Harvest at Saltwater Farm

This past Monday, we went to help our friend, Dave at Saltwater Farm, which is about a mile from where we live, harvest his grapes. It was a cool day, perfect for grape harvest. We saw Dave busy at work processing the already harvested fruit.
Dave first gave us a little peak at the fermenting Pinot Noir under the tarp then, he showed us the press that is a recent addition to Saltwater Farm. It is a small world. The press came from Black Ankle Vineyards!

We then went to the vineyard and joined 14 other people who were busy picking the Chardonnay. In no time, all of the rows of Chardonnay were picked!

Why Does a Grape Cane Shred Its Bark

When we are walking in the vineyard, my husband and I often come across vines that are sloughing off their outer bark in shreds. We wondered if this was good or bad. I thought it was okay because somewhere I read that the sloughing off of the outer bark is a sign of older wood. I did some online research and came across the answer and followed it into the rabbit hole as I searched for more information.
While reading the online literature on the periderm, I came across words such as phellogen, phellem and phelloderm and things became a bit confusing. I understand best when I can see a diagram so I searched the Internet and the offerings were few until I came across Theoretical Aspects of Vascular Anatomy with all the illustrations that I could possibly wish for! Take a look at this beautiful illustration of the cross section of a grape shoot:¹

The vascular cambium, also simply called cambium is where all the action takes place. The cambium consists of a single layer of cells which produces xylem cells to the inside and phloem cells to the outside. Every year, the cambium produces new phloem and xylem and adds to the girth the grape cane.
Once a year, some cells in the outer layer of the phloem becomes meristematic and regains the ability to produce new cells and growth. This meristematic growth produces the cork cambium which in turn produces a layer of new cork cells that becomes impregnated with a waxy substance cutting off the water supply to the cork cells and older phloem.

Cork cells die after they reach full size and then they become impervious to water. When fully formed, the periderm or what we know as the bark seals off the inner dehydrating cells from the once green outer cortex, which then dies and turns brown.
This periderm is made up of the:

• Cork cambium/(phellogen)
• Cork/phellem is produced towards the outside
• "Cork-skin"/phelloderm is produced on the inside

Each year, new meristematic growth that produces the cork cambium (phellogen) adds to the accumulated periderm of previous years and this accumulation is what causes the bark to slough off!
References:
1. Theoretical Aspects of Vascular Anatomy
2. Tim Martinson, Assessing Winter Cold Injury of Grape Canes and Trunks, Cornell University, 2011.
3. Edward W. Hellman, Grapevine Structure and Function.
4. Michael G. Mullins, ‎Alain Bouquet, ‎Larry E. Williams, Biology of the Grapevine, pg. 53.

Autumn Sightings: Pink Leafhopper

We were closing in on pounding the 1000th line post in the vineyard. When we do this task, I drive our tractor and work the hydraulics (the easier job) and my husband positions the line post and we pound it into the soil. We have gotten into a very good rhythm and sometimes it can take us as little as 2 minutes for the process of pounding one post and moving to the next location.
It was a somewhat cool day and the warmest place to be is on a tractor when the hydraulics are being operated. I revel in the heat generated from this activity because it keeps me comfortably warm. So, it was no wonder that this little insect chose the tire to find a little respite from the cold. I mentally debated the time it would take to get a photo of this leaf hopper, but the contrast of the pink and the blue of the Landini Mistral was too good to pass up. So, in between working the hydraulics for our Atlas Copco post pounder, I whipped out the camera that I carry in my overall pocket and started taking some photos. Meanwhile, my husband who was positioning the line post was telling me to "Focus! focus!" When we got home and I showed him the photos of this tiny but beautiful vineyard visitor, he forgave me.

Looking online, I was able to identify this pink leafhopper as a member of Gyponana gladia, or also possibly Gyponana octolineata. You might ask, "What does this have to do with grape growing" and my answer would be, "Not much", but then working in a vineyard is all about observation and sometimes the bonus of seeing amazing creatures!
Reference:
1. American Insects, Gyponana gladia.

Hoboware Temperature Loggers Deployed

Yesterday, we had every intention to pound more line posts but when we reached the vineyard, the wind was blowing strongly enough so that our guide line was affected, so we went to plan B. We deployed our Onset Date Loggers that will monitor the temperature in the vineyard. We would have, could have, should have been monitoring our temperature way before planting our vines so that we would be aware of temperature variations on our 4.5 acre plot, but at least we have gotten around to it. So, we deployed them in 3 locations:

Logger number 1 is located at the lowest point in the vineyard in the northeast corner. Logger number 2 is located on the west edge of the vineyard and logger number 3 is located on the south front portion of the vineyard.
Prior to deploying the loggers in the vineyard, we collected data for 20 days so once the loggers were positioned we were able to test the ability to download data to the shuttle. The transfer of 20 days of temperature collection didn't take very long and when we brought the data shuttle back home, we were able to retrieve the information from the temperature loggers.

