12 Jun Field of Dreams – The Birth of our New Vineyard
Heart & Hands began with a dream of finding a limestone-rich site for Pinot Noir. Our first vineyard is thriving, and we are now embarking on a vineyard expansion...
Riesling Tag
05 May And now for the clusters…
With the San Diego-like temperatures this past week (clear, sunny, mid 70's), the vines made a quick leap from bud break to a first showing of the clusters. The forecast for this week doesn't look like there will be much of a change, so we're...
31 May The Grapes are Blooming!
On May 29th we received quite a scare. A "microburst" of 90 mph wind ran through our area and took down a number of trees along with severe rain and hail. Fortunately, we dodged both the extreme winds and hail and only received a touch...
21 May Reinforcements!
Some replacement vines have arrived. Occasionally, a vine is struck by the tractor or just doesn't seem to perform like the surrounding vines and needs to be replaced. These vines are marked in the Fall and are ordered from the nursery. Once we are in...
05 May A Little Bit of Frost Damage
We were met with some pretty cool temperatures (29 degrees) last weekend and after a couple of warmer days, we were able to assess the damage. It looks like the frost was minimal at best. Maybe one bud per three vines. In fact, a number of...
03 May More Riesling Blending
The past few days we've been finishing the tank blends on the next set of four Rieslings - the 2011 Dry Riesling, 2011 Hobbit Hollow Vineyard Riesling, 2011 Patrician Verona Vineyard Riesling, and 2011 Nutt Road Vineyard Riesling. The Dry Riesling has a snappy, crisp...
27 Apr The Clusters Peek Out
The vineyard has some additional excitement this week - the first clusters of 2012 began to emerge. While these clusters are smaller than your pinky fingernail, we're thrilled to see this development knowing how much effort has gone into the vineyard thus far. We still...
23 Apr Readying the Rieslings
Because of the inclement weather, we decided to focus our attention on indoor activities. The early Spring has led us out of the cellar and into the vineyard, prolonging some of our normal seasonal cellar tasks. One of those tasks is wrapping up the blends...
13 Apr Preparing the vines for the 2012 vintage
After a relatively mild winter and abnormally early spring weather, we are experiencing an earlier than normal swelling of the buds. The vines were planted in Spring of 2010, and this is the first year that we might harvest a few grapes from our estate...