Hello and Welcome,
This is an Amalie Robert Estate
Vintage Update: Flowers 2019.
They are out! The bloom is on the
vine! And the weather is just absolutely gorgeous! Fruit set is happening all
over the vineyard from Gewürztraminer and Chardonnay through Pinot Meunier and
Noir to Syrah and Viognier. While we don’t grow Rosé wine berries, we can
finagle a little bit out of the winemaking process.
So, just how many flowers are
there this year? At this point in the game, you would expect Ernie to have an
answer to that and he does. First, let’s review the following definitions from
that all knowing communal source, Wikipedia.
Prime Number: A prime number is a
number with no divisors other than 1 and itself. Euclid proved that there is no
largest prime number. But people do keep looking. The largest prime number
known as of this writing is 24,862,048 digits long. That’s a big meatball!
Twin Prime Number: A twin prime
is a prime number that is either 2 less or 2 more than another prime number.
For example, the first few twin prime number pairs are: (3, 5), (5, 7), (11,
13), (17, 19), (29, 31), (41, 43), (59, 61), (71, 73) and (101, 103). Leave it
to the mathematicians to be fixated with the twins that really are not twins.
Reminds us of the imaginary number crowd.
Perfect Number: Now we are
getting somewhere. A perfect number is a number that is half the sum of all its
positive divisors (including itself). The first perfect number is 6. Its proper
divisors are 1, 2, and 3, and 1 + 2 + 3 = 6. Equivalently, the number 6 is
equal to half the sum of all its positive divisors: (1 + 2 + 3 + 6) ÷ 2 = 6.
The next perfect number is 28, then 496, and 8,128 and then 33,550,336. What
would these guys do without spreadsheets?
So, it follows on with perfect
linearity that this year we have 148,326,337 flowers. Let’s start with 49,433
flowering vines. While we have a few more than that, 49,433 is a safe bet and a
prime number. Each flowering vine has 11 to 13 shoots on a single 4 foot cane,
and as you can clearly see, 11 and 13 are twin prime numbers.
Here is where it gets tricky.
Each shoot will have 2 or maybe 3 potential clusters. These are called
inflorescence. Since both the number 2 and 3 are prime, we can logically assume
that the true number resides between 2 and 3. We really got out of a tight spot
there.
Each inflorescent will have about
101 to 103 flowers. Again, you can see these are twin prime numbers. However,
not all flowers will pollinate. So as harvest rolls around we may have 79, 83
or 89 wine berries per harvested cluster. Each of these clusters’ wine berry
count represents a prime number. But as we are talking about flowers, not wine
berries, we are getting ahead of ourselves.
Ergo, with simple mathematics we
have been able to ascertain the final flower count of 148,326,337 flowers is a
prime number. The final proof is an exercise left to the reader. Please beware
of the illegal prime number, it does exist.
Now, here is an easy number, 105.
That is the number of days that typically elapse between flowering and harvest.
While we have not seen the Vintage 2019 movie before, we did see Vintage 2011,
which was a prime number vintage, as was 2003. The next prime number vintage
does not occur until 2027. And wouldn’t you know it, 2027 and 2029 are twin
prime number vintages! How cool is that?
If it is a warm vintage, look to
the prime number 103 to open the harvest window, and if we hang out for hang
time, we go to the prime number 107 as a starting point. All perfectly legal
and within the bounds of mathematical fidelity – no systemic variability
permitted.
Stay up on the FLOG to see how
the vintage shapes up: http://amalierobert.blogspot.com/
Kindest Regards,
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