You've all seen me calling for volunteers/learners in this news letter, every year, for many years now...  Well, you can take solace in that pruning is done for this year.  The unfortunate part of this is that the most important part of winemaking is no longer available this year for education.  If you want to truly understand what wine is really all about, plan on joining me for an afternoon in Jan-Mar 2016 to learn pruning!

The next most important vineyard task is - oh joy - weeding.  The dandelions and shotweed are opening already, and the grass clumps are ready to at least be mowed!  This is an eternal background task, hopefully I'll get right to it.

Speaking of weeds sprouting...  This year is the earliest I have ever seen for the grape plants to come out of dormancy.  Normally they don't start "bleeding" from pruning until early April - this year it was happening in early February!  While working through pruning (normally I have early Jan though Mar), I suddenly found myself going from 6 weeks to finish up, to oops, you should've already been done already!  I've had to mow around the winery twice now, the weeds are popping up everywhere, there's honeybees buzzing about in the vineyards, I've been working in a T-shirt with no coat for weeks - it's unbelievable!  Whether or not you believe in global warming, man induced or not, I will tell you that I am seeing climate change - the last few years have been warmer and warmer, earlier and earlier.  Cliff Mass, atmospheric scientist at UW says that 2014 is what global warming will bring us in about 2050.  From a Puget Sound winegrower point of view, I'm all for it, with earlier spring and warmer summers!

Note that Mike has done an informal internship in winemaking and grape growing for several years now - you need only commit to 1 afternoon each month, Mar-Nov to visit with Mike to learn the basics.  If you're interested, simply reply to this email or call/txt 206-200-5902.

We're now at Tilth Restaurant on 45th in Seattle's Wallingford neighborhood.  Tilth is run by Maria Hines, a James Beard award winner and has appeared on Iron Chef.  The focus is all about local.  We're a bit of a shoe-in for their wine list as we are the closest commercial vineyard to the restaurant, and we are really honored to be featured there.

Mossback Cafe is a new name and location for the Food Shed in Kingston.  We've had our wines with them before, and we're really happy to be working with them again.  They have an intense love of truly local foods, and they create unique and interesting meals.  If any of you have met the PV Executive Chef, Andrew, you'll appreciate this - when Andrew and I visited the restaurant to pour wines for them, I was pretty much sidelined - the discussion quickly turned into the possibilities of interesting pairings with distinctive local foods and wild preparations.  I (probably should have) been miffed, but it was fascinating seeing these "foodies" going so many interesting places in their ideas.

Might you be interested in selling wine at a farmers market?  If you've followed this newsletter for a few years, you're aware the Mike is a big believer in Locavore and Farmer's Markets.  However, as there's only the one of me, and I have to man the tasting room, I can't also be doing sales at a farmers market...  If you think it could be fun to sell at a farmers market (it really is!), you might want to consider doing a market local to you occasionally.  We could do it weekly, just once a month, every other week, it's up to you.  Farmers Markets like to have their vendors figured out by March so you don't have to decide today, but sometime soon.  Please reply to this email if interested.

I use my iPhone earbuds constantly, and seem to trash them regularly -- I'll give you $5 cash, or $10 off any wine purchase for your unused iPhone earbuds.  You can swing by the winery with them, or just drop them in a padded envelope and mail them to me and I'll send you $5 for each, plus your mailing costs.