▪ COVID-19 comments

Most everything that needs to be said about the Coronavirus/COVID-19 pandemic has already been said, but I do have one suggestion that I haven't seen being passed around much, then I'll go into the direct impacts at PV.

a)  I strongly recommend that it's time for you to set up Apple Wallet, Google Pay, or whatever touchless payment system your smartphone has.  At PV we use Square, and it accepts both these systems.  I've personally resisted doing this until now, but now I'm thrilled to have it.

b)  In our Square payment system, we have turned off the requirement for a signature on credit cards - you do not have to touch the screen.  I'd suggest you mention this to other small businesses you may come in contact with that use Square - they can choose to do it as well.

c)  We've put off our Wine Club pickup for the first quarter of the year.  We hope to still have our wine club pickup in April, but probably without a get-together.

d)  As mentioned above, with the Governor's lockdown due to COVID-19,we are not allowed to do our usual tastings.  You are welcome to come to our tasting room for bottle purchases.  Feel free to email/call/txt 206-200-5902 to place your order and we'll have it ready , and we can bring it out to your car when you arrive.

e)  Most important - this shutdown is disastrous for small businesses like PV.  Most of our income is from tasting room visitors.  We hope to make it worthwhile for people to continue to come in and buy wine.  Please read on to the next section on our big sale...

We've finished with Winter pruning, got through it in about 5 weeks this year - the weather in February was very nice for this work.  In March we spent a bunch of time making cuttings from our prunings, in order to propagate the almost 1,000 plants we'll be needing for the new block of grapes going in to the north of the house.  What's left now is general Spring Cleaning like raking fir cones out of the grass, and shoring up the picnic table in hopes of getting another year of life out of it...  We're watching for grapevine budding, then the next task will be to start shoot thinning, and of course to start with our sprays for Powdery Mildew.  As always, if you're interested in learning about grape growing, consider joining our pv-helpers email list.