The worst case for California

 

If things couldn't get worse for Californians, first massive drought, then flooding rains, now blizzards. When will the pestilence arrive? 

Buds forming

 

I did an edit of the vine pruning today. Found a few things to remove that I was cautious about before. And I noticed that the mild wet weather has brought on bud development on the Solaris and Chardonnay vines. The Pinot Noir and Albarino are still dormant and I didn't check the Rondo.

Everything else is growing, too. The grass needs mowing, the fruit trees are coming to life. Good thing we pruned them last week. 

There was a beautiful rainbow yesterday and the tides have been extraordinarily high this week. But the weather has now improved which means getting caught up in the garden before it really takes off. 

12,000 bottles of wine dug out of the silt

New Zealand crews are assessing the damage after cyclone Gabrielle. In some places, they face total loss as hundreds of hectares of land are under many meters of silt brought in by the flooding. Many are blaming the extensive monoculture forestry for the landslides. 

In other places, wineries are digging to reach bottles of wine now stuck underneath the silt, meters of it. The bottles have gone for testing, and hopefully auction as the wine was not insured. The silt and slash have left many roads to vineyards and wineries unpassable. 

When I drove around NZ, even in good weather there are landslides that cut off roads. I had to wait for hours in one remote region for bulldozers to clear a lane covered in mud and pine trees. To go back would have taken many hours and there was no alternative route. In some places, cars shared bridges with trains, which was another experience altogether. But if those bridges were taken out, it will take weeks if not months to rebuild. 

People from the hard-hit Esk Valley are being evacuated as heavy rains approach. Heavy rain is expected in cyclone-hit Gisborne, Hawke's Bay, and Coromandel Peninsula overnight. Heavy rain and thunderstorms are causing flooding around Auckland and Northland. If this isn't an impact from climate change, then what is it?  

Meanwhile, North America is experiencing record snowfalls in half the country, whereas the other half is reporting record-high temperatures. Go figure! 

Devastation in New Zealand

The devastation was evident on the North Island in New Zealand after cyclone Gabrielle tore through last week, with flooding and mudslides wreaking havoc in two wine-producing regions. Wine producers in the Hawke’s Bay and Gisborne regions of New Zealand face power cuts and water shortages as they prepare for the 2023 harvest in the cyclone-ravaged regions, this after weeks of flooding due to heavy rains at the end of January. 

MetService described Cyclone Gabrielle as one of the worst storms to hit New Zealand in living history. Hawkes Bay received three times the amount of rain in one night than it usually would during the whole month of February. Many vines were completely submerged during the cyclone, just weeks before the start of the grape harvest. The extent of the damage won’t be known for some time, with communications and access to some vineyards still cut off by high waters and landslides. It could take weeks to get power and communications back up and running. 

Hawke’s Bay and Gisborne are New Zealand’s second- and third-largest wine-producing regions respectively, yielding a combined 60,000 tonnes in 2022 and accounting for 12% of the vintage.

20 wines under $20

In an interesting article in the New York Times, a wine critic chooses 20 unusual wines that provide interest and great value at less than $20. Among them are several made from unusual varietals. I have been noticing that people are experimenting and doing very interesting things with wines that don't fit the AOCs. They are even buying vineyards that are outside regulated regions where winemaking is precisely controlled so they can try out all kinds of different things. Biodynamics, sustainable organic farming, no additives, different mixes, unknown varietals. How exciting!

There are wines from Virginia, Macedonia, Austria, Catalonia and even France highlighted. There's one Malbec from the Uco Valley that we must try - Altos Las Hormigas. There's a white rioja from Muga that sounds divine. None of these are mass-produced. Some are made from grapes growing on 100-year-old vines, others are made from ancient varieties that have not been favoured by winemakers for centuries. 

There is even a wine made from high-quality trebbiano Abruzzese grapes grown on overhead trellises, Jasci Trebbiano d’Abruzzo 2021. "The grapes are farmed organically and trained on overhead pergolas, a traditional method that many have rejected as out of date, though some thoughtful producers are finding that older generations might have had excellent reasons to prefer it. The wine is clear, pure, textured and refreshing."

I am glad people are getting creative. This whole notion of controlled regions where no one can venture outside the box is unnerving to me. It means there may be room for us to experiment as well. 

Spring transformation

Yesterday was balmy and calm and everything seemed to come alive. The bees were a buzz, the flowers were coming to life, and the birds were singing up a storm. And yes, today the stormy weather took over. Gale force winds, rain in the late afternoon and cold temps made me realise it's not really over. But here are a few signs that things are about to change. 

But I cannot find my heated propagators from last year, so my seed trays are falling behind. I'll have to just bite the bullet tomorrow. 

Remarkable weather

Spring has arrived on the bank holiday weekend celebrating St Bridget's Day this Monday. Imbolc, St Bridget's actual feast day, arrived on the 1st of February, of course. But the weather was better today. It provided the perfect opportunity to prune the vines. 

We actually started yesterday and I did the little ones - Albarino and Pinot Noir - last week. Yesterday, I finished the Chardonnay vines, and today I did the younger Solaris. They were brutal. We had let them grow wild and they took on interesting shapes that needed to be coaxed into straight trunks, but I got through the lot and removed most everything that didn't belong, although there will be editing to do. In a few cases, I wasn't sure which of the stems to pick as the primary so I left two or three options which I will inspect more closely with fresh eyes. 

In some cases, it was very easy to see which was the primary and in almost all cases, the primary was already quite strong, to the top of the post, and rather woody. This is the year when they reach adulthood and their permanent shape. 

Alex worked on the 'old' vines now in their eighth year and he did a very nice job. It's really feeling like a mature vineyard in that section. 

In the beginning, I was shy about cutting. 

Yes, it's the moon. New day coming. 

Alex's pruning

May need a bit of editing

The piles of cuttings are growing

The sun is getting ready to set. Just a few more to do. 

Looking a bit tidier.

Lovely sky

Croagh Patrick is aglow

Lovely calm day

Stunning panorama

New stray, Ginger, coming for a walk with me.

Fiery sunset

Peach on earth

The hills are alive...

Bye-bye sun

Flooding in NZ and Fires in Chile -- is this the apocalypse?

While New Zealand deals with massive flooding, Chile burns and Turkey is dealing with devastating earthquakes in which thousands have lost their lives. 

Everyone knows about NZ wines, and the celebrated Marlborough region is among the most heavily affected by the heavy rains. It is unknown if the rains will damage the vines. 

In Chile, fires have ripped through winemaking regions, destroying some of the region's oldest vines. Three regions – Araucanía, Biobío, and Ñuble – have declared a state of emergency after temperatures soared to more than 40C. Wildfires have already burned more than 40,000ha in the area. Record temperatures and strong winds have made it difficult to stop the blazes from spreading. The drought conditions had already made this a challenging year for Chilean winemakers. 

You didn't know about the wines of Turkey?  Cappadocia, Aegean, Thrace, Central, and Eastern Anatolia are Turkey’s major grape-growing and wine-production areas where you can find numerous vineyards. Sadly, just a small proportion of Turkish-grown grapes are made into wine, but some of the boutique vineyards have been producing fine wines that are being recognised on the international stage.