Wine PhD

Here are some of the leeks at the Robert Mondavi Institute Garden at UC Davis. They have flowered - are they still edible in this state?

You can see why I consider myself lucky.

Two of my favorite people beings on the planet.

Budbreak has occurred in my backyard in Davis, CA. I look on with mixed feelings. This will be my baby Viognier's 4th leaf and I'm not sure I will be there with her when she fruits. We are possibly going to move this year and I don't think I will be able to transplant her successfully.

A look back at year 2: That was a lot of growth for April!

Two eggs, poached
Truffled mustard vinaigrette
parsley

Next week Vitis, our student tasting group, is putting on a tasting of some old sherries. We went and selected wines for the tasting this morning with Darrell Corti, the founder of Corti Bros Market in Sacramento, CA.

Here is one of the wines that we will try. After the tasting I will post my impressions.

During winter in Davis, the morning fog sits thick until about 9:30 am and best exemplified over large, continuous patches of grass. I have started walking Tilden in the morning - both him and I enjoy walking through a field where the border between the gray sky and the silver, ice-covered grass is indeterminate. Our footsteps leave visible footsteps, like green dance instructions of a platinum page. I enjoy the trees most of all. The deciduous trees stand as ghosts of their verdant pasts and the evergreens sit, like stoic black cones, waiting for the sun to return.

While the cold elicits frowns and complaints and shivers, but it also provides some of the most striking natural scenery of the year.

Seemingly before it even began, Harvest 2009 is done... at my house. Harvest lasted one day. Why so quick? I only have one vine. I deftly harvested my vine in about 30 seconds with nary a scratch. I even left the spider, weaving it's web between two canes, unmolested.

Professor Andy Walker confirmed my hypothesis late last week that my grapevine is Viognier. I was both impressed by my ampelographic skills and by his, as my leaf choice was not particularly good and my cluster was 3/4 eaten.

Here is my Harvest 2009, in all of it's glory:

As you can see, I suffered quite a bit of bird damage and a little bit of rot. Botrytis, perhaps? I don't think I have enough grapes even to make one half bottle of wine, so this year I will be content to eat them. Wine grapes are much better to eat than table grapes, anyway! Perhaps I'm just a bunch of sour grapes...