Arrow Lakes Vineyard - Grape Harvest 2015

Great year this year for the vines and the grapes.  We had a long growing season of about 150 days to harvest and the warmest year yet with approximately 1100 DDG.  The irrigation system worked great and really helped the vines through the dry spells.

The sugars were really good with the leon Millot and Marquette as standouts in the 21-22 brix level.  The Evangeline and Petite Milo came in at 22 brix and Acadie at 20 brix.  The brix is a measure of the sugar levels in the grapes and when converted to alcohol 20 brix makes about 11% alcohol and 22 brix makes about 12.5% alcohol.

The production was outstanding on Ravat at about 2LB per trellis foot and the Foch was similar at about 1.5-2lb per trellis foot.  In hind sight  these were probably over-cropped by 0.5-1 LB per foot and likely kept the sugars and ripening back slightly on these two.

Here is some of the grapes;