Wines I'm Making: Grapes Dusted with Sulfur

In the past week, I've dusted our little vineyard with sulfur as a preventative against mildew later in the season. I waited too long, as usual. The first application is best done when the shoots are about six inches long, but many were already two to three times that length. I think the plants will be fine though, as they're getting much more light and air than in the recent past, as my neighbor has removed a number of small trees behind the vineyard that were creating shade. Also, I've switched to dusting with powdered sulfur rather than suspending the powder in water and spraying the vines, which seems to cover better and to be more effective. It's also much easier to do. 

I'm hoping that wildfires won't be an issue this year, but the winter of 2020-2021 was one of the driest on record. While that is good for suppressing mildew, it doesn't bode well for fires in the area. 

In the entryway to the house, 12 gallons of Cabernet Sauvignon/Cabernet Franc from 2020 still sits, neglected, in large glass containers. I had given up on it. It had an off smell and taste caused by the smoke and the ash that dusted the vines at the end of the season. After doing some research, I decided the only way to save it might be to have it distilled into brandy, but the companies I called said the smallest batch they do is 200 gallons. I had given up on it but had been able to bring myself to dump it out. And so it has been sitting and still it sits. But, yesterday, I tasted it it for the first time in a couple of months (it should have been racked and sulfited already many weeks ago), and, strangely, the taint seems to be gone..... Perhaps it will be worth taking to completion after all?

Miscellaneous: Bees Again

Having lost our bees again over the summer of 2020, I was trying to decide whether to buy new bees this spring while hoping a swarm would move in on its own back in April, and a swarm did, in fact, find one of our two empty hives and take up residence. So, we have bees again. For the past ten years or so, it's been hard to keep a hive going. This is the third or fourth year that bees have moved in on their own. At first, they look strong, but they seem to lose energy and focus and over the summer the colony fails. We haven't harvested honey since 2013. 

I'm hoping for the best this year. So far, the bees seem happy. They are bringing in nectar and pollen from the sea of flowers blooming in the garden, which is near its spring peak. 

Wines I'm Making: Shoot Thinning 2021

Working on shoot thinning in the vineyard this week. It's a bit overdue. It's easier to do when the shoots are shorter than they already are, but it's not too late. Next chore will be to dust the shoots with sulfur, which prevents mildew later in the season. I'm hoping that this year smoke from wildfires won't taint the wine, making all the work a waste. I've had to pour out the entirety of the Cabernet from 2020. Only the 2020 rosé (which we make from our Sangiovese grapes) proved drinkable. In the photo, the row of vines in the foreground has been thinned, the row behind will get thinned tomorrow. 

Plants I'm Growing: First Blooms—Bosc pear, flowering crabapple

Spring is here. I've been lazy about keeping track of what's started to bloom in the garden this year, but note here that the flowering crabapple toward the back of the house (above) and the Bosc pear at the front of the house (below) both started blooming in the past couple of days, on March 28 to be exact. 

Books I'm Reading: Hogarth: A Life and a World

Jenny Uglow's biography of William Hogarth—Hogarth: A Life and a World (1997, Farrar, Strauss and Giroux)—is a big, heavy book that took me a long time to finish, reading in spurts, but I eventually did finish it and I'm glad I plowed through it it to the end. It revealed to me how ignorant I was about Hogarth and that I had conflated in my mind some of the work of Hogarth with that of French artist Honoré Daumier. I feel straightened out now. 

The book was slow going in large part because of the extraordinary detail it goes into about Hogarth the man, his work, his milieu, and the London that was the backdrop to his life, including a great deal about the politics of the day—a subject I always find hard to follow and retain. 

I had always thought of Hogarth (or my Hogarth/Daumier person?) as a printmaker and satirist. Perhaps the greatest revelation reading Hogarth was the realization that Hogarth was a fine painter, and rather more down to Earth than the best-known painters of the generation that followed him—Gainesborough and Reynolds—who always strike me as being somewhat too refined (a matter of taste, of course). I had never really thought about how Hogarth worked, but I suspect, if asked, I would have assumed his famous prints were conceived as prints, engraved from sketches, but it seems that Hogarth in most cases did full-blown oil paintings of the subjects that became his prints and that the prints were engravings of the paintings, often cut by Hogarth himself, who got his start apprenticed to an engraver (although as he got older and busier, some of his work was engraved for him by others). 

