Nimble Hill Journal


Vineyard update

Good morning all, 2009 season has started off with a bang. Last weekend Penn State held a pruninig clinic at Nimble Hill. It was hosted by Mark Chien and Bill Pencek both from Penn State. Attendence was around 90. We could not have asked for a better presentation or weather. Thank you to both of them. Pruning is going well. We are about 1/3 done. New plantings for this year will be Vidal and Gruner Vetliner. We are very excited about the Gruner. Winter kill has been minimal even though we had the coldest temps in the last 4 years at our site. Stay tuned for further updates.

Best Regards

Gary

Harvest 2008

We are in the midst of the 2008 harvest at Nimble Hill. As I write this, Gary is picking up 3 tons of Cayuga which we will process this afternoon. As soon as we are done crushing and pressing the Cayuga, he will head for Westchester to pick up 2 tons of Chardonnay. He should be back by midnight and we will press them in the morning. Because of picking late in the day and the cool nights right now, this will work. We have already harvested 3 tons of Edelweiss from our vineyard and it is now done fermenting. The Edelweiss goes into our new blush wine Innocence. The 3 tons will allow us to triple production on this wine, which is good because it is almost sold out. We will be picking the first crop of Riesling from our vineyard within the next two weeks as well as harvesting our St. Croix and Landot Noir which go into making Nimble Hill Red. More news on the harvest later.

NIMBLE HILL'S FIRST HARVEST

Good afternoon everyone,

Nimble Hill harvested it's first grapes yesterday. What a great feeling. It went very smoothly due to the great crew we had. I want to thank all of the volunteers. It could not have been done with out them. We ended up with 190 gallons of juice that is now chilled and settling. Tommorrow we will rack and start fermentation.

Take care

Gary

MONDAY MORNING IN THE VINEYARD

Good morning all, 6 AM start in the vineyrd this morning. Applied another spray. Vines are still looking strong. We are getting ready to start dropping fruit. Japenese beetle damage has been slight. Spray program is working. No sign of disease either. We could still use a little more rain to get through this mid season. Chance of showers every day this week. Keep your fingers crossed.

Take care

Gary

TODAY IN THE VINEYARD

Good afternoon everyone,

The vineyard is looking great. Sprayed this morning for Japanese Beetles and a few other things.Linda worked hard all day yesterday shoot positioning and tying. We also have recieved a lot of rain this past week. It was needed. We are still on a 7-10 day spray cycle that seems to be working well to keep the vines healthy.

Take care

Gary