Our truck picture had been making the social media rounds, over a million views.  I was doing deliveries around Harrisburg yesterday and got a lot of smiles and thumbs-up from my fellow road warriors stuck in traffic on I-83.  It's nice to be the recipient of road joy instead of road rage!

View from my office window

The weather outlook for this week looks perfect.  Slight chance of rain tomorrow but otherwise we just break 70, dry and beautiful clear skies which is all perfect for ripening grapes!  My friends in CA might even be jealous.  We have a small amount of Pinot Noir which we may pick on Wednesday so we will see how prepared we are on the crush pad.  Harvest is about to start!

Cheers!

Keeping our feathered friends from the Franc

We missed pretty much all of the rain that passed through the area over the weekend so the vineyard is continuing to benefit from this great Indian Summer weather, dry and warm!  So far no disease or rot and we have netted almost all of the vineyard without the birds having discovered us.  Because of the slow start in the spring harvest will probably be delayed a week or two so there is plenty of time for things to happen but right now we are in great shape.      

Welcome to Allegro Vines!  My name is Nelson Stewart and I am the Vineyard Manager at Allegro Vineyards in Brogue PA where we like to say we are not in the middle of nowhere but you can see it from the winery.  I have over 25 years volunteering and working in cellars and vineyards in MD and PA with the last 12 years as a full-time vineyard manager.  By a very early age I showed talent on the violin and developed those skills into a successful career as a professional orchestral violinist in both Europe and the USA.  In 2002 I swapped my hobby with my profession which is how I came to be at Allegro.

Enough!  I hope to give regular updates of life in the vineyard and what I observe and learn as the season moves along.  Questions and observations from readers will be much appreciated and hopefully make interesting reading for you. This is a great time to start a blog because a most of the repetitious hard work of the summer is over and we are just weeks away from the start of harvest. Thanks for following!