Fool's Prairie Vineyard

Sara Nelson Sara Nelson was raised in a family-owned print shop in the heart of Washington state’s wine country.

Learning is always good. I had the opportunity to do an internship at Seven Hills winery this past harvest and I got to see their amazing vineyards. I was introduced to fan training where the vines have multiple shoots growing from the ground and various fruiting zones. It’s an old Washington vineyard technique to help vines have a fruit zone that survives a frost event. Hardest job I’ve ever done but incredibly rewarding. I’ll post pictures in the next post!

Foamy Syrah at barrel down!

Late harvest Riesling Old School

Spring drought, May 19 freeze event, late June heat dome should have spelled doom for Fool’s Prairie but the vines look better than we expected. Every year we learn and have a better plan for the next!

Protecting the vineyard from our vivid imagination is hard work!

Giving the vines a haircut. We’re about three weeks behind Walla Walla for bud break, we prune late to get past the last frost

Heard something about Ellie getting in a bad car accident in Pullman. Has anyone been in contact?

It’s warming up so it’s time to spend weekends in the vineyard again. Today we removed, stacked, and stored 1000+ grow tubes in preparation for pruning. We are very happy that a neighbor offered to farm the open land around our vineyard which will reduce our need to mow or spray for weeds this year. It was a dry spring though so everybody hope for some rain to get the vines and grains off to a strong start!

We had some Reisling on the vine we opted not to pick due to fruit yield and cold weather. We learned a lot about our vineyard this year and looking forward to the 2021 growing season!

We got a little Pinot Noir to play around with today and the dogs wore themselves out playing chase in the vines.