Glorious day last week for a picnic at Wallula Vineyard with a nice group of friends from Texas. A refreshing menu of fresh cheeses, orzo mint pasta salad, bread from the excellent Ken’s bakery in Portland, cold cuts and a fantastic pate de campagne. Of course, plenty of Rieslings but, one small problem we forgot the glasses! Never mind, the team started cutting plastic bottles! We ran out of bottles to cut, so I had to use a bottle of Riesling made from Organic grapes for a glass – a fine container for a hot lunch under the tent!

Spring should almost be over on the West coast of the United States but we are witnessing a fairly cool 2010 influenced by the infamous El Nino slowing down our growing season – this is a particularly good thing for us Riesling producers (we like cool germanic weather). Physiologically our vines are now blooming and we are probably about two weeks behind a normal season – This is also great for Riesling because delayed maturity promote long hang time and long hang time = better flavor development. I still expect harvest to be starting in 14 weeks or so.

Below is the GDD chart (for more on GDD http://rieslingrules.com/the_book/winemakers-blog/vineyards/2009-vineyard-update/ - you will also see the 2009 chart in comparison)