White Grape Harvest

We harvested the white grapes...primarily L'Acadie Blanc and Evangeline at the end of September 28 and shipped to the winery.

Nice grapes little spoilage but the wasps and rodents took thier tool. We lost alot of low hanging fruit on the L'Acadie to skunks and Marmots and lost some to wasps on the Evangeline.

Overall nice crop and it continues to grow as the vines mature. The collective brix was 20.5 and ph was 3.1. These are great numbers for white wine.

There is a general formula used to guage juice chemistry for white grapes and its the brix x (ph x ph). The target is having the result of this formula be close to 200. Of course this is just a general guage for juice chemistry.

Using our numbers we had 20.5 x (3.1 × 3.1) which results as 197. So pretty close to 200.

Awesome weather and the best family harvest crew!

Worst Wasp Year Ever

 Well its the worst wasp year since we started growing grapes in 2008. 

Wasp on an Evangeline cluster

They love the aromatic fruity grapes and the first ones to rippen are targeted. We use insect netting in the Evangeline as they can get hit but there are so many wasps this year they are finding any little gap in the netting. And once one wasp finds the grapes they tell all thier friends.

Added alot more clips to try to close off some of the gaps but not sure if that will have much effect. ...Few more weeks to go before harvest whites, with reds in early October.

But overall the grapes are comming along...photos below

Marechal Foch (showing ripeness spectrum)

Castel

Leon Millot

L'Acadie

Sovereign Ruby

Veraison - Grapes Ripening

Historically average for the grapes to start ripening is around August 15/16 for us. Earliest is a few days into August and the latest around the 26th of August. 

We are right on target for historical averages and we are seeing the Castel, Leon Millot and Marquette showing colour and a bit on the Marechal Foch as well. Foch is typically a few days behind those others. Photo taken Aug 15 & 16.

Castel

Leon Millot

Marquette

The L'Acadie is looking good (photo below) and Evangeline is ok..it suffered some bud damage this past winter.

Crazy bad year for wasps and leaf hoppers. Been at least 10yrs since wasps were this bad...going to be "fun" at harvest as the wasps love the grapes.

Mid July - Fruit Set

As of July 13 we are seeing good fruit set on the vines with a bit less so on the L'Acadie but overall ok. We had about 3 cool and rainy days right when L'Acadie was in the midst of flowering.

The new vines are growing well and most at top wire. We should get some Marquette this year if all goes well. In the picture below the new vines are in the foreground and old vines in desperate need of thinning are in the background near the house.

Here is the older vines, below, just about to get a good hair cut. These are Marechal Foch and they pretty much send out a primary and secondary shoot at each node. So all secondary come off and we shoot thin the primary ones as well.

This time of year involves shoot thinning and positioning and weed management. While these are not particularly labour intensive it's  great to have help on these so big thank you to Jim.

Flowering has Started

It's been a relatively normal spring for temperatures with May at an average of 13c and June on target to finish the month at around 15.6c-15.8c. That's pretty much centre target for our long term normals and the vines are growing well. 

The new "baby" vines are growing well and can be seen in the distance extending the old rows. Its 3rd year for them and many have already reached the top fruit wire and are expected to have some fruit this year.

This last week we were looking at the weather data and extrapolated when flowering might occur and we figured 60-80% flowering in and around July 1-3rd based on our historical climate-flowering records.

This is good, we really need to be flowering around then, or earlier, as our season generally ends with frost the first week of October.

So in a normal year that gives us a good 90-95 days to get the grapes to ripen to harvest. We often go mid to late October before frost but we count on early October frost. That's taking it to the limit for varieties like Marechal Foch.

As of June 25 we are seeing all varieties at the front end of flowering and with decent weather this week we should be past half way flowering by July 1st. 

A bit of a surprise is how prolific with flowers most of the vines are. With the severe cold last winter I was expecting more primary damage but its not nearly as nasty as what I was expecting. They are all looking really good and hoping for warm weather through flowering and fruitset.

One observation is how many bees are around right now. We have white clover in every second row and the clover is in full bloom and irresistible to the bees. The vineyard is literally buzzing and this times we'll with the vines flowering this next week and we will see what the next few weeks bring...some photos...

Leon Millot

Marquette

Marechal Foch

L'Acadie Blanc

Castel

How Are Your Grapes Doing?

Typical question that comes up in conversation around the vineyard is how are the grapes. So far, so good is the correct answer for us right now..saying "right now" as there are so many stages of growth between now and harvest and potential pitfalls along the way - you cant really speak to a future state.

Last blog I wrote about the side by side difference between the row of Marechal Foch and Leon Millot. The photo below shows the Foch in the fore ground and Leon the next row over. The Foch was showing lots of buds pushing at this time and the Leon showed hardly any buds. Fast forward 2 weeks later and you can see in the next photo that the Leon is really pushing lots of buds now and catching up to the Foch - nice!

The Marquette came throught the winter well and should reach top wire this year and showing at least 2 flower clusters on each shoot. (photo below).

The Marechal Foch rows are looking good so far as well (photo below), most are in 4 leaf stage and on target for a "normal" spring. With average heat in June we should see flowering around the 24th of June.

