Clearly I wouldn’t make much of a full-time vineyard manager.

It’s been almost a month since my first visit to Raphael’s vineyard to visit "my" vines. As you can see to the right, they’ve grown quite a bit.

But on Saturday morning, we went out east and stopped by so that my parents could taste Raphael’s bottlings and enjoy the vineyard views as I walked my row of ten-year old  cabernet franc vines.

There isn’t a whole lot for me
to do with the vines yet (the real vineyard tenders are making it easy on me), but I did weed a little between the vines and pulled any shoots from the trunks. As you can see on the left, Ben was quite helfpul 😉

Once the fruit clusters set, I’ll be thinning the crop quite a bit to get the most intense, flavorful fruit we can. And, now that we don’t have any major plans for the rest of the summer, I’m hoping to visit the ole vines at least twice a month — more often when possible.

Our little beagle sure likes to walk the vineyards, so I’m sure I won’t be alone.