June 8th vineyard update ....

A little over a week ago we got some very strong winds ... 90 mph!!! Yes, that is the same as a category 2 tornado or category 2 hurricane winds! WE got a lot of broken tree limbs and lost a lot of vine shoots. Since then we have gotten a lot of strong winds but nowhere near that strong. And we have had a lot of rains ... many times for several days in a row. In spite of frequent spraying, I have seen some minor signs of PM or DM. This is a first for me in the 5 or 6 years that I've had the vineyard. Hope I can get it under control.

Those replacement canes that I added this year sure are producing a lot of shoots. I have been busy shoot thinning and still have way too many!! And, the vines are in bloom this week and look like a very heavy set ... luckly we ave had no rain but some fairly strong winds. Marquettes usually don't need cluster thinning but it looks like I will need to drop a lot of clusters this year.

After using a 2 gallon sprayer since I started the vineyard, I finally decided that I needed something a little easier to use especially when the canopy is full (easier, meaning no pumping and tank re-filling). So ... I bought a 15 gallon sprayer with an electric pump. Still just a one nozzle spray wand but no pumping !!

Late Spring Freeze -- Survived !!

On May 2nd we got a nightime freeze down to 29*F and then again on May 3rd it got down to 26*F in the vineyards. Many of the vines had shoots with buds that had burst into small leaves.

Fortunately, because of previous experences with late spring freezes, when I did my early rough pruning I not only kept the canes on the cordon/spur fairly long (3 feet) but I also laid down new canes whenever I could and left them as long as possible. My hope was that because the buds open first at the ends of the canes and last at the start of the canes, that I would have some more "closed" buds that would not suffer as much damage if we got a late spring freeze.

It seems to have served me well this year. After final pruning (which would normally be down to 2 buds per cane on spurs) I had some losses on the canes that were from the cordon/spurs but very little loss from the the extra-long new canes that I laid down. After pruning these new canes down to 3 feet on each side of the vine it looks like I ended up with enough buds to get a full crop.

I'll try to leave renewal buds again this year in hopes of having replacement canes for the older cordons again next year. I may even consider going to cane pruning completely instead of cordon/spur pruning in future years.

Overall, the vines look good at this point.

Update RE: 2010 Harvest wine

Well it has been a long time since I last posted. I encountered some major health problems right after my last post that caused me to be house bound ever since. I'm now starting to get better and hope to pay better attention to my vineyard this year.

The 2010 harvest was quite small due to my sloppy job of netting. I got my wife to help but I apparently did not block out all the entry points for the birds (which we have lots of !!!). I also did not inspect my vineyard daily like I normally do and ignored them for several weeks only to find that about 75% of those beautiful grapes had been eaten! However, those that I did harvest were very nice. My wife de-stemmed and crushed them by hand for me (she didn't want to use the "crusher/de-stemmer" equipment). This is the same sweetie that planted my original Marquette vines several years ago because I was unable to (I had another heart attack just before the vines arrived).

Bad news aside, the 2010 grapes made a nice wine that ended up (after MLF and cold stabilization) at pH of 3.4 and TA of 6.1 g/l (.61%) without the use of any carbonates to reduce acid levels. With a little oak and some blending I expect it to be a nice wine when ready for drinking in a few years (this will be the 2nd harvest that ended up with similar numbers!!).

Looking forward to a good 2011 harvest and hoping for no early Spring freeze or other major weather problems.

A votre sante !!!

Updated Vineyard Pictures

Seems like every year there are new and different challenges to growing grapes. We've had tornado winds one year, then golf ball size hail another year, late frosts a couple of years, and this year we had a very very wet spring (vineyard was under 6 inches of water for several days) combined with 60+ mph thunderstorm winds that blew the canopy like a "kite'' and bent the wood posts over 45 degrees.

Things are looking better now. Vines are doing well. Veraison is just starting so the netting will go up soon along with the electric fencing.

Here are a few current pictures of the vineyards and a pic of some of my "cuttings" that I will use to fill in the empty spots vacated by the vines I took out this past spring.

Enough is enough !!!!

I mentioned previously that I had pulled out my Concord vines this Spring. These were my first vines. I made a lot of jelly with them but I do not like them for wine. I prefer to make "wine" jelly anyway (especially a nice Barolo). So, they got taken out and will be replaced with Marquettes.

