Godfrey-Brownell Vineyards

2010

More Notes from the Vineyard
This is the new archival section of our notes.

Eventually, we'll get all our notes and newsletters posted going back to the last century (1999).

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June 2010

Yes, we are open and all is well.
We had a great visit to Provence in April and came back to tons of work--including the bottling of lots of new white wine. In Provence, we visited with Anais and her family and their wonderful vineyards and drank a lot of light red wine.
June was its usual self this year: promising sun and warmth and delivering cloud and showers. But July has come in like a heat wave. Luckily, the interns have the beach in Cadboro Bay to cool off. We spent much of the winter restoring grandma's wonderful old cottage on Cadboro Bay and the interns got to enjoy it before it got rented out.

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July 2010

2010 in the vineyard: terroir vert wins.
Why we love vetch and clover!

The "old vineyard" planted in 1999, is now reaching a point where we no longer need to irrigate or fertilize. This took about 8 years of fairly active annual cultivation and planting of diverse green manures (clovers, vetches, italian rye grass, some oats) etc). One of the many keys to this approach is the wonderful vetch plant. Here's a bundle of vetch we picked up out of a Chardonnay row and put up on a post wire just to take a photograph.

We have never used herbicides or pesticides on the farm. Our last irrigation was in 2006 and our last trace minerals applied were in 2007. The rows look like this before we mow them.

Now, our petiole nutrient analysis shows levels well above our original targets. By June, the individiual shoots are strong and healthy.

We are now now growing all our nutrients within the vineyard and getting closer and closer to the biodynamic ideal of zero imports. Our sole challenge remains finding a solution to the mildew dangers associated with growing French grapes in a BC rain forest.

By the end of June we began tucking and tying and reducing growth to that magic stage where we get the maximum of ripe but healthy fruit in October. We will never go back to the sterilty (and expense) of bare earth rows. Not when our annual "growth chart" looks like this.

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2010 on the patio.

We're working on our section on the local food community. Cowichan Valley gets better every year in terms of food variety and local production. . The sea food store in Cowichan Bay is now under new ownership and it's going to provide a great addition to our current source: Mad Dog Crabs.

Looking for a good, local B & B with a host who loves to cook? At the Sea B&B in Mill Bay.