The Development Phase

That was the story that heard from all the developers who we brought to interview for the job. Luckily, we had the good fortune not to encounter stubborn rock formations buried which were the size of Volkswagons. Where uniform vineyard block development and uniform ripening is the target, achieving consistent soil depth, soil chemistry & soil moisture levels is the goal. That’s more of a challenge on a mountain site than it is on the valley floor. Site prep means taking out every stone the size of a fist or bigger. It also means conditioning the soil and amending it to be chemically identical and homogenized across the entire block. That is a massive earth-moving project & is one that requires regular rechecking of the soil chemistry to be sure the results are achieved. Massive piles of rocks came out of the vineyard blocks and became our building blocks. “I’m building you some giant planter beds stuck to the side of the mountain,” one excavator operator said. He was right, we made every rock and boulder useful to shore up the blocks and surrounding vineyard avenues. The dry-season window for development on the mountainside is just April 1st -October 1st, so it took all of two years to do the develop the site and be ready for planting. Miles of subdrains were run to manage the water and be sure the blocks were well drained. Hundreds of tons of mushroom compost, gypsum & crushed lime were trucked up and worked into the blocks, and hundreds more tons of gravel were brought in for the roads and avenues.