It's Raining.......finally!

There is more than a little anxiety about the water situation here in California. My weather station was showing us at below 50% from an average year and you can see that the reservoirs are dry. Last week the rain began-what a wonderful site. So far it hasn't been a lot, but the predictions are talking about some pretty good rainfall as well as snow coming our way. I monitor my weather station at my Tres Palmeras vineyard daily- this morning it was .10 inches away from 10 inches for the season- it would be nice to see this at about 15 inches. Only time and Mother Nature know how this will all shake out.

Late January brought very warm weather which has caused many plants and animals some confusion- trees and bushes are blooming about a month early. Now we are having some very, very cold weather- this won't be good for fruit trees. So far many of the vineyards are still appearing to be dormant. Since it is pruning time indication of dormancy is if an old shoot is cut off and there is no sap-good sign- still sleeping.

Aside from the weather, last weekend it was time to replace my old phone. Since I had been looking at pocket video cameras as well, I looked into what might be out there to avoid having too many portable contraptions in my pocket. So a new phone with camera and video capabilities was purchased. Just took a video of my office to see how the quality looks- hopefully will be good enough that I will have footage in my next post- I love technology!

I also was able to get a look at the pics I took at harvest, but couldn't seem to get them transferred out to share them. That has been resolved and I will be posting them on Flickr, Facebook, The Wine Space, ...............I will let you know where they land!

Well, it is time to get back to winemaking- barrel tasting is at hand!
Cheers from the Mustang Winemaker

Starting Off the Year

It's raining and with the rain I think of indoor activities like making videos. Well, watching more than making. But over the course of the last year I figured out that my phone could take videos. The video attached is my first effort at trying to show the disgorging process. This will just be a small part, an appetizer, until I can get the rest of them in the correct format.

I am also attaching a photo taken of me hand disgorging as I did not have a saber to do a real show on opening a sparkling wine. Crowd loved it- I was a mess and had to change before I could get back to lunch. But it was a kick- I love showing people this and then tasting the wine- yes! It is one of my life's little pleasures.

So a new start in my blog posts, more vids of what I do as a Winemaker and life in general. I was contemplating doing a what I do in the day of.....still working on the details of how to make that work, but I will.

The start of the year also means cleaning up the end of the previous year- inventories, taxes, reports to different agencies. Not good video, but some of the daily, weekly, monthly, yearly tasks that not many of us do.

It's a good thing that it rains this time of the year.

Cheers from the Mustang Winemaker

PS-stay tuned, new website is starting to look pretty good!