August 10th - we are seeing colour change on all the red varieties. The Marquette and Castel are showing the most colour and more so in block 10 (the south lot) than block 11. The next is Leon Millot followed by Marechal Foch. We are about 1 week ahead this year, which is always nice. Generally we see the colour change as early as the first few days into August to as late as the 26st of August, but in an average year we'd see the colour change around August 16-17th. See photos below.
Marquette
Castel
Leon Millot
Marechal Foch
The L'Acadie and Evangeline are coming along as well and the Evangeline is in line for a mid-September harvest. Evangeline below
Unfortunately we are dealing with some fungal pressure this year. It happens time to time, even with these resistant varieties but with the high humidity and damp weather we have had its been a good year for fungal growth. One thing we rely on is a few days of very high heat and sun as that has a killing effect on powdery mildew in particular. A few days in the 37c or higher range knocks the fungus back and can even kill it. We haven't had many days like that either this year, just a few, so that impacts as well.
Bit of a double edged sword with that high heat as the grapes are often prone to sun burn when it gets that high of temperature and some of the grapes on the clusters exposed to direct sunlight with that high heat will often shrivel and die...but thats the trade off because that same high heat will also kill off the mildew spores and growth. For me I'd rather loose a bit of the grapes to sunburn than to mildew.
We've netted the vines now and will start testing the sugar numbers at the beginning of September to gauge when harvest may be.
