2014 Paumanok Minimalist Chenin Blanc

My husband alerted me to an article in the New York Times about Chenin Blanc Makes an Audacious U.S. Return. The article begins with the saga of Chenin Blanc grown in California used to make inexpensive, sweet white wine, and ends with Chenin Blanc redeeming itself in the hands of the Massoud Family of Paumanok Vineyards located on Long Island and others. We are very familiar with the Chenin Blanc from Paumanok, including the Minimalist that is mentioned in the article. The Massouds make delicious Chenin Blanc that pairs well with local seafood such as oysters.

Understanding Grape Berry Development

One of my go to articles was published in 2002 in Practical Vineyard and Winery and is called Understanding Grape Berry Development. This article is especially meaningful to us now that we are taking care of grapes. The following chart that is found in the article is a visual summation of what goes on during grape berry development.

The above chart tell us a lot of information at a glance from flowering to berry ripening:

• The change in xylem and phloem flow
• The change in berry size
• What and when the various chemical compounds begin to accumulate in the grape berry
• When véraison begins
• How long after flowering can you expect full berry ripening
• The increase in ^oBrix as a function of time

Relevant to what we are seeing now, is that when véraison occurs the ^oBrix of the grape is between 4 and 7. In this respect, our Auxerrois seems to be miles ahead of our Chenin Blanc. The chart also says that it takes 60 days from véraison to full ripeness. That would put us some where in mid October for our Chenin Blanc.
Today, while we took a break from mowing the weeds, we checked the ^oBrix of our Auxerrois and Chenin Blanc. Our Auxerrois is still on the course to ripen earlier than our Chenin Blanc. We are tasting our grapes when we check the ^oBrix and we are getting pretty good at telling what it is by taste. The Chenin Blanc at ^oBrix 14 is acquiring the flavors of Chenin Blanc. When we check the ^oBrix of our grapes, we are also looking at the color of the seeds.

Checking the oBrix Reading of Our Grapes

Now that we have grapes my husband purchased a refractometer for us to use to check the ^oBrix reading of our grapes. The Wine Spectator Glossary defines ^oBrix as the following:
^oBrix: A measurement of the sugar content of grapes, must and wine, indicating the degree of the grapes' ripeness (meaning sugar level) at harvest. Most table-wine grapes are harvested at between 21 and 25 Brix. To get an alcohol conversion level, multiply the stated Brix by .55.
^oBrix is actually a summation of the amount of sucrose, fructose, vitamins, minerals, amino acids, proteins, hormones, and other solids in the juice.
^oBrix is the scale most often used to measure sugars in winemaking: 1^oBrix = 1% sugar (wt/vol), or 1 gram sugar in 100 mL.
In oder to measure ^oBrix, we purchased a device known as a refractometer. We bought ours from the Valley Vintner. Our kit came with the refractometer which is temperature compensated (Automated temperature compensation ATC), a small vial of distilled water, a screw driver for adjusting the baseline, a plastic "eye" dropper as well as a cloth. There also was a set of instructions on the care and use of the refractometer.

The hand held refractometer is a handy device because it can measure the ^oBrix of a small sample. We don't have too many bunches of grapes so we cannot do the statistical analysis that is required to get an accurate measure of the entire collection of Auxerrois and Chenin Blanc grapes, so we have been taking tests using one grape at a time. This is fun!
Our Auxerrois is ahead of our Chenin Blanc with ^oBrix measuring between 14-16 and the Chenin Blanc is currently between 10-16. The Chenin Blanc is much more variable since we also have some very green clusters that have not reached véraison and the ^oBrix is at 5.0.

Disease Affected Plants

It's been about 1 week since we noticed that some of our plants were being affected by a Grape Leaf Problem. In order to determine if it was some kind of abiotic problem or a nutritional deficiency, we decided to count and map out the places in the vineyard that we notice the occurrence of this leaf problem. The vineyard was divided according to the number of line posts. The count begins with the end post numbered as 1 and the first line post becomes 2, between end post 1 and line post 2 are 5 vines. We have 24 line posts as indicated on the horizontal axis. The y-axis indicates the variety that has been planted in the row.
The results of our mapping yields this visual. The compass shows that north is on the right hand side as you face the image. The unaffected rows are colored green and the affected cells in the row are colored brown and in the brown cells are the number of vines that are affected with the leaf browning problem. At the moment, it appears that we have 31 plants that are affected. We will be keeping tabs on our plants to see if this problem spreads to our other vines and the direction of the spread.

