Grapes Starting to Turn Colour August 18th

Here is Leon Millot on August 18th showing the berries are just at the front end of starting to turn colour.  This photo is from my neighbors yard, who also have Millot growing.  Unless we were to get an early frost this is excellent as in a normal year we'd have another 40-50 days of the growing season left. Can only hope.

We've been really struggling for rain this year.  We''ve only had about 1.5 inches of water since the first week of July, however, its raining today and looks like we're in for at least an inch over the next few days.  Been smoking hot also, and will likely have a 20.5c or 21c average for August - again about as hot as we've ever had it. If we get a normal September/October were in line for 1000-1100 degree days growing.  The vines are showing a lot of water stress, so a few inches is in order forsure.  

Grapes Comming Along Well August 2/13

We had a great month for heat in July average about 20.5 degrees making it about the hottest July in 6 years of recording.  The grapes are really doing well and have filled out, some are moving to bunch closure but are being held back by the lack of moisture.

Here is Leon Millot

Here is Ravat 34

Vineyard Expansion

After five years of growing we have both a picture of the climate, soil, and what vines work and what do not. When we started out we wanted to plant a vineyard with Leon Millot, Castel and Acadie Blanc and we know now that the Castel does not like our sandy soil.  On the other hand the Leon Millot is doing quite well, remarkably so considering we've virtually applied no fertilizer or soil amendments to our 85% nutrient void sandy soil.  Interesting is that I've read several accounts that the Kuhlman varieitiees like the sandy soil, so for reds we've got lots to choose from including the Leon Millot, Foch, Lucy Kuhlman, Joffre, Triompe D'Alsace, and Colmar Precoce Noir.

Two and Three summers ago we opened up the area to the east and the west of the vineyard to see the lay of the land and if it was suitable for grape growing and discovered that we have approximately 4 acres of land suitable for grape growing.  We've also another 1-2 acres on other parts of the property, but for now this area remains forested.

This summer we are beginning to prepare the land we opened up for planting of approximately 0.5 acre of Leon Millot for next year 2014 and perhaps another 0.5 acre for 2015.  We are looking at 4-5 foot spacing and 7 foot between the rows - similar to what we've used in parts of the experimental vineyard (4x7).

We are also liking how the Foch and Acadie is working out and are looking ahead to potential plantings those varieties in the next few years however in all cases we're moving into the use of fertilizers and soil amendments to bring the vines into heavier production earlier.  Presently we are 5 years in with the Leon Millot and are obtaining approximately 200-250 grams of grapes per row foot - target is 1 lb per row foot.

We are beginning to add fertilizer this year in a relatively small amounts but already we've seen the vines take off more than other years. The challenge is now balancing the annual fertilizer amounts giving them just enough to get the enhanced growth and at the right times.  Last fall we added fertilizer to the ground after the vines went dormant, we added some at pruning time and again at bud break.  We'll not add any more until dormancy for this year.

Bloom Time at the Vine House 2013

We had above normal temperatures for May at an average of 13.5c and average temperatures of 15.5c for June and this has pushed all varieties into an early flowering season.  We were a week early for bud break and that has carried over in to at least a week early for flowering as of June 29th.  Last year we had the coolest May June in the past 5 years and flowering didn't occur until the 10th-14th of July.  Having said that after the cool beginning we had normal heat over the summer and an average September and still had the best juice chemistry on the grapes.  So given the earlier start this year that should help things along even more - will just keep the fingers crossed for some mid summer rains.

The vines are looking great, with the Leon Millot and the rest of Kuhlman's doing well (Foch, Lucy Kuhlman, Triompe, Colmar, and Joffre). Petite Millot is also doing well as usual and the Acadie blanc is comming along. The Evangeline is maturing and were getting a few more cluster and the Ravat 34 looks good with nice growth but again you have to stay on top of the the buds as the secondaries over populate the growth very quickly.  Seyval Blanc is finally comming along and the Vandal Cliche and St. Croix is looking good for second year plants.  Castel is still struggling on our soil (which is very sandy) and Regent (winter die back) just doesn't perform at our location, nor does the blattner varieties, cabernet Foch (grapes don't mature) and cab-Libre (grapes don't mature, winter die back).

