We have budbreak

Here it is at last, a full three weeks after last year. This is budbreak on a classic, #2 pencil-sized spur on a Traminette vine. We didn't have an ultra-mild February and March this year like we did last year, causing our early budbreak and subsequent disaster.

I don't know how I'm going to keep up a viticulture blog after we move to Oregon and I no longer have even a test vineyard to photograph, though I hear there are a few vines in the Willamette Valley. I'll have to do more interviews and spend some time in other folks' vineyards. I'll figure out my blogging niche once I get out there. Until then, I'll keep posting about grapes and wine with an emphasis on the vines.

February vineyard calendar

I really should have had this month's calendar up at the beginning of the month rather than the end, but there are still a few days left in February. Here's the list of tasks I hope to have finished by Friday:

1) Sharpen pruners, loppers

2) Measure pruning weights for your upcoming season's balanced pruning plan.

3) Begin pre-pruning on more cold hearty varietals

4) Trellis repairs

5) Prepare sprayer for early season sprays of soybean oil and lime sulfur in late February and early March.

Pruning weights

Now is the time of year to head into the vineyard and grab a sample of pruning weights. Larger growers will already be well into pruning. But smaller growers in our region can, and should, wait until as late as possible to prune their vines as this is a way to delay budbreak in an attempt to lessen the risk of early season frost damage to young buds and shoots. I won't be pruning in earnest until mid-March. Our early budbreak happened last year around March 30, so this is the last two weeks of the pruning season. I can afford to wait until the last minute with my small test vineyard.

Pruning weight samples can be taken before you start your serious pruning push, however. If you get this task out of the way, you won't have to worry about it slowing you down later.

You will only need to prune a small random sample of vines to get an average pruning weight. In order to take this measurement you will need only two items in addition to your pruning shears: a bungee cord and a small, hand held fishing scale.

What you need to do first to get this measurement is prune vine down as you normally would. Maybe be conservative and leave some extra buds so that you can trim the vines down later to keep it in balance with the other vines in your vineyard. It's always easy to remove buds down the road, but up to now I've heard of no way to add buds to a pruned vine.

Next, bundle up all of the trimmings from that one vine and wrap them with the bungee cord. Hang the bundle on the fish scale and note the weight. That's all there is to it.

Once you have your measurements, write them down in your permanent record. You will be able to compare your pruning weights from year to year, and from bloc to bloc of the vineyard. You can then use those pruning weights to guide your decision of how many buds to leave on each vine in the vineyard. Most extension programs and growing guides offer suggested pruning formulas that tell you how many buds to leave that season based on your pruning weight.

I recently weighted my Nortons and came up with an average of 3 lbs of cane prunings. The suggested bud count formula for Norton is 50+10. The first number in that formula refers to how many buds should be left for the first pound of prunings. The second number indicates how many buds to leave for every additional pound of prunings. So for 3 pounds, I should leave 70 buds on every Norton vine. That could be 14 5-bud spurs, or 25 2-bud spurs or any combination that arrives at a total of 70 buds. Every vine is a different creature.

You will find out if this formula works for your trellis system and vineyard site. You might need to adjust it once you see how it works for you. Maybe you'll find 70 buds is to many. Maybe you'll find that it's not enough, especially if you have wide spacing or a GDC trellis. Maybe next year you'd want to try 40+10 on Norton and see what the difference is. But at least you'll have a baseline to begin with.

Here are formulas for other varieties that I grow: Chambourcin 20+10, Vidal 15+10, Traminette 20+10, Cabernet Franc & Mourvedre 20+20.

There are a number of reasons to perform this measurement. It gives beginners an idea of where to start. It gives you a way to begin to predict the next upcoming harvest and growing season and evaluate what impact freeze events and damage have had on the health and vigor of your vine.

Here's more info on balanced pruning:

http://www.farmwest.com/index.cfm?method=pages.showPage&pageid=303

http://viticulture.hort.iastate.edu/info/pdf/prunecanopy.pdf

Vineyard falconry

At the Midwest Grape and Wine Conference last weekend, we ran into Dennis Devitt, a vineyard manager for Gallo who was attending the symposium on mechanization. While we watched the Superbowl, he described a unique method of bird control. It seems they hire a falconer who helps relieve their starling pressure by running birds of prey through the ranch for months at a time.

It was fascinating to hear how they use the raptors to drive away birds who damage the fruit, and evidently it's loads more cost effective than netting the vines. This article describes the whole process.