My St Croix vines are now 5 (or 6?) years old and I have attempted to make wine with them for the past few years. As I mentioned in a previous post, I simply have not acquired a palate for this wine. As I mentioned previously, I am really impressed with the Marquette wine I have made and would much prefer this to the St Croix.

So..... today, I also pulled out all the St Croix vines from my vineyard!!!

The vineyard looks rather "spotty" now. The Concords are gone, the St Croix are gone, and several Marquettes are gone (Very unusual bunny damage this winter and I got a bit sloppy with the Roundup). Now have about 17 empty spots.

Oh well, I'll fill in the holes with more Marquettes and in four years I'll be back to producing vines again.

Update on last year's wine (2009 vintage)

In a previous post I explained how I made 4 variations of my Marquette 2009 wine. Here are some tasting notes now that it is 9 months old. Being only 9 months old all four batches obviously exhibited "young" characteristics which should improve with time as the wine mellows and matures.

Batch "A" is a 60%/40% blend (Marquette/Italian grapes). Although tasting fine the Italian wine flavor did come through very prominently. The chemistry was not changed much by this blending so all that really got accomplished was a modification of flavor.

Batch "C" was modified by the addition of a small amount of Potassium Bi-Carbonate to reduce the TA a bit and increase the pH. Unfortunately I can taste "something" different in this batch which I think is the Pot Bi-Carb. This may go away with more time but at this point I do not see enough of a benefit (TA and pH wise) to repeat this process in the future unless I absolutely have to.

Batch "B" was diluted (amelioration) 10% with RO water which lowered the TA but left the pH unchanged. Color did not suffer because I originally used Lallzyme EX and Opti-Red in the fermentation to boost color extraction. This batch was the best tasting of the four. It might have benefited from a bit more oak but otherwise is a very nice table wine.

Batch "D" was left untouched and has a TA of 7.2 and 3.33 for pH. This was the next best tasting wine. A bit more oak and another year or two of ageing should make this a very nice wine. I will most likely ameliorate this batch similar to Batch "B" at the next racking.

With a higher end TA and lower end pH these should be long lived wines. Although TA at 6.5 (batch "B") is just a wee bit higher than I wanted it, it is still very good for a "cold-weather" wine and it should mellow with additional ageing (which the low pH should allow).

I'm very happy with the way this wine turned out. Hopefully I can replicate these results again this year (assuming Mother-Nature cooperates). For cold weather areas like Nebraska, I'm really happy with the way this wine tastes.

The wine made from the St. Croix grapes did not turn out as well. To me, this grape has a very unique taste which I'm not fond of. I have tried St Croix wine at many other wineries and although very well made they all seem to have this unique taste also. I will most likely extract my St Croix vines next year and replace them with more Marquettes.

Vineyard Update ...

We had a very unusual winter this year. Snow drifted as high as 16 feet in the vineyard/orchard (heavy snows and winds were blowing 50 mph for days!!). As a result, the "cute" little bunnies (we have a lot of them) sat on top of the snow and ate the tender shoots off the top of the peach trees then as the snow melted they continued to eat but changed over to the vines. Yes, they sat on top of 6 feet of snow and ate the tender shoots (and as the snow continued to melt) all the way down to the cordons and in some cases chewed away at the younger cordons. So,.... I have a spotty northern vineyard this year with some vines that will produce very few clusters. I will use new base shoots to replace trunks and cordons as needed for next year's crop. Those that did not get eaten are doing extremely well.

We had a very early warming this spring and the vines popped their buds into leaves early. But, luckily we did not have a severe late frost to kill them off. It did get down to 29*F one night but that was still a degree over the critical temp for major damage. I found almost no damage.

As of today (June 12th) some shoots are already 2 feet over the top wires (top wires are 6.5 feet). The cluster pollination went well and I will need to do a LOT of cluster thinning (it really hurts to cut off all those beautiful excess clusters and throw them away!!). If we don't get damaged by hail or tornadoes this year, the crop should still be about the same or greater than last year.

The southern vineyard is going well. I continue to add new vines but lost some when I got a bit careless with a Roundup spray under the vines to kill the weeds. I will let some of the more established vines have a small crop this year.