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Water them in during active growth, the best time is before flower buds show up and several weeks after fruit set, you want it 2-3 weeks prior to fruit set as nutrients like Zinc, Magnesium and Boron essential for fruit set need time to be in the right location in the plant to ensure good fruit...

It’s pretty crazy how far along some of my vines are not a single other local winery has as much growth as my grapes I am seeing flowers already and fruit set is beginning as of this week on some grapes.

I loaded last years Zinfandel with a full heavy dose of French oak cubes in stainless and let it age 6 months and it got really oaky so I pulled it and bottled it oak does sneak up on you when you aren’t sampling it periodically

I did a split fermentation one year with the same syrah must in 3 containers totally different wine in each fermentation used D-21,BM45 which is the main strain in 4x4 and RP-15 and each was wicked different. I liked the D-21 the most had darker fruits, a richer rounder body more mellow tannins...

Hungarian barrels are my preferred barrels with the exception of American oak for Zinfandel or Syrah. I like the softer oak characteristics that respect the fruit a bit more you get the oak without losing the delicate notes from the grapes.

Yes, I know I just wanted to let everyone know why barrel prices are higher this year overall. It definitely helps that you are offering barrels to forum members who can’t get them as barrels can be difficult to buy as you either have to have a local supplier or someone who has reasonable...

That’s Zinfandel for you, particularly that sweet but dry note that usually shows up in my Zinfandel fermentations. The alcohol will calm down eventually. And as I said RP-15 is the go to yeast for quality Zinfandel. I also like it for Syrah and for Cabernet. BM4x4 tends to produce more red...

Barrel prices are up due to a shortage of wood and manufacturing of barrels right now, even us commercial guys are looking at long lead times like order today get them in a year. Which is part of the reason we switched to barrel alternatives it’s way easier to obtain them and I don’t have to pay...

Tartaric is not that bad, high malic can be really rough and abrasive. It’s easy to tell if a malolactic fermentation has finished by taste. I have had white wines made from grapes that were probably picked a bit early and since they don’t go through malo they can be super sour sometimes

Young wine can often times be sour because it’s young and not ready yet and it will age out. So a sour tang does not always mean you have a problem.

One of the wineries I worked for years ago had 4 big open top round stainless fermentation tanks we had one of those drivable lifts and would get on it and use a steel punch down tool. We also did some fermentations in macrobins at that winery all white wines were fermented in barrels or...

Yuck that’s cold, I’m just glad my minimum temp is like 40 at night and my vines are all past budbreak so it’s less risky the rain is annoying though.

For me, 1103p is the bulldozer of rootstocks it overcomes every obstacle you put in front of it it’s a workhorse alongside St George pretty bulletproof and 1103p is resistant to sharpshooters as well. I will add that overall the vines on SO4 have been more productive but that is expected as SO4...

It is usually done manually we do our fermentations in Macrobins and will do punch down in the bins 3x a day with a steel punch down tool. I like a lot of punch downs to minimize risk of microbial cap growth and to extract more color and tannins for longer aging.

No it likes dry meager soils it does well in sandy soils it’s okay with moderate wetness but it will rot and get crown galls easily in damp conditions this comes from experience with it I’ve had a lot of problems with it in regards to root rot in damp soils and disease and crown gall

SO4 tends to like dry soil it doesn’t like wet soils but it also suffers from sensitivity to magnesium deficiency

SO4 is a good vigorous rootstock, very rapid growth even when young I had vines make fruit the second year no matter how many times I removed it they really wanted to get going!

Nice I’ll take a look. Also big tip the best yeast for Zinfandel in my opinion is RP-15.

Zinfandel is my favorite red grape since we don’t do Zinfandel at the winery I have a local contact I get Zinfandel fruit from and make a batch for friends and family on the side yearly absolutely fantastic grape if you know how to work with it. It has a lot of quirks, the brix is an issue...

Nice choice, if I was planting a white grape vineyard for a winery I would do Marsanne or Roussane really popular choices and grow well.