Photo of the day: A green sea of vines under a blue sky
July 05, 2011
Early June, when I wrote about how cold our spring had been, seems like a lot longer ago than one month. When I returned from a two-week trip to the Rhone (during which it was consistently in the 90s here in Paso Robles) the vineyard had grown so much that it was barely recognizable. There are vineyard blocks where the canes have grown so much, so fast, that you can't see the ground between them. Neil, Ryan, Levi, David and the vineyard crew are spending most of their time shoot thinning, but it will be another few weeks before they've caught up. This last month of warm weather is exactly what we wanted to see. We've nearly caught up to last year in degree days, and more importantly the vineyard looks like it's only a few weeks behind rather than a full month.
I snapped one photo of a hillside of Grenache that gives a sense of what things are like out there, with a sea of vines topped by a robin's egg blue summer sky.