While we weren’t looking, the weather turned cold. Too cold. In other regions, winegrowers set bales of hay alight (one big bale per half vines), or send helicopters overhead in the small hours of the morning (3 helicopters per hour per 150 ha), or light candles in the vineyard (450 candles per 1.5 ha) like a votive to the Ice Saints, […]
April sweeps in on the wings of a song: the weather is magnificent, truly springlike – no other word for it. A little bit of rain here and there, a lot of sunshine everywhere, cool nights, temperate days: this is Spring as Spring should be…. or at least, at the beginning of the month it is. (Who […]
Spring continues. Do we see the beginning of the budding of the vines, or are we just imagining it? It’s balmy and beautiful, and how lucky you are if you happen to be a tourist here right now. And how great too, if you are a Carnivaleer, carnivalling away in the world’s oldest, longest, and longest-running […]
We heaved a sigh of relief last month when the really cold, miserable weather settled in – but it was short-lived. By mid-January the temperate Marin wind was blowing from the Mediterranean, the sun was shining, and Spring seemed just around the corner. All that could change, however, and we rather hope it does. The pruning is […]
The New Year dawned on Tuesday morning, or so they say. We couldn’t see much of it, the day was covered in an unpropitious wrapping of gloomy, grey fog. Things didn’t look as bright and as cheerful as we hope they will be this year. But the new vintage soon put itself right, and the […]