Here are the various flowing picture as of June 29th.
Leon Millot

Foch

Triompe D'Alsas

L'Acadie Blanc

 

Evangeline (KW96-2)

Ravat 34

Bud Break 2013

The warm winter has been followed with a warm May, at least fro the first two weeks that have averaged about 13.5c.  With the warm weather we've got bud break on some varieties at least a week ahead of normal. We have also been able to see what varieties are looking well going forward in to bloom and what varieties don't seem to do well at our site.  Again Petite Milo is most advanced, followed by Lucy Kuhlman, Acadie, Foch, Leon Millot, and Colmar.  The Ravat is slower to emerge and it appears that it is just the way this vine grows and probably gets this from its Chardonnay parentage.

The varieties that are doing well are Leon Millot, Ravat 34, Acadie Blanc, Evangeline, Lucy Kuhlman, Marechal Foch.  St. Croix and Vandal Cliché look like they are going to be good but are only into year two.  The varieties that were not sure about yet are Marquette, Castel, Joffre, Triomphe, Baltica, Seyval Blanc, Colmar Precoce Noir.  The varieites that are not performing well are Regent, Zweigelt and Pinot Noir.  We also had Agria a few years back but it performed poorly - a lot like Regent.

Here are some of the varieties as of May 19th, 2013.

Ravat 34 (2 clusters|) compare to last year this time http://houseofvines.blogspot.ca/2012_05_01_archive.html

Petite Milo (2 clusters) compare to last year this time http://houseofvines.blogspot.ca/2012_05_01_archive.html

Acadie Blanc (3 clusters)

Evangeline (1 cluster)

Colmar Precoce Noir (2 clusters)

Leon Millot (1 cluster here, usually has 2 clusters)

                              If we get by the next week without a frost were are well on our way.

Spring Pruning - Vine Health 2013

Did the first round of pruning in early April this year - should have been in March at the latest but time and weather were a factor.  Remarkably we haven't had any snow on the ground in the vineyard since the early part of March and already the weeds are coming up and making a go of it.  We also had a stretch of warm weather at the end of March where the day time highs were touching 20 c.  

So it should not have been to much of a surprise that when I did the pruning that the canes were bleeding already.  I checked the data logger and this has been the warmest winter we've had since we started taking winter temperatures.  The coldest weather we had was -18 one night and there have been a lot of obvious freeze thaw events when day time temperatures exceeded 5 to 10 c and night time then would dip down to between -5 and -10.  We also had very little snow with barely 2 feet of cover through most of the snow pack season.

The freeze thaw events and the vine stress experienced by some vines last summer have combined to cause significant damage to the canes of some varieties.  Most notably the Colmar and Triomphe suffered the greatest cane and bud damage.  Interesting they are from the same parental cross.  In the same row the Lucy Kuhlman and Marechal Foch suffered less with the Foch doing better between the two.  The winter should not have been very hard on the Foch but the water stress leading into winter did not allow the vines to prepare for winter very well.

Having said that virtually all other varieties have come out from the winter in good to great shape.  The Ravat 34 again is tremendous and the Leon Millot has the best survival rates that I've seen since I planted them. 

Castel looks good and was already into scale crack.  The Acadie, Petite Milot and Evangeline also look good and the Marquette and St. Croix were superb.  On the other hand the Vandal Cliché has died back to the ground on many of the vines and yet this vine is supposed to be hardy to -35c and my vines are young.  Again, I expect the freeze thaw cycles may have had a big effect on this variety also.

Marechal Joffre again had some die back along with Regent, Seyval Blanc, Pinot Noir and Zweigelt but again these varieties had varying degrees of stress going into the fall.

The oldest of the vines, the Ravat and Leon Millot did excellent and they are now 5 years old with well developed root systems and this effect on their winter survival is evident.  As the other vines mature I expect the winter survival rates will improve.

