We had a great winter break. A wonderful time in Napa and Sonoma; a
couple trips to Chicago; a conference in Lansing and a quick visit with our oldest son Jake in Detroit and the next thing you know it’s time to
get back to work!  Somebody needs to tell Mother Nature though. It’s
cold and there’s still occasional snowflakes in the forecast. The two
pictures were taken the same week in January. The lighthouse is on
Lake Michigan in St. Joseph, a few miles from the winery. Lucky for
us, we were in California at the time! What a difference a year makes.

Fortunately, we have plenty to do in the wine cellar preparing our new
releases. Hope to start bottling next week. First on the schedule is the
2011 Stone Temple Pinot and ’11 Cabernet Funk. After that, we are
almost ready to bottle the 2012 whites, starting with Sauvignon Blanc
and Cha Cha Chardonnay.  We are working on labels for the Marquette
and Valvin Muscat, brand new wines for release later this spring. Do we
have enough bottles? Do we have enough corks? Where did I put the
labels? If I was the worrying type I would have trouble sleeping. 
Fortunately, I delegate the worrying to Sue. It frees up my time for
other things, like sleep!

All the grapes have been trimmed and the crew is going back over them
now to tie the canes down on the fruiting wires. I delegate that too. There’s
grape brush to chop. Peach trimming starts tomorrow. We will begin
fertilizing cherries any time I can get a tractor to start. Tractors don’t like
cold weather either. Susie says the sap is moving slow, and I think she’s
looking at me.  The vines are in great shape. The temperature never got
below zero this winter. That’s hurdle number one, cleared. Looks like a
good late spring; hurdle number two coming up. It’s a mixed blessing.  A
late spring will reduce the chance of freezes after bud break, but it also
means the grapes will have less time to ripen in the fall. The growing
season is pretty much over November 1st, so we will have to take that into
account when we evaluate crop size. A shorter season means you have to
be aggressive in limiting the clusters. Too many grapes and the vine
cannot ripen them all. But we’ll add that to the list of things to worry about
later. By we, of course I mean Sue. It’s important to delegate.

“We are stardust, we are golden, we are billion year old carbon,
And we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden.” ...woodstock