It's About Time

That's not a comment of exasperation, it's the recognition that, after all these months of pruning and spraying, leaf pulling and weeding, that we are finally here. Harvest time is literally right around the corner.

We seemed to quickly get to veraison (where the skins turn color from a pale green to a deep golden color and begin to soften) and then it seems like we have to fast dance for there is still the feeling that we are way behind in our chores. The leaves have to be pulled to allow sunlight in to the grapes, and also to provide some air flow for the breezes to dry the clusters. Now is the time when we closely watch the weather, along with any fungus that might creep in, and then lastly the sugar content of the grapes themselves. That's a picture of me out in the field, taking a refractometer reading that will give me the sugar content. What the little gadget does is read the light reflection through a small droplet sample of grape juice.......the more solids (sugars) the more bent the reflection is which is then shown on a scale.

It is a balancing act that normally comes together all at the same time. You are looking for a Brix of maybe 21 or 22 (percent of sugars in the grape flesh). But if there is an oncoming wet weather pattern, a compromise must be made to accept lower sugar levels. No sense jeopardizing the entire harvest for a point or two in sugar content. And then there is the fungus. It starts out as a single grape within a bunch that is slightly discolored. Come back the next day and there might be 6 times that many. One more day and you lose the entire bunch. It spreads rapidly. The other day I walked the vineyard and threw out 3 dozen bunches that were beyond hope. We now have a prediction of 4 straight days of rain next week (not counting the thunder storm we received last night that was not forecasted). Our Brix registered 21.4 yesterday morning.

I think it about time to start picking the Seyval Blanc.

We have Monday scheduled to start picking. With a crew of six we might get done with the picking by mid day. From there we start the processing.....destemming and crushing, performing a "free run" through our press, killing off any airborne yeast and initiating our own fermenting process. To do all this should take the entire day.

And then next week we do it all over again with our Cabernet Francs. Their Brix is about 19.6 right now. Another week would ordinarily make them ready to harvest, but the rain might bloat the grapes and water down the sugar content.  Do we pick anyway? Will these be affected by the fungus as bad as the whites?

I'll let you know.

Winter Injury

You  may  think this is a rather odd time to bring up winter injury, but as I mentioned in the last blog, we are constantly walking around the vineyard and inspecting, touching, and analyzing what we see in order to make changes or adjustments which get us closer to our ultimate goal: perfect fruit.

Even new workers and helpers are advised to bring to our attention anything that seems unusual from their day to day observations. Lets face it, after pruning a couple of rows of vines, even a novice can see a bug, or a different colored leaf, or a mechanical failure and be able to decide that something is wrong. As part of my instructional dialogue, I explain to them that this understanding of differentiation is what divides man from orangutans. Nothing convinces them better right up front to be more observant than the possibility that they might be called a monkey if they don't spot something odd. And every time something different is brought to my attention by these extra set of eyes, it is an opportunity to instruct and teach....it makes for better employees.

So we walk the rows, grabbing samples of leaves that are compared against resources I have for IPM (Integrated Pest Management). Whether it be insects, diseases, or chemical disorders, we can generally get fairly close in our diagnosis. Sometimes it leads to a change in a chemical cocktail we spray on the vines, other times it may mean altering the timing of an application or defining a needed nutrient to apply that the plant is lacking.

But one of the most perplexing problems we have recently spotted is what I call "Sudden Death Syndrome".  An otherwise healthy vine, with plenty of leaf structure and sometimes a full array of grape bunches, just out and out dies for apparently no reason.

You first think that the trunk sustained a major injury, which would lead to an immediate lack of water and dehydration. We had this problem years ago when I tilled our Nortons and found out, albeit a day late, that the tiller was cutting through the major root structure that had advanced near the surface of the soil instead of reaching down out of the typical tilling path.

This was not just a single occurrence. For those one time events you get to the point of brushing off the problem and blaming it on nature taking its own course. A lot of attention worrying about a singular occurrence is not very productive. However in this case, we lost dozens of vines throughout the vineyard. They weren't the older vines with solid trunk structure. These had smaller trunks, maybe less than 3/4" in diameter. And our losses were within all the varieties, though the Viognier, the Petit Verdot, and the Cabernet Sauvignons were the hardest hit all showing identical symptoms.

I sent pictures off to Virginia Tech to see if they could identify what the primary cause was. Their immediate observations were similar to mine: "Was there any trunk damage?"  They also hinted at cold injury which we both ruled out because, relatively speaking, our winters down in this coastal part of Virginia don't get that frigid to create this kind of damage. However, we were too quick to dismiss this possibility. My final conclusion is that it was an injury sustained by winter snow and cold. You see, initial Spring growth  begins by a mechanical uptake of water and nutrients in the xylem cells (though not a direct comparison, think of these as being like the rings you see in a tree trunk), but as development continues, the woody portions lack the live cambium tissue that was killed during the winter but is required to transfer these needed nutrients. The vascular cambium is the region that produces new phloem cells (those just under the bark) and the xylem cells. Without a replenishment of these cells, the transpirational (think evaporation) loss of water from the leaves exceeds the ability of the damaged vascular system to transport water. Hence you can understand why our immediate suspicion of trunk damage had the same symptoms as this winter injury.