Our deployment of the temperature loggers were just in time. This morning, when I woke up, I observed the first frost on the windshield of my car!

Cross Section of a One Year Old Grape Shoot

Yesterday, in between pounding posts (yes, we're still at it!) I took pictures of one of our grape shoots that had developed its protective periderm to see what the cross section of a one year old grape shoot should look like. Then, I went on line to the Cornell University Fruit Website and found a very good image of the cross section of a one year old shoot which was labeled.

The process of maturation of a one year old grape shoot begins shortly after veraison when the shoot begins to develop its periderm. After the periderm has formed, the one year old shoot is referred to as a cane.

References:
1. Tim Martinson, Assessing Winter Cold Injury of Grape Canes and Trunks, Cornell University, 2011.
2. Edward W. Hellman, Grapevine Structure and Function.

How Many Grapes Does It Take to Make a Bottle of Wine

Last night, on the way home from working in our vineyard, my husband and I discussed how many grapes it would take to make a bottle of wine. At the moment, this is entirely theoretical because although we have a vineyard, we only have 500 survivors from our devastating winter of 2013, but it is still a good mental exercise. I cited Lucie Morton, who wrote the book Winegrowing in Eastern America which included this illustration:

When we discuss this question, my husband always refers to the linear feet of fruiting wire rather than the grapevine as the unit of measure. It would really be nice to know how many cases each row of vines can produce so today, I sat down to do some calculations.
If we take into account, my husband's insistence that the calculation must be based on the linear feet of fruiting wire, the following assumptions will be made: On average, there is a shoot every 4 inches or a fist's width apart and on average, each shoot produces 2 clusters of grapes. So, for our 760 linear feet, we will have approximately 2280 shoots or 4560 clusters of grapes.¹ I also assumed that each cluster of grapes was approximately 0.2 pounds based on information I found at the Cornell University website.² So, the calculation based on the linear feet of fruiting wire gives us this:

In back calculating, the above assumption gives us 3.75 tons per acre, which is about where we want to be when we are in production.

References:
1. Ben Beale, Grape Canopy Management, University of Maryland Extension.
2. Estimating and Adjusting Crop Weight in Finger Lakes Vineyards.
3. Mark Chien, Need Quality? Try Canopy and Fruit Zone Management Vermont and New Hampshire, Penn State Cooperative Extension.

White Wine Production Theory and Practice

Recently, I was surfing the internet and found a really good presentation on making white wine called Practical White Wine Production Theory and Practice given by Tim Donahue and Sabrina Lueck. The presenters advocate knowing the chemistry and biology of the juice that you are working with. The 63 slides in this presentation begins with an explanation of pH, TA, Brix and YAN.
I found the following slide to be a great summary of what to look out for as white wine grapes get transformed from juice to wine:

I found an embed button on the slide deck:

Practical White Wine Production: Theory and Practice from Sabrina Lueck

Onset HOBOware Temperature Logger

It's been raining for 3 days now and this has given us a nice reprieve from working in the vineyard. However, that doesn't mean that all work related to our vineyard comes to a halt. Recently, my husband bought 3 temperature data loggers from Onset to put in our vineyard so that we can more accurately monitor the temperature in the coming year. When we received the software installation CD and the data loggers, my husband asked me to install the software and configure and test the loggers. Okay, this was right up my alley because in a previous life, I used to install computational software and manage computer hardware. I read the little installation manual and then got ready to configure the loggers.

The installation, complete with pictures was not as intuitive as I had hoped it would be but somehow I muddled through it and then configured the loggers to do the overnight test in 3 different locations in our home. When I got ready to download the data, I was lost. Then, my husband found this YouTube video to help me:

It turns out that the data shuttle must be initiated by the computer while the software is up and running. Then the shuttle will be able to download the data collected by the logger. When the data have been downloaded to the shuttle, the shuttle will reinitialize the logger and restart the logging. Now, the shuttle has all of the data which can then be transferred to the computer. At this point, the shuttle is called a base station.
The beauty of this is that the initialized shuttle can be taken to the vineyard, sans computer and the data can be transferred to this handy device. I've set the loggers to collect a data point once every 10 minutes so that means that I can collect data for 44 days without having to download it from the loggers. But before deployment, one more test in the home to ensure that I really understand what is going on!