Flaherty Wines

We’ve been enjoying a cool spring for the last few weeks, sunny and fairly warm one day, then cloudy and threatening rain the next. Not that the weather around here does much more than threaten to rain—until flowering, that is, but that’s another story. The vines are finally starting to leaf out (or push, as the winegrowers say). Interestingly, the table grapes next door are much further along than our tempranillo, and the wine grapes just one valley south are a good week to ten days behind the Aconcagua vineyards.

This growing phase is known as budbreak. For me personally, this period is marred by the fact that I walk around with Barry Manilow’s Daybreak stuck in my head (substituting budbreak for daybreak, of course). This happens every year, until I eventually drive myself crazy and move on. It’s not exactly the soundtrack I would have chosen for my life….

Everything else in the garden has regenerated, too. California poppies are everywhere, and the air is richly perfumed with jasmine, lilac, Banksia rose, and the native Chilean ilan-ilan. Our wisteria has finally filled out in the last couple of years, creating a lovely cascade over the stored fermentation bins. Spring is such a beautiful time of year.