With all this being said, it meant that there was very little we could do to have prevented this. Some of the vines had new base shoots this season, and we will use those to replace the dead vines. Others however show absolutely no sign of life, and these we will slot to be replaced in the Spring of 2015.

Such is farming.

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Before Its Time

It's that time of the season when the grapes begin to change color and the skins tend to soften some. With soft skins the grapes can expand and the clusters begin to tighten up. Only now can the sugars start to accumulate until you get the Brix reading you're looking for.

But it also is a sensitive time within the growing season when everything can go wrong too.

I remember when we had our first batch of grapes in Block One, and, though we were aware of the "bird issue", we didn't put a great deal of concern on the damage they could cause. Little did we know that birds are keenly aware of the sugar content of the grapes. Before we could pick the whites, the grackles flew in one night and completely cleaned us out. Anticipating a repeat, we watched the sugar level within the reds, and decided to pick these early. So did the birds. Again they came in at night and ate every grape hanging on the vines. Only skeletons were left.  Since then we have been using Bird Gard, an automated sound system that screams out Red Tailed Hawk sounds along with distressed bird calls. We have had great success with it.

Late summer and fall tend to bring on the rains, and be a time when tropical storms and hurricanes race up the east coast dumping buckets of rain on our otherwise well cared for grapes. The vines tend to soak up this rain and send it straight up to the grapes. Where once you had a 16% sugar and climbing, following a rain it might drop down to 13 or 14% as the sugar levels get diluted. Two to three points may mean an additional week the grapes have to hang on the vine to regain these losses.

And with summer heat and rain comes humidity. All those latent fungus spores are rejuvenated and can't wait to get growing again. If there has been any skin rupture from the grapes expanding and cracking the skins, that means there is plenty of sugary food for them to have a population explosion. It'll make the bunch of grapes it is growing on no good, and possibly cause it to spread throughout the entire vineyard. It doesn't take long.

So we walk the rows, tasting samples of the grapes to see if they turn from tart to sweet. It is amazing how variety makes such as big difference. One chews a red grape, a Cabernet Franc for example, and you wince at its "sugar-free" pulp. Spitting out the seeds is a reflex action; these are not seedless Concords. From here you  move over just one row, where the Seyval Blanc are; a greenish-yellow hybrid grape that have grapes maybe twice the size of the Cab. Francs. A similar taste test is performed, and the sweetness is incredible. If it wasn't for the seeds, you'd reach in and grab some more. Using a refractometer, I measured the Brix on the Seyval Blanc at 16, which if it was converted to alcohol it would only provide a little more than 8%. (NOTE: the actual conversion includes many factors, like what yeast was used. The true conversion can range from multiplying  Brix x .55 to .61) The Cab. Franc registered just a 6 on the Brix scale....no wonder why it tasted bitter.

This year we also are seeing our first grapes from our Petit Verdot and our Cabernet Sauvignon. They deserve to have their Brix determined too, even though we expect a very small harvest. The bunches on the Cabs. are full and plump, a deep red, almost black coloring. While the red grapes in Block One are just turning color, from their grassy green to their final blue-red color, the Cabernet Sauvignon have already turned completely to their final shade. But how is their Brix ? One would think that they would be farther along than the Cab. Francs strictly based on the color, but the results prove they are at about the same sugar level at 5.5%  The half percent is well within any margin of error, in as much as my sampling technique is rather weak because I don't want to waste valuable grapes to do a sampling many weeks before harvest.

So this is the process we go through. Checking the weather. Continuing our spray program. Still pruning to get rid of suckers. Leaf pulling to allow sunlight to reach every cluster (and dry out morning dew). Checking the Brix levels weekly and increasing our frequency of checks as we approach a 20 Brix  or so.

We have looked over our past harvest data and have found that our harvests tend to begin about August 24th and last about a month. Whites first, followed by the reds. I suspect the Seyval Blancs will be right on schedule.....I was hoping maybe a little early but we just received a few days of rain to screw this up. Then the Viognier, followed by both Cabs., the Petit Verdot, and lastly the Nortons. We may actually get to pull some Scuppernongs this year too, but our experience with these grapes is rather on the light side so I have no idea when we will be picking them, though I am guessing later, not earlier.

Core Drilling - Building the Winery: Part 2

There seems to be a bunch of "little things" that need to be done before you can invite the local paper to see "dignitaries" hold chrome plated shovels and collectively dig a ceremonial hole indicating the start of the building process. We have already had a surveyor come in and establish where our building will be located relative to our property lines. And we had our perk test done so we know the best places to have our septic system located.

