Hello Fellow Wine lovers

It was so nice to see our members on our recent Zoom meeting on October 25th. 

The main topic of the meeting was to learn how everyone was doing with their harvest and wine making so far this year.  The general consensus was that the fruit has never looked so good!  There was little powdery mildew to deal with, and the animals gave us a break this year.  Maybe it was because of the electric fencing installed recently?   Birds were still there though.

David Hicks mentioned that he had found a very reliable bird fencing system that has worked very well for him.  So I invited him to prepare a presentation so that we can share with all our members.  Stand by for that one!

We talked about fertilization, alternatives to commercial petroleum based products, such as composting and living soils.  Composting will be a topic of one of our upcoming general meeting topics,  so stand by for that one as well.    

We also reviewed how to test the vineyard for deficiencies in nutritional and/or mineral needs.  The advice  given was to take a petiole sample just before flowering and if you want to set up for the following year’s harvest, to take another sample for analysis right at verasion.  The samples are sent in to a lab and they will determine if there are any imbalances to be addressed.  They will even give you exact amounts of the nutrient or minerals to add to achieve your goals!  I will post sources of laboratories  so look at our website under viticulture forum soon for laboratory suggestions and procedures.

Harvest numbers were up this year.  We like to keep track of the LWGA vineyard harvests so please let me know how you did. Please send this information to 5powderhounds@gmail.com   Those of us who make wine as well have completed our harvests and have already started producing the wines.  The good news is that no one has reported any smoke tainting detected,  yet.  I say yet because the smoke taint can present at any time.  Even after bottling!  There are all sorts of articles describing how to test, analyze and predict the effects of smoke tainting, but in the end, no one really knows.  This is a relatively new phenomenon. We might be lucky enough in Lamorinda to have been far enough away from the fires to have dodged the bullet.  Only time will tell us for sure.  So, let’s hope for the best.

The meeting lasted 1.5 hours and was very informative indeed. I hope to see you again at our next meeting!

Sincerely;

Daniel Howsepian

LWGA President