Falconry isn't unusual in California vineyards, but the process used by Falconer Getty Pollard is fascinating. It sounds like the ultimate biological pest control. I'll see if I can track down some photos.

More double-trunking: age of trunks.

I talked last week about double-trunking. I should make a few additional points on this topic while it's pruning season. You shouldn't wait for freeze, diesease or mechanical damage to replace a trunk. You should consider keeping trunks of various ages; one older trunk and one young trunk is the best combination in our climate region. A younger trunk means fewer years of freezing, splitting, cracking and scraping. Even on healthy vines you should build a replacement plan into the pruning schedule every few years, if not more frequently. I've included another photo of a GDC trained Norton vine. Last year I allowed several suckers to grow up on this vine even though both cordons are healthy and productive. One of these new suckers looks like it will be a viable trunk (highlighted in yellow), so that I'll be able to prune off one of the old cordons (pink) and wind up with trunks of two different ages. The replacement trunk will also be straighter and correct the problem of the split of trunks being too high on the vine, which we talked about last week.

One other tidbit of information this week. As the wind chill dropped down to minus twelve degrees this week (and yes, we did have days of 70+ weather and tornados not three weeks ago), I started to worry about vine death. A friend pointed out though that vines don't experience wind chill because they have no mosture as a result of going into dormancy. That's a relief, as wind chill is often ten or even twenty degrees lower than acutal temperature.

Multiple trunks

In a climate that features cold winters, one technique you can use to keep your vineyard in production is training multiple trunks. Instead of a single trunk and head, you train up two trunks. This applies to short trunks on VSP-trained vinifera as well as long trunks on trailing varietals like Norton trained on a high single wire or GDC trellis. Our vines take a beating by our cold winters and by tractor damage, and an entire trunk might be killed down to a low spot on the vine. Having two trunks means that a damaged trunk can be eliminated and a new trunk trained up in its place, while the second trunk helps keep the vineyard in production with minimal losses. Of course, if both trunks are obliterated by a deep freeze, your double-trunking is for naught, but that's the risk of continental climate viticulture.

Here are a couple items to consider when training up trunks: first, have the trunks start from as low down on the the vine as possible. Photo A shows a VSP, spur-pruned Traminette vine with two trunks coming right out of the ground. On a grafted vine, you'd want to be above the graft union, but still low as possible. Photo B shows the same varietal, but the two trunks split off half way up the vine. The problem here is that if the area below the split is damaged, you'll lose both branches of the trunk and have to start from lower on the vine.

Practicing what I heard Kevin Ker (of the Cool Climate Viticulture and Oenology Institute at Brock University in Ontario) recently refer to as "spare parts viticulture" is essential. It might even be wise to keep a young sucker cane every year as a possible third trunk. In Photo C you'll see a GDC trained Norton vine with two healthy trunks, numbered 1 and 2. I've left a cane from last year (#3) as an insurance policy. It might make a great replacement trunk due to its youth and the fact that it is ruler straight while the other two trunks are a little more twisty than one would like. Straighter trunks are easier to work under without catching equipment and damaging the vine. Plus trunk #3 it starts lower down on the vine. I may just keep this one to replace one of the other trunks even if all three survive and are healthy. I'll talk more about the age of your double-trunk system in a future post.

Winter soybean oil spray

If you grow grapes in the Midwest, the last thing you want to think about in February is spraying your vines. When you make 10 to 15 applications per year, you relish the break that the cold weather brings. I like going down into the workshop and seeing the spray rig put away for the year.

But this season I'll be adding another spray to the schedule. In mid-February, I'll be applying a spray of 8% soybean oil. The reason for this spray is to delay budbreak in an attempt to avoid damage from spring frost events. I recently saw Imed Dami of Ohio State University give a convincing presentation on the affects of spring oil applications. Dami who puts out a useful grape-wine newsletter at OSU, studied both stylet oil and vegetable oil, and the latter had fewer problems with pytotoxicity and reduction in yield. But at a rate of 8% or less, vegetable (soybean) oil sprays delayed budbreak anywhere from 2 to 19 days under the right conditions. Also, vines deacclimated slower. Deacclimation is the process of getting ready for spring, and vines that start this process are more susceptible to freeze and frost events. Dami recommends using a spreader-sticker like Latron B-1956 at 1% along with your 8% oil. He says that you can spray 200 gallons or more per acre.

