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Show and Tell, Next Meeting!

The next Lamorinda Wine Growers Association meeting will be on Sunday, January 31st at 4pm. Please mark your calendar and plan to participate, as this will be a great and interesting meeting! We will be taking a virtual tour of member’s unique and interesting winemaking or wine cellars, or wine gadgets, or just plain fun stuff. This is a great opportunity to see how and where our wines are made or stored, and to get to know members better in the process. Here is a link for the zoom meeting: https://zoom.us/j/9252007676.

Before the meeting, Use your smart phone to take a short video for presenting at our next meeting.  The topics for the videos are as follows:

1.      A winemaking gadget that you have designed, manufactured, etc. that is unique or time saving.

2.      A brief tour of your winemaking area showing how you’ve set up the area.

3.      A brief tour of your wine cellar, especially if you constructed it yourself, instead of having a contractor build it for you.

4. A funny video on something related to wine or grapes. In these still dark days, humor is always welcome!

After you take the video, send it to me via email. If the file is too large to send by email, send me a message without the file attached, and we can work out a way to get it to me, or create a smaller version. My email is gerardvs1@gmail.com and if you need help or to talk with me just call my cell, 707-758-7441

This meeting should turn out to be a great and super interesting Zoom meeting with lots of member interaction and seeing what other people are doing with their winemaking efforts.  I’m sure, like me, many of you wonder where and how some of our members make or store their wine! We will send a reminder email to the membership about the time and date of the meeting, Sunday night, January 31, 2021 at 4:00 p.m.  Mark your calendars and please create and send your short video presentation soon. We likely will get more videos than we have time for, so early submittals will get priority!

Pruning, Vine Health and Trunk Disease

I am now reading this pruning book, recently translated from French, that presents a quite intriguing perspective on pruning, vine balance, sap flow and trunk disease. This new pruning approach is growing rapidly in use, in France and now in CA.

Could it be that the pruning techniques now most commonly used are very damaging to our grape vines? The book is well illustrated, which really helps, at least for prune addled me, with understanding the pruning recommendations. 
https://boardandbench.com/products/grapevine-pruning-manual-for-the-prevention-of-trunk-disease?_pos=1&_sid=487efdc95&_ss=r

Holiday Message from LWGA President

Hello wine growers and wine makers:

As this year draws to an end, and as I look back at all that has happened in the year 2020, I find myself grateful for all the good things that I have experienced this year. There are many personal good things I could recite, and I hope you will also have some of your own.

The board and I have been working hard all year to make your membership rewarding. We have had many new members signing up this year; We have had many on site visits with membership to help improve pest control; irrigation matters; new vineyards and wine production facility planning sessions; assisted in harvest and many other helpful activities.

The website has had a great deal of activity this year. Many questions and information exchanged on our forums, interesting articles postings, and online seminars with wide ranging various subjects. Please don’t hesitate to contribute yourself.

Our Zoom meetings were well attended and had interesting topics as well as a chance to see each other virtually. We are planning to host more in the coming year until it is safe for us to resume our in person meetings, which I know we are all craving! Stand by for more information about that soon.

Sadly our holiday party had to be cancelled this year, but I know that we have not lost the spirit of our group getting together for a festive occasion.

Real progress is being made at the Lamorinda Wine tasting center in Lafayette and we’re all hoping that the grand opening will coincide with the reopening of in person gatherings.

I hope you will all have a safe and happy holiday this year! We’re all looking forward to a much saner year, but please don’t let your guard down yet. We all want to get to the finish line together!

Sincerely;

Daniel Howsepian

President LWGA

Holiday Party Update

Hello LWGA Members:

This notice is to inform you that due to the continuing dangers associated with the Covid-19 Pandemic, we must regrettably inform you that we have cancelled our planned LWGA Holiday Party in December. This year has been an especially difficult year for our members to gather physically and we have relied on Zoom meetings with very good success.

The board and I have been working together to produce a schedule of events for the 2021 year, and we hope that we will be able to provide those for you in the coming year. Stand by for more information on those events.

Please be careful in the coming months with family gatherings!

Sincerely;

Daniel Howsepian

LWGA President

Re-Cap of Zoom meeting on October 25

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

Message from LWGA President

Hello Wine Lovers!

Early October and most of us are just wrapping up our harvesting for the season.

 Just as we were figuring out how to get together safely with close friends and family in small groups outdoors, respecting social distancing, masks,  etc.  due to the Covid-19  threat, we get another challenge thrown at us with weeks of smoke making it unpleasant and unhealthy to  gather outdoors!  What a year!

To add to all of that, some of us have been discovering smoke tainting in our musts and fermented wines;   Happily, not too many. The weather has begun to give us clear  smokeless days.  So nice to be able to see the surrounding mountains again!

As mentioned in my last message to you, we are planning to hold another Zoom meeting on October 25 @ 4 PM.  Please click on:

https://warriortrading.zoom.us/j/9252007676   and follow instructions to log on the zoom meeting.

We had a very good turnout in July and we would really like to see you again. 

The topic of the meeting will be about you.  We want to know;

– How you’re doing,

– How was your harvest;

– What was your yield this year;

– Where are you with winemaking if you make wine;

– Have you experienced smoke taint in your harvest/fermentation.

– Anything else you would like to share with us.

So hang in there!  You’ll be happy to know that our Lafayette wine tasting facility is moving along very well.  

Another bit of news is that our bonded winemakers are having a wonderful sampling experience with the Orinda Chamber of Commerce in November!  Chamber members  will be tasting selected samples of Lamorinda AVA wines which will then be available for sale in time for the holidays!  Great exposure for our AVA! 

Also, many thanks to all of you who have sent in your annual dues! 

Best wishes to  everyone and please join us on October 25th.

Sincerely;

Daniel Howsepian

President LWGA

Maturity; Balance; Ripeness; When to Pick?

Hello fellow wine growers:

I am sure that many of you are looking at those magnificent grapes right about now and wondering when to pick. I came across an interesting you tube from Pennstate, College of Agricultural Webinar about just that. I found this very interesting and I hope you do too. It’s worth the 30 minutes to view.

Enjoy!

Daniel Howsepian

Results from the Member Survey

I’m delighted to share with you the aggregated information from our recent member survey. As a reminder, the incoming Board put out a survey to current membership to invite comments on how to best serve the needs of the membership.

Attached is an at-a-glance overview of the Association, and here’s the link to the breakdown of the results received from participants.

The highlights:

–        48 members participated

–        Around 78,000 pounds of grapes were harvested in 2019

–        The majority of grapes were produced for non-commercial consumption

–        About half of respondents outsource wine production

–        Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot are the most frequently grown grape in Lamorinda

–        Cabernet Sauvignon and Petit Syrah are the most frequently produced wines

–        Generally, people are supportive of the tasting room with the main focus on production, sales, member tasting and meetings, education, and interest in offering experimental wines for tasting

–        Social mixing is just as important in learning as formal education

–        Suggestions for areas of member education focus on solving problems throughout the production process from crush to bottling, vineyard management, mentorship, how to maximize an individual location, legalities of wine making and selling

This feedback will be used to shape educational and social events over the coming year, as well as making it easier to match needs with expertise.

Keep letting us know of your successes and other updates that you’d like to share with the broader community.

Amy Schofield, Board Member