While you were sleeping

Today is one of those foggy and quiet mornings in Russian River Valley. Low grey clouds mixed with wispy fog that still allows you to experience the vivid shades of green from the healthy growth on the grapevines. Something is different about sound quality on mornings like this, I wonder if the low clouds act as would walls of padded recording studio – bouncing and distilling sounds to their pure components. I swear I can hear notes in the bird chirps that I never heard before (and, no, I did not spike my coffee with anything – thanks for asking). Late May is always a period of rapid growth in the vineyard. Just nature doing what it does best, while we are sleeping. After a few days of heat the tiny little caps you’ve seen on a grape cluster fall off, revealing the delicate flowers. A turn of the head, and they set and become little BB-sized green berries, ready to begin another cycle of grape-life.

The image in this post is of Merlot clusters from the same grapevine. One is still flowering, one has already set. We (grapegrowers) do not like it when we see a lot of variability in flowering and set because it can be an indicator of potential uneven ripening of grapes later in the season. Not much we can do about it at this point, keep drinking a good cup of coffee while walking the vineyard in the morning, listen to the bird sounds and keep taking naps while nature does its job