Smokey Conditions During Netting 2018

So we got the nets out in the past few days and just in time as some of the grapes (Leon Millot and Evangeline) are ripening fast. The birds took some of the early Leon Millot and the wasps are going after the Evangeline. Super smokey with the forest fires.

We netted up just over an acre of vines with the new bird netting and it went quite fast. The reds are turning and whites softening.

Mid Summer Update 2018

So it's mid summer and we have a good idea of crop load and likely outcomes in terms of how much grapes we can expect.

Most varieties are doing well and we haven't needed much water this year. Wouldn't say were too much ahead ...it's pretty much a normal year.

The Foch is looking good but we didn't get as much production off the younger vines as anticipated. Triompe D'Alsace is also looking good. Ravat 34 is great again and Evangeline is looking good too. Netting will begin in a few weeks.
Here is Ravat 34

Evangeline

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.

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

Great Spring Growth 2018

It would appear that environment Canada was right on the money with their long term weather prediction for early summer heat. It was cold and snowy right up until the end of April, and then we had about 2 weeks of spring temperatures and lots of melting, and then some great heat that brought on bud break and that continued into early June.

So normally we would have good growth, possibly we would have between 5 to 7 leaves of growth in normal years. We are around 7 leaves in most varieties and some like Castel and Foch are already starting to flower. Others like Acadia Blanc and Seyval are slower and around 5 leaves of growth. So we are on target if not a week+ ahead of normal as we usually flower the last week of June.

Foch, Evangeline both look good and as usual Ravat 34 is great. Hoping for some heat for the next 2 weeks for good conditions during flowering. Here is what they look like now;
Marechal Foch

Castel

Triompe D'Alsace

Ravat 34

Evangeline

Arrow Lake White wine wins Gold Medal

Wow...we just found out that our Arrow Lakes White wine won a Gold Madal at the Winemaker International Ameteur Wine competition in Vermont, USA. We are really pleased with this as this is the worlds largest ameteur wine competition and a great follow up to the Gold medal our Marechal Foch won last year.

We submitted our 2016 vintage as we wanted to see what the jugment would be on a 2 year old bottle. This is a really nice wine when it is new and fresh and we have found it holds these qualities.

We blogged about the 2016 Arrow Lakes White wine, click here to read more about it. http://houseofvines.blogspot.ca/2017/03/arrow-lakes-white-for-2016.html

Bud Break 2018

I always am excited at this time of year to see how the vines are doing and as the buds push you get the first sense of what the season could be. One thing we did this year was prune a lot of the varieties to 4 bud spurs rather than long canes. The droughty summer last year was so hot and dry we suspected the buds further up the cane would not have been as well developed or as fruitful or that we may get more cane dieback than usual. As it turns out it wasn' that bad but we did get more cane dieback.

As the buds push out further and expose the tiny flower clusters you get a further sense of the fruit potential for the year and can start to vision the green pruning we may need to do to adjust the crop load. So far things look mostly good. Unfortunately we may have lost some of the new vines planted last summer to the intense heat and then the winters crushing snow the ripped many young trunks off their trellis canes. Great thing about own rooted vines vs grafted is even if the vine above the soil gets damaged..the roots can send up a new cane and we can train those up the trellis.

So here are some of the vines budding out so far.

Ravat 34 with long spurs in the back ground

Evangeline with flower clusters emerging and showing a secondary bud at the bottom (This secondary will come off in the green pruning we do)

New Vines - L'Acadie Blanc

Like everything else this spring we are late planting the latest truanch of vines. Finally we are getting the nice weather and we can get the vines in the ground.

It was a beautiful day for planting and you can see the latest rows planted in the bottom right corner of the photo.

The new vines are L'Acadie Blanc. These vines were created in Canada, are widely grown in Nova Scotia, and are fungal resistant and cold hardy. It produces a beautiful white wine that can be made in various styles.

In a few years these will be mature and producing beautifully.

School Horticulture Science Presentation

So one of the things we really like to do is to pass what ever knowledge we've learned or gained by experience over the years. We have been doing presentations on our version of sustainable vineyard practices for a few years now. Gardening clubs, Horticulture Societies and schools are often calling seeking presentations and this past week we were able to entertain presentations for a local school in assisting them with their horticulture science module for their junior high school students.

Arrow Lakes Vineyard has not used pesticides or herbicide in the 10 years of operation. We employ particular vineyard management practices that we don't foresee ever having to use these things and these practices are part of the presentation. We also use minimal water that we call sustenance watering. Its really only providing water to the vines to ensure they stay alive and healthy as the rest of the water needs come from rainfall. Weed free rows ensure that all the rain that falls goes exclusively to the vines and is not utilized by mid-row grass or weeds. Our water is also pumped by solar power or gravity fed so we have no power requirements to deliver the water to the vines.  This is just some of the stuff we talk about in a very practical sense using the real world example of Arrow Lakes Vineyard.

We follow this up with showing the students how to grow grape vines from cuttings and each student gets to start their own cutting and try to grow it into a grape vines. Hopefully they will all get to take a vine home to plant at the end of the school year in June!

The energy and enthusiasm of the students and teachers is great, and it surrounds the understanding of our impact on the earth in everything we do on it. How what we put on our crops has a much wider impact than the soil immediately where the inputs are dispersed is top of mind for these students. The consciousness they have around water conservation and pollution is exceptional and really positive to see. I credit the students for their understanding and mindfulness of these issues and their teacher for obviously making these significant learning points long before I came along to present.

Well done!

So Much Snow and Cold Too

Amazing to see the difference year over year. We would normally have done all our pruning by now but the snow pack is unbelievable this year and much of the vines are under snow still. Environment Cnada says there is 140% more snow than normal in the Kootenay snow pack on the top of the mountains and for sure we see that in the vineyard. 

Not only that it has been much cooler than normal.  Normal March temperatures are about 3.5c average but we had 2 this year so while we have had so much more snow we are not getting any heat to melt it away.  Environment Canada says expect a cool spring as well for the next few monthes.

Here is a photo from March 25 2016 when we were preparing the vineyard for new vines and a photo of the same area this year March 29, 2018. Most of the second year vines can not even be seen under 2.5-3 feet of snow that is still out there.