Daily Archives: September 28, 2018

1 post

A Clean Harvest – September 2018

The harvesters make a constant thrum, even at night.  Everywhere, the Merlots are coming in. People are euphemistically calling this a “complicated year.”   The dreaded Plasmopara viticola (mildiou) hit the Merlots hard.  Some vineyards were turned into deserts.  Here’s a single, desiccated plant.   Imagine 25 acres.    This microscopic “pseudochampignon” arrived in 1878, on the heels of the phylloxera insect – the 19th century import from my stateside compatriots that decimated almost all the vineyards in France. Fortunately, our Merlot parcels were only affected partially.   Unfortunately, you can’t make good wine with affected grapes. So it has been […]