent his agent a new lead. Note: it was in escrow once before so don't assume it is sold. Thus far no impact on the farming.

Only a couple small lots of Merlot from my vineyard and Crouse Vineyards are left plus some uncertain quantity of Cab from Crouse Bacchus block.

5/19/15 COLD weather. Bloom is mostly done but, is dragging out due to the cold weather. Below is an interesting graph showing the temperature difference between last year this time and this year. You can see that we had most of a week of warm temps last year at this time vs. temps as much as 30 degrees cooler this year at the same time. The blue curve is the difference in temps.

5/6/15 BLOOM is about 50% now in the Cabernet Sauvignon. Here are a couple photos from the top of Crouse Block 6.

Here's a cool panarama of a replanting on Atlas Peak where I was reinstalling soil moisture sensors

4/25/15 RAIN. We received 0.65" of very welcome rain last night. In the valley and on the Eastern side they received less, 0.4". Thankfully we don't have anything in bloom except for the Malbec at Konrad Vineyards. Rain and cold at bloom can affect fruit set. Malbec actually has better fruit set at bloom if it is not growing so fast which is the case with the cooler weather.

I also installed a water recovery pump at Crouse vineyards and a pond level sensor there. The water recovery pump might also be called a reverse bilge pump. A bilge pump is used in boats to pump water out that leaks in. If you think of the reservoir as the hull of a boat which has leaking water out rather than in then the pump outside the reservoir shown in the first picture below can be thought of as a reverse bilge pump. The water is on the outside of the hull and we want it back in. This probably seems like a brute force alternative to fixing the leak but, we have already spent a couple thousand dollars trying to fix the leak without success. There is a reason why this approah is common in boats and ships, leaks are hard to fix especially when the leakage is distributed over a large area which is the case here. You can see the new pond level sensor in the picture on the right too along with the outflow from the new pump. You can see the leak rate between the 30th of April and the First of May when the pump was turned off for a day. In addition to leakage from the reservoir going into the sump there is also spring water from the hillside to the East filling the sump hence the net rise in the pond level. The water in the sump is ice cold and crystal clear. The pond level has risen 5" since we started the pumping whereas it would have lost 10" if we weren't pumping. This puts us around 50,000 gallons ahead of where we would have been without the pump. Sometimes reality serves up a bonus, but not too often.

4/24/15 Replaced the manifold pressure sensor and upgraded to a CS3 radio network and now I have good data. Also placed a new pond level sensor at the pond and capped the line that went to the unfarmed block with the broken risers making it impossible for the same irrigation system operator error to happen again without some replumbing. I dug a little deeper around the riser and found the valve that the operator was trying to open buried underground.

New Pond level Sensor at Konrad.

4/22/15 First BLOOM observed on the top few vines of Malbec at Konrad vineyards. I Replaced the manifold pressure sensor at Konrad Vineyards but, the reading still doesn't seem right. 38psi when the visual gauge there shows 65 psi. and the value is varying 10 psi. Set an alert. Closing the barndoor after the cows are gone. There is still some finite amount of water left.

Here is a picture from Konrad K2U. The vines are growing fast. Remember it is still April.

Here is the Malbec at Konrad Vineyards. My shot of bloom was out of focus. You can see some hail damage to the lower leaves on the left in this photo.

Here is a view of K1 in the foreground and K2U further out to the right at Konrad Vineyards.

View of K1 looking up to the top. We have two parties interested in this block, one large company and a smaller player. We are working through some contract issues with the larger company.

Just a nice panorama of Konrad K1 thanks to the iphone Panorama feature. Mt. Diablo is in the middle far distance but is covered by fog on this day.

4/21/15 Cool Weather

4/7/15 A hail storm caused some damage to larger basal leaves. No apparent impact on flowers or growth afterwards but the larger basal leaves look rather tattered. I'm also noticing that the second clusters on the shoots are higher up on the shoot than usual.

4/2-4/13 Water loss from Konrad pond. Through a coincidence of bad luck the majority of the water in Dr. Konrad's pond was drained into a neighboring rerservoir over an 11 day period. On 4/2 while preparing to spray for powdery mildew protection PVM was trying to fill the 100 gallon sprayer tank on the back of the tractor at the top of block 6 from a fill line there. Having forgotten how the fill line was plumbed to the system they tried opening a valve at the top of block 6. This valve, shown below in the leg off to the side of this riser actually supplies water to the submain of a block which is no longer planted. The row risers for this block are no longer maintained and have been sheared off by crawler turns over the years. See the picture of one of them below.

When this valve at the top of block K6 was opened no water flowed because the water supply was shut off at the main manifold next to block K1. They left this valve open and drove the crawler up to the manifold where there is another fill line. They opened the main valve at the manifold and filled the sprayer there. When they opened the main valve the vineyard main was pressurized and water began flowing through the valve left open at K6 and out of two sheard off 1/2" risers at the edge of the abandoned block. They did not notice this flow as they were roughly 200 yards away at the main valve out of site of the area where the water was flowing from the risers. They finished their spraying and left the vineyard in vehicles that made too much noise to hear the water flow. The water flow was 100 ft. from the road and out of site of the road they exited on. They weren't planning on returning until the next spray time and since we are not yet irrigating there I had no plans to go there either. Ramon left for L.A. a couple days later to visit his brother in the hospital. Ramon is back there again for his funeral today 4/22/15. It was 11 days before our neighbor Mario managing the adjacent vineyards at Domaine Chandon noticed their reservoir more full than it had been and came to investigate. He found the source of the water flow, shut off the main valve at Konrad Vineyards and called us saving us from complete disaster. Thanks so much Mario!!