The best way to keep your buds from getting fried by frost events is to do whatever you can to delay budbreak. That means pruning as late in the season as possible, or even rough pruning, leaving longer spurs or canes; the buds on the end of a spur or cane will break first, delaying those closer to the trunk. If you leave long canes, it could delay some of the buds you intend to keep by a few days.

So late pruning, rough pruning and oil applications are three methods to keep those buds from breaking until after frost danger has passed. It's a lot more work, and it may help or it may not be necessary. In the worst case scenario, you can do all these things and still experience damage. But that's the nature of nature.

One note on the spray rig in the photo. That's what I use for my test vineyard, and it will probably get me through my first pair of seasons in my 1/2 acre planting. After that I'll want to switch to an airblast sprayer to make sure I get good coverage on the fruit, since vinifera is more sensitive to diseases. It's an ATV sprayer that runs on a 12 volt battery, plus a gas mask, rubber boots, chemical gloves. I pull it up and down the hill in a hand cart. Only the disposable plastic suit is missing. I really hate all this stuff, but you gotta do what you gotta do. If I someday strike it rich I'll move somewhere where I don't need to spray.

January vineyard calendar

After two seventy degree days, all of the recent snow cover is gone. The ice that you can see on these Norton vines has melted. It's strange weather for early January, and I hope it doesn't begin to deacclimate the vines before a new cold snap. Would be much better for the vines if it were to get cold and stay cold. As I sit here now I see a brown bat circling outside, something I've never notice before this time of the winter, and also never this early in the day. Aren't they supposed to hibernate? I picked up a tick in the vineyard today as well. All this strange weather comes after my local power company mailed us an entire magazine denouncing climate change. They say it's just a frenzy stirred up for political purposes, and that it's a way for university scientists to score grants. Here's a quote: "Global Warming has become a $4 billion per year industry." Oh, and how many billions did Exxon bring home last year? Forty-something, I believe. That's the fossil fuel racket; they'll say anything to keep the dough rolling in. Sorry for getting off track. You can always trust your local coal pusher when it comes to sound climate science, right?

Well, I'll still pretend like it's a typical January and mid-winter rather than spring. Here's my vineyard calendar for this month.

1. Make a pre-planting checklist of everything that needs to happen before the new vines arrive from the nursery in March


2. Place order for all of required planting/trellis materials


3. Review reference materials: is there anything new that has been published? Are there new editions of materials such as the trusty spray guide?


4. Pre-prune heartier varietals. I wouldn't touch vinifera varietals until March if possible, though, to help delay budbreak. Right now I'm just doing a little clean-up on Nortons.


5. Check your applicator/chemical license to ensure it's up to date and place order for all early season sprays. I'll now include a March application of soybean oil to help delay budbreak. This is on top of the usual early lime-sulfur sprays


6. Review your business plan and see how you're making progress on long-term goals


7. Meet with your accountant to get paperwork ready for tax season


8. Cook and eat well, and drink lots of good wine

To augment my final item, I should mention that my recent favorite budget-friendly finds are a Clare Valley Austrailan Riesling and Primus, a Carmenere, Cab Sauv and Merlot blend from Chile. Both around ten bucks. The Riesling was un-German. Not that I have anything against the German version, but this was bone dry and raw, maybe even a bit of straw or grass. Many folks don't like those characteristics, but I thought it was interesting on top of the the typical melon and citrus of the cooler climate versions, and it also might hint at the kind of Riesling that might develop in our hot summer conditions here in Missouri. I already want to amend my vine order and plant some. It's a tendency you have to learn to fight, otherwise you'll wind up with twenty rows of different grapes and twenty different budbreaks, veraisons, harvests, etc, plus not enough of anything to make a barrel.

Monitoring your vineyard's mesoclimate

My last post of the year is another vineyard tip courtesy of Michael over at Amigoni Family Vineyards. He plants thermometers variously throughout his vineyard blocs to record variance in temperature of the mesoclimate. Because of slope, air flow, elevation, location of forested areas and water, etc., the temperature can vary greatly. Having a thermometer posted in each bloc, or even several for a larger bloc, can allow you to see that variance in action during a simple stroll through the vineyard.

Michael uses basic thermometers that also record the high and low temperature for a season by marking the extremes. This is especially useful here in Missouri where winter freezes can mean mortality for vinifera varietals. If you notice a temperature variance of several degrees in a winter low, say -10 degrees Fahrenheit at the top of the hill versus -13 in the middle of a slope, then you might want to plant your Chardonnay higher up and save your Cab Franc for the middle and maybe hybrids at the bottom, or avoid planting the bottom altogether. High temperatures are also an issue. Ours is a continental climate, which means we have strong extremes in the summer, too. We have hot growing conditions, and cultivars like Pinot Noir and Riesling are going to prefer the cooler mesoclimates within a vineyard as long as the winter lows won't wipe them out. You may find that the spots with the lowest lows don't necessarily have the lowest highs, and vice versa.

