It hasn't been 40 days nor 40 nights, but with the amount of rain we've received so far this winter, it sure feels like it! Last night we received close to 4 inches, and that was between 10 pm, when I re-set our rain gauge, and 7 am, when we got in the car to see how much water our vineyard could hold. The answer, which we found out as soon as we looked out our front door, was "a lot!" A good portion of our vines were under water. Thankfully they were hibernating and by the time they awaken, they will be none the wiser. So, since we were up and out, we decided to take a drive up Highway 29, the main road through St. Helena, to see how our friends were faring. A few miles up the road, we pulled into our friend's veterinary clinic and saw that they were in front pushing water out the door. We drove back into town and filled up some sand bags for them - and for us - as an aside, always bring a shovel when going to fill a sandbag (we were lucky and were able to borrow one from a fellow "bagger"). The Napa River flooded so much so that a young woman had to be rescued by helicopter from the bed of her pickup truck just before it went under. Our little town even made CNN Headline News.
The 2005 harvest was great. Alot of work and alot of fun. Now the wine is resting in 48 French oak barrels in the cellar. We taste it every so often and so far, we are very happy with it's progress. Sometimes I think we feel like parents to this wine. We worry about it, we check on it constantly - is it doing okay, is it where it should be - is it happy? When our youngest left home for college, we thought our parenting days were over. Little did we know!
A Happy 2006 to everyone. Chantico.
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