The complexity of the prints is extraordinary and because so much of the detail refers to contemporary events and people, a good portion of their meaning is likely lost on most modern viewers without some kind of annotation, and Uglow provides that, bringing each of the major works to life, pointing out the significance of the smallest details. 

She fleshes out Hogarth, the man, too—as the painter and famed satirical printmaker he became—but also as a supporter of native British artists facing what he thought was too much fuss over artists from the continent working in Britain, as a champion of the rights of engravers (he was in large part responsible for legislation that helped protect engravers from piracy), and as a philanthropist (he was very much involved in the founding of London's first institution to protect abandoned babies, which, shockingly, Uglow points out, were common at the time, often left by the side of the road or somewhere equally exposed, to die. The book's subtitle—A Life and a World—is apt. Recommended as a portrait of a man, of a great city, and of a bygone age.

Plants I'm growing: First blooms—Species tulips (March 20, 2021)

I planted a variety of species tulips (as opposed to the more common hybrid tulips) in the garden many years ago now—maybe nine of ten years ago. I planted hundreds. They were beautiful and, apparently, delicious. I large fraction of them disappeared into the gullets of a local colony of ground squirrels (since departed). Others gradually stopped blooming after a year or two, as tulips often do (while daffodils seem immortal). One species, Tulipa bakeri, has proven the most robust. These (those that remain) still come up  year after year. The first buds opened this year on March 20. 

It is from species like these that what most people think of as tulips today were developed. Tulips are native to places like Turkey and the countries of the Caucasus region. This is a variety called "Lilac Wonder." Tulipa bakeri bloomed in the garden on March 5 in 2009 and on March 16 in 2010 (although I seem to have two contradictory dates for 2010--also February 24), on March 14 in 2011, on March 4 in 2012, on February 25 in 2013, on March 6 in 2014, on February 20 in 2015, on March 9 in 2018, and on March 16 in 2019, so this is toward the late end of the range I've noted over the years, but nothing out of the ordinary.

Rain: A little more rain

Since last reporting, we have had rain on and off, mostly recently yesterday, March 14. We've had 1.70 inches of new rain. That brings our total for the 2020-2021 rain year to 12.00 inches--still very, very low. By this time of year, normal rainfall is usually about 30 inches. Rain is in the forecast again for later this week. We'll see....

[Since writing the above, we've had an additional 0.7 niches or rain, bringing our total for the current rain year to 12.70 inches. The above still applies. We have had very little rain this year. This is the lowest level of rain we've had in the 20 years I've lived in Santa Rosa.]

Art I'm Making: Recent work—Untitled Collage No. 223 (Santa Rosa)

Some newish work: This is Untitled Collage No. 223 (Santa Rosa), completed last summer—August 18, 2020, to be exact. Acrylic on paper, acrylic monotype, collage. Image size 20.4 x 25.5cm (8.0 x 10.0 inches). Matted to 16 x 20 inches. Signed on the mat. Signed and dated on the reverse. 

Click on the image for a larger view. For more of my abstract monotype collage work, visit my website. https://ctalcroft.wixsite.com/collage-site 

Rain: A little more rain in early February

In the past week, we had some rain again—a total of 1.15 inches of new precipitation. That brings our total for the current rain year (ending September 30, 2021) to 10.30 inches. By this time of year we should have had well over twice that much. This remains the driest winter I've experienced in the 20 years I've lived in Santa Rosa. 