Auxerrois and Periderm Formation

We have been having another week of temperatures in the 90s the second heat wave of this summer. It began on Friday, August 14 and has been non-stop. We did go into the vineyard to do the count of plant affected with the Grape Leaf Problem and saw that our Auxerrois grapes are swelling. They are ahead of our Chenin Blanc grapes and are ripening as we had expected, sooner than the Chenin.
Not only that, the periderm on the shoot is beginning to form, a sign that the plant is getting ready for dormancy. The periderm formation begins at the base of the shoot, where it is connected to older wood and then continues to the growing tip. The Auxerrois and the Chardonnay are forming periderm, but the Chenin Blanc is not. This is interesting phenological development for us to observe.

Grape Leaf Problem

Some of our vines have been displaying this type of problem on its leaves:

We are thinking that this is not a fungal disease or a disease that is caused by insects. We are leaning toward a disease that is caused by nutritional deficiencies. There is some information on the Internet, appropriately titled Grapevine Problems: Leaf Spots Not Caused by Insects or Disease. I also read another document on the Internet called Grapevine Growth Distortions: A Guide to Identifying Symptoms authored by V. Walton, P. Skinkis, A. Dreves, C. Kaiser, S. Renquist, S. Castagnoli, and R. Hilton and published by the Oregon State University Extension. This publication has a flowchart that might help in narrowing down what the cause of the leaf problem can be.
There are only a few plants that appear to have this problem and they seem to be located in the same area. I am going to take a count of these plants and their location and plot it to see if I can see a pattern. I'll post my plot later.

Sake and Sushi II

A while back, I posted a blog on Sake and Sushi in Hawaii.
In Connecticut, when we are in the mood for the best sushi (nigiri), we always go to Go Fish Restaurant in the Old Mystic Village, next to the Aquarium. On this evening, just as we were entering the establishment, our friends, whom we had just had dinner with and sampled the Trio of Tempranillo along with Spanish chicken, were just leaving! What a coincidence. They had also gone to the sushi bar and recommended the Tokyo Nachos.
When we got to the sushi bar, Gene and Go were there, and we were hoping to see Bryan and Jerry. My husband wore the Sansei t-shirt that I brought for him from Hawaii, and we wanted to let Jerry know that I went to Sansei while I was there. Jerry was not there and Bryan was in command this evening. We settled in with our usual nigiri (maguro, hamachi, fluke, unagi and tako) starter. Bryan made for us an ume and shiso maki that paired excellently with the sake we were drinking. Then we asked Bryan to make us a "Bryan special". We always ask Jerry to make us a "Jerry special", and the specials never disappoint. While we were having our nigiri, we saw Bryan busy making something in a martini glass. When he was a third of the way through, we asked him what he was making, and he said, this was the Bryan seafood martini special. Wow! This is what it looked like:

There was 2 of everything: shrimp, tako in miso, crab, salmon, hamachi, asparagus, and mango all on a bed of shredded daikon! It was as delicious as it was beautiful. If you are in Mystic, the Go Fish sushi bar is the place to go to assuage your sushi craving. And, if you are adventurous, tell your sushi maker, "Omakase!" which means "I'll leave it up to you". Their creations might just surprise you and send your tastebuds straight to the culinary moon!

Trio of Tempranillo

Our friend, who is a masterful maker of paella, invited us over for Spanish style chicken last night and served some Tempranillo to go with his creation. We anted up the Ruby Magdalena Vineyard Tempranillo, a gift from our son and daughter-in-law who visited Marty Johnson, earlier this year. Marty lives in Zillah, Washington and grows and makes wine from Tempranillo to honor his Spanish grandparent. We enjoyed his wine, shown here with two other Tempranillo wines from Spain, a Crianza from Ribera Del Duero and a Reserva from Rioja.

Marty is making some mighty fine wine.

