GRADY FAMILY VINEYARDS HARVEST 2017

It has certainly been an interesting year. First a very wet winter and spring brought hail to the vineyards. Summer was more normal with a couple of hot streaks but nothing out of the ordinary until August when we had a prolonged heat spike over 105 for several day in a row. We applied more water to help the crop through the heat wave and things seemed to be getting back to normal, then we had a light unseasonable rain! Fortunately the grapes seem to be a resilient crop and they tolerated it all well. We have harvested our whites and the Pinot Noir and Zinfandel. All looked like good crops and fruit with excellent chemistries. This morning we picked our Petite Sirah under a beautiful orange sunrise. For the next 3 days we will have machines picking more fruit that we sell to other wineries. When we have finished this week we will be down to just the Cabernet Sauvignon (my personal favorite wine) and thankfully they are a thick skinned variety that will tolerate just about anything nature can throw at them, so we will not lose anymore sleep over the strange weather. Thank God at least we did not have to deal with hurricanes! Our thoughts and prayers go out to all those devastated in Texas and Florida and Puerto Rico and the other islands that are recovering from the storms. We have moved on to new vintages for several of our wines and are really pleased with the wines. In particular our 2015 Pinot Noir has turned out very “French” in style with lighter color and big bold cherry aromas and flavors.

We have already contacted Cooking with Turf (the Irish band) for our St. Patrick’s Day party in 2018. Beth and I had the joy of a 2 week trip to Ireland in August this year and had a wonderful time. The country is VERY green and the people very inviting. We enjoyed both literary and musical pub crawls, and I have to admit I did drink more Guinness than wine while visiting the Emerald Isle. Our daughter Christy was with us for the 2^nd week as the trip was planned to attend the wedding of one of her best Notre Dame friends. We all survived my driving on the wrong side of the road and getting through the round abouts.

Please enjoy all of the wine club shipments and feel free to email with any questions.

Jim and Beth Grady

Grady Family Vineyards has begun the cultivation of our vines with pruning finished in March and shoot thinning and tying following  in April.  We are happy to see the results of a rainy winter in California.
Our son, Jim III has been busy running the crew and sulfuring the vines.  In addition our grandsons, Kevin and Kyle have helped clear dead wood that was trimmed from the zinfandel vines.  This involved riding and driving the Polaris which was a great incentive for them!

We have entered several of the Grady wines in the Ca. State Fair Wine Competition and will be anxious to see the results later on this summer. We will share this with you on Facebook and this blog.

We love to hear from our faithful Grady wine drinkers!

Cheers until the next time,

Beth and Jim Grady

With  a week having passed in September our vineyards are about half harvested.  Our Old Vine zinfandel grapes came off last week and are now finishing the fermentation process.  The majority of our zins  are trucked to Delicato Vineyards in Manteca after machine harvesting.  The grapes we use for our award-winning Old Vine Zinfandel ( Gold at the 2015 San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition) are hand picked and carefully treated for the optimum flavor and quality of the wine.  We are looking forward to another stellar wine with our 2015 vintage!
We will keep you posted as we will be harvesting our Petite Sirah  and Cabernet Sauvignon grapes within the next week!  In general the harvest is 2-3 weeks earlier than in 2014 and tonnage seems to be on par with last years numbers.  Until later,  have fun and enjoy drinking some Grady wines found on our website or in your local stores!

We are now in the states of Maine, Mass., New Hampshire, Vermont, Illinois, New Jersey, New York, Colorado and NO. California ( Lodi and Stockton) and Ontario, Canada.  We anticipate growing by at least 2-3 states a year by seeking small distributors to treat our carefully crafted wines with tender , loving care!

Cheers!  until next time…

Last week we harvested our Pinot Grigio grapes by mechanical harvesting.  We were pleased the vines produced 8.5 ton to the acre.  The grapes were sent to be crushed and are now in stainless tanks.
We expect another fabulous Lodi Pinot Grigio with the full fruit flavors and tinge of sweetness on the finish that our consumers have come to know and love!

Be on the look-out for the ’15 Grady Family Vineyard Pinot Grigio in the early spring of 2016!

Greetings from Grady Vineyards,
 

We have been diligently pruning our vineyards for the last month.

Each variety needs to be pruned at the right time and is treated with great care.  Dr./Coach /Vineyardist Grady takes sole responsibility for pruning our Pinot Noir vines.  This process is done under the guidance of our son, Jim who manages our grapes.   It will take at least 3-4 days of work for the Pinot Noirs to be pruned by one person.

The vineyards will now go through a constant cycle of tasks in order to produce a crop next September and October!  I will keep you up to date and try to add some pictures with our next post.

Until then drink Grady wine and remember to stock up for St. Patrick’s Day!  We will be having our annual celebration at Woodbridge Uncorked on Friday, March 13th from 6-9.  Great food, Grady wine, beer and Authentic Irish music!   Call 209 365 7575 for reservations or more info.

Cheers,

Beth Grady

We just finished bottling several varieties of wine including our Pinot Noir ’13, Petite Sirah ’13 and Old Vine Zinfandel ’13. They are in the same category as their previous vintages … full of fruit and soft tannins on the finish.  We think you will thoroughly enjoy them!
In the vineyard the leaves have finally fallen to present the bare trunks of the vines.  The fall was warm and so the leaves just took a little longer to settle on the ground.  The last few nights have been close to freezing so the vines are truly in their dormant period.  The very good news is that we have had some substantial rain this fall.  We are hoping that the winter brings additional rainfall to provide more to the below ground water table.

We will be pruning by the end of January and into early March. The cover crop has been planted and weed spraying will begin with the first hint of warm weather which encourages the weed growth.

As you can see there really never is rest for the vineyardist!   Until next time Happy New Year and enjoy a glass of Grady Family Vineyard wine as you sit by the fire.

Today we hand picked 3 ton of zinfandel grapes to begin  the process of making our  2014 Old Vine Zinfandel.  At the beginning of next week the rest of our zinfandels  (22acres) will be machine harvested.  This same week our petite sirah grapes will be machine harvested at 2 different ranches. Shortly thereafter our 10 acres of head-pruned petite sirah grapes will be carefully picked.  These will make premium petite sirah ’14 wine.  Our last variety to be harvested will be our cabernet (4 acres) which will be crafted into our Fine Irish Cab ’14 and GFV Reserve Cab ’14.
As you can see the harvest is moving quickly after a waiting period as the grapes made sugar.  If next week’s schedule is any indication,  the harvest will be over several weeks earlier than usual.  We are anticipating excellent tonnage but we won’t know for sure until the end of next week.  Stay tuned to get the latest update!

Hello from the Grady’s,
Harvest is approaching and the vineyards are drinking lots of water and continuing to ripen the grapes to maturity. Our newly planted head-pruned petites sirahs are being cared for by Jim lll with much attention. We are anticipating a great harvest! ( in 3 years for these new plants!)

We were happy to recieve a GOLD medal for our GFV Old Vine Zinfandel’09 at the LA International Wine and Spirits competition last month. It scored 91 pts.! At the Ca. State Fair Competition we were awarded Silver medals for our Fine Irish Cab ’08 and again the GFV Old Vine Zinfandel ’09.

We are looking forward to 4 new wine releases in September.
They are: Shenanigans Fine Irish Cab ’09
Shenanigans Pinot Grigio ’11
Shenanigans Celtic Chardonnay ’11
Shenanigans Pinot Noir ’11 limited cases