State of the Grape: Part 1

Whew, am only now coming down off my sugar high following the Gravenstein Apple Fair this past Saturday (and have finally slept after two days, too; I neglected to mention that with my apple cobbler I also bought an iced coffee--which came in a 32-ounce cup that took both my hands to lift to drink). There's SO much going on the Every World A Feast blog world right now that it's hard to get my mind around things. First, COMING SOON, a SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT regarding the FIRST EVER Every Meal A Feast "Gathering" in which YOU TOO can participate. Plus this Friday, I leave for VEGAS BABY with my good friend JS, and in the spirit of my buddy Jay's recent blow-by-blow account of his across-country "cannonball run", I plan to post frequent updates regarding my Vegas food & drink escapades. Trust me, this will be something NOT TO BE MISSED, so if you have any weekend plans, you might just want to cancel or postpone them to stay in close contact to the Internet. More soon about Vegas, but let me just say now that Vegas to me is ALWAYS a cannonball-type run where the real question becomes not did I have fun or even did I win any money, but did I SURVIVE???

With all this talk of late about apples, I thought now I'd turn to grapes. I talked yesterday with my good friend Todd Anderson, who's the owner and head winemaker at Conn Valley Vineyards in the Napa Valley, to get the Every Meal A Feast inside scoop on this year's pending grape harvest. Here's a verbatim interview with Todd (with my mental comments in parenthesis):

Me: Hey.

Todd: Hey.

Me: How's it going?

Todd: Good. (This is warm-up guy-talk.)

Me: Tell me about the grapes.

Todd: This year they're hanging to the left.

Me: Really? Is that a good thing? (Is he pulling my leg?)

Todd: No, you idiot. I'm just kidding. (He WAS pulling my leg, the bastard!)

Me: Oh, O.K. So when you are going to pick those suckers?

Todd: I don't know. In all seriousness, it depends on what Mother Nature does in the next couple-three weeks. We monitor things in the vineyard very closely this time of year.

Me: Monitor sugar levels, right?

Todd: Yeah, plus some other factors, like color. And a lot of times we make our final determination of when to pick based on taste.

Me: Really?

Todd: Yeah. After growing grapes for 25 years, you get an idea of what the grapes are supposed to taste like at harvest.

Me: That's very cool.

Todd: Yeah. It's all about getting great fruit. The better the fruit, the better the wines.

Me: O.K., thanks. Say, do you have that five bucks you owe me?

Todd: See me next week, O.K.? I gotta go do a vineyard walk-through.

Me: (&^%$##%^)

Here are some grapes-on-the-vines pics; enjoy.