Cruz Way Farms Family Vineyard

When did you do the first harvest of Mourvedre, while still green?
What kind of yield are you getting from the Barbera? I cut mine to two-bud spurs and removed all shoots that were less than a #2 pencil in diameter. I also removed
clusters to reduce crowding, but wanted to leave the extra (largish) shoots on to control vigor. I'm not sure if that's the best method, and I'm thinking I should have removed all but one shoot from each bud site, but I did that
last year and got huge berries and huge clusters. My hope was that starting out by over-cropping, then dropping fruit prior to veraison would help keep the berry size small and keep the clusters a bit less compact. The birds are
doing their part to 'help', whenever they find a way through the netting.

I actually got the first Mourvedre harvest at year two, our only grape to do that -- approximately 19 years after planted as rooted vines in March. It was not a big harvest, a little less than two tons on about 1250 vines, but it
was beautiful fruit and the winery that made it into a red won several gold medal awards with it that year. It was delicious and totally typical of the variety -- very earthy and rich. At year four we had total failure. A super
hot late summer/fall here and poor leaf set stalled sugar development and it all mildewed in October, though I did hand pick 600 lbs. selectively and made an utterly delicious red from it at home. Last year we got 6 tons from
those vines, though we did go through a drop probably 2-3 tons, and sold them all. The vines look better than ever this year and I'm hoping for a slightly lower yield -- 4-5 tons. We will drop fruit soon, but not much; I toured
it yesterday and it looks pretty balanced escept on the bottom 3-4 rows, where I need to drop some fruit. It is a very late variety -- late to bud break, late to flower, late to veraison and our latest to harvest.
We have a litte
less than an acre of Barbera, about 625 vines, and we get about 2 tons from it. It is much in demand here and gets a good price (as do all our grapes; we try to grow for quality). We prune to about 2 bud spurs and let it rip.
It's not known to be wildly vigorous, but it really grows strong in the place we put it (the foreground in the picture I posted of the entire first property) and really has too much vegetative growth. We thin it twice, once when
we pull the wires up and a second time to pull overly aggressive top canes and lots and lots of side canes, which I recommend. I go through it and do some canopy management to expose some fruit to the sun so they don't hang in
complete shade. We have never dropped clusters. It has plenty of foliage to support what it puts out naturally. (We do drop on the Mourvedre as it typically overcrops on its own.)
We have bird problems (and bees/wasps) in the
Mourvedre, but not the Barbera. Netting would be nice, but with over 1200 Mourvedre vines it's not cost effective. We just let them have their share. I think that's because our Mourvedre hangs until October here, while we pick
our Barbera first. We do have high acid issues with the Barbera, which is typical, but let the purchasing winery deal with that. It's part of the variety.

You remove the aggressive canes? I've just been cutting them back to increase lateral growth above the fruit. I try to leave the fruit zone itself open for airflow to combat PM. But, I have to increase the shade a bit to keep from
having raisins at about week 4 after veraison. The fruit zone net also adds some shade, and I hope I can mature the fruit a little more slowly. We harvested 7/24 last year. I probably could have waited one more week, but that's
about it.

We harvested our Barbera 8/28 last year and 9/18 the year before.

We've had 8 days of 100F+ temperatures, which usually slows/stalls sugar accumulation as the vines shut done for part of the day, but our grapes have done all right through it. On Sunday, August 12, 2012, Brix were as follows:
Barbera 18.7%, Sangiovese 19.9%, Mourvedre 13.2%, Vermentino 17.2% and Roussanne 18.6%.

Two weeks ago I bottled our house-made 2011 reds after about 9-10 months in (American) oak. We had about 12 cases in all. The Mourvedre
seems to stand out, with great, typical Mourvedre earthiness and an intense, almost black color, which is not so typical of Mourvedre grown here. It's beautiful.

You have an amazing vineyard. Thanks for the pictures.