One note on the term mesoclimate. Most people incorrectly use the term microclimate when they mean mesoclimate. It makes sense, everyone knows what "micro" means, not so for "meso." But there are three climates that affect a vineyard. First, theres the regional climate, or macroclimate. That's the thing that we can't change. It's specific to an entire growing region, and it's what makes the Rhone the Rhone, Burgundy Burgundy, the true Sonoma Coast, Russian River Valley, etc. Then there's the mesoclimate, which is your variance in climate from bloc to bloc and row to row. We can affect that through careful planting of varietals, the direction of the row in relation to the sun and also in the winery by blending grapes from one mesoclimate within a vineyard with those from another. That's the term most connoisseurs use when they're talking about a specific vineyard's growing conditions and the style of the wine it makes. Finally, there's the microclimate, which, according to every viticulturist's good friend Dr. Richard Smart, is "the climate within and immediately surrounding a plant canopy." The temperature and humidity can be vastly different inside a dense canopy as compared to a few inches away on the outside. This is what we have the most control over through canopy management practices such as leaf removal, trellising, shoot positioning and thinning.

That's it for this year. It's been a productive year for me. We've purchased a property and vines are on order. What's more, it's a varietal with proven success in our area and one that area winemakers are excited about. See you next year.

-D

Jeffersonian viticulture

Wine is now being made in all 50 US states, as NPR notes in this story. The piece marks the second time I've heard discussion of Thomas Jefferson related to viticulture in the past few days. The Grape Radio guys recently posted a video from Virginia where the grower mentioned the early colonists' obsession with planting vineyards and Jefforson's own experiments with vitis vinifera in the east. "He failed miserably," notes Fletcher Henderson of The Winery at La Grange.

But the NPR story mentions that this Jeffersonian vision of a nation of backyard vineyards is finally coming to fruition more than two centuries later. It also cites that the number of wineries in this country has doubled in the past ten years. There is a renaissance happening. There are vineyards going up all over the place, a fact to which I can attest.

What's contributing to this change? Why are people planting vines on their farms or in their back yards in places like Minnesota? Is it Thomas Jefferson's prescience about the American spirit? Is it evolving conditions due to global climate change? Information sharing enabled by the "so-called Internets?" New cultivars? New techniques?

A certain amount of this can be attributed to the pioneering American spirit, Jeffersonian innovation if you will. But then China is also planting new vineyards at an incredible rate.

What seems to be happening here, though, isn't industrial viticulture. It is something done not necessarily for money, but because people are driven to do it. I'd love to make money off of our vines, but if I were to never break even I'd just be satisfied with producing good fruit. There is a sort of neo-pastoralism at work here, and I can't quite put my finger on it. I remember seeing dooryards in Beaune and Tuscany where every house featured its own vineyard, and it seems we are recapturing that sort of of pastoral Old World sensibility. Whether we do it as a natural pursuit of some rural aesthetic, or if is happening in artificially planned vineyard communities for the well-heeled, a broad cross-section of our society is getting into viticulture. Grapes are going in the ground. Wine is being made. And it's a beautiful thing.

I just called to add 50 more vines, another row, to next spring's planting of Cab Franc.

Happy holidays!

-D

Hilling vines

Growing vinifera in cool climates requires extra care. One additional step is hilling up of the soil around the base of the vine trunk. The goal is to cover the base of the vine up above the graft union where the rootstock is joined to the scion. If there is a hard freeze, there is a better chance of the vine surviving. The trunk will likely die, but enough wood might be insulated and preserved beneath the soil to grow a new trunk from the scion. This first photo shows two recently hilled vine rows.

There are several ways to hill up vines. Here, Michael Amigoni (aka the GoMV) at Amigoni Vineyards uses a small tractor with a side-mount grape hoe to push the mounds of soil up against the base of the vines. There are custom-designed rear-disc systems as well. The wider the mound, the greater it's insulating factor. Hilling up is essential, as a hard freeze can be devastating. In the Finger Lakes region, 25 percent of the vinifera were killed a freeze in 2004.

