Fungus

It rained a little bit this morning! That’s a major event here–the power goes out every time there is even a tiny rain shower, so you can imagine what this major lightning storm did to power here. It was beautiful lightning–still pitch black because the sun hadn’t risen yet, the lightning contrasted against the sky awesomely. It was a nice start to the day!

It turns out that this rain might actually be good for the grapes that are about to be harvested here. Usually, you don’t irrigate or water grape vines too often because if the roots are stressed, they dig deeper into the earth and bring more interesting flavors to the grapes. But apparently, when there’s a brief rain like today, late in the harvest season, a fungus called Botrytis develops on the grapes. The wind that comes with the rain spreads the fungus to other vineyards very quickly. Grapes affected with this Botrytis fungus produce exceptional dessert wines! Score! So watch for special, late harvest dessert wines (or sauternes) from the Napa Valley this season–they should be excellent! (Want to read more? Check this out).

COMMENTS
Whenever I hear dessert wine, all I can think of now is that night in my suite when we drank like 10 bottles of wine or something ridiculous! My god we were so frickin drunk! lol. But lots of fun! And of course I have a new appreciation for dessert wine 🙂

Posted by: Carrie on September 3, 2003 10:53 PM
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Ding! We were so frickin drunk that night. One of my friends here recently pointed out that the reason you can get drunk off of one glass of wine and feel like a lightweight is because wine has about twice the alcohol content of most other (non-hard-liquor) beverages. I guess I sort of knew that, but never put two and two together when partaking of these liquid delights. score! I don’t have to feel so pathetic when I’m completely obliterated after 3 glasses of wine.

Posted by: Shira on September 4, 2003 04:48 PM