Some thunderstorms during the last week, but luckily no hail – and in between once again some sunny days – looks a bit like April weather at the moment, with temperatures changing easily bout 10C (50F) from one day to the other…
Once again, I walk the wines uphill, to see, whether everything is all right, if there are no signs of leave-diseases, like mildew or powdery mildew, which would urge us to spray. As we try to work by limiting spraying in the wines to the strict minimum, we have to be attentive. Till now, we just has one passage of sulphor powder in the small Echelles terraces, to prevent oidium, as powdery mildew is called in France.
spraying sulphor
It has to be done with a back-pack-sprayer and a helmet, to protect from the sulphor dust… and is not the most pleasant thing to do…
But fortunately, we often have good wind after a rainy day – our preferred is called tramontane – a straight north-west, our local version of the famous mistral, which helps to dry the leaves on the terraces rather quickly, so fungus has less chance to spread around.
I couldn’t resist to take some photos of the fresh vine shoots against the sky – performing their elegant dance in the breeze…
dancing vines
All different in their elegant movement
dancing vine
listening to a secret melody
dancing vine
And while the shoots are growing every day, the flowering of the little grapes goes on. In a few days, even the Cabernet Sauvignon started
flowering Cabernet Sauvignon
– now we will just have to wait for the Mourvedre – the “latest” to flower and ripen of our grape varieties, which is the base of our Cuve Clos des Cedres.
Mourvedre and solar pannels
We’ll talk about the solar panels in the background later – it’s our way to produce all the energy necessary at Lisson:-).
diary of a german winemaker from the South of France 