Wednesday, August 14, 2019

Leaf Pull to Expose Grapes

One technique that is often applied to grapes is to remove leaves around the clusters of the grapes. The idea behind this is to expose the grapes to sunlight, and to improve airflow to lower the potential for fungus or rot.

Leaf pull is usually done at veraison, when the grapes begin to ripen and this usally involves removing the first 1-2 leaves on a shoot. These are the leaves that will be closest to the clusters.

Veraison started about August 8 at Arrow lakes Vineyard with the Evangeline softening and the Triompe D'Alsace and Foch starting to turn from green to red. And with that, we did a preliminary leaf pull around the Ravat 34. Bottom photo is Triompe D'Alsace starting to ripen.