Planting your graft unions an inch or two off of the ground is essential for ease of hilling and to get the maximum amount of soil over the graft union, increasing the insulation factor. Here is a close-up of the hoe blade. Care must be taken to avoid damage to the vines, and one key is to ensure that the trunks are as straight as possible from proper planting and training. On a side note, multiple trunks help fend off cold damage. If one trunk is split or killed during a hard freeze, there's a chance that the second trunk might survive, ensuring that you don't lose an entire crop to that freeze event. Snow can also help insulate vines, but we don't get permanent snow cover here in central Missouri. Mounding can also be accomplished with mulch or straw, but soil has a greater insulation factor. It can be done by hand, as in this backyard vineyard.

Hilling vines is just one technique in reducing winter damage in cool climates. Trunk renewal is another technique; this involves training a new cane every few years to replace an older trunk so that you don't have all trunks of the same age. That way a freeze that kills the older trunks might spare the younger wood that has undergone fewer freezing winters and less mechanical (tractor) damage. Here's a great summary of some cold weather practices in Canada, where they're growing Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, Merlot and both Cabernets where it is not uncommon for winters to dip below -18 degrees. As rare as it is to find vinifera in our region, it is also as easy to forget that these European grape varietals has been growing in colder regions for many years and with much success. It's a challenge, but few things that are easy are worth doing.

* Update - 1/12/08 Here's an article on hilling in the OSU Wine-Grape newsletter

Adventures in agricultural lime

I know that the first thing that crosses your mind when you twist out the cork of that last precious bottle of Pommard 1er Cru smuggled home in the half case in your carry-on luggage after your anniversary trip to France back in the days before the paranoia of the twittering fear mongers (nothing to fear but...) rendered corkscrews and even liquid itself verboten in-flight, before that rich, deep, very French odor of slate, raspberry and barnyard slips over the lip of the bottle, before your acknowledgement of the event you're celebrating, before your expectation of the table conversations that will be lubricated by maroon sunlight in bottle form, before the possibility slips through your consciousness of the extra-curricular activities (if you're lucky [sic!]) that might follow whatever event warrants such a fine bottle of magic...yes the first thing you will think of upon pulling that cork is, of course, the soil pH. Yes, you will wonder, yes, what exactly was the pH of the soil in which these grapes were grown?

Okay, maybe I'm making assumptions. In truth, unless the bottle belongs to a soil scientist, a vineyard manager, or someone with a serious problem, the last thing on your mind when you open a bottle of great wine will be the soil pH. After all, the acidity of the soil doesn't even relate, directly, to the pH in the finished wine. pH isn't a sexy wine word like "slate" or "shale" or "minerality," terms which have all become cliches among aficionados.

But soil pH is important if you're growing wine. The pH of the soil has an optimum range for vinifera, hybrids and native American varieties. Natives tolerate, and even prefer, the slightly higher acids of a low pH soil (remember, it's an inverse relationship, low pH = high acid). Cabernet franc, which I'm planting, prefers a pH of around 6.5. At this optimum range, soil nutrients are more accessible and are taken in at the right levels. While a low acid soil won't necessarily mean you wind up with a low acid wine, it can affect the overall health of the vine and thus the ripening and health of the fruit.

My soil tests showed that the pH of my first vineyard block at the new site was 5.5. Since I'm planting cab franc, I wanted to raise that pH to around 6.5. The way to do this, effectively lowering the soil acidity, is to add agricultural lime. It's a common necessity in our region. Your handy Extension person and or website can help you figure out exactly how much lime to add to your site to raise your soil pH.

Lime additions are calculated and measured and bought in tons. Even though I spent time growing up on a farm as a kid, I also lived in an apartment in Chicago for many years, so the idea of tons of anything is a foreign concept. I was sure it was going to be expensive to add appx. 800 lbs of ENM (effective neutralizing material, aka lime) to my one-acre bloc. Especially when a single 50-lb bag of pelleted lime cost six bucks.

There are two basic types of limestone...calcitic and dolomite. I have high magnesium content (call it 'mag' content to sound like you know what you're talking about) in my soil, so I wanted to add calcitic limestone as dolomite contains higher levels of magnesium. You can have too much of a good thing, and excessive levels of any nutrient can cause toxicity that is as dangerous, or even more dangerous, to your vines than not having enough nutrients. At first I planned on using bags of pellet lime, spreading them with a rented lawn spreader and a borrowed ATV. I thought this was a pretty clever solution, and when I figured out that it would cost me around 400 dollars to perform the entire operation, I was fairly satisfied. The problem was matching up the ENM rating of the limestone in question. ENM is measured in lbs per ton, so if you have limestone with a rating of 400 (per ton), and your experts tell you that you need to add 800 lbs of ENM, that means you need to add TWO tons of the material to reach your target. That's 4,000 lbs! A lot of stuff.