Wines I'm Making: Vines Pruned (February 15, 2021)

Yesterday and the day before, I pruned the 34 vines in our little backyard vineyard. It takes only a couple of hours, but I often put it off more than perhaps I should. Typically the cuts ooze sap because the ground is already warming by the time I get around to the chore, particularly in recent years as our winters have become less severe. Waiting doesn't seem to make any difference, though. There will be nothing to do in the vineyard now until the vines start pushing out new shoots and the shoots need thinning. Here's to hoping for a good harvest this coming season—and a harvest not impacted by wildfires. 

Wines I'm Making: Labels on the 2019 Cabernet Sauvignon/Cabernet Franc

Finally got around to designing labels for our 2019 Cabernet Sauvignon/Cabernet Franc from the backyard vines. Made about 53 bottles last year. Quality excellent—which is good because the 2020 wine remains doubtful (because of the smoke from the wildfires last summer). 

For those who don't know, "Clos du Val" is a well known winery in the Napa Valley, but, more importantly, it is also the name of a Premier Cru plot in Auxey-Duresses, one of my favorite little Burgundy villages. As my last name is Talcroft, I called our "winery" "Clos du Tal" as a pun on Clos du Val. This is appropriate, though, as the French word "clos" refers to a walled vineyard (our word "cloister" has the same root) and our little vineyard is behind a stone wall. I call the vineyard "Stone's Throw Vineyard" as the vines are a stone's throw from the house.

Plants I'm Growing: First blooms—Yellow Daffodils, Rhododendron "Noyo Dream"

It's been warm lately for January here, but plants in the garden are starting to bloom pretty much on schedule—that is, in line with their typical bloom times. The first flowers on the Rhododendron "Noyo Dream" in the side yard opened on February 1. The first of the yellow daffodils in the front garden started to bloom on February 4. 

Rain: End of January Rain

In the past few days, we've had some more rain, although today, January 31 was clear and sunny. Since last reporting, we've had 2.65 inches of new precipitation at my location in northeast Santa Rosa. That brings are total for the 2020-2021 rain year to 8.20 inches--still about ten inches below normal for this time of year. Rain is forecast for tomorrow and the day after (February 1-2). Let it rain, let it rain, let in rain.

[Edit: More rain did come. We've had an additional 0.95 inches since the above was written, bringing our total so far to 9.15 inches. Every bit helps, but we remain further behind normal than I've ever seen before. At this point in the season, we should have had more than twice that amount.]

Wines I'm Making: 2020 Sangiovese Rosé Labeled

 

Finally got around to making labels for our 2020 rosé of Sangiovese. The grapes at harvest were dusted with ash from the wildfires in August and again late in September. I was concerned about the possibility of smoke taint, but the wine seems to be fine. I lightly rinsed the grapes before crushing and pressing them and they spent only a short time on the skins.

I've heard, however, that smoke taint can develop over a few months, but I'm hopeful. I'm hopeful also that our Cabernet grapes from 2020 will not have been tainted, but we won't know for sure until next autumn when it comes time to bottle that wine (so far, it tastes fine). Next winemaking chore will be pruning the vines. I also want to post an image of our 2019 Cabernet, which I've just labeled. 

Plants I'm Growing: First Blooms—White Flowering Plum

I've been lazy so far this year about recording the first blooms of the year in the garden, but I did note the date the white flowering plum in the side yard starting blooming—January 14. Although this tree began blooming on December 30 one year, it normally starts blooming around the second week of January. January 14 is a typical date. 

Elsewhere in the garden, miniature cyclamen (Cyclamen coum) and camellias are in bloom, as are a smattering of other winter-blooming flowers (candytuft and mustard mostly). Daffodils are on the way. Spring will not be too far away, but much-needed rain forecast in the coming days will slow things down a bit. Looking forward to the rain. The more the better. 

Art I'm Making: Recent (sort of) Work

It's already early 2021 and I’ve not posted any art work to this blog since June of last year. I've not been entirely idle, but I have been working at a very slow pace recently, having finished a total of only six pieces last year and I've posted only three of those pieces so far. In an attempt to start catching up, I post two pieces from July last year.

Below is Untitled Collage No. 221 (Santa Rosa). July 16, 2020. Acrylic on paper, acrylic monotype, graphite, collage. Image size: 34.4 x 25.3cm (13.5 x 9.3 inches). Matted to 24 x 20 inches. Signed on the mat. Signed and dated on reverse.

