Jim Thompson: Vineyard Manager at Martha Clara

On our trip to Long Island, we met with Jim Thompson, the vineyard manager at Martha Clara. Jim is one of the organizers of the Long Island Sustainable Winegrowers. Jim started managing vineyards and practicing viticulture in Traverse City, Michigan. Jim took us around the 100 acres that he oversees and explained the various tests that were being conducted in the vineyard by Alice Wise, Viticulturalist and Education Specialist for the Cornell Cooperative Extension of Suffolk County, at the Long Island Horticultural Research & Extension Center in Riverhead.

Jim drove us around the extensive vineyard, pointing out where some Merlot vines were converted to Sauvignon blanc. They brought out experts from California to do the chip budding in the field and the results were some amazing growth of the new shoots this year. There are several barns in the vineyard and in one barn was a Lipco sprayer that they use. It was huge! There is definitely a difference in scale of equipment between a 100 acre vineyard and the 4.5 acre vineyard that we have. One of the things that Jim said was indispensable was the movable catch wires that Martha Clara uses to position the grape shoots. (My ears perked up!) Jim said with movable catch wires, the vineyard crew can do the 700 miles of wires in 3 days! (In our vineyard, we will have about 6 miles of catch wires.) In this photo, Jim is explaining how the catch wires are tethered to the end post. Since we also plan to do movable catch wires, it was really instructive for us to see how it is done. We took a short break with Jim to have lunch at Love Lane Kitchen and then back to Martha Clara to finish up the day with a wine tasting. We thoroughly enjoyed the on site education from Jim.