Verasion is here, relax, a little
With the gradual arrival of verasion, we’re finally relaxing a little. The threat of our major crop fungus in the Santa Cruz Mountains, mildew, is about over. Verasion is when the fruit starts to turn from green to red in late summer. Why the color changes is for another blog post. Suffice it to say that mildew is no longer a threat once verasion is underway. The best way to treat mildew is to prevent it in the first place. With the exception of a few tons of fruit from friends in Napa or Chalone, all of the fruit going to La Honda Winery is grown by us, our vineyard subsidiary Post & Trellis Vineyards. And Post & Trellis Vineyards employs sustainable farming practices. So we purposely limit ourselves to organic and sustainable vineyard sprays - sulfur dust (a pure organic mineral right off of the periodic table of elements), Sodium Bicarbonate (otherwise know as kitchen baking soda), and organic horticultural oils. The upside of using these ’soft’ materials (and not petrochemicals, which do in fact have a good and useful place in the case of a real farming emergency) is that our vineyard soils are healthy and happy and alive. The flip side is that these materials are not quite as strong and therefore the timing and frequency of applications becomes critical. So we montor the presence of fungus very carefully - until verasion starts - so now we can cross that risk off of the list and continue our focus on getting the fruit to perfect ripeness in the last few weeks of the season.