We were following Kristen Lowe's advise: Get to know your grape vine supplier. So, on our recent trip to UC Davis, we contacted Mercier Grapevine Nursery and met with Sebastian. Sebastian showed us around their facility which included a callousing room, a cold room, and an area for grafting the rootstock to the scion.
He also showed us how a graft is made.
We went to the vineyard to see where the rootstocks were grown and also saw how they grew the FPS scions. Sebastian picked some FPS chenin grapes for us to taste. Next, we took a trip to Woodland to see the Entav clones. Here we sampled grapes from the Entav Chenin grapevine. We took the clusters back to our hotel, put them in the refrigerator and then did a taste test. The FPS clone had much less flavor, although when we tasted them in the field, we thought they were more flavorful.
Sebastian graciously spent most of the day with us. In fairness, we need to go and see some other nurseries before we decide where we will buy our grapevines, but we learned a lot from Sebastian's tour of the facility and nursery blocks, it was time well worth spending.
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