Saturday, July 14, 2018

Ravat 34 Wine 2017

Every year this vine puts out a great crop no matter what the conditions. After 10 years we have found this vine has no fungus issues..sets fruit well in virtually all conditions...and is very easy to maintain with cordon spur pruning.

It has a semi upright growth and is easy to train in a 3 or 4 wire vertical shoot system. Usually 2 x 100 gram clusters per shoot and they usually tops out at 19 Brix in the vineyard with 3.0 acidity.

Ravat 34 is a cross of Chardonnay with American grape. It carries a lot of The chardonnay quality and this shows in the resulting wine. It retains high acidity though and has been descibed by some as being akin to Alegote. Very nice again for 2017.


Friday, July 6, 2018

Fruit Set 2018

Weather is a huge factor when it comes to fruit set. If it's too cold or if it's rainy then the pollen is not exchanged easily and bees are not making their rounds.
A few years ago we experienced cool and wet weather when L'Acadie Blanc was flowering and as  result we had very poor fruit set on that variety.
This year the weather has been pretty good during flowering which occured around June 20 to 22. The vineyard is lush and has great growth. Looking across the rows you can still see snow on thhe mountain tops.

The early flowering varieties were Foch and Castel..where as the Evangeline and Triompe D'Alsace are always later. As of June 30 we have a view of fruit set in most varieties. Here is what we are seeing;
Marechal Foch

Leon Millot

Ravat 34

Pinot Noir

L'Acadie Blanc

Castel

Evangeline