Installing Our Trellis System

On July 25th, we pounded in the last of our line posts and it felt to us as if we had pounded in the golden spike. Just as a reminder, here we were in November 25, 2013 with all of our trellis material in hand:

That photo is from a blogpost called More Things to Do: Trellis Installation.
One thing that we learned is that it takes a long time to install the trellising system. Another thing that we learned is our trellis system is especially critical because our tall grafted vines grow quickly and need support shortly after they are planted. This is the breakdown of what we did and how long it took us (us = two people, a tractor and a trailer). A generous loan of the post pounder and the auger from the Holmbergs, facilitated the installation of our black locusts endposts and the timely help of our friends all contributed to getting this job done.

Task	Time Elapsed	Actual Days worked
Line Post Installation (1332 line posts)	May 12, 2014 - June 25, 2015	May 2014: 12,13,14,17,18,19,20,22,23,25 June 2014: 2,3 August 2014: 4, 5, 9,10,11,12 September 2014: 29 October 2014: 3,5,6,10,12 (half way through) 13(17 more rows to go) 14,15,17,18,20,21 (10 more rows to go) June 2015: 10,11,12,16,17,18,22,24,25 finis!
Endposts (72 end posts)	November 2014	November 2014: 11,12,13,14,15,16,18(north end) 19,20,21,23,25,28,29(south end)
Earth anchors (72 earth anchors)	December 2014	December 2014: 14,15,16,17,18(south then north field),19,21

Work on our trellis continued in 2015 as we used the G-Pak to secure our endposts to our earth anchors. My husband was able to do this task in 2-3 days. Getting the appropriate spinning jenny makes Installing Our Fruiting Wire one of the simpler tasks in the trellis installation. So, on June 25th, we breathe a sigh of relief and celebrated by taking a selfie with the last line post, our version of the golden spike.

The Sight of One Flower Blooming

We went to the vineyard on Wednesday, June 17 and while checking up on our vines, we saw this one grape flower in bloom! It was on a Chardonnay plant. Excitedly, we checked our other plants, the Chenin Blanc and the Auxerrois, but it was only on this one Chardonnay that the flower had blossomed.
The grape flower in bloom is something of an anomaly because the grape flower bud is formed with a calyptra or cap which consists of the grape flower petals. The grape flower is a perfect flower, meaning that they have both the female (stigma) and male (stamen) parts and can self pollinate. This calyptra covers the reproductive organs of the grape flower. When the grape flower "blooms", the calyptra falls off. After seeing this one grape flower, I looked every day to see if our other grape flower buds were blooming.
When they pop, they pop at once. On Saturday, June 20, we saw nothing and then on Monday, June 22, many of the flowers were in bloom. All of our varieties, Auxerrois, Chenin Blanc and Chardonnay were in bloom, so I took photos and photos and photos and among the ones I took, I found the blossoms in various stages of shedding their calyptra.

Between Saturday when we saw no flowers in bloom and Monday, when we saw many flowers in bloom, there was a rain event in our area which brought us 3/4-inches of rain. Rain can have a detrimental effect on fruitset due to the following reasons:

• Temperature is an important factor in germination and growth of the pollen tube. Fruitset is greatly reduced when temperatures fall below 65^oF or exceed 100^oF
• Cold temperatures, rainfall or high humidity are often associated with incomplete detachment of the calyptras leading to reduced fruitset
• Rain can dilute the stigmatic fluid and interfere with germination of the pollen grains

We'll keep these things in mind as our season unfolds. So far, it has been an unusually cool summer.
References:
1. 1. Nick K. Dokoozlian, Grape Berry Growth and Development.

Installing Our Fruiting Wire

Our vines have been growing, growing, growing, so it was time to install our fruiting wire. With almost all of the lineposts in, we put the spinning jenny in the back of our trailer and secured one end of the wire on the endpost. My husband and I took turns driving the tractor as one of us strung the line along the linepost. It took us 2 days to string the fruiting wire on the lineposts. Now that we are down to the last few rows of line posts to pound, after we finish a row, we string the fruiting wire on the newly installed lineposts.

The plants, mainly Chenin Blanc that had a decent cane from the previous year, were already sending out healthy looking shoots. Many of the shoots have flower clusters and these are the plants that concerned us and motivated us to string our fruiting wire. Happy vine, puts us on cloud nine!

