Pamo Valley Winery

This is me celebrating the growth of our new vineyard on Black Canyon Rd., Ramona. I’m holding up a Primitivo grape which will be in the bottle and available for drinking in the year 2012-2013.  Wine making and grape growing requires much patience!  Notice the before and after pictures of this vineyard planted just 20 days ago. See the green foliage peeking out and latching on to the bamboo stakes climbing to the second line of wire where they will eventually seperate, each cordon (left and right) will grow about 4 ft long.

Veraison has begun!  The grapes have stared the process of turning purple and the sugar levels are rising. You don’t want the birds to find any early ripening grapes, they can ruin your crop in a heartbeat.  Yesterday we had a team lined up and started the process of netting our vineyard on Burma Rd., Ramona.  Four of us began at 7am. It was an interestingly cool and foggy morning which made it nice to work in.  The actual netting (we use extruded netting which is very light weight) was rolled over the top of 500 plants in less than 2 hours.  It was tough for the guys to hold the roll of net (which felt like several hundreds of pounds when rolled up in a 7 ft wide, 5,000 ft long roll) up over their heads and walk each row.  While they were doing the hard work, I replaced all of the old emitters with new ones and plugged all the holes in the irrigation line that were no longer needed.  We gave the vineyard a full day of much needed water.  Mike weed whacked the rows and in between each plant.  Weed management is crucial in vineyards and always seems to be the most difficult of tasks.  Once the netting had been placed and stretched over the vines, everyone went through and sealed them underneath with hog rings so as not to allow any openings for critters or birds to get in.  The clipping and sealing underneath is very time consuming. We only managed to complete half the vineyard yesterday after running out of hog rings. The supply store doesn’t open until Monday so we will complete the job then.

Guest blogger, Wil Anderson, shares his thoughts on how to enjoy a glass of wine…

We headed down to our favorite wine bar down in the Lower East Side last week - SavorNY.  We luckily found SavorNY, kind of by accident, when a few friends were in town and I met them there.  It’s quite a trek from the Upper West Side, but it’s always well worth it.  

We certainly aren’t wine experts, but we do know when we’ve found a glass that we enjoy.  Coming from Northern California, and the wine country, we’ve certainly done our “research” into finding what we like (and more importantly, what we don’t like).

After our last visit, we started discussing why we liked SavorNY so much - I mean why not find a place around in the UWS instead ofmaking the effort to take a subway downtown that includes a healthy walk crosstown?  Here’s a short list that we came up with:

Last night was the 2nd annual Lum Eisenman Ramona Valley Wine Competition at Cordiano Winery in Ramona.  This was a local wine competition with 52 wines being entered. Several Bronze medals were awarded, 4 Silver and no Gold. Guess who won the Silver?  Pamo Valley won 3 Silver medals!  The highest scoring was the 06 Estate Syrah with a total of 87 points (90 would have been the gold). 07 Cabernet Sauvignon got 85 points and the 07 Syrah got 82 points!  Not a bad showing.  And more great news, our winemaker John York scored the 4th Silver medal with his very own 07 Cabernet Sauvignon from Hellanback Ranch Vineyard - waytogo!

While we continue to finish the trellising structure on our new vineyard, I keep busy with my other gardening hobby. I get total satisfaction and enjoyment out of watching my flower and vegetable garden grow in our shaded black clothed room. I like to plant from seeds and watch them develop.  Eventually when they are mature enough I will put them in the ground in the garden up by the house.  Here I’ve planted some herbs, sweet basil (top) and cilantro (bottom) only a week or two ago and they are already sprouting. My second batch of lavendar and first batch of mint are a little slower to appear.

And of course my favorite of the mixed tomatos (bottom left)!  No salmonella in these babies!  Although I did find some nasty tomato hornworms in my tomatos planted in the garden yesterday. I picked off about 20 of the nasty critters and sprayed the plants with some bug killer.  Looks to have solved the problem for now.