Above is Untitled Collage No. 222 (Santa Rosa). July 18, 2020. Acrylic on paper, acrylic monotype, collage. Image size: 10.7 x 14.3cm (4.2 x 5.6 inches). Matted to 11 x 14 inches. Signed on the mat. Signed and dated on reverse.

Click on the images for larger views. For more of my abstract monotype collage work, visit my website. https://ctalcroft.wixsite.com/collage-site 

 

Rain: A Little More (January 10, 2021)

Since last reporting, we've had a little more rain—1.30 inches to be exact. That brings our total for the 2020-2021 rain year (which runs through September 30, 2021) to 5.55 inches. As I keep saying, anything is better than nothing, but we're still far below normal for this time of year. Average rainfall for January 10 is approaching 15 inches. No new rain in the forecast at the moment.

Birds I'm Watching: 2020 Audubon Christmas Counts

Again this year (2020) I participated in a couple of Audubon Christmas bird counts. The groups I birded with covered the Spring Lake and Lake Ralphine area in Santa Rosa on December 20 and the Barnett Valley Rd./Jonive Rd. area, near Sebastopol, on December 27. Didn't see any rarities, but had four Hooded Mergansers on the Martindale Ranch pond on December 27, saw all three local nuthatch species that day, and also all the local woodpeckers (Downy, Hairy, Nuttall's, Pileated, Flicker, and Red-breasted Sapsucker). The weather held both days despite a forecast of (much needed) rain. Pictured is a Cedar Waxwing photographed on December 20.

Rain: More Rain (December 12-January 2, 2020)

A little rain overnight on the 11th and this morning has added 0.40 inches to our total for the 2020-2021 rain year. That total still stands at only 2.0 inches. Normal rainfall by December 12 is four to five times that. We will be seeing serious drought conditions in the coming year if we don't start getting some good storms soon. Some new rain is forecast for tomorrow morning, but we're unlikely to get the 6-8 inches we would need to catch up. 

[Edit: Additional rain has added another 0.45 inches to the total. So, as of December 15, we have had 2.45 inches or rain this rain year at my location in Northeast Santa Rosa--seriously below normal.]

[Edit: More rain on the night of the 16th and into the morning of 17th added 0.70 inches of new participation. That brings the total so far for the year to 3.15 inches. Still way below normal, but, every little bit helps.]

[Another update:] Rain subsequently added 1.2 inches to our total, bringing the total as of January 2 to 4.35 inches at my location---still woefully low. Normal rainfall by this time in the year is a little over 14 inches, so we're about 10 inches below normal. More rain is forecast for this week. We'll see.]

Miscellaneous: The 2020 Presidential Election

I just don't get it. There is no evidence there was widespread fraud in the election, no credible evidence of significant lost votes, stolen votes, or altered votes. There were, by all accounts, more safeguards in place this time than there were four years ago, no dispute about vote numbers anywhere except where Mr. Trump feels he should have won. The Georgia vote has been counted THREE times, some of the Michigan vote and the Wisconsin vote counted TWICE with no significant change in the totals. There were Democratic losses in the house and elsewhere, despite the supposed ability of somebody, somewhere to steal a presidential election (somehow, it's always only Mr. Trump who is the victim).

Mr. Trump is a documented liar, a documented narcissist, a documented con artist. These are facts, well known and accepted for decades based on his record of business failures and fraud in the real estate and casino businesses in New York and elsewhere and on the way he has treated the people he has worked with and who have worked for him. This is not news. He's behaved this way for decades.

People complain about how the media are always attacking him, always going after him, never giving him a break. Do they not stop to think that he attracts this relentless negative attention because he is a relentless transgressor? How many times do you have to see the same behavior repeated to accept that there is a pattern there? That is not entirely a rhetorical question; I wish I understood why people are willing to forgive him over and over and over and over and over again despite the obvious.