Millerandage

I love the way millerandage, a French wine growing term is pronounced [mil-ROHN-dahdzh] but what it actual is in grapes is not so lovely. We have some of that happening on our grapes and that condition is a direct reflection on what it was like when the flowers were beginning to bloom and pollinated.
In looking back to a blogpost I wrote on June 28, The Sight of One Flower Blooming, on June 20 we saw very little flowers in bloom and then on Monday, June 22, we saw many flowers in bloom. Sandwiched between those two days was Sunday, a day that brought 3/4-inch of rain. Rain during flowering as well as cold weather can lead to millerandage, otherwise known as "hens and chicks" or shot berries.
The thing with millerandage is that the smaller berries will not ripen at the same time that the larger berries will ripen and there is a chance for having green flavors in the resultant wine. We will not have this problem because we only have 366 clusters of grapes and I am thinking of hand destemming each cluster. (NOT....but may be).
The Wikipedia has a very good explanation on Millerandage that is worth checking out.

Cleaning Our Grape Clusters

In addition to Counting Clusters we have been going through the vineyard to get rid of raisiny looking grapes.

The question is, what causes grapes to look like that. My husband thought that we might have a problem with the spotted wing drosophila so I am looking into this. I recall that there was a post that described a method of trapping the drosophila and I found it here: Spotted Wing Drosophila.

The method is simple: Create a trap from a clear plastic cup with a lid. Make small holes in the plastic lid. Make two holes on the sides of the cup near the top and insert wire, string or twist ties in the holes to enable it to be hung. Get yellow sticky cards to put on the inside of the plastic cup and fill the bottom with apple cider vinegar. Hang the trap near a grapevine. The vinegar acts as an attractant and the yellow sticky card will trap the insects.

The female and male spotted wing drosophila look like the following photo. It is the male that has the spots on it's wings, the female does not have any spots.

The female, however, is the destructrix. Using her saw-like ovipositor she deposits her eggs inside sound fruit providing a home for the developing larvae.
Click here: Drosophila suzukii for a closeup view of the male and female spotted wing drosophila as well as distinguishing characteristics between a spotted wing drosophila female and a female drosophila ovipositor.


References:
1. Washington State University IPM: Spotted Wing Drosophila.
2. Ministry of Agriculture, British Columbia, Spotted Wing Drosophila (Fruit Fly) Pest Alert.

Cluster Counting

One of the things that we could do even in the sweltering heat was to update our plant count and at the same time, do a cluster count. We don't have any Chardonnay clusters and we only have 20 clusters on our Auxerrois, so at best, we hope to be able to taste our Auxerrois to see what kinds of flavors we can achieve. We do have approximately 465 healthy Chenin Blanc plants and a conservative count of the clusters gives a total of 366 clusters.
Another way to look at the count of our plants and clusters is to see it as a graph. It is not surprising that the rows with the most plants gives the most clusters.
In the chart below, the vertical axis, Y1 denoted by the blue circles gives the number of clusters and Y2 denoted by the green bar graph shows the number of plants. The horizontal axis is the row information.

The question is, what can we do with a mere 366 clusters. I looked at a previous blogpost, that I called How Many Grapes Does It Take to Make a Bottle of Wine and did some calculations. I assumed that each cluster will have a weight of approximately 0.2 pounds and multiplied it by the number of clusters, 366, which amounts to approximately 73 pounds. Looking at the chart, 912 pounds equals 73 gallons, so 73 pounds equals 5.84 gallons. A few years ago, when my husband and I began our journey into grape growing and winemaking, my friend gave me her winemaking kit so, somewhere deep in the bowels of our basement, I have a 5 gallon jug. I'm thinking of making some wine from our Chenin Blanc.

Rabbit Wine and Champagne Sealer

Lately, we have been drinking sparkling wines and often we do not finish the entire bottle. (I know this is difficult to believe). My husband looked into closures for sparkling wines and found one. It is called the Rabbit Wine and Champagne Sealer sold by Metrokane. Buying this closure will not break the bank since it is around $5.00 and well worth it. The proof is in the bubbles, so here is a photo of the sparkling wine that we drank on the second day. The gizmo that saves bubbles in the sparkling is shown below.

We also enjoyed the sparkling that is shown capped with the Rabbit closure. It is a Domaine Eugéne Carrel Methode Traditionnelle. We had this with a Caprese salad which was refreshing on a hot, sweltering July evening.