Old Roots Winery on Ear to the Ground

 

Esperanza and Jesus established Old Roots Winery in Wexford where they have invested €3 million of their own money to plant a vineyard and are awaiting planning permission to build a full-scale winery. RTE's Ear to the Ground visits their vineyard at harvest. Among the grapes they planted are Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, and Cabernet Cordis. They have been selling to upscale hotels until recently when they opened an online shop. I just ordered three bottles of red and white to try. 

The interesting thing is they didn't want to plant the varieties that are considered suitable for our climate because they think those don't make great wines. I wonder what David Llewelyn thinks about that? 

Their story is the first in this segment. 
https://www.rte.ie/player/series/ear-to-the-ground/SI0000000488?epguid=IP10017293-33-0014 

Pinot Noir achieves ripeness!

 

Although two gales in one week stripped the vineyard bare and desiccated the leaves on nearby trees, a few grapes survived long enough to test for sugar content. The Brix of the remaining grapes came in at 17 to 19.5. They tasted sweet and complex. I'd say there is hope for future harvests. 

Gale yesterday

 

It blew, it rained, and it blew some more all day yesterday while Craig worked his butt off digging last year's donkey poo and straw out of the shed and spreading it on the vineyard floor. I hope it's decomposed enough to not be toxic. If it's okay, it should start to correct some of the soil deficiencies. I'll have to order minerals to supplement. The max wind speed recorded at Mayo Sailing Club was 78 knots. 

The winds decimated the leaves on the vines so it appears the Pinot Noir will not have enough support to ripen sufficiently. The brix reading is 12, not high enough. But I am encouraged enough to believe that accelerating warming will one day get us over the line. It is also probably too late to collect leaves to send to Teagasc for disease analysis, but I will pursue this next week. 

Nino 3.4 SSTs off the charts

 

For the first time in recorded history, the Niño 3.4 sea-surface temperature (SST) is above 30.0°C, reaching a preliminary SST of 30.06°C on October 5th. The Niño 3.4 SST anomaly is now 3.41°C above the 1991-2020 baseline.

This afternoon, we were basking in 18C temps and sunshine, perfect for bringing in all the vulnerable plants. 

I had a busy day. GP visit first thing, breakfast in This Must be the Place (recommended), painted window at 22 on the Quay, food shopping at Tesco, lunch at home, plants moved into polytunntel, and catch up online. Just a normal day in retirement. 

September second warmest on record

September was provisionally the second-warmest September on record. The average temperature of 15.22°C ranks it behind only 2021’s average of 15.27°C. Significantly higher than average temperatures across the country made it 1.62°C warmer than the 1991-2020 average and 2.29°C above the average for 1961-1990. It was generally dull, wet and warm overall. We had only 42 degree days below 15.5C compared with more than 75 for the past two years and 53 over the LTA.  Soil temperature was higher than expected, but the radiation was lower. 

So far, October is following suit. 

Seaweed fertiliser

 

This week's storm, which hit during a spring tide, dumped loads of seaweed on our driveway and along the road. So for the last few days, Alex has been collecting it and distributing it throughout the vineyard. A friend adamantly said we had to wash it, but I told her the torrential rainstorm already did that for us. This thing about washing the salt off the seaweed is BS. The salt spray in the wind already distributes a saline solution over our entire peninsula. 

Meanwhile, the Pinot Noir is coming along nicely.  Very pretty bunches, and they don't seem to be bothered by mildew. The warm weather has helped. Today was glorious. Sunny and warm, the weather station at MSC recorded a high temperature of 18.7C -- on the 3rd of October! And we've got three more days of warm weather to go. 

Yesterday morning

Yesterday Midday

Yesterday evening

Storm warning

 

The sky at 7:15 this morning was on fire. Red sky at morning, sailors' warning. And so here we are. It's blowin' hard, but from the ESE, a direction from which we have some protection. It's a big storm. 

Alex lit the solid fuel stove for the first time since last Spring because it got quite cold this morning, but now it feels like about 20 C degrees. Still, the warmth feels nice. We'll light a fire tonight for the first time, too. 

The pressure dropped in the course of the day from 1012 to 986 hPa.  We had a gust over 50 knots; that's 98 km/h. We haven't had storms all summer. We're not getting much rain, but the south is getting pummeled again. 

It was the hottest summer on record.  There have been no hurricanes in the Atlantic, but the Pacific is very active, with Cat5 Hurricane Polo making landfall at Baja California. We are about to see one of the largest rain events that’s ever been triggered in the continental United States by a Pacific Hurricane. The saturated remnants of former Category 5 Hurricane Polo are going to inject a massive conveyor belt of deep, tropical moisture up through NW Mexico and into the U.S. South-Central Texas could be at the epicentre of the event, with isolated rain totals potentially reaching up to a FOOT this week.

Met Éireann Summer Stats