Tuesday, February 28, 2017

It's All About The Wine

As we slowly perform our final pruning tasks in the vineyard, doing some last minute weedwacking, and making plans for what we want to do in regards to fungicide spraying and fertilizing, we often are too concerned with how we want this coming season to perform than the final results of this past year.

Spring not only brings on bud break, which is apt to be really early this year, but it corresponds with the bottling of the 2016 harvest. We try to get it done in March and April; after that it starts to become warm in the winery which may negatively affect the wine. Diane, who has the primary winemaking responsibilities, is doing a balancing act as to how to apply all the fluids we have in the tanks. From what is still there,there is nearly enough to make 600 more cases of wine. Some of our prior year wines are running low or have run out. Others have been a rousing success and have to be replaced or backed up.

She recently released two wines that are starting to have a nice customer following, even after only a few weeks. Our Petit Verdot, another one of our red Bordeauxs, is an inky red color, more body than our award-winning Cabernet Franc, with the dark cherry, red currant, and spice notes. Those that fell in love with our Cabernet Sauvignon have now made this their new favorite. This is our first vintage year for this grape.
  The  other wine that we released just last week is our new Hog Island Sweet White. Over the last 2 years we have offered it's counterpart, a Hog Island Sweet Red, which is very port-like with 3% residual sugar. We sold out of the 2014 and are now in the 2015 vintage year. The "White" is a blend of Seyval Blanc and Scuppernong, which is an American grape, quite sweet in nature and when the time comes to harvest it, it is the size of a ping-pong ball. The Seyval Blanc "tames" the Scuppernong, which is a cultivated muscadine. The Hog Island Sweet White is more in line with the local's preference for sweet wines, just as they like their sweet tea. If one had to find a comparison, I would say it is like a Moscato, with 10% residual sugar.

So, as we head into the 2017 season, our motivation is that the quality of our wines start in the vineyard. The healthier our fruit, we believe, will be positively reflected in our wines.








Wednesday, February 15, 2017

Just a One Bull Town

Number Eleven.




For those of you that follow my blogs, if there is any conclusion you come to, it's that none of my lessons have come to me the easy way. And increasing the size of my herd is one of them.

I remember when I purchased my first four cows, all having been inseminated and confirmed pregnant. I did the quick math and thought 9 months from then I would have 8 cattle. And then 12 months from then another 4 to make 12. And then another 12 months later up to 20. You get the drift. Compounding cattle is soooo easy.

If you travel back in time I had to ditch 2 of the cows with their new calves because they were killing me with their nightly escapes through the fence. There weren't holes in the fence. The fences were't collapsing for any reason. They were 4-wire fences that were tightly built. Cows didn't care. Every night they would go over to this one particular spot....do a body slam, and off the entire herd (8 cows and calves by this time), traveling the back way 1 1/2 miles until they "joined" another herd of cows in another farmer's field. Sound travels easily in the flat lands, and my cows knew where their fellow bovines were. The grass had to be greener over there, right?

So in this business you trade off trouble makers or lack of sleep and stress will kill you. Moving them to someone else's herd isn't sending them trouble, because the herd dynamics in the new location, not to mention the scenery, is different and it quickly eliminates their escape instinct.

The following year I was now down to 2 cows and 2 heifers (their female calves). I had them all  A.I.'d, but only one out of 4 took. Talk about bad odds. And the one that took gave me a bull calf. Geez.......and this was using sexed semen which was to have given me an 85% chance of getting a female calf. Where are the statistical odds when you need them to  work in your favor?

I watched the bull grow, and fortunately I was able to trade it off for another bull from a farmer located one county over. He also has Red Angus.....400 of them! Didn't feel like line-breeding my stock, which is what they call a son being allowed to impregnate it's mother and sisters who happen to be near by. My new bull is tagged #11.

The following year I did the A.I. thing again. Even had the Vet come back and confirm that all 4 were pregnant. He used the ole "hand up the you know what" method instead of his Ultrasound machine. He said they were all pregnant, but once again the touchy-feely method had it's flaws. Only my 2 new cows provided calves; the 2 oldest cows didn't take. Don't know what the Vet felt, but it wasn't a 1st trimester calf in these two instances.

If you've been keeping count, I now have 7 cattle: 2 older cows, 2 new mommas, 2 heifer calves (thank heavens sexed semen worked this time), and a bull. Recognizing I purchased my original 4 cows in December 2012, we are now 4 year's later and I haven't quite gotten my head count to where I started. So easy.....I think not.




Now let's see if the bull has better results than semen in a straw!