Wine and movies

Despite the photo at left, I assure you that this is still a blog about viticulture and not a wine tasting blog, of which there are plenty of fine examples. But I have good reason to feature a bottle of Francis Coppola Diamond Collection Claret Cab Sauv (05). Most of you probably know that I've been bitten by the viticulture bug...I grow grapes in the yard, we have an assortment basement-made wines fermenting in the cellar, I've got a commercial vineyard in development and we decorate the house with empty wine bottles.

But now I need to confess that I'm not merely a vine nut. Another of my overriding passions is motion pictures. A couple years ago, I started writing screenplays just for kicks. I didn't expect much to come of it, but when I finished my first effort, a friend read it and urged me to enter it in a contest. I sent my first feature length spec script to the Nicholl Fellowships (Oscars) last year and it finished a respectable semifinalst, in the top 30 out of 5,200 submissions. I was blown away, but half thought it was a fluke that this script, The Eulogist, did so well.

Well, this morning I had another surprise. I received an email notifying me that this same script was a finalist, making the top 10 in Francis Coppola's Zoetrope Screenwriting Competition. Mr. Coppola himself was a judge, and it's humbling to think that one of the masters of American cinema read my little thriller.

So what's all this got to do with wine? Well, as you probably know, Mr. Coppola is not one of the great auteurs of film, but he's also seriously into wine. And upon hearing of my respectable finish in his contest, my lovely and generous wife purchased a bottle of his Diamond Collection Claret to celebrate. We finished it off tonight.

I don't know what this contest means. I'm not sure if it will lead to a career in film or will just be a nice feather in my cap. With the strike going on now, my hands are somewhat tied. I don't want to cross WGA lines as I someday hope to be a member, and waiting until the end of the strike to send out material means being part of a tidal wave of spec scripts as the industry rights itself again. But a couple things are for certain. I'm hooked on writing screenplays. I've finished two more since writing The Eulogist. And my latest effort, a comedy-drama entitled "Vintage," deals with the subject of wine. I need to find a way to get it into the hands of a producer-type who also is interested in sunlight in bottle form. Hey, maybe Mr. Coppola would would be willing to check it out.

In the interim, I'm keeping my day job and still working to get our vineyard site planted this spring. So far, screenwriting has been a good winter diversion. I'd love for it to turn into something more. But for the time being, my interest in film will have to be balanced with my interest in viticulture. Lots of work to do this spring.

Oh, and some final thoughts on the Coppola Claret. I pulled out my handy Wine Aroma Wheel and applied it to the great director's Cab Sauv. There was some nice licorice/anise and a touch of strawberry jam and chocolate. Bold, though not overpowering. Not a steal at eighteen bucks, but worth all of that price.

Now I need to change gears and focus on the Midwest Grape and Wine Conference for a few days. I leave at 5 in the morning. A report will follow.

Cheers!

DB

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.

Articles, blogs, links

_ Georgia (USA) vineyards experienced some of the same difficulties that we did from the spring freeze event.

_ Here's a tip on marketing your wine: raise the price.

_ Here's another guy who's doing a similar project to mine. What's more, we're practically neighbors, and he is also a student of the Godfather.

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

Article and blog links

_ Pinot Noir grape genome sequenced. I'm an English major and not so great with the sciencey stuff, so what does that mean in translation? Well there's talk about creating disease resistant Pinot Noir with the same flavor profile as the real stuff. If that happens I'll put a row or two in the ground as soon as I can get my hands on them.

_ Here's a nifty blog called Wine Rendezvous; it features some brief, witty videos that also have some actual information in them. The blog is a promotional vehicle for O-Chateau, a Paris wine tasting company. Cool stuff.

Review: Wine & War

Here’s a good read for when you’re iced in and your sprayer has been winterized, and before you start pruning. Despite its focus on the weighty subjects of the title, it’s easy reading, following anecdotes from winegrowers and winemakers from most of the great regions of France as they suffered under German occupation. It’s often amusing as when defiant vignerons build false walls in their cellars and re-label their plonk for shipment to Berlin. Other vignettes find winemakers facing execution for supporting the Resistance or helping to hide a Jewish family from the Gestapo. Growers also face shortages of labor for harvest or lack of copper for fungicide as the Germans commandeered all metals for their war effort. It will make you grateful that your greatest obstacle to growing good fruit is the weather, as nasty as it can sometimes be.

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

Easter Freeze wrap-up

I've already written at length about what is now called the Easter Massacre that affected the vineyards in our region. I was fortunate to be able to cover a workshop held on the event for my day job. Most interesting was the use of oils to delay budbreak, which I'll try to elaborate on in a post soon.

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