It seems to be happening everywhere. An early start to the season, wet spring, dry summer, early harvest. Until it's not. A winemaker on substack reports that they are about 65% through their 2026 vintage in their historic Bedrock Vineyard in Sonoma County.
Liam here in Ireland was preparing to harvest his Solaris weeks earlier than normal when the birds devoured about half of his harvest.
We're not ready yet, but at least it is raining here so maybe, just maybe, we'll have a decent take.
Despite the recent rain, the ground below the surface remains powder dry. Heaven help us! Literally.
One of the vineyard owners posted a note that he was just getting ready to harvest Solaris when the birds took half his crop. That spurred me into starting to measure the Brix of our grapes. We are not close to harvest yet.
The Solaris came in at 15-16 while the Rondo were more varied. I measured from 12 to 16. The Pinot Noir aren't changing colour yet, so I didn't bother measuring them.
Yesterday we had some extraordinary weather, including 5.5 mm of rain. The temperature was quite nice, and a gentle breeze blew without gusting. One extraordinary thing that I noticed was that our soil temperature was the warmest in the country at 17.8 C. The next warmest was 17.5 C in Belmullet. Dublin Airport was 16.0 C. That's quite a difference. I'll have to start watching that as it could have a bearing on our vineyard success. I know we have an unusual microclimate due to Clare Island's parting of the clouds. We can watch them flowing down both shores of Clew Bay while we have sunshine down the middle. We've observed the clouds meeting up and reconnecting again in Castlebar.
Station Rain Max Min Sun Wind Gust Soil Global Gmin
mm oC oC hr Kts (Km/h) Kts (Km/h) oC J/cm^2 oC
Newport Furnace 5.5 17.3 14.6 8.6 (16) (0) 17.8 569 14.5
The numbers are in for the month of August, and the stats for Newport Furnace are not nearly as dire with respect to rainfall as I expected. I still cannot see the data on my PC, but I can access it on my mobile. I cannot, however, copy and paste it here.
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| Very impressive |
Yesterday we took part in an event where we harvested grapes from the vine at Turlough that attendees could take home. Andrew gave a short talk on the vine's history and restoration, and Barry, the owner of House of Plates restaurant in Castlebar, provided recipes and tastings of grape jam and chutney. Delicious. He also introduced us to an unbelievably delicious blue cheese called Mike's Fancy Cheese Young Buck.
When we arrived at 11 am, the glass house was full of giant bunches of grapes. They weren't quite ripe yet, but they were being harvested on the day for cooking. Some were left behind for show and tasting when ripe. At 12 pm, the event started in the courtyard room. They later took people in to see the vines in small groups.
Tomorrow I will make chutney from the 5 kg of grapes we brought home. We could have had three times as much. It took me 2.5 hours to destem and crush them this morning. (I also processed 2 kg of broad beans. Never again.)
On Wednesday, we are giving a talk on the development of our gardens and vineyard to the Westport Gardening Club. I built a large PowerPoint presentation for it. Hopefully, it will be of interest.
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| Perfection. Foster's seedling. Two reds made a white. |
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| A teinturier Andrew brought in for tasting. It was very red inside and out. |
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| John with a monster bunch |
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| Beautiful |
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| Well curated |
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| A wild herb Barry added to chutney |
Here are Barry's recipes:
Grape and Apple Jam
2 kg grapes
400 g jam sugar
250g haw berries
150 g woodruff
5 cooking apples
300 ml water
Cook all ingredients together over a low heat for about an hour until the mixture reduces and becomes thick. Pour through a sieve.
Grape and Apple Chutney
Step 1
2 onions, diced
2 chunks of ginger, diced
400 ml rice vinegar
400 g jam sugar
200 g dark brown sugar
2 tsp mixed spice
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp chilli powder
4 cooking apples, peeled and diced
1.5 kg grapes
Cook all for roughly one hour until the mixture reduces and thickens.
Step 2
4 apples diced
4 plums, diced
500g grapes, halved
2 tbsp honey
Add ingredients in step 2 and cook for a further 10 minutes. Store in sterilised jars.
About a week ago, I brought one of my refractometers down to the polytunnel to see if I could track the grapes' ripening there. About a week ago, the Albarino tested at a Brix of 15. Today, they are 17.5. Looks like we might make 20 next week. Should I wait? There are only three bunches on the one vine and one bunch on the second vine. But that's four more bunches than we got outside.
