Green Pruning

So I wrote in a previous blog that I leave extra buds when we do the first pruning just in case the winter was harsh and killed off many of the dormant buds or in case we were to get a late spring frost. Leaving the extra buds provides some degree of insurance against these possibilities as there are more buds that could possibly survive and produce some grapes or even secondary buds producing a smaller crop.  However, if all the buds including the extra ones that I leave produce a good cane with proper flower clusters I would need prune off many of the canes to bring the extra canes back to a "normal" cane count in order to produce quality fruit that will ripen on time. (If I were to leave all the extra canes the vine would be over-cropped and be slow to ripen and may actually not winter well as the vine does not get enough time to shut down into dormancy before the cold winter hits).

So what is normal bud/cane count? I use quotations around "normal" because I'm not so sure there is a normal bud/cane count.  You'll often read documents that provide recommended bud counts to leave for various grape varieites.  For instance a document may say that for St. Croix to leave 30 buds for the first pount of prunings then and extra 10 buds for each pound of prunings after that to a maximum of 50 buds etc etc. Often these measures dont tell you all you need to know to make a proper determination like what if your vine has 8-10 feet of trellis length. While 10 feet is unusual, at 10 feet of trellis length the bud count I mentioned above would probably leave 5 buds per foot when the vine could probably grow best at about 6-7 buds per row foot. Variables that affect growth include soil type, the fertilizer, length of season, vine type, irrigation, training method etc., as all of these will impact what the optimum balance is between bud/cane count and quality fruit production. So while the bud retention counts per pound of pruning is a good method its really just an approximation - a place to start - then you'll have to tinker with it to determine what is optimal.

So getting back to green pruning - when I did the first dormant pruning in March I may have left 10-12 buds per trellis foot on some vines but in the end I only want to retain 6 buds per trellis foot.  So now it is late May and risk of frost is gone, bud break has occured, and the canes are all about in the 3-5 leaf stage. I can see what canes are healthy and what ones are not. Some canes may be stunted or have poor flowers or no flowers at all and others may be fine.  In doing the green pruning I want to keep the good healthy canes and prune away the canes that are stunted or with poor or no flowers. I'll prune away until I achieve the desired 6 canes per trellis foot. See the pictues below;
Good cane with 3 nice flowers

Poor (or No) flowers on a cane

Stunted cane with 1 flower cluster

Sometimes nearly all the buds will produce nice canes and flowers and the temptation is there to leave them and produce this great big crop, but as I mentioned before if you do this it will delay the ripening and may also cause the flowers to produce straggly poorly filled clusters.  The vine simply doesnt have enough nutirents or energy to get all the flower cluster to full production.  Also, if you are trying to use a long cane pruning style for your vines you will find that if you leave too many canes that they simply wont grow long enough for this style and they are not as winter hardy so they have a tendancy for greater die back in the winter.  This makes it really hard to employ a long can pruning styles.
These canes shown here are going to be thinned out a bit even though they are all excellent with great flowers. So while all these canes are great its not a choice of which ones are better than the others - in this case I'll prune ones away so that there is greater space between the remaining canes that will allow better sunlight exposure and air flow.

Bud Break 2016 2-3 Weeks Early

Since weve been growing grapes at Arrow Lakes Vineyard the bud break usually happens 14-21 days into May.  So what happens is the earliest varieties are at full leaf stage (about 75% of the buds) and the later varieties are a few days if now nearly a week behind.  For instance Petite Milo is always the first to bud out and get to full leaf stage, Castel, Foch and Marquette are next followed by Vandal Cliche, Leon Millot, Ravat 34, Acadie Blanc, Evangeline and Triompe D'Alsace - in pretty much that order.

This year as of April 30th, several of the vines are at full leaf stage including Petite Milo, Foch and Marquette.  Castel is mostly there and Leon Millot not far behind,  The Ravat 34 are not yet with full leaf open and the same goes for Acadie Blanc.  The Evangeline and Triompe are the latest to get going and ironically both about the earliest to ripen - both these varieties are great for short seasons with the potential of late frosts.

