Time to prune. We pruned the vineyard and it was time as the leaves are coming out. Temps d'élaguer. Nous avons taillé le vineyard et il était temps, les feuilles commence à sortir.

Winemakers mechanized Vineyards Mechanization in the vineyard is the solution to workers shortage and is the future. Part of the article below: <<St. James Winery began a mechanization experiment in 2004 that lasted until 2009 using side-by-side rows in a block of Chardonel grapes. Meggitt reported that initially they found some variation in the fruit, […]

A night in the wilderness We decided to take a short vacation and went spent the night in the wilderness behind our vineyard. In the morning we went for a walk in the mountain. It's crazy how different is the vegetation between our place and here, only 4 miles and 500 ft higher. Une nuit […]

End of the Harvest at Copper Horse Vineyard: We harvested the last of our grapes, the Mourvèdre, and are going to process it at the Cochise Wine Company's winery. The grape is not the best, low sugar and low acidity, but waiting longer would just mean loose more grapes to the birds while the Ph […]

Are the birds a problem in the vineyard? At first, I said "NO". The birds can have some grapes, as long as they eat the bugs. But when I saw what they can do to a vine, I changed my mind. Some vines completely eaten. The nightmare! It is partially my fault as I didn't […]

Harvest Time at Copper Horse Vineyard: The harvest has started early this year, again. Last Monday we harvested almost a ton of Viognier and, on Wednesday, 2/3 of a ton of Syrah. It took 6 peoples 9 hours to harvest the Viognier, and only 4 hours to harvest the Syrah. Then there is the 1.5 […]

Snake in the Vineyard in English: I was working on my hands and knees pulling grass at the base of the wine when I encountered a 5" snake skin. You know the saying "If it was a snake it would have bitten me", and it was a snake, but just its skin, luckily. Based on […]

Rocks, my enemies, my friends, in English: There are many rocks in the vineyard at CHV. Everywhere as a matter of fact. They are rough when driving or walking on them. They damage the blades of the mower. And there are so many, you can't even take them out. So what can I do? I started […]

CHV Vines In English: Some weeds are growing mighty fast. I walk the vineyard by irrigation zones, so I walk by the same spot every 5 days...So you can imagine my surprise when I saw a piece of vegetation almost 5 feet tall. Luckily when it grows that fast it's easy to pull out from […]

Wall-Ye in English I heard of a French robot called Wall-Ye that can prune vines about a year ago or so, and I have been following its development since. It had some issues at the beginning but it seems to be working now and doing more, such as mowing and removing suckers. I'm really looking […]