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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

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

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:

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

Dangerously hot weather to continue for nearly a week. Be careful outside, hopefully we won’t see major wildfires, and remember to give your vines extra water this week.

I know it might be a little early to talk about winemaking. We’re all admiring and patting ourselves on the back for how beautiful our grapes are right now completing verasion.

However, it’s never too early to be thinking about the harvest and what we need to do and prepare for when it happens. After all, we don’t want to mess up those beautiful grapes we will be picking!

I just posted in the Winemaker Forum a very informative article all about YAN and why it matters. Worth the read!

Hello fellow Winelovers;

If you missed our last Zoom meeting on Sunday, July 26, I’m sorry to have tell you that you missed a good one! There were 15 people who signed in who participated in a lively discussion of many subjects.

We started off the meeting by having our resident Webmaster, Bill Scanlin, walk us through various sections of our website. Navigating any website can sometimes be confusing, but Bill made it easy for us to understand the tools available to the user, and showed us how to access and add to many of the features and information available to any member. There is a wealth of information accumulated over many years for the taking. Pictures, viticulture and wine making info; member info; resources and classified section; etc. There will also be included shortly a new sign up area if you would like to volunteer to help with harvesting, bottling, netting a vineyard, or other activities you might like to learn about and to get to know your fellow winelovers!

We then moved over to a free social discussion which turned out to be very dynamic! Many subjects were touched upon such as Electric fencing success stories; trapping and handling of critters in the traps; watering at the post verasion stages; bear home intrusions in Tahoe; desirable grape varietal selections at planting of new vineyards; It was noted by one of our participants that we are 10 solar days ahead of last year in indicating that the harvest this year might be early by as many days! So get ready…

We also had Bill English give us a report on the status of the much anticipated opening of the new Wine Tasting/Production facility in downtown Lafayette. While there will be some limited production of wine during the construction this fall, it will be mostly for testing purposes and that the facility will be up and running by next season! Keep up the good work Larry & Bill!

After the quickest 1-1/2 hours I have recently spent on a Zoom meeting, the meeting was adjourned. We will most likely have our next general meeting in September by Zoom as well.

As a last note, if you have not yet sent in your renewal for the LWGA, please do so soon so that we can continue to provide the services for you. Thank you!

We at the board hope you will have a healthy and productive summer!

Sincerely;

Daniel Howsepian

President LWGA

Hello fellow wine lovers!

Here we are in the middle of July, and I have to say, my vineyard has never looked so good!  I have heard this from many of our members. 

We had a scheduled regular LWGA meeting for July 26, which was to be held at my home @ Raisin d’Etre Vineyards in Lafayette and I was looking forward to seeing everyone and to showing everyone the vineyard this year.  We were to have a short educational session about Composting, led by our resident Certified Composter, Gerard VS, and then to our usual social time together.

Sadly, the Covid-19 pandemic is showing no sign of abating! In fact, as you surely know, it’s getting much worse!  We must double down on our united effort to shut this thing down. 

 
So, once again, regrettably, we must cancel our planned July  26 regular meeting in Lafayette.

 
In our efforts to stay engaged, we will be holding instead a Zoom meeting on July 26 @ 4 PM. 

We will be having as our special speaker, Bill Scanlin, walking us through how to navigate through our LWGA website.  There is a great deal of information posted on our website and we want you to know how to find what you need.  The link to the meeting will be:
https://warriortrading.zoom.us/j/9252007676

At our last Zoom meeting, we had a great turnout and we at the board hope to see you sign in and join us at this meeting.

 
Sincerely:
Daniel Howsepian

President 

Here is an interesting and detailed short to long range weather forecast. It forecasts a record hot summer, and, unfortunately, high fire danger:

With flowering underway, or even completed, this would be a good time to know how the vines are doing. One of the best ways to do this is to take random samples of your pedioles from your vineyard and send them to the lab for analysis. If there are deficiencies, you will have the time to make adjustments to ensure you get the best possible harvest. For those with vineyard managers, this would be a good time to ask if the managers have performed a pediole test and how did the results look.

If anyone has any questions, or would like references to laboratories, please contact Daniel Howsepian at 5Powderhounds@gmail.com or Gerard Van Steyn at gerardvs@gmail.com and we would be glad to help!

Hello, vine and wine people! Attached to this post is an update to the vineyard irrigation guide that was originally created for a meeting last year. This update includes some general guidance on typical irrigation rates per vine per week, and suggestions for extra irrigation before hot days. But, please note, as with any such general suggestions, some vineyards will require much less or more water.

So far, the weather is starting out interesting.. abnormally hot days for this early in the season, followed by cold and even rainy days. If the extreme weather swings continue, we all will need to watch our vines for signs of under or over watering even more – and powdery mildew, as always.