Summer Lane Installment 4: A Visit to Grgich Winery

Being Americans and looking for a touchstone of comparison for Croatian wines, where else would we go next, but to Grgic in Trstnik. Grgic was started in 1996 by the famous wine producer Croatian born and educated 'Mike' Grgich, who in 1977 founded Grgich Hills Estate in Rutherford CA. By starting the vineyard back in his home country, he set out to show the potential of Croatian wine and the winery makes two wines one each from autochthonous varieties, Plavac Mali and Pošip. The facilities are perched on a knoll at the mouth of the village bay and vineyards run up a steep hillside behind. The red wine is a 50/50 blend of grapes from these vines and vines in Dingač, the district known for its warmth and southern exposure just a little farther out on the peninsula. The Pošip grapes for the white wine come from the adjacent island of Korčula. The 2013 Pošip is a well integrated and balanced with grapefruit scents and flavors. Gladly, we sampled two bottles of the Plavac Mali—one that had been open since the previous night and one that had just been opened. If our testing was representative, aeration is strongly recommended to gain fuller more accessible flavors. The wine is a heavy red with lots of tannin, a nose of smoke, earth, leather, clove, dark chocolate and coffee and flavors of chocolate and dark fruits. Grgich Hills Estate imports the Plavac Mali and sells it at their tasting rooms in CA.

Summer Lane Installment 3: A Visit to Milos Winery

This is the third of Summer Lane's contribution to this blog. The blogposts are from her recent trip to Croatia and her wine tasting adventures while she was there. Read her First Installment: A Sampling of Wine from the Coastal Area of Southern Croatia June, 2015 and her Second Installment: A Visit to Tomic Winery. In today's blog, Summer will take us to Milos winery.
The Pelješac peninsula, just north of Dubrovnik, is recognized as a source of some of the best Croatian red wines, essentially all of Plavac Mali. The first winery visit is Milos, which was one of the first private wineries established in Croatia after the fall of communism in Yugoslavia and currently manages about 35 acres with vines as old as 35 years. They age their wine in old oak barrels to minimize the oak transfer and fermentation is driven by naturally available yeasts. Blue Danube is their importer to the US. We tasted 5 wines, though that is not their complete selection. The rosé is a light dry wine with notes of honey, strawberries, and peach skin and is intended to be consumed young. The 2010 quality red of Plavac Mali has a pepper, dark cherry, aromatic herb nose and tastes of black pepper, dark cherry and tart tannins. The premium quality Stagnum Plavac Mali from 2006 had a smokey nose of overripe dark fruit and flavors of dark fruit, peppers, leather, cinnamon and cloves, and an edge of bitterness. The last wine at this location was the semi-sweet red which had significant structure and balance and was not really sweet, so much as forward in its dark cherry fruit. We noted that the heavier richer red wines deserved ample time to breathe, and this was confirmed at our next winery. Check out: Milos Winery.

Summer Lane Installment 2: A Visit to Tomic Winery

This is the second of Summer Lane's contribution to this blog. Read her First Installment: A Sampling of Wine from the Coastal Area of Southern Croatia June, 2015. In today's blog, Summer will take us to Tomic winery.
The three well-known and reputed wineries we visited were Tomic, Milos and Grgic. Tomic has beautiful facilities near the town of Jelsa on the island of Hvar. Their wine selection is significant given the small total production and winery staff. Our tasting included 5 wines, ranging from the table white to their premium quality large format red, and small plates of carefully prepared smoked swordfish, cured meat, and Croatian cheese slices, olives and tender anchovies.
The tasting room was created in the same stone and style as the 3rd century AD Roman emperor Diocletian's Palace cellars in Split, Croatia—the perfect ambiance.
The SV Klement, named for the largest island in the Pakleni island chain west of Hvar, where the Pošip grapes were grown, was crisp and balanced with a nose of citrus and apple blossom and tastes and tart mouth feel of grapefruit.
The second white was a crisp, clean 50/50 blend of Pošip and Bogdanuša with a lightly floral and citrus nose and delicate flavors of lemon, grapefruit, and pineapple.
Moving to red, we had a 2009 Caplar, a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon and Plavac Mali, aged 6 months in oak and 5 years in stainless steel. It had a pleasant nose of cherry, leather, and smoke, and was dry with flavors of dark cherry and plum.
The 2009 Plavac Mali, which follows in the footsteps of their award winning 2007, had a musty organic nose and rounded inviting flavors of dark cherry, plum and leather.
The 2011 Valinki is Plavac Mali, unfiltered and aged 18 mo in Croatian oak and 2-3 years in stainless steel. It is deep red with a nose of chocolate covered cherries, strawberries, wild herbs, and ocean scents and flavors of chocolate and plum skins. It retails only in a large format bottle. Unfortunately, due to the modest production, Tomic wine is not exported to the United Stated, but does appear in stores and restaurant wine lists in Croatia.