Once I figured this out, I grew scared...my cost was doubling, not to mention the workload. But then I learned you could buy lime by the 12-ton truckload. And what's more, a good agricultural co-op will deliver and spread it for you. The problem is that you need to buy a minimum of 12 tons. I thought this might cost a fortune, but then I learned I could get 12 tons for a couple hundred bucks...a fraction of the cost per ton than what I'd been planning to spend on bag lime. The only issue is that you have to have a place for them to spread the extra lime. I had them dump two tons on my one-acre spot (at 400 ENM per ton, that would mean I added the required 800 ENM to the bloc) and then spread the rest randomly around our property. That way I'll be ahead of the game when we plant new blocs in the future.

I had the field disked ahead of time to allow the lime to work down into the soil. I had to wait a few weeks for them to come out to our property as, believe it or not, 12 tons is not a very large project. They were liming area corn and bean farms with hundreds of tons, so they had to work me in. I met them at the vineyard, showed them where I needed the lime and they took care of the rest. I'll let it rain, then rip and then drag the bloc smooth in the spring to further spread the lime. I'll test again every year to to see how the lime levels are shaping up. A couple years down the road I can make adjustments as needed.

This is probably confusing to novices. It was very confusing to me, but now that I've gone through the process I have a pretty good handle on the hows and whys of spreading lime. I also understand concepts like acid rain better. This is a problem in the northeast...acid rain can reduce pH of soils into the low 4-range (increasing acidity). That would be no good for wine grapes of any variety.

So now at Thanksgiving or on your birthday or whenever you pop open that next great bottle of wine, maybe the soil pH will be the first thing you think about. I know I'll be thinking about it for a long time.

November-December vineyard calendar

Farming is a seasonal business. Everything you do is tied to what Mother Nature is going to throw your way. Sometimes all you can do is react, but there is also plenty you can do to prepare yourself and your vineyard.

I'm beginning a new feature. At the beginning of every month I'll try to establish a comprehensive checklist of all the seasonal items to accomplish in the vineyard. This is specifically tailored for my region and varieties, but I'm basing this off of several calendars I've seen, both from the ICCVE and the fantastic "Production Budgets for Arkansas Wine and Juice Grapes" document. (I can't find it online anymore, otherwise I'd link to it.) I'm lumping the next two months together because this is the slow part of the season and many of these tasks aren't tied to what's happening in the vineyard and can be performed at any time during the two-month period. Once I have the entire year covered, I'll keep the posts intact and simply review and adjust them as I learn from experience. I hope folks can find this a useful reference, and also feel free to make suggestions.

1. Clean and winterize sprayer(s)


2. Winterize irrigation system


3. Check on/confirm vine orders for upcoming planting season


4. Review season disease and pest damage and revise/adjust IPM (integrated pest management) strategy


5. Check stock of supplies, list items needed to order


6. Adjust soil pH (add lime) if necessary


7. Prepare ground for new vineyard blocs


8. Check trellis, perform repairs


9. Hill up soil on grafted vines


10. Clean sheds, garages, equipment


11. Evaluate effectiveness of and repair/adjust deer fence

November surprise

A hard freeze turned the leaves brown overnight, and within hours they'd all dropped. The notoriously vigorous norton vines shed their dinner plate-sized leaves and exposed a few surprise missed clusters. I tried the berries (that weren't dessicated) and they were rich and without the usual norton acidic tang. It was a reminder to leave this varietal hanging longer to drop the TA as much as possible. I'm always overeager to harvest. I could have left them for another two weeks at least. Conversely, I should have harvested the traminette a week or even ten days earlier. It's a slow learning process, and you have to wait an entire year to correct your mistakes, by which time you're apt to have forgotten your lessons. How does the saying go? Insanity is doing things over and over again the same way but expecting different results. In any case, it's a great time of year...the season is over, and the weather pleasant for trellis repairs, which you can undertake at a leisurely pace.

Dirt work

I need to prepare the soil for planting next spring on our first vineyard bloc. I've been having trouble finding the right implement...I'd like to rip the ground with a chisel plow (or v-ripper) to a depth of 24 inches. I thought it would be a challenge to start a vineyard without owning a tractor. But I caught our neighbor out in a field across from our property where he was discing some ground for winter wheat. He agreed to hit the bloc with the disk, cutting cross ways first and then going against the grain. It'll only be about 12 inches of soil work, but it should at least open up the ground enough for me to lime the bloc this fall and give me some more time to track down a ripper before I plant.