With any luck we'll have bud break the 3rd week of May (normal) and no late spring frosts.  In any event we double prune and have left a little over double the bud count for the vines.  If we do experience a late frost, then hopefully we'll have enough remaining buds to produce a decent crop and otherwise well prune back the rest of the buds 1-2 weeks after bud break.

Ravat 34 wine - vintage 2012

We have had some success with the Ravat 34 grape at our location over the past 4 years.  Year over year this variety has produced well.  It sets fruit well each year except the 2012 year where we had the extreme high temperatures during flowering.   Generally speaking this variety struggles to exceed 19-20 brix and it is strong, vigourous and disease free - no spray required at our site.  At our location, the grape needs about another week of warm weather to ripen better than what we usually can produce however, even at 14-15 brix this variety already shows strong varietal flavour.  Under 15 brix there is some slight herbaceousness - green pepper, but very slight.  More ravat info here

Usually when we pick this variety we find that the must brix is at least 1 brix higher than the brix on the vine.  This year when harvested the Ravat 34 in early October it was showing about 14.5 brix on the vine but in the tank the brix was nearly 16.  The must also showed 1.1g/ltr T.A and the ph 3.0.

The grapes were crushed and pressed, 25ppm potasium MBS added, chaptalized to 20.5 brix from 16 brix, and fermented with KV yeast until dry at about 22 degrees celcius.  After about 10 days primary fermentation had nearly slowed and the wine was transfered from the fermentation vat into a carboy to finish secondary fermentation again at 22 degrees celcius.  The secondary fermentation took another 10 days and the wine was racked and another 25 ppm potassium MBS added. 

The wine cleared quite fast and it was cold stablized for 4 weeks at temperatures between 0 and -6 celcius and significant tartaric acid crystals precipitated out of the wine.

In the glass, the wine is very nice, honey dew and slight pear aromas, clean tasting, lemon grass with very very slight herbaceousness.  Of the most common white wines in production it most closely resembles Sauvignon blanc.  This is somewhat at odds with it's parentage which is Chardonnay x Berliandi.  What ever the case this is a really nice wine. 

2012 Grape Harvest

We had a very interesting year this year starting out with a normal May and bud break around the 18-20th of May.  We had lots of moisture throughout May and June, way above average and probably about 12 inches by early July.

June was cold though, way below normal and stunted the vines so that the flowering didn`t happen until nearly the middle of July.  Most varieties were in mid-bloom stages by about the 12th-13th of July, which is about 5-7 days later than normal.  just as the vines were flowering we experienced record breaking heat and had 9 days of 35-37c heat, and the month was the second warmest July we have recorded at 20.3c average.  It appears that the extreme temperatures during flowering caused some stress to the vines at this delicate stage and the flower clusters on all varieties did not have good berry set. 

August was the warmest August we`ve recorded yet at 19.6c average and no rain fall at all and we had a few days in the 37c range.  September was also warmer than normal at 14.6c average but we had a 8 day stretch in mid month of 26-30c temperatures which helped with the ripening.  It finally rained on the 8th and 9th of September and we received about 1.5-2 inches, which was enough to help out the heat stressed vines and just in time.

We harvested on October 3, as we had a -3.5c frost and that ended the season.  Canes on most varieties had hardened off quite well by then.

The grapes were few by volume but the juice chemistry numbers were better than expected (see Grape Harvest Data pages).  Some of the highlights were the Leon Millot that read 19.7 brix in the vineyard and when crushed the juice was 20.5 brix and 3.1ph.  The Petite Millot also stood out and is consistently putting up good numbers, this year at 19.5 brix in the field and 20 brix after crush.  The Colmar Precoce Noir also ripened to 20 brix in the filed and 21 brix after crush and was very ripe.