The other good news is the vines are super healthy, best every for bud and cane survival.  For the main red varieites we have bud survival is probablt 95 % on Foch, Marquette and St. Croix and 85-90% for Castel and Leon Millot.  Bud survival on Ravat, Acadie, Petite Milot and Evangeline are all 85-90%.  Foresure the mild winter is a key here but so is the fertilizer that we've been providing the vines the past few years and in particular the irrigation supplied last year in conjunction to these things.

Acadie Blanc

Evangeline

Castel

Warm Spring - Understatement of the Century

I mentioned in a previous post that this spring has been really warm.  We saw that the vines were already starting to push with scale crack stage in mid-March.  In early April we have seen the vines at the stage just before bud break and for Arrow Lakes Vineyard this is what we usually experience at the end of April.

So I wanted to see just how this April compares to other "Warm" April temperatures and looked through the data that Environment Canada has for the Kelowna station.  I went back to 1899 and found that there is data for each year but that the station location has moved a bit, but not to far from present day Kelowna Airport location.  This has some importance because when comparing year over year you want the same location to mimic the same conditions etc.  (A low spot can attract cold air, closer to the lake has a moderating effect etc etc.)  The differences that noticed from location to location dont appear to be that magnificent.

 So here is what I found.  The normal average for Kelowna Airport is approximately 8.4 celcius for the month of April.  The warmest April on record that I could find since 1899 is in 1934 with an average of 11.4 celcius.  I've put the five warmest Aprils since 1899 in the table.

So has April 2016 been warm?....are you ready for this.....we are on target for an average of 13.0 for April "WOW".  Forget "warm"  this is smokin' hot and consider that the normal May average for Kelowna is approximately 12.9 explains why we are 2-3 weeks ahead. See the table below.

I googled "earliest bud break ever 2016" and it would appear that from California to Kelowna bud break is way ahead and the earliest ever recorded in many locations.

School Presentation and Project

So its hard not to talk about growing grapes when you are passionate about that kind of thing.  So when a teacher asked if I could provide a presentation to the class I was thrilled.

Was a bit of a history lesson (how they use to process grapes in ancient times),

bit of geography (where grapes are grown in Canada),

bit of business and agriculture and grape products.

Best part was showing the students how grape vines grow in a vineyard and how to propegate grape vines.  Each student got to help plant a grape vine cutting and now with any luck these cuttings will root and each student will take a vine home with them at the end of the school year. They are starting to bud out nicely!!

Early Spring Again - Dont Get Your Hopes Up

The vines that I have pruned are bleeding sap like crazy (see photo) so they are well on their way to bud break.  In checking the vines they all look really healthy and cutting into the buds they also look healthy with a high winter survival rate.  The only one that was not great was the pinot noir as it shows lots of fungal pressure on the canes.  This is foresure a carry over from the fungal pressure we experienced on the pinot noir last summer.  It was the mildest winter that we've recorded yet with coldest temp being -15c and as of March 31 it was 22c in the vineyard.  So in all there is a strong likelihood that we'll have allot of healthy buds and flowers this spring.

The down side - seems that there is never the perfect year, there is always something to contend with.  If you get a mild winter, good bud survival and lots of fruit, lots of rain and heat in the summer and you thought it was going to be the best year - then you get fugal pressure.  My concern with the early spring is that the vines push buds too early and then we get a late spring frost that kills them all.  Time will tell. Fingers crossed in the mean time.

Prepping for the New Vines

We are planting 2000 row feet of vines this year, mostly Marechal Foch with some Leon Millot and we spent the last few days staking out the rows and plots for the vines.  Of course if the piece of land we were working on was a perfect square then it would be really easy to measure the row distances from the edge and plot each accordingly - but that's not the case.


Not only is the piece of land odd shaped, (or rather the area that we are planting on is odd shaped) the rows are also at an angle to the property line.  Amazing how the geometry that I though I'd never use after high school comes back when you have to triangulate point to point distances.