I wanted to show a picture of the actual ‘test’ Salvia Splendens planted in our vineyard. Again, we only planted 4 of them and we planted them on the inside of the endposts (for this side anyway).  I believe for the opposite side we will plant them on the outside of the endposts.  It’s a ’space’ issue. 

Anyhow, after work yesterday I was on a mission to finish my red ant killing.  We have a serious (well, not too serious but serious enough) ant problem in the vineyard.  John told us about some ant killer that’s like food granules and you sprinkle it around the ant hole and they take it down the hole and it wipes out the nest’s in that area.  So sure enough, that’s what I did and that’s what the product did! The product is from Spectracide called Triazicide. 

We noticed while walking the vineyard last night that there appears to be some kind of minimal moss growth around the water area.  We are watering about an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening.  With this heat, we cant afford not to water them in fear of losing them. Especially at this young of age.  So we got a hoe and started to lightly plow around the vine to loosen up soil and it looks to be fine.

Overall the vineyard is turning out to be a great project for us.  It’s been very cooperative and we hope it remains to do so!  Mike is still working on getting those t-posts and the tension wire up, it’s a big job!  See the progress?

Just when you think the plants are in the ground, the job is finished too, right?  Not so.  Mike and his brother Rick are out there in the heat attaching metal brackets and tension wire to the end posts so that we can raise the irrigation line up and off the ground about 3′. This will allow the emitters to drip directly over the plant, not to get clogged by the dirt (laying on the ground) and for easy access of mowing when the weeds start to appear (if they do).  I mentioned in an earlier post that I had a vision of lavendar plants at the end of each of the posts.  Well, I happenned to be at a garden center today and found Blue Salvia Splendens (some type of native sage from Brazil?). Anyhow, they fit the description I was looking for (purple, soft and feminine) and were right in my price range.  I picked up 4 out of the 38 that I will eventually need. I wanted to plant a few and see how they did before investing in the whole 38.  This is a picture I got off the internet, arent they pretty?!  I love them. I will monitor the 4 I have in the ground and if they appear to have taken off, I will purchase the remaining balance.

Remember when you were a kid and the feeling you had when you woke up on Christmas morning?  Well that’s how we felt Saturday!  We were up and in the vineyard at 6:30am yesterday morning ready to go!  Mike started by putting soil amendments in the pre-dug holes. I started setting the plants out in each row accordingly to what varietal was being planted where. 

Oh, I never did mention the varietals we ended up getting!  We got Cabernet Sauvignon, Primitivo (Italian version of Zinfandel), Viogner and Orange Muscat.  The Viogner and Orange Muscat are a white grape. We are going out on a limb by trying these.  However there is a need for more white grapes in Ramona so we thought, what the heck.  Mom and Jeff got here around 7am and they started setting the plants out in each hole.  I started folding the grow tubes and setting them on the ground by each hole. 

John and Alan York and grandma Ellie arrived around 8am to assist.  Alan and grandma started putting the bamboo stakes in all the holes.  John started the planting.  He wanted to get a method going so we would all be uniform and follow in his lead.  He did a good job and so did everybody else.  First John started, then I, then Alan, then mom and Jeff.  Alan kept saying, “this feels like, 99 bottles of beer on the wall”. Everytime you would look up from planting, the work was getting less and less. 

Grandma was spraying the plants with misted water while they waited their turn to get put in a hole and planted. It was starting to get very hot out.  Yay!  Here comes Dick and Mary York to help!  Mary had a sprained wrist so she was on light duty. She helped pick up all the empty pots that were left on the ground.  Then her and Dick helped with the planting. 

We couldn’t believe how fast this went.  We were done by 10:13am.  Mike had left to go into town to by some drinks and sandwiches for when we finished.  We all took a break and sat under a shade tree. 

Still waiting for Mike to return, we decided to finish up by getting our little red cups, filling them up with 15-15-15 fertilizer and walking the lines sprinkling a little bit around each basin of the plant.  Finally, we are finished with the job and Mike has returned with the goods!  Job well done team!

