(Another) Year in the Vineyard with Wes Hagen, Clos Pepe: Week #9

Another Year in the Vineyard, Week #9 May 7-14, 2010 By: Wes Hagen, VM/WM Clos Pepe (Don’t forget to mouse over the images to get a few extra nuggets of useless information!) Greetings, readers!  I’m happy to be reporting this week from the beautiful and cool confines of Clos Pepe Vineyards and the Santa Rita Hills—back from Temecula last week, and looking forward to being in Stevenson, Washington next week.  The Spring months mean travel in Wes’ World—I judge three or four Wine Competitions in May through July, travel to San Francisco for Pinot Days, and always do a few tastings and winemaker dinners in Los Angeles.  Before the vineyard gets too far along, it’s important to spend some time promoting the brand and networking with those in the wine business.  Summer’s slammed with fine tuning viticulture and getting ready to welcome interns and the bottling line, so I tend to only leave the property for those precious few weeks between the end of the frost season and the beginning of fruit ripening.  So this week I get to blog