Monday, October 7, 2013

Great Grape Harvest for 2013

We had a great year for growing this year and despite the 8 week drought in late September to mid-September the vines did great.  We had about 1030 C degree days growing. 

They have had 5 full growing seasons in the soil now and must have good roots, especially in the Ravat 34 and Leon Millot that have been around the longest.

The wasps were the biggest factor in Harvest and they took virtually all the Lucy Kuhlman and Colmar Precoce Noir.  These are among the earliest grapes we have.  However, the Evangeline (KW96-2) is really early and we picked it on September 8th at 18brix and 2.9ph as we did not have enough wasp netting to cover them.  They are among the the latest to bud out and the latest to flower and the earliest to harvest with giant juicy bunches of grapes.  We left a few Evangeline bunches in hopes that the wasps would miss those and then we could see the numbers at full ripeness.

Some of the numbers we got this year harvested Oct 5 as follows;
Variety                                          Brix             PH
Leon Millot                                    22               3.2
Ravat 34                                         18               3.0
Acadie Blanc                                  19               3.0
Petite Milo                                      22               3.1
Evangeline                                      21               3.3 
Castel                                              22               n/a
Foch                                                21               n/a
Triompe                                          21               n/a