From the Fields - Kevin Merrill

By Kevin Merrill, Santa Barbara County winegrape grower

Along the Central Coast where I am particularly, we got over 6 inches of rain in one day. While that is great for the vineyard and the vines, it is a little much at one time. Things held up as well as they could. We are fixing places that have eroded. Where we had a few issues is where we’re developing new vineyards. The ground is open and prone to erosion, so we are battling that. You’re always susceptible when you put in a new orchard. We’re dealing with that, hoping that we don’t get a huge deluge. We hope this doesn’t exacerbate what’s already there, but we’ll put them back together. We’ve been through it before. We’re getting all the infrastructure in, the irrigation pipes and trellis systems.

We’re able to get into the field. We started pruning crews. We’re a little behind but not much. We’ve gotten so used to not having any rain that you forget that sometimes you have pruning crews that work a couple of days and they’re off for the rain and they come back. We’ve forgotten that over the last five or six years, but we’ll work around that. The best news is we’re getting the rain, and we really need it.

We’re looking at a better year marketwise. The market is stabilizing a little bit, and we are seeing a demand. Hopefully, the demand for fruit is up after going through the smoke taint a few years ago. We had a short year last year; it was a less-than-average crop, which is good for supply.

We are extremely happy to get the rain and that we’re starting to get these reservoirs going. Cachuma Lake is spilling again, and that is just great.