Full Count Curve Ball

"Jesus, I like him very much, but he no help with curveball" -Pedro Cerrano

Proverbially speaking the bases are loaded. To put it more succintly roughly 90% of the fruit we farm is still sitting on the vine and the heavens, or maybe Pariacaca if you live in Sebastapol, decided to cast down a few hours of on again, off again rain showers on Sunday. Coupled with high humidity, 87% and high nineties today, conditions were ideal across many Russian River Vineyards for the spread of botrytis, which in this scenerio wouldn't be quite so knoble.

As many winegeeks are aware Botrytis cinerea is a necrotropic fungus that can cause bunch rot under the right conditons (rain and high humidity). Likewise in some growing winegrowing regions such as Alsace, Mosel and Tokay botrytis works its magic to magically dehydrate grapes by penetrating grape skins releasing water and consentrating sugars and acids. Many of these grapes go on to produce world class desert wines that fetch high pricetags.

However, in our case, we were sitting in boat number one: bunch rot. The threat of bunch rot is particularly acute in certain grape varieties, specifically Chardonnay and Pinot Noir because of their compact cluster structure and delicate skins.

So when you have half of your vineyards with full crop loads and a descent threat of rot what do you do when your read the curve ball with its trajectory spinning toward the far corner, just under the letters. Now while I'm not a gambling man I don't think today would be the day I would start if I was calling the shots. No doubt about it I would have they guys up on their horses spraying their pants off as we did today.

The tough decision is whether or not to spray an organic vineyard when the only effective sprays available are conventional. What do you do? What would you do with thousands of dollars worth of fruit on the line? Sometimes pragmatism must weigh heavier than idealism. After all a farmer has to protect his livelihood.

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Thus, today shifted from picking to spraying, as one we picked one ranch and another opted for a pick latter in the week. Just outside Healdsburg on top of a hill I could hear windmills churning, a loud attempt to take adavantage of dormant equipment and try to knock some standing water off of the fruit. The uproar reminded me of Marlborough, New Zealand where helicopters seem to outnumber people in some tourist regions. Mid-harvest when the rains had just begun to arrive the company called in a local chopper to make a few passes and knock the water off the vines before the fruit was machine harvested.

"This'll push the sugar up at least a half a brix" Nick the vitculturalist shouted over the roar of the chopper.

I stood spellbound on the rattling harvester thinking 'We have hit a golden age in agriculture when a luxory commodity is treated like royalty.' Well not really. It was more like, "Shit, this is the wine industry. I want in!"