In preparing the land we worked it in the year before and again now in the spring so its as free of weeds etc as we can get it.  What we also do is auger a planting hole for each vine about 3 feet deep as this allows for an easy conduit for the vine tap root to get deep into the ground.When the vines come its easy to get them into the ground and we'll add a stake for them to grow up on.  We'll then add the irrigation lines shortly after they are planted. 

Checking for Winter Damage

As of February 16th, this has been the warmest winter we have recorded so far since we started monitoring the temperatures in 2007/2008.  The coldest temperature to date has been -15c one night in December and at the same time we've had alot of wet snow and rain.  The wet snow has caused a bit of damage as it accummuated on some of the vines and weighed them down so much as to pull the wire anchors loose from the posts in some places.

This time of the year is a good time to assess the vitality of the vines and given the warm winter we'd expect them to be pretty good overall.  By now we would usually have experienced the most severe weather and we are now moving into spring.  The potential downfall to a warm winter is that there may have been strong diurnal temperature swings (warm during the day but freezing at night) which can cause damage to the vines.

In checking several of the varieties they appear to be quite healthy both in the canes and the buds.  This picture shows nice green healthy cane. 

We'll now move on to pruning shortly and while for some vineyards pruning in March is rather late pruning we dont want to prune until we can assess how healthy the vines are comming out of winter.  If we prune in January and then in early February we were to get severe cold that kills many of the buds then we may have a very small crop that year.  Even in waiting till early March to prune we will still leave extra buds on the vine in the off chance that there is a late spring frost.  The extra buds gives us a bit of insurance against the potential frost damage.  Once the risk of frost has past we will adjust the canes and crop load accordingly by conducting late "green" pruning in May.

Arrow Lakes White for 2015

We've bottled up the 2015 Arrow Lakes White.  We used the same blending ratios as last year with 70% Evangeline and 30% L'Acadie Blanc.  Both grapes ripened wonderfully in 2015 with the Evangeline at 22 Brix 3.3ph and the L'Acadie ripening to 21 Brix 3.0ph. This is the third year we've been able to make this blend and its nice to see a similar flavour/aroma profile with tropical fruit aroma and flavours  repeating year over year.

Evangeline is very much like Gewurztraminer and has that muscat lineage as it is a cross between Seigerrebe and St. Pepin.  This gives the Evangeline the tropical fruit flavours and aromas.  Evangeline grapes below,

The L'Acadie adds crispness and the usual hints of pear the are found in L'Acadie are elevated with the Evangeline but the citrus side of L'Acadie is still evident even at the 30% ratio.  L'Acadie grapes below;

St. Croix Rose for 2015

The St. Croix grape is a hybrid developed in the USA and produces a dark blue grape with winged clusters about 100-125 grams and 2 clusters per shoot.  It ripens about the same time as Marechal Foch but the beauty of this grape is that it shows varietal flvours early and even makes nice red or rose wine when under-ripe. Its also hardy to about -35 celcius and has outstanding disease resistance and good production. This makes it a nice grape for shorter season areas and for organic growers.  It is one of the most widely grown red varieties in the USA north central states as well as the Quebec wine industry.

This year the grapes did ok.  St. Croix doesn't like our sandy soil so much and generally prefers rich soils. However we had moderate production and ripened the Arrow lakes Vineyard grapes to 18 brix in the vineyard (19 brix after crush) with ph of 2.9.  This is not ideal given the strong heat year we had but the test vines are young still.  Yet, at these parameters the grape makes a really good rose' and that is what we went with.  Typical crush and press and fermentation with 71B yeast.  Back sweetened with sugar to 14g/l and this is a beautiful rose'.  Pear and melon aromas dominate.  Again fresh pear comes through in flavours with pineapple and strawberry hints - I really like this grape and the wine "rose'" it makes... simple goodness.

First Bottling for 2015 - Marechal Foch

This style of wine is more fruit forward with low skin contact. We also added a small amount of oak this year to see what that would produce and it is quite nice.  In fact I'd consider adding a bit more in future years.  The wine has excellent fruity aromas of prune, chocolate, cherry and pretty well balanced all around.  Really happy with the wine.  Its really new and for sure in a few months we'd see the acid come down a bit more although its acceptable now.