The L'Acadie, Castel and Evangeline all took a bit of a hit this year. Castel the worst and requires some cordon and trunk re-growth. Having said that, they will all produce to varying degrees this year. 

Lots of snow still in the mountains yet, and really quite stunning this time of the year, with the green valleys - doesn't get old.

Bud Break 2024

 So we have a better picture of how the vines made out through this past winter with the -27c cold snap. With bud break we can really see how they are.

Our Marechal Foch came through fantastic, some die back but overall strong. Leon Millot, sibling vine of Foch, got hit by the cold, probably 50% bud death but its still early to tell. The photo below shows a side by side comparison of Foch row ( fore ground) showing lots of grean leafy buds, and the next row over is Leon Millot with very few buds showing.

The L'Acadie did ok..as predicted the vines located in areas with soil deficientcies got hit hard..really hard with some trunck death. But those vines that entered winter healthy have alot of live buds and look to be very fruitful. Photo below showing buds with 2-3 flower clusters.

Now that danger of frost has passed we are trimming back the vines to a more normal bud count. We will adjust again in June. Phoro below of Foch getting a good hair cut.

Pruning Update: looking good so far

With the deep cold we experienced this past winter...-27c...we were unsure how the vines would be budding out this year, if not trunk damage or how many live buds we would have.

We delayed pruning till we could see whats going on and we are seeing buds push now and while there is damage, in general, things are looking good. Still some time to go to determine if weve lost primary buds and flowers but we will know better by end of May.

For now we can say our commercial varieties look pretty good. We had originally been planning for -25c to -30c lows and chose vines that were supposed to be hardy to those lows.

For Reds...Marechal Foch, Leon Millot, Marquette, GR7 look pretty good so far. Castel is showing the most damage but still not too bad. Foch below;

The L'Acadie and Evangeline look good. Some L'Acadie have damage but thise appear on vines in a few pockets that were stressed due to magnesium deficiency in our sandy soil.  Evangeline is late budding so we still are not 100% sure but again they look good so far as well. L'Acadie below;

So overall things look good so far. Still waiting till they leaf out to confirm primary buds and flowers and get past any late season frosts but if all else is normal we should have a fairly normal crop too. Of interest is the other  non-commercial vines we have that are showing well with low apparent damage and pushing buds after the nasty cold snap.

Reds: Triompe D'Alsace, Colmar Precose Noir, Lucy Kuhlman, St. Croix, Marechal Joffre...all looking good.

Whites: Petite Milo, Vandal Cliche, Ravat 34...also all looking good.

New Season 2024

Snow is all but gone in the fields by the last week in March, very similar to spring 2016. usual trellis work starts, repairing winter damage, upgrading trellising, wires etc. Awesome time of year, as the vineyard and everything around it satrts to come to life..bees and butterflys aready out and about, a few frogs noticed here and there and so early in the season the sky so blue with no smoke.

Typical for this year we are continuing the switch out of the original treated wooden posts for metals posts and earth anchors. Remarkable that several of the treated posted brok off about 6" below the ground level as we worked them back and forth to get them out of the ground.

We have noticed that alot on the wooden posts out here..just how easily they get to rottinging despite the so-called treating they received. We started noticing that in the original test vineayrd that after about 6-7 years the posts were breaking off at ground level. 

So we have moved to metal posts and notwithstanding rusting, they should survive for decades vs the wooden posts. Likewise the earth anchors should have a similar life.

The vines were not budding yet, so we don't as yet have a great guage on the survival rate of the buds on the vines but in all the commercial varieties we cut into the canes were good for the most part. We did som bud cross sectional cutting to see how some made out and every one we cut into was good on all varieties. Thats not a to say there is no bud death but the few we looked at were good.

Adding a bit of Calcium/Magnesium as we spotted areas with vines that that showed deficient last year... typical for sandy soil.

Pruning will start at the end of April as we'll have a better idea of how the vines look at that time and we are going to leave extra bud count in the even of primary bud daamage.

2024: Not the Warmest Winter we've had - Remember 2016?

So not that much snow this year and its been pretty warm, kinda reminds me of another winter not that long ago. 2016 was one of those nice warm winters, really didnt get that cold at all and not much snow. Was remarkabley warm and by the 3rd week of March we were already working the fields and getting ready to put vines in the ground. See photo below from 2016;

In comparison to 2024, January and February of 2016 were way warmer and I suspect March 2016 will be much warmer as well than March 2024.

Month	2016 Average Temp	2024 Average Temp
January	-0.5c	-3.4c
February	2.3c	0.5c
March	5.8c	?

One of the differences is the snow pack though. We had more snow in 2016 but it was still below normal going into February. was only about 80% of normal in Februay 2016 so pretty close to this year except we are sitting with a bit less snow pack this year than that year.

Could be in for a similar spring to what we had in 2016 and if thats the case, bud break was about 2-3 weeks earlier than normal and we had alot of rain too, especially in June which impacted fruit set. 2016 was also an El Nino event as we are having in 2024, but we will see what comes.