As a grower, I’m not so happy about lighter crop weight, but as a winemaker, Kenneth is excited because there will be a higher skin-to-juice ratio yielding more intensity. Shot berries can add to quality as long as it doesn’t get too hot in the vineyard. There have been no major heat spikes this year so far, just a couple of days in the high 90’s.

The vines are growing nicely. Without any rainfall, there aren’t huge canopies, and because the crop level is slightly low, it should come in more quickly.

The old California sprawl system of trellising (two wires on a cross-arm) gave us more leaf canopy and so was more forgiving, but not fine-tuned for quality. Now we all have movable vertical trellises, 48 inches high, and we’re more precise in the number of leaves – often we have eight canes with eight shoots per side, for 16 shoots total or less — so we really need to keep them functioning to have enough leaf surface to ripen the fruit. In this third week of June, we’re starting to see veraison (softening, coloring of berries) and the vineyards look just great.

Last year we had good weather during bloom and the flowering resulted in both big berry size and berry numbers, so cluster weights were heavy. This year we had an “o.k.” set, but we’re seeing “hens and chicks” – large and small berries within the same cluster. These clusters are more open, allowing more air flow, and they are lighter, so the small berries reduce yields, but they also should increase flavor concentration, which could make the 2007 vintage more promising from a winemaking perspective.