People still believe his lies about the election having been somehow anything but an honest loss. There's no mystery here, no conspiracy. More Americans voted for Joe Biden where it counted than voted for Donald Trump. It's that simple. If nothing else, it should make people suspicious that suddenly Fox News became evil in the eyes of the president the moment it contradicted him.

I really do not understand why people believe anything he says—why they persist in taking him at his word. I really do not understand. I wish I could understand. But I can't.

Serendipitous Art: Silver Bubbles (December 6, 2020)

Bubbles forming on the bottom of a dark pan set on the stove to boil. Looked like art to me. Serendipitous Art. 

Click on the image for a larger view. For more unintended art, see my blog Serendipitous Art. http://serendipitousart.blogspot.com/ 

Miscellaneous: Home-baked sourdough bread

When I was in high school, oh so long ago now, I used to bake bread quite often. Loved doing it. Had a great recipe for a Swedish limpa bread (light rye) that was sometimes our daily bread and another for a delicious oatmeal bread. But I haven't baked bread in years. During the pandemic, we've been trading garden-grown greens with a friend for sourdough loaves. After months of doing this, I asked for some starter and yesterday tried baking a loaf--my first attempt at sourdough, never having done sourdough back in high school. Even though I mixed up the order of doing things to some extent, it worked. Behold! My first loaf.

I used this recipe, which is quite easy to follow, but you have to first make starter or get someone to give you some. 

Rain: First real rain of the season (November 2020)

Last Thursday, November 12 we had a little rain--about 0.4 inches--but yesterday (November 17) and today we've had a decent downpour. It finally feels like fire danger is over for the year after an evacuation in August (much earlier than usual--because of fires started by lightning in many parts of the state in the absence of rain) and then fire scares again in October. 

The last rain we had was on May 13, in the 2019-2020 rain year. This new rain is the first of the 2020-2021 rain year, which goes from October 1, 2020 to September 30 2021. So far there is 1.20 inches of new rain in the rain gauge, bringing our total to 1.60 inches (way below normal for this point in the year), but it looks like there will be at least a little more rain today.

Birds I'm Watching: Bald Eagle at Howarth Park, Santa Rosa

Out for a walk this morning looking for birds. Not enough birds and far too many people walking, running, and biking without masks. Along the trail several people volunteered that they had seen a Bald Eagle earlier in the day near the lake by the parking lot I had parked in. As I rounded a corner near the spot he was supposed have been, there was no bird. Then someone said he'd flown away down the edge of the lake not long before, where I spotted him in the distance. Shortly afterward, he flew in much closer. I spent about 45 minutes getting some decent photos. First time seeing a Bald Eagle in Sonoma County, CA, which is about the southern edge of the Bald Eagle's historical range.

 

Went out for a short walk along a creek trail not far from home on Saturday (October 17). It's the autumn migration season for songbirds, so this is a good time of year to see warblers moving south for the winter and sometimes to see exotic strays not normally present in our area. Didn't see anything exotic and only one warbler species (a pretty Townsend's Warbler), but I did see a busy Pileated Woodpecker working on making a hole in a tree branch. North America's largest woodpecker species (Dryocopus pileatus).

Wines I'm Making: 2020 Cabernet Pressing

It's that time of year again. On Saturday I pressed the new 2020 wine (October 17). We got about 150lbs of Cabernet Sauvignon/Cabernet Franc grapes from our little backyard vineyard (25 Cabernet vines, of which four, or 16%, are Cabernet Franc) this year. I fermented the grapes this year using Rockpile yeast after a two-day pre-soak. As we harvested and crushed the grapes on October 3, fermentation took twelve days. We ended up with 11.4 gallons of pressed wine (and last week four gallons of rosé from our nine Sangiovese vines).

Next step is to inoculate the new wine with malolactic bacteria to induce malolactic fermentation, which converts some of the malic acid in the grapes to lactic acid, which softens it--standard procedure with red wines. This wine will be ready to bottle in about a year. The 2019 wine is ready to be bottled now--the next wine-related task that awaits me.

