Shenandoah Valley of CaliforniaCharles Spinetta Winery and Wildlife Art Gallery
If you are a broker, principal, or fellow professional winemaker interested in purchasing quantities of premium wine, click here.Our sister site for brokers, principals, and fellow professional winemakers to buy our family's winegrapes.Business Hours and Map to the Winery. Also look at the "Intersections Guide" so you don't get lost.An online tour of the vineyards, winemaking facilities, tasting room and art gallery, precipitation history, industry links.The wildlife art gallery, wine label collection, original paintings for sale, and more art for sale.Laura's custom framing shop will frame your family heirlooms - make an appointment soon.Current releases of dry reds and "fun and yummy" sweet wines.Current news, our flyer, recipes, and dozens of illustrated stories about winemaking and field work. Good reading!Order form for shipping - you must be 21 years of age.
Remember the baby Chenin Blanc grapes you saw on the budding out page? We're peering down into that same vine in mid June after it has been "crown thinned". Crown thinning involves removing the canes growing up from the central portion of the plant. This allows for better ripening and spray coverage, among other benefits. Looking Down!
To the right, you can see that same cluster of grapes in late July. Getting big & round!
With each new planting in the Spinetta Family Vineyards, our practices improve. We hedge and mow our vineyards. A pair of shears on the front of the tractor cuts a trapezoidal swath down the center of each row. Hedging allows tractors and people to traverse the vineyard easily. With "offset planting", the plants shade each other less, the roots have more room, the soil's nutrient cache is better preserved, and the shears meet one plant at a time rather than two. Different Planting Methods
When spraying or dusting (we use sustainable integrated pest management (IPM) and organic methods), the offset plantings get better coverage than the block plantings. Indicated by the green arrows above, the sulfur dust (or wettable spray - organic methods to prevent mildew) reaches the "farther out" plant better (we skip rows when spraying.) Sixteen rows of vines are in one "section" of a vineyard - there's a wider road to drive down on either side. (During harvest, eight men are on either side of the truck.)

Most vineyards in the Shenandoah Valley sulfur at 7- to 10-day intervals. When it's 96 degrees or above, one can spare a couple extra days - but it always gets cool at night. If the dew point is met in summer, this can mean disaster for vineyards with poor spraying programs. A person must take a yearly class from the state dealing with viticulture, nutrients, pest mangement, etc.

Our vines are very healthy: no bad bugs or birds, no erosion problems, and no phylloxera. So, when you see a vineyard planted close to the highway with no space in between the vines and the fence, think about the sneaky things hiding there. Cars kick up dust - a habitat for mites, and vehicles also spread phylloxera. You can only make good wine from good grapes!
Amador County
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Charles Spinetta Winery, Spinetta Family Vineyards, Zinetta, and the CSW Logo are registered trademarks of Charles J. Spinetta. Unless otherwise specified, all images and copy contained within the charlesspinettawinery.com domain are Copyright 1984-2012 Charles J. Spinetta. All rights reserved. Charles Spinetta Winery and Wildlife Art Gallery 12557 Steiner Road, Plymouth, California 95669, USA, telephone: (209) 245-3384, facsimile: (209) 245-3386