Happy Holidays

Oh, after a wine sopping good time over the modern Latin based pagan ritualised consumer holiday that we experience in summer it was time for a bit of the ole DE-TOX.

Here's the farm score card:

to January 15th...Vines - Excellent growth...Lovely grape set...Chardonnay looking stunning (again)...Sauvignon Blanc (for Kevin) still in the pea stage,
Apples - Great color and good fruit set in the Golden Delicious...Royal Gala are yummy...And the Pink Lady's are off to the juicers because of the fungal rot due to the HUGE rain in November;

Feb 1st...Vines - Fantastic growth in the Chard (5 tons a Hectare min) with Balling at 17.7 yesterday...Sauvignon Blanc is sitting with 9 tons and a balling of 13.5 grass green...Viognier is to quote two separate winemakers (the labels sound like "Sataraxea" "Aumabridge") "Bloody beautiful"...Syrah hasn't fully started verasion yet but looking at 3 to 4 tons a Ha.
Apples - Ready to pick on Wednesday the Royal and Golden's.

Baboons, Buck and Birds - We bought 7 Meerkats (now called Eagle Eye's legally) to dissuade the birds from entering the vines...they work alright...Installing first Mirror ball in the Big block on Monday...and now have a source for a 2 meter diameter mirror ball for the Cab Franc! If they don't run from that damn thing they'll at least take a while to learn to s(h)it on it.

Holidays are flippen over and though I could use a nice glass of wine I'm trying to clear my palate to give it the greatest chance of harvesting the best grapes.

Besides, at the end of the day I'm really only waiting for the paradise stage in the viognier when I can sip a glass of perfection once a day for a month.

Love,

Jake