I need to add enough lime to raise the soil pH from 5.5 to 6.2-6.5, which is a better range for vinifera. In these photos you can see my neighbor, Poodle, cutting the edges of the vineyard block. The field has been in pasture grass for as long as anyone can remember, so I should be able to plant right away. If it were row-cropped, I'd want to leave it fallow or cover-crop it to work out any chemicals and add nutrients back into the soil.

In these photos you can see the tractor at work. I also added some lines so that you can see the eventual orientation of the rows. This is an area slightly larger than 1 acre, but it will actually only have an acre of grapes. I need to leave a 30-foot aisle in the middle of the bloc so that the electric company can get to that pole directly in the center.

The advantages of this bloc are its southeast-facing (but mostly south) exposure. The rows are perpendicular to the slope across most of the bloc, though one corner will have rows running directly up the slope. I'll cover crop the aisles with buffalo grass or fescue, so that will help prevent erosion. The bloc is also parallel to the prevailing winds. It's a windy ridge, so this should help with some frost issues as well as with drying out the grapes with the wind blowing down the aisles, which may help with fungus issues.

Cluster weights

A very simple viticultural step that I've always overlooked in the past, mainly because I didn't know that I should be doing it, is to establish an average cluster weight every season. It's easy enough to do: grab 20 clusters at random from any one varietal, weigh them, average the score. Keep track from year to year.

Having a record of average cluster weight swill allow you to estimate your yield early in the season. Once you know your vineyard well, you'll be able to determine how many clusters you keep, on average, per vine, adjusting for weather events and conditions. That way you can prepare tanks if you're in the winery business, or if your a contract grower you can give your customer an accurate estimate.

Cluster weights vary greatly by varietal. But even then, weights of the same varietal can vary greatly based on trellis system, location, weather, etc. Sampling the weight at harvest is the only way to get accurate numbers. But with so much going on at harvest time it's an easy step to forget. I've picked the vidal and traminette already, and I forgot to grab weights on the latter before crushing. Now I've got to wait another year to record this data.

Techniques for organic viticulture

When we planted our first test vines in May of '01 after a epiphanic trip to Cote de Beaune (Burgundy) the previous harvest season, I had intended to grow grapes organically. That's why I chose hybrids with good disease resistance in our area, including Cynthiana/Norton, Vidal, Traminette and Chambourcin. I had visions of featuring "Made with Organically Grown Grapes" on bottles of my private stock. I'm a card-carrying Sierra Club member and a proud tree hugger. My little diversion into agriculture has even heightened my environmental concerns as I can see global warming working directly through the progressive forward movement of budbreak and harvest during my six years of growing grapes. I've never met anyone with grapes in the ground who harbors the slightest doubt about the pace of climate change.

So as an environmentally conscious individual, I set out with the intentions of growing grapes without any chemical assistance. And I've learned the hard way that, if you want to grow good grapes in our region, you have to treat for fungus aggressively, including chemical sprays. Now my goal has shifted from growing organically to growing the best grapes possible. Once I can produce a full crop of quality grapes on a consistent basis, I'll move toward embracing more sustainable (and riskier) practices. But you need experience to minimize risk, and I've got a long way to go.

There are several practices that I now employ, which I haven't in the past, that are completely organic and sustainable. They include aggressive canopy management and leaf pulling, use of grow tubes and use of bird netting. I found that much late-season rot on the Cynthiana was due to bird pressure...a couple broken berries can spread disease throughout an entire cluster. Grow tubes seem to allow for stronger growth and root development in young vines, increasing its disease resistance in the first few years. Leaf pulling around the fruit increases air flow, sunlight exposure and reduces the damp conditions funguses like.

There are other things you can do that are completely sustainable practices, including use of treatments like Serenade and Kalligreen instead of more caustic chemicals. You can use bio-fuel in your tractor, solar-powered or solar-charged tools and pumps in the vineyard. I also plan to irrigate from a pond rather than using district water as water shortage becomes an increasing problem, even in our area. These things can save you money as well as reduce the footprint of your farming operation. But I've also learned the hard way that you first have to focus on growing good grapes, and right now I can't accomplish that in our region without some chemical intervention.

