Spring certainly hasn’t yet shown its face here in Sonoma Valley. After a nice early start on the rainy season, we encountered a spell of dry weather that lasted, it seemed, longer than it should have. Then just as the local papers began forecasting “drought” for the upcoming year, it started to rain. And rain. And rain. Hopefully, the last few weeks of “cats and dogs” has brought the water table in Sonoma Valley up to where it should be and the snow pack in the Sierras as thick as it needs to be. It does seem a little colder than usual around here, but that could just be the fact that my blood circulation ain’t what it used to be. Anybody else notice that?

Chris Loxton (Our Trusty & Talented, Yet Displaced Aussie Winemaker) and I finished the first racking of the 2000 Syrah on February 16. The new wine, after fermentation and pressing off the skins, was put directly into French Oak barrels to begin malo-lactic fermentation. When that is completed, “racking” is the winespeak process for pumping the free-run wine off of the “lees”, the settled sediment in the bottom of the barrel. We do this with a strange looking stainless steel tool called a “Bulldog’s Pup” which gently pumps the new wine out of the barrel by injecting nitrogen gas into the barrel. (I don’t want to sound sexist, but there’s something that fascinates most men about stainless steel. They also feel that way about heavy equipment. And Ferraris.) Just prior to racking and the addition of a small amount of SO2, Chris and I blind tasted each lot of the new wine, compared the flavors developing from each type of oak barrel, and he made the recommendations for the barrel order for this next season. We also decided which block of the vineyard we will nurture for next year’s GlenLyon Syrah and which blocks of fruit we will grow to sell.

Both vineyards are now pruned and the canes have been tied to the fruiting wires. The cover crop of clover and fescue growing between the vine rows look like long strips of velvety green carpet cascading up and down the vineyard hillsides this time of year. Ours is an annual cover crop that reseeds itself every season and we’ll mow it when the seeds are mature and the tips start to turn brown. I enjoy doing that a lot. It puts a big smile on my face to be out in the new-budding vineyard on the tractor, mowing the cover crop. It’s the first job that indicates the rains are pretty much over and that the new growing season is beginning. The overwhelming smell that comes from the new mown grass that flies every which way from under the rotary mower is almost too much. As I said, it sure does make you smile. Only thing wrong with the whole scenario is that Corky The Wonder Dog has to stay back at the house. When those rotary blades hit a rock, it’s like a bullet flying out from underneath the cover at precisely dog-body level. Corky does sort of understand the danger, but it still tears her up not to be able to chase the rabbits that pop up and run out of the way of the tractor. She hasn’t caught a rabbit yet, but it’s not from lack of trying. She is now almost fourteen and in people-years, that puts her up there close to the centennial mark. But, then again, I don’t know any ninety-eight year old humans who still want to chase rabbits.

That’s it for now. The Book of Psalms (104:15) said it best:
“Wine maketh glad the heart of man.”

Squire Fridell