We have an almost clear sky over the vineyards of Glenora and along the shores of Seneca on this the second Sunday morning of April. The temperature is 35; however the wind which is coming from the southwest at 5 miles per hour is giving us a wind chill factor below freezing-31!
In the vineyards: Wet-Wet-Wet!! We (well the rain gauges) have recorded rain or snowfall for 6 of the past 7 days for a total of 1.47 inches. For the month the rainfall totals 1.96 inches. On the positive side the warmer temperatures of this past week have almost eliminated all of the snow drifts in the Knapp vineyards so the team there can now finish pruning and brush pulling in last few rows of the Riesling block. It will be a while before the tractors and brush choppers move into the vineyards-again too wet. While not a vineyard topic on Wednesday when the editor was driving north along route 89 which borders the east side of Cayuga Lake he noticed that there was still ice covering the north end of the lake. Reports indicate that during the coldest part of the winter the ice cover there reached 22 inches. Apparently it is still quite cold on the broken Finger Lake (Keuka) as there have been no reports from the "good ole boys".
In spite of a 2 inch snow covering last Sunday's Easter Sunrise Service which was held at Veraisons was probably the most attended ever with close to 100 people present, and then staying for the Boy Scouts Pancake breakfast!!
The cellar floor resurfacing project: It started last Monday morning with the removal of the vinyl tiles in the Lab-Steve's, Tasha's, and Sean's domain. At the same time grinding of the floors in the south tank room and wine bottling area was started. By noon those of us on the mezzanine area thought we were experiencing something similar to a desert dust storm in spite of the efforts of the workers to control dust-taping around doors, lots of plastic covering and huge exhaust fans. Even with all of those precautions by late afternoon the reserve tasting room (next to the retail shop) had a fine coating of dust on the counters. Being creative the retail team wrote notes in it (the dust covering) to explain the wines when doing their chocolate and wine tastings. There is more to come: On Wednesday the epoxy base application project started-now instead of dust we have fumes which again were somewhat inhibited from traveling up the stairs to the office area and retail area by the door sealing, fans and plastic. There has been a positive side to this, along with some great looking floors-the epoxy fumes in the retail shop created a feeling of euphoria for our visitors which in turn caused an increase in wine sales!!!!!! At this point it appears that the project will be completed by this coming Friday, and the wine production team can move back into the cellar. By the time the project ends the cellar team will have been "out of production" for almost four weeks. However due to a lot of preplanning that will not impact wine availability/production.
On Friday afternoon we attended the open house that was held at the Finger Lakes Community College's new Viticulture and Wine Production Center which is located in Geneva. It should be noted that almost every major wine producing area in the world has a facility similar to this-a "hands on" teaching facility for grape growing and wine production. This facility along with the Cornell research and teaching facilities now place the Finger Lakes at or near the top of world class teaching and research for viticulture and enology. That environment is much different than it was in 1977 when we were starting Glenora.
It should also be noted that significant funding and support came from within the Finger Lakes regions with financial support from The Bank of the Finger Lakes and Lyons National Bank; equipment from Vance Metal; wine industry support from Heron Hill (John & Josephine Ingle), Greg Learned (winemaker at Bully Hill): Bully Hill Vineyards (Lillian Taylor in memory of Walter S. Taylor): and the Seneca Lake Wine Trail (34 members who contributed $1,000 each: these are only a few of the local supporters!! It is great to see the industry and community getting behind projects such as this.
What is "Dukkah"? That question prompted the editor to attend last evening's Vegan Focus Wine Dinner at Veraisons. Chef Orlando and Chef Sarah and their team presented a 6 course 100% Vegan Food and Wine Dinner. Each course was accompanied by a wine from either Glenora of Chateau LaFayette Reneau. Like the food the wines had to be Vegan as well which means that some of the standard fining agents such as egg whites and isinglass cannot be used as filter aides. Dukkah (pronounced DOO-kah) is an Egyptian Arabic word meaning "to crush" or "to pound" which is done to cumin, coriander, sesame seeds, dried herbs and nuts to create a course powder which is used as a garnish. The meal was excellent - lots of creativity by Orlando and Sarah
Thought for the week: Confidence
Confidence on the outside begins by living with integrity on the inside.