More bad luck was that our monitoring system failed to detect this event. The pressure sensor on the manifold had failed last fall and hadn't been replaced yet. There is also a level sensor installed in the pond intended to alert us to water loss from the pond. You can see it on the pole in this picture of the pond. This sensor was also not functioning. Part of the reason for this (I'm rationalizing) is that we didn't expect to be farming Konrad Vineyards this year, expecting it to be sold and as a result let the monitoring system fall into disrepair.

This photo shows the water that is left in the reservoir, about 15-20%. Meter readings before and after the loss indicate that 680,000 gallons or 2.1 acre ft. of water were lost. Much of this water found its way down through the upper part of block K6 to drains which drain into Domaine Chandon's reservoir. Fortunately Domaine Chandon has always been a good neighbor and has expressed that they are willing to help us get water back.

Since half of Konrad Vineyards, Blocks K2L, K3L, K4L and K6, are already dry farmed and the vines have deep roots at age 13 years and we will likely get some of the water back, we are not too worried about the vineyard's performance this year.

3/11/15 Here we go again. This is the Malbec at Konrad vineyards with block K1 in the background. Note fruit from both of these blocks and a couple others are available.

Here is a vine in K2U well past bud break already on 3/10/15. The lower blocks are somewhat behind. Half of this block is also available.

Below is a picture from Crouse Block 5 showing it too has broken bud. We had a very small amount of rain last night and the air is now much more humid than it has been which is all good.

Here is a Crouse Block 8 Merlot Vine well along.

Crouse Block 3 Mount Veeder Magic Vine.

I finished fertigation of Konrad Vineyards yesterday. Only the upper blocks K1,K2U, K3U,K4U,K5.were given fertilizer on the order of 1oz./vine. K2L got half a dose before I discovered that the mid row valves in Block 2 were open and closed them.

This is the 6th year of my blog. This year we have added farming of the vineyard of one of Ms. Crouse's friends, August Vineyards on Orchard Ave. to the Northwest of Napa. This is a flat land Malbec vineyard which is new for us. I just posted seven tons of Malbec from this vineyard on the market this week.

Dr. Konrad has had a couple offers to purchase his vineyard but none of them has closed. He is growing grapes again this year while continuing to market the vineyard. We're happy to be working with him again.

Ms. Crouse and her husband are remodeling their landmark yellow house on Mt. Veeder Rd. and are making good progress in case you haven't seen. However, Greg and their contractor punked me today (I think) sending me home for a set of dry clothes after a joint they left unglued came apart as I was pumping to her tank uphill. At 50psi. the joint came apart while I was standing 2 ft. away. This is what it looked like from dry land a little further away. Now I know why they insulate the handle on the pump shutoff switch. Actually Eric their contractor was conveniently nearby and shut off the main power so I didn't have to risk electrocution in the pond shower to turn off the pump.

The next day after repairing the joint I resumed pumping and fertigated blocks 3 and 4 at Crouse but, as I was filling the tank to start fertigating block 5 a different joint in the manifold came apart with similar cause and effect. O.K. guys this is no longer funny. This is what happens when a high powered executive decides to take up plumbing. This 3" plumbing operates at 105psi to convey water 250 ft. up to the top of the hill. The cross sectional area of the pipe is 7 sq. inches times 105 pounds/sq. inch = 740 lbs of force on each joint. It's amazing that plastic pipe can handle this pressure at all. You can see why anything less than perfect joinery will fail. There are another three "executive" joints that are still holding but, I now have spare parts on hand to replace them if need be. Water cost per break is a couple thousand gallons as the whole tank empties before I can reach the shut off valve under the plank next to the wet power panel. Whine complete.

If you don't have an evergreen contract or an extended year contract grapes from the block you received grapes from last year are up for sale in the general market, listed on WineBusiness.com and the NVGG grape market. Don't assume you will get a call from me before I sell the fruit to someone else although I try to give you an opportunity to purchase when I start talking to someone else about your block. Sometimes though a buyer makes an offer at a good price on the spot and wants an answer. In these cases I tend to accept the offer.

I moved this blog to a new server and upgraded all of my networking to Gigabit speed at Camalie which has sped up the serving of this blog imensely. Farming now requires high performance networks.

Pulido Vineyard Management Grower's Blog 2014

Camalie/Konrad/Crouse/ Grower's Blog 2013

Camalie/Konrad Grower's Blog 2012

Camalie Grower's Blog 2010, 2011

Konrad Grower's Blog 2011

Konrad Grower's Blog 2009, 2010

Home Pages: Camalie Konrad Crouse August

All photography by Mark Holler. Copyright 2009-2015

Last Updated 3/13/15 M.Holler