The vineyard is in a really lovely time - rapid growth as it warms up outdoors.  We're already past the "mouse ear" stage, where the little leaves start to poke up looking like little mouse ears - we have complete leaves, though they're still very small, it's beautiful!  There's browns of last years growth with white and green highlights and pink spots where it's budding, and of course the lush green clover weed cover!  Come on out to the closest commercial vineyard to downtown Seattle and don't forget your camera!

At this point, all we're doing in the vineyard is weeding.  The upper block in front of the house is my showpiece where I give the tour, so it's been mostly kept up, yet it's still been a two week undertaking just to get through a pass of pulling the weeds that are about to pop their seeds, like dandelions and shotweed.  The clover in some places is still in little clumps that can be pulled, but in much of the vineyard it's taken over like a solid carpet.  The few grass lumps are tough, but still manageable.  (Sometimes I wish I wasn't doing things organically so I could just spray some weed killer on it instead of all this work...)

The next job will be weeding the Morales hillside below the driveway.  Each year I start on this hillside and have never made it through, it's an absolute nightmare of multi-year-old established perennials, more dandelions, grass, clover, sheep sorrel, shotweed - it's gonna be awful.  I doubt I'll get very far through it this year either but I'll do what I can...  I don't expect anyone to be interested, but if you'd like to join the fun and spend an afternoon with me on the hillside, simply reply to this email or call/txt 206-200-5902 .

We're very pleased to announce that PV wines have earned several awards recently.  We did really well at Great NW - we entered 4 wines, and received 2 awards (complete listing Great NW Wine Awards results page). But we did even better at Savor NW - 4 wines entered - 4 awards!  (Complete listing here Savor NW current winners.)

Some of you may have heard my tale during a tasting room visit, of judging a similar wine contest like these a few years ago, and how it has changed how I see wine awards.  In these tastings a typical judge will taste perhaps 250 wines in 2-3 days.  Needless to say, no wine is actually ingested - the wine is only tasted on the tongue - if a judge were to actually swallow even just a few samples, they'd become quite drunk!    What an award means, is that the wine tasted nice briefly - the judges don't get the joy of feeling the wines go down, of pairing the wine with foods, nothing like that.  My point is that even though I'm quite proud to have had my wines stand out so well, these contests are only part of the story.  Wines that don't show well in these sorts of contest may still be spectacular wines, yet on the other hand, wines that do show well in these contests may not jibe well with your own particular taste.  I often liken wine awards and scores to movie critics - remember Siskel and Ebert?  When I was a kid, my mom would watch The Today show in the morning with breakfast - in time you'd learn that your taste in movies matched Siskel's, or perhaps Ebert's taste was more like yours.  The best way to get advice on wine is to pay attention to a few experts until you find one whose taste matches yours.  If you like PV wines, might I recommend Kermit Lynch?  He's a wine importer from Berkely CA, and he appreciates cool-climate wines like mine.  Look for his selections in your favorite wine shops, his name will be on back label.  He is mostly an importer though, so don't forget to keep buying Washington wines!

Great news - I got someone to do some farmers markets for me!  If you've shopped at Poulsbo Farmers Market 2 years ago, or at Kingston last year, you'll have met Bailey.  She'll be doing it again this year, yay!  The schedule is planned to be 1st Sat. at Bainbridge, 2nd Sat. Poulsbo, 3rd Sat. Kingston.  At Bainbridge we'll only have 3 wines, as BI market is very strict on what Local means - only my BI grown wines are eligible for sale there.  The other markets will have my other wines as well.

I'm still interested in having someone do sales Farmers Markets on the Seattle side.  If anyone would like to do any Seattle or Eastside farmers market, please reply to this email and perhaps we can make it work.