Aerial roots: danger signal

I'm still trying to figure out what these aerial roots mean. They are appearing at the nodes on my Chambourcin vines, though not on any other varietals. Shoot growth has been strong, petiole samples showed balance, and the fruit looks good for such a strange year weather-wise. It could be trunk damage from our freeze, or perhaps some root pest, but aerial roots mean that the vine is losing faith in its root system and is ready to start over. I hope this row survives.

Even though these vines have been showing just a hint of water stress, the good kind for this time of year, I gave them a good soak tonight. We've had very little rain lately...hot and dry. We should have fruit that is unusually concentrated for our region.

Simple enough for a three year old

Today I'd like to sing the praises of the hand refractometer. It's the simplest viticultural tool to use. Its purpose is testing brix (sugar level) and while it might not be 100% accurate, it's fairly close, and you can perform a quick check as you wander through the vineyard.

The device is like a little telescope with a flat glass space on one end. You lift up a little plastic shield, squirt a few drops juice from a freshly picked grape onto the glass, drop the shield on the juice just like you're preparing a slide for a microscope, and then look through the eyepiece. It will give you a reading that's roughly twice the potential alcohol for finished wine. Tonight's readings were between 10 and 20 brix depending on varietal and the sun exposure of the grape in question. The overall average of the quick sample in the vineyard tonight was 15. We like to get to an average of 23 brix in our region, which will give us 11.5% alcohol. This year, due to the freeze, we have uneven ripeness, so I'll have to pick a number in the middle of a wide range and hope there isn't too much underripe fruit. Had I more vines, I'd drop all the fruit that's lagging right now. I probably should have done it last week. But my test vineyard is only 60 vines divided between four varietals, so I can't afford to drop any more fruit than I already removed in cluster and shoot thinning earlier in the year...I wouldn't end up with any wine. We've had a dry stretch, helping to hold various rots at bay, so maybe I can leave the fruit to hang longer than usual.

Hand refractometers only cost around fifty bucks, and they have heft to them. It feels like a real serious scientific tool in your hand. If you want to feel like one of the big boys, then order one of these gadgets. I like to stroll down the rows and squint into the refractometer and play like I'm a vineyard manager in Napa or Tuscany. Then my neighbor hollers and waves, spoiling the fantasy. It's all a game and I'm a kid, which is a rationale I embrace. Tonight my daughter helped me with the readings...it's so easy she can almost do it all by herself. But then she is brilliant for her age...so much more advanced than other kids.

Cynthiana/Nortons hit veraison

The Cynthiana/Norton vines are hitting veraison in my test vineyard 1.5 weeks after the Chambourcin. The two varietals couldn't be more different. Chambourcin hails from the much-maligned French-American hybrid stock while Cynthiana is 100% pure indigenous, a naturally occurring hybrid of
vitis aestevalis. Chambourcin has loose clusters with large, dark berries while Cynthiana has tight little clusters with small berries. You can get some incredibly dark, rich wines out of either, though Chambourcin excels in a less tannic must with less maceration. Both of them make a very nice red wine and have fared well in the test vineyard.

It's easy for me to overlook Cynthiana despite the fact that it performs wonderfully in our region. But I'm something of a contrarian and this varietal is our Missouri state grape, thus my plans to plant Cab Franc in my commercial bloc. Were the total acidity a little lower, Cynthiana would stack up well against any red out there, and I think there's huge potential for blending a touch with some varietals that tend to get a little flabby. When you consider the trend toward large, fruit-saturated, high-alcohol wines made with extra-ripe fruit, a little Norton/Cyn could add some needed backbone and bite without resorting to acid blends off the shelf. I'll certainly experiment with a Cab Franc/Cynthiana blend, maybe 90/10, when I have the chance.

One problem with Norton/Cynthiana is the dual name. I like the latter while the former is more recognizable. Add this schizophrenia to its regional nature and the anti-American varietal stigma and it's got a long way to go to gain wider acceptance. I'm not sure the day will arrive when this varietal will make a splash in the wine press, though good stories abound. Paul Roberts has written extensively about this varietal, and there's a very amusing sequence in his book, From this Hill, My Hand, Cynthiana's Wine where he brings some splits of his homemade Norton to the great houses of France to solicit some feedback.

So when I talk about larger plantings of vinifera, I sometimes feel like I'm neglecting a local upstart cultivar that makes a very nifty wine. But then there are plenty of folks in the area making some good Cynthiana. And there are other folks out there promoting this varietal, so I still think it has a bright future.