Miscellaneous: Unusual garden visitor

We had an unusual garden visitor today (October 11, 2020). I spied this little butterfly, a skipper, in the garden today, but it's not one I've ever seen before. Looking it up, I see that it's a Common Checkered Skipper (Pyrgus communis). Not common here, apparently. According to what I found online, it's normally found in the Orange County, California area, well south of us. Very pretty, though, with its bluish body and checkered wings.... 

Wines I'm Making: 2020 Cabernet Sauvignon/Cabernet Harvest (October 3, 2020)

Just finished harvesting and crushing our Cabernet Sauvignon/Cabernet Franc grapes. It was a novel situation this year. Ash everywhere. Everything lightly dusted, but the grapes were mostly protected by the leaves of the vines. Many of the commercial wineries in the area heavily thin the leaves around the grape clusters toward harvest time, to give them extra sun and light and to facilitate harvesting, but I generally don't follow that practice and this year leaving the leaves alone served to protect the fruit.

The ash is easily removed. The problem is that "fire taint" is caused not so much by ash from distant (relatively speaking) fires, as in our case this year, but by prolonged exposure to thick smoke, which is absorbed directly through the grape skins and by the leaves, later migrating toward the fruit. I'm hopeful that the grapes we've just harvested won't suffer from taint as we have had only a few days of really bad smoke. We'll see.

Today harvested 152.46 pounds of Cabernet Sauvignon/Cabernet Franc grapes, including fruit from two more-recently planted vines at the front door. The crushed juice measured at 24 degrees brix, which is perfect, and at a pH of 3.48. Aside from the ash, the fruit was very healthy. Suffered no losses to critters at all this year and no losses to mildew either. So, I'm hopeful that, despite everything, we'll have good wine from 2020.

The crushed grapes will undergo a two-three day cold soak now (or a cool soak anyway) until I inoculate the must. I plan to use the Rockpile yeast strain this year as my notes say that's what I used in 2015 and our 2015 wine turned out to be very good indeed.

Miscellaneous: Ruth Bader Ginsburg 1933-2020

It was a shock last week when I read breaking news that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had died--a shock because it was sad news of the passing of a such an important figure, but a shock because we are so close to the election and there was no doubt in my mind that Mr. McConnell would have no qualms about pushing through a replacement nominee, despite the insult of his refusal to even consider President Obama's entirely legitimate nomination of Merrick Garland in 2016--despite the bald hypocrisy. 

The Republicans now are, of course, correct in saying that the President has a right and a duty to appoint a new justice. The point is that President Obama had the same right and duty (why does this need to be explained to anyone?). Objections now to appointing a justice so close to the election are based on a sense that to give Mr. Trump another appointment is a double insult to President Obama and Merrick Garland--and that to block another trump appointment is only to right the original wrong. The Republican party has sunk lower than I would have ever thought it could go. 

Wines I'm Making: Harvest 2020--Sangiovese

I decided to harvest the Sangiovese grapes today. The berries appeared to be mature, judging from the seeds, and some were already turning to raisins. With a heat wave predicted for today and the next couple of days and the next opportunity to harvest likely next weekend, it seemed the time was right. We got a total of 53.2lbs of grapes, which is roughly normal. We've harvested anywhere from about 40lbs to over 70lbs in the past. 

A juice sample before harvest showed a brix of 19.5 degrees, which, corrected for the temperature, is around 20.25 degrees. The crushed grapes tested at 20.25 brix and a specific gravity of 1.080. As I often do with the Sangiovese grapes, from which we make rosé, I bumped up the specific gravity with a small addition of corn sugar (450 grams or so), which raised the specific gravity to 1.090. That should yield a wine of about 12.6% alcohol. The pH of the must was 3.58. I crushed the grapes a little after noon and will press them this evening after they've had about six hours on the skins--which is less than usual. I frequently leave them overnight, so that they've typically had about 18 hours before pressing, but that would mean pressing first thing in the morning and there won't be time to do that before work starts. The color this year is likely to be a bit lighter than usual. We'll see.