So following this we needed the input of a GeoEngineer (a combined soils engineer and geologist) to determine whether all of our plans could be implemented and how far towards China we have to sink our footings in before we actually start pouring the slab and putting up framing. That's where the core drilling comes in.

The process is really quite simple to understand. Stratums are determined using a split-spoon sampling method which pulls up soil from varying depths and defines its composition. Going down 20', we had three stratums identified. For our first 5' we had silty & clayey sand. From 5' deep to 14' this soil changed over to a well-graded sand, and from about 13' deep to 20' down we had a lean clay composed of a lot of shell fragments. Since our farmlands were well under water thousands upon thousands of years ago, this was no surprise. Then there were the "blow tests", where a 140 pound hammer is allowed to fall 30". Counting the number of hits it takes to go 12" provides an "N"-value. In our 1st stratum it was 9, in our 2nd stratum it increased to 14, and then in our lowest / 3rd stratum it was reduced to 6 (we found mush). Using these two bits of information it allowed the GeoEngineer to define relative density and soil consistency, which then led to the engineering recommendations regarding construction footings. Simple, huh ?

There are a few other tests done too. Like putting the sand through a sieve to determine granular size, and by doing various moisture tests that allows one to conclude how compaction of the soil will be influenced by the weight of the structure.

We are still waiting for our septic system design, so once we get it we can apply for our building permit !

Know Thine Enemy

There are few bugs in the field that get you up in arms quite like the Japanese Beetle. Most just take a bite here or a bite there. Some, like the honey bee and lady bug are actually helpful in as much as they pollinate or are predators which search out and eat harmful bugs. But the Japanese Beetle is the terrorist within the vineyard. Throughout the winter months and well into the Spring, the vintner has convinced himself that this must be an off year for the Beetle; nary a sign. But keeping to a yearly routine, June 1st is when they raise their ugly head and soon thereafter you'll see one or two.

In a previous blog I mentioned that we had insect traps set up around the vineyard looking for signs of 2 particular grape pests. All of the traps have come up empty, meaning the Japanese Beetle is our #1 problem this year. It usually is.

Chemical warfare is not to be taken lightly. Putting aside the "Greenies" who believe that nature should be more closely involved in controlling insect pests, the fact is that there are no known predators of the Japanese Beetle that can make a difference when the need arises. There are some wasps and ants that like to eat larvae, but that doesn't stop these beetles from flying in from adjacent pastures to eat their preferred food: grape leaves. There are these pheromone traps you can buy at your garden center, but all they do is attract the beetles from outlying areas; not something you really want to do. And besides, they would be filled before you reached the other side of the vineyard.

It is said that a grapevine can lose 10 - 15% of its foliage before it starts to affect the health of a plant. The dilemma lies in the fact that Japanese Beetles are gregarious, meaning that hundreds of them may sit on a particular vine eating their way though the upper canopy leaving nothing but a skeleton behind. For a small vine without a lot of leaf structure, this can be deadly. And for an older vine, this loss of photosynthetic ability may affect the fruit.

There is a concept that vintners use called Economic Loss Threshold. Like the name suggests, the vintner will hold off on applying costly chemicals until he believes the expected loss will exceed the cost of preventing that loss. So he waits, and waits, until he finally can't take it anymore and it forces him to add an insecticide into his spray regiment. Each application costs $160.00 With honeybees in the area added considerations must be made to reduce the negative impact on their populations. Day before mowing (to remove flowers on neighboring ground plants) and early evening spraying (hoping the bees are back in their hives) now enter into the scheduling of these lethal sprays. They are non-selective; anything with 6 or 8 legs will be toast if contact is made.

Sevin XLR and Carbaryl 4L are the insecticides of choice. Neither is available for the casual gardener, though some Sevin can be found on home store shelves. I suggest against using the Sevin powder unless it can be put only on the leaves on non-flowering plants (that wouldn't attract the bees anyway), because with morning dew the powder can stick to the legs of the bees and be transferred into a hive and cause its damage. Dried liquids have a reduced chance of being transferred and carried.

I can attest to the effectiveness of these 2 insecticides. We had been on an every other week schedule with our insecticides, starting in the last week of May. Into about mid-July we thought we had our bug situation under control, when I missed an insecticide spraying. My excuse was that I didn't have any in stock when my scheduled spray day came along. Anyway, this past week, the 3rd week in July, from my own observations and from field reports from our other fields, we were being inundated with Japanese Beetles. Tens of thousands of these bugs were everywhere. The Cabernet Sauvignon were horribly attacked. So going out one evening I applied a 1/5th dosage application on the leaves (that's all I had left), and the next day I saw only 2 beetles (1 dead, 1 alive) that managed to not fall to the ground in a death spiral after they were dosed.  I cross  my fingers that we got to them in time.