We made some changes in the vineyard this year, one we went to a more conventional netting that is black and has virtually no shading effect.  The netting we had been using was white and had approximtely 12-16% shading.  While relatively small shading effect, the accumulation over a week or a month could reduce the ripening of the grapes.  The other change that proved very important was the early September removal of the large ponderosa pine that was on the south west corner of the vine (see previous blog).  While the shading effect of the tree  was held to only the south west corner of the vineyard during May-August, by September the sun is low enough in the sky that the tree eventually shades parts of the entire vineyard over much of the day.  It appears that removing the tree changed the heat accumulation for the month dramatically.  If we compare the heat accumulation over the last 5 years for Kelowna and our vineyard, historically on average we have accumulated about 20 DDG (10c base) less than Kelowna in September.  However, without the tree and shading we were only 4 DDG less than Kelowna for the month - that is a dramatic change for us.

We also learned this year that while the mid row cover crop of clover is helping generate plant matter and nutrients for the soil and vines, it draws too much moisture from the soil that is desperately needed by the vines - especially in the droughty periods.  For our sandy soil and dry land farming practices we will be reducing the width of the between row cover to just a few feet wide in years to come.

Big Tree Comes Down

 

We had the massive Ponderosa Pine that was located on the south west corner of the vineyard.  We had been wanting to take this tree down for some time as it is leaning south and seems to bee leaning more and more each year.  If it were to come down it would happen in a big storm and likely take out the power lines for everyone up the road from us.  So we had Loki Tree removal come to the property and they took it down in sections.  They did and excellent job, and cut the trunk into 8-10 foot lengths.  Great service from Loki and they are very reasonable in their price and serve much of the West Kootenay region check out them through the link to their web site in links section.

 

We're also lucky to have such great neighbors who came along with his skid steer and moved away all the trunck pieces and cleaned up the tree linbs, piling them into a big burn pile for later in the winter. 

 

While we new the the tree needed to come down, we also knew it shaded the south west corner of the vineyard and lowers the head accumulations at that point.  however, in the fall, during the ripening period when the sun is lower in the sky the tree shades the entire vineyard as the shadow moves in relation to the sun.

 

What we didn't realize was how much that changes the ripening of the grapes until this year.  The tree came down when we were just putting the bird nets up (Sept 7-8th).  over the next month we had excellent heat in September and this was maximized by not having the tree to block the sun. 

 

Sad to see the tree go as it was a beautiful old tree (about 100 years based on the rings) but we're glad it doesn 't pose a danger anymore and happy with the extra heat in the vineyard.

 

Mid-Summer update

What a bizarr year so far, the coolest June we've recorded at 14.2c average and about 1 to 1.5 degrees below our expected June average of about 15.7c.  Looking to Kelowna Airport similar condiitons for them as they recorded 14.7 for June way below their normal average of 16.3c for the month.

The grapes were way behind going into July and apparently the whole region is facing this as one grower I spoke to in Enderby (just noth of Kelowna) said they were 1-2 weeks behind normal vine and fruit tree development. 

This means we were expecting flowering in mid-July and for our site this is a difficult situation to manage simply in trying to ripen the grapes in the days we have left before fall frost which usually comes along the around October 7th.  So if this holds true then simple math tells us we've got about 85 days to ripen the grapes which is barely enough for the earliest varieties. 

Well July turned it all around and we had about the hottest July we've recorded at our site comming in at 20.15c average.  In fact from July 9th to 17th the day time highes we're between 34c and 36.7c, no doubt it can get hot on the ridge.  We've also had alot of rain, several inches over the month so we've already recorded about 10-12 inches of rain in the year.  So while the temperature has been hot, we're not drying out.

However, the timing of the heat wave was right when the vines were in flowering stage and the heat caused problems with the fruit set.  This is called coulure or shatter and comes from extremes in heat or cold or rain during flowering and can also be related to deficient vine nutition.  The condition is pretty much universal in varrying degrees over all 22 varieities we're testing - see pictures of the Ravat 34 below.

Coulure brings with it its own challenges now as the remaining grapes tend to be smaller and do not accumulate sugar like they are suppose to.  So what we'll have left for grapes doesn't look promising for this year but we'll see - we've got a love-hate relationship with mother nature these days.