TO SEE MORE PICS OF PLANTING, GO TO THE WWW.PAMOVALLEYWINERY.COM /GALLERY/BLACK CANYON VINEYARD!

Thursday morning (approx 9am) we headed out of Ramona on our way to Hughson, CA to pick up our much-awaited vines.  We packed up the dogs, toothbrushes and toothpaste, change of clothes and we were on our way.  Mike drove his truck with the enclosed trailer attached.  He had the trailer all rigged up with a fan, a table for double stacking and a mister to spray the plants each time we stopped.  We saw some amazing vineyards and almond trees planted over what seemed like millions of acres along the 5 north.  Here’s a picture taken from our cell phone. Way off in the distance you can see a vineyard.  We assumed all these vineyards were table grapes used for fruit and grapejuice. 

After making a few minor stops at the rest areas and gas stations, we finally arrived to Duarte Nursery around 6pm.  We knew they were closed but wanted to see where they were located and to see where the nearest hotel room was.  We were content that we knew where we were going first thing in the morning, found a hotel room and a great Mexican restaurant in a little town called Ceres. Ceres and Hughson are closest to Turlock and Modesto.  After we ate we went to the hotel room.  I think I crashed out around 7-8pm.  I was beat from the long drive.  Mike followed suit soon after. 

We had a good night’s sleep and were up at 6am on Friday morning.  Got ready, had breakfast in the hotel lobby and rushed over to the nursery by 8am. Duarte Nursery was very organized and the people were very nice. We basically pulled up, went to the office, paid our bill, went outside and there were our plants, on the bench ready for loading.  We had a little difficulty in the placement of the trays in the trailer.  It took a few times to get it right but after an hour of putting them in and taking them out, we finally got it.  Mike gave them their first spray and off we went! 

The next stop, Home Depot.  We found one somewhere between Los Banos and Fresno.  We loaded up with soil amendments and fertilizer for the big planting day tomorrow.  Of course I can never go into a Home Depot without sneaking in a plant or seeds.  I got a few

Today I ordered 500 -  ½’x 6’ bamboo stakes from Jim’s Supply in Bakersfield, CA. A nice gentleman by the name of Elijah was very helpful. I also ordered 500 grow tubes from Cameron & Cameron somewhere near Santa Rosa, CA. Sam Casenelli of Novavine referred us to a fellow named Jerry.  Jerry was very on top of things and took our order.  Both items are due to arrive on Friday. Sam at Novavine was a very good customer service/sales rep and I had a nice experience dealing with him. Unfortunately the plants we initially wanted were not available at the time we needed them so we were forced to go to Duarte Nursery in Hughson, CA (somewhere in the Central Valley, I believe close to Modesto, CA). Anyhow, the receptionist who answered the phone at Duarte Nursery was extremely efficient. She faxed me a list of available vines literally as soon as I got off the phone with her.  I called them back within 20 mins to place my order for the selected vines.  A lady named Carrie in customer service was really great too.  She was able to get me an estimate almost immediately.  She was very empathetic with me.  I expressed the urgency (and stress) of the order and wanted to make 100% certain that all the plants I needed were in stock and that they would be available for pickup on Friday. Sure assured me that indeed they would be.  Pulling all this together has not necessarily proved to be the easiest of tasks. But given my past “project manager” experience, to this point I feel confident that everything is going to work as planned.  Mike has been great in getting the vineyard, irrigation, holes etc ready. Ordering of the stakes, tubes have been smooth.  I got the time off work, the plants are ready for pickup Friday @ 8am and the team is lined up for planting first thing Saturday morning. I’m stoked!  Now the journey to pick up the much-awaited plants!  Mike has the 5×12-enclosed trailer all rigged up for double stacking (we are picking up another local wineries, and family plants as well), a few fans are setup to keep it cool and we have a sprayer/mister as well.  We have a generator in the back of the truck to plug the electrical in to.  These will be the moist spoiled plants ever!  They will certainly have nice ride back to Ramona, CA and I bet they cant wait to get home and in the ground….