See the blog and/or Facebook site for a history of Hvar wine and news on wine production in the area: Tomic Wine and Tomic Facebook

A Sampling of Wine from the Coastal Area of Southern Croatia June, 2015---First Installment

A new addition to this blog is the recruitment of Guest Contributors who have visited wineries in far flung locations. The first guest contributor is Summer Lane who has had a 35 year career in veterinary medicine and pharmaceuticals and a lifetime of travel. She is a sports, food and wine enthusiast. This is her first guest contribution to this blog.
After hearing of my plans to go sailing along the coast of Dalmatia, my friend and enologist recruited me to be a guest contributor to her wine blog. Though I have been discovering wine for over 20 years, there is so much to know about varietals, regions, vintages, etc that I can only say, I really know nothing about wine. Wine is an extremely personal, highly subjective matter, and any evaluation of a wine is bound to stir discussion and adamant disagreement that cannot be resolved objectively.
My six sailing companions had a range of experience with wine tasting, from none to moderate. The sailing trip was a boating trip, driven by wind and waves—not focused on wine—and we were only going for 10 days specifically to the southern islands near Split. That said, we sampled many wines of the region in a spontaneous, terribly unsystematic way and, most importantly, we had fun. So with those disclaimers, I offer you a very high level review of one wine lover's odyssey of Croatian wines.

Like any wine producing region, particularly those in Europe, in Croatia everyone seems to make wine—from one's grandfather to recognized professionals. The varietals and clones cultivated, the location and management of vineyards, and the processes of harvesting the grapes and making the wine are highly variable, and as a result so is the quality of the wine.
Grapes have been grown in Croatia since introduced by the Greeks in 6th century BC and Athenian writers in 400 BC praised white wine from the Dalmatian island of Vis. Today, some varietals are grown that are known worldwide, some grown are known by different names elsewhere in the world, and some are distinctly local. For instance, Croatian grape varietal Crljenak Kastelanski (or Tribidrag, which is the name dating back to the 14th century) is called Primitivo in Italy and Zinfandel in the US. The most common red grape in Croatia, Plavac Mali, is descended from Crljenak Kastelanski. Pošip is a very common white varietal that from what I can tell is specifically local. Similarly, Bogdanuša, Trnjak, Vugava (Bugava), Trbljan (Kuc), and Kurteloska are local to Croatia and/or that region of the world. The wine drinking experience varies with the type and quality of the wine. Wines have one of three quality classifications: Vrhunsko Vino: Premium Quality Wine, Kvalitetno Vino: Quality Wine, or Stolno Vino: Table Wine. See the Wikipedia link for a concise summary of wine regions, qualities, and varietals: Croatian Wine.
Unbottled, unlabeled locally produced wine was served in carafes at the informal 'konobas' (literally translated 'tavern'), which were often small family run restaurants with marvelous indigenous cuisine. The menu at these restaurants on the islands was often limited to three local traditional main dishes of fish, squid or octopus, and lamb with one or two house appetizers and aperitifs. We found the food was, more often than not, exceptionally fresh and tasty. Combined with the unusually idyllic and unique hilltop or waterfront setting and some good company, these establishments provided dining satisfaction unrivaled by the finest dining locations. Admittedly, though, the wine was not the highlight.
The local or family produced white wine, often of Pošip or Bogdanuša, was simple and light and usually had grapefruit, other citrus, local herbs, and/or grass overtones. Some whites, often blends, had an unctuous, musty nose of overripe or fermenting fruit and/or sea breeze or low tide. The rosés and reds, almost always of Plavac Mali, were usually light with bright red fruit, such as cherry, raspberry, or strawberry. The established wineries had richer wines of Plavac Mali that yielded dark cherry, plum, pepper, fennel, chocolate, leather and/or raw beef notes.
Stay tuned for the next three installments of Summer Lane's sailing holiday to Croatia and her visit to three well-known and reputed wineries, Tomic, Milos and Grgic.

Bugey-Cerdon Sparkling Wine

Recently, my husband opened this Bugey-Cerdon Sparkling Wine so that we could quench our thirst after a sweaty day of work in the vineyard. Delicious and refreshing are two words to describe this sparkling wine. It is imported by Kermit Lynch so I went to their website to read about Patrick Bottex.
Here is a short excerpt:
Patrick and Catherine Bottex have been farming the five hectares of limestone slopes above the Ain River since 1991.

Cerdon is one of three crus in the appellation of Bugey and is the only one whose entire production consists of sparkling wine. The Bottex’s blend consists of ninety percent Gamay and ten percent of the native Poulsard.
This sparkling is made using méthode ancestrale, a rare technique that experts believe predates the méthode champenoise. The wine first goes through a primary fermentation in cuve, but is then bottled before all of the residual sugar has converted to alcohol. After going through a secondary fermentation in the bottle for at least two months, the wine is ready to drink.
At just 8% alcohol, this is a very quaffable sparkling that my husband thinks will go well with Thai food. I'm game!

Rain, Rain, Everywhere But.....

It's pretty sad. We have had only 2 rain events during this spring season, once on April 20th that brought 3/4-inches of rain and another time on June 1st which gave us 1-1/4 inches of rain. There have been some pretty heavy rainstorms in Connecticut, but all of the storms seemed to go north of us or south of us. We could see the soil getting dry and dusty.
My husband said, "We gotta hoe around the vines", so we brought out our hook and crook hoe, our go-to hand weeder and began hoeing around our 8 rows of Chardonnay vines since they looked the most parched and then hoed around our Auxerrois. We filled our IBC tank with water from home and gave each vine a little thirst quencher. We did this on Saturday (June 12th) and then saw that rain was in the forecast for Monday. The probability was 100% so we breathe a sigh of relief.
Hoeing weeds is not always a drudgery (I lie), but if we were not doing manual labor, we probably would not have seen this beautiful butterfly that posed so nicely for a photo. Later, I learned from Pamm Cooper that this butterfly is called the Great Spangled Fritillary.

It's Monday and the promised rain has arrived! We are using this rain day to catch up on things left by the wayside for far too long.

Linepost Pounding Help in the Vineyard

I might have been stretching the truth just a little in my previous blog where I wrote about the Anatomy of an Endpost and said at the end that it has only taken us 3 years. The sentence implied that we were all done with the trellis system and the truth of the matter is we have 10 more rows of lineposts to put in. So, on Wednesday, we started with the first of the ten rows and it took us 6 hours! My husband has devised a great system using an Atlas Copco hydraulic pounder to accomplish this task and last year, we were getting pretty proficient at linepost pounding. Our record is putting in 33 lineposts in about 3 hours.
Our friend Barry, came to help us on Thursday morning and we accomplished this task in 2 hours! So, early on Friday morning, he brought along Mary and the 4 of us pounded posts. We beat the 2 hour time by 8 minutes so Barry was in the mood to see if he could better that time, so we did one more row of posts. This time, we didn't finish the row, all of us were flagging and we had to call it, so this row DNQ (did not qualify---golf speak). Barry was off to Seattle on Saturday in preparation for the PGA Golf US Open where he will be putting in 110 hour weeks. Four rows done, only 6 more to go! Thanks very much for the help, guys!

Annual Cycle of Grapevine Growth in Our Vineyard: Fill in the Blanks

I am reading an online article called Grapevine Structure and Function written by Ed Hellman. In this article, Hellman gives a timeline of the annual cycle of grapevine growth as it relates to sites in Oregon.
It is a nice guide, but I thought that I would try to figure this timeline out for our vineyard. We now have two data points for when budswell occurs in our vineyard: In 2014 budswell occurred around May 10th and in 2015 budswell occurred on May 8th, followed by budbreak a week or so later. Therefore, in general, during the second week in May is when we should be seeing our dormant buds come out of its winter hibernation. I started to fill out Hellman's Annual Cycle of Grapevine Growth timeline like this:

This year, we do have blossoms on our grapevines and I have been monitoring their growth. So far, I haven't seen any of the blossoms bloom, but according to Hellman's article, bloom usually occurs 50-80 days after budburst in Oregon. Here is how our blossoms have been developing since we first saw their appearance on May 18th.

I'm going to continue to fill in the blanks for Hellman's Annual Cycle of Grapevine Growth as it pertains to our vineyard and update this blog. I'm looking forward to bloom!

Anatomy of an Endpost

In looking back at my blog, we have been thinking about our endposts since before the dawn of our vineyard. The blogpost Endpost Designs was written on April, 2013 even before our vineyard was planted. Little did we know at that time that we would select the anchored endpost design, because out thoughts were leaning toward putting in an H-brace. Reality set in as we thought about the costs of putting in black locust for our endposts. Black locust is a good choice for endposts unless you find out like we did that straight black locust is difficult to find and it can cost up to $25.00 a post. We were able to find a dealer in Barkhamstead, CT who was selling reasonably straight black locust for $10 for a 10-foot length. We ordered and received our trellising material in late June, 2013 where it sat for almost 1 year. We began putting in our lineposts in May, 2014 and our endposts in November, 2014.

One thing that we were unclear about was how to secure the endpost to the ground anchor. My husband settled on the GPAK system from GRIPPLE. Our favorite go-to farmer friends, the Holmbergs also recommended that we use the GPAK.
So, my husband began installing the GPAK in late May.
I took a picture of what the close up of the endpost now looks like with the GPAK trellis anchor installed.

There are all kinds of endpost designs out there, but when we were trying to determine exactly how to finish it off, the devil is really in the details.

My husband purchased these fasteners from Big Heel Fasteners, the link provides much more information. The nice thing about these fasteners is that you can screw it in. If you don't like where you put it on your endpost, you can easily unscrew it and reposition it. Lastly, in order to make the GPAK wire visible, to avoid running into it, we wrapped the wire with fluorescent orange tubing.

It's only taken us 3 years!

2014 Waitsburg Cellars Cheninières

We are always on a lookout for good Chenin Blanc wines to try and my husband found this one at a local package store. It was a 2014 Waitsburg Cellars Cheninières dubbed, "The Aromatics". A few weekends ago, our son Brett and his wife, Laura flew in from Seattle, Washington on a red-eye flight to spend the weekend in Stonington, attending their friend's wedding. On the first night that they were here, after going to wedding ceremony Part 1, and coming back sans dinner, and looking for all the world, like Sleepless from Seattle, my husband made a succulent fresh clam linguine dinner for the 4 of us. This wine, from their backyard in Waitsburg, Washington, was the accompanying potent potable. We liked the acidity of this wine which complimented the richness of the clam linguine.
On the Internet, I learned that the winemaker, Paul Gregutt has served as the Northwest regional editor and reviewer for Wine Enthusiast magazine since 1998, and wrote the “Wine Adviser” column in The Seattle Times from 2002 until April of this year. His book, Washington Wines and Wineries: The Essential Guide, is considered a definitive resource.
That same article, explains that the name Cheninières, is a play on Savennières, the great Chenin Blanc–producing region of Loire Valley in France. Paul Gregutt also makes another Chenin Blanc called Chevray, a clever reference to Vouvray, another great Chenin Blanc-producing region in Loire, that makes one of our favorite Chenins, The (italics, mine) Domaine Huet.
We need to revisit this Cheninières and try the Waitsburg Cellars Chevray as well.

Vineyard Scouting: Turn the Leaf Over

It's a good thing to go through the vineyard every so often. I did that yesterday while my husband tried his new weeding attachment. The vines looked fine, they were growing, but I came upon this partially skeletonized leaf. I belong to the Anonymous Society of Leaf Turners, headed by Pamm Cooper, whom I met through the University of Connecticut Extension Master Gardener Program. In Connecticut, a good place to learn about the latest in flora and fauna is at the UConn Home & Garden Center on Facebook. What Pamm taught us in the Master Gardener course is that when you see a leaf that has been partially

skeletonized, like this one, you need to turn the leaf over and see if you can figure out who is doing the damage.
Of the many times that I have walked the vineyard and turned leaves over, this is one time that I thought, "Caught you!" It was a tiny green caterpillar. It appears to me to be a member of the Sphinx moth caterpillar but I haven't been able to positively ID it.

Vintage Notes: Spring 2015

It has been a cool, dry spring. The last time we had any measurable rainfall occurred on April 23, when we had 3/4-inches of rain. The vines have been surviving on the water that was in the soil (field capacity) from the winter snow pack that we had never experienced in the 30+ years that we have lived here. Altough some of the plants were actually growing despite the lack of rain, we were concerned that the continued lack of rainfall would take it's toll on the some of the vines that we had transplanted.
Mother Nature answered our plea for rain on Sunday evening with a little sprinkle and with sporadic rainfall on Monday, June 1st accompanied by cool 50^o Fahrenheit temperature. It's still sprinkling today and cool. We'll need to check our rain gauge to determine what the rainfall was in the vineyard. I'll report back. We went to the land saw that between early Monday morning into Tuesday afternoon, we had 1-1/4 inch of rain!