As harvest has ended, our wine club orders have all shipped out and our holiday packages are officially for sale, we thought it would be a good time to let everyone know what is happening at the vineyard. Once the stress of bringing in all of the fruit is gone, there is still much to do.
It is a gorgeous time of year as you can see from this shot taken recently on a rainy day. Here is a vineyard update in Ben's words:
We finished our harvest in November and close to 1 month later the vineyard has officially been "put to sleep"...and just in time- we finished on Friday and yesterday, 4 days later, we received rain! Old Mother Nature was waiting for us at Briarwood Vineyards to finish up and we thank her for that. During the last month we completed all of our fall tractor work, which involves tilling the soil and sowing seed in the vine rows to stabilize the soil and replenish nutrients. The seed will grow with winter rains, helping with stemming erosion and will add valuable organic matter when we turn everything back into the soil in spring. The past few weeks have been pleasantly warm during the day and ferociously cold at night. Temperatures at the vineyard when I arrive have been in the twenties, with our coldest morning hitting 